Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

It’s already been quite the morning around here - with baby dedications, baptisms, missionary testimonies and new classes and curriculums in our life group ministry - it has been very busy to say the least.

And now we get one more new start as we begin to study this wonderful book.

Earlier this year we worked our way through Colossians and the goal of that study was to present Christ - high and magnified - and to get a very clear picture of His work in salvation.

This summer we have spent time going through the promises of the Psalm writers and really their writings that point to the coming of Christ.

But now we get the distinct privilege of studying Christ Himself.

I think two statements by Charles Spurgeon sum up well the privilege of studying Christ.

The first are the first words he spoke from the pulpit at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London on March 25, 1861

714I would propose that the subject of the ministry of this house, as long as this platform shall stand, shall be the person of Jesus Christ.

I am never ashamed to avow myself a Calvinist, but if I am asked to say what is my creed, I think I must reply, “It is Jesus Christ.”

The body of divinity to which I would pin and bind myself forever, God helping me, is Christ Jesus, who is the sum and substance of the gospel, who is himself all theology, the incarnation of every precious truth, the all-glorious personal embodiment of the way, the truth, and the life.

The second is the last words that he spoke from the very same pulpit on June 7, 1891

723He is the most magnanimous of captains.

If there is anything gracious, generous, kind and tender, lavish, and superabundant in love, you always find it in him.

These forty years and more have I served him, and I have nothing but love for him.

His service is life, peace, joy.

Oh, that you would enter it at once! God help you to enlist under the banner of Jesus even this day!

But I must give us each a warning at the very beginning of this study.

I would venture to say that almost all of us have read this book before - and most of us have read it multiple times.

With such familiarity there is the possibility to be too casual in our study, to be too familiar with the stories and to say “oh yes, I’ve heard that one before” and miss the beauty of what God has to say to us today.

Let’s commit to coming to these passages each week with fresh eyes and look to see not simply the familiar stories but what they reveal to us about the person of Christ.

Every story must have a beginning and this morning we come to the beginning not of a simple story but of a person.

Every book must have a beginning.

Throughout history there have been some iconic beginnings to books.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” immediately identifies Dickens book “A Tale of Two Cities”.

“All children, except one, grow up?” is the start of J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan”.

There’s even a novel that starts out “If you’re going to read this, don’t bother.”

The beginning of the book of Mark would rank up with these iconic beginnings.

Even this beginning - so ripe with promise - is often overlooked when it comes to beginnings in the Bible.

When we hear the words beginning our minds immediately turn to Genesis 1:1

or John 1:1

but normally we don’t immediately think of Mark 1:1.

Before we dig into why I say this is a great introduction - let’s take a few moments and examine who wrote the book and why it was written.

It is church tradition that tells us that this book was written by Mark because just like the other Gospels the author doesn’t choose to identify himself.

However, there is ample evidence from the first and second centuries that attribute this book writing to Mark.

Writing in 140 A.D. the church father Papias serving as the bishop of Hieropolis wrote “And the presbyter [the Apostle John] said this: Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered.”

And then in 150 A.D., the church father Justin Martyr referred to the Gospel as “the memoirs of Peter” and that Mark had written the book while in Rome.

Mark is a great example of the restorative power of the Gospel.

John Mark might be the young man at the end of this Gospel who runs away from Christ’s arrest naked but we definitely know that his mother hosted a church house in the book of Acts.

Following Peter’s release from prison by an angel in Acts 12 he goes to the house of John Mark’s mother where they were having prayer meeting on his behalf.

Mark accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey but left early in the trip.

Paul gives us another clue into Mark’s identity by telling us that he was Barnabas’ cousin in Colossians 4. It was the desire to include Mark on a second missionary journey that led to a split between Paul and Barnabas.

Somewhere after that time, Mark and Peter are reunited and their relationship is developed to the point that Peter would later refer to Mark as “his own son” in 1 Peter 5:13.

It was during their ministry together in Rome that this book was written.

Which brings us to one last issue that we have to address in order to properly place this book in its context.

We need to briefly discuss what some theologians have called the “Synoptic problem”.

Among the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke are referred to as the Synoptic Gospels.

Synoptic is a compound word with “syn” meaning together and “optic” meaning “to see”.

If you’ve ever read through the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke you would recognize that these three Gospels share a lot of material in common and the “Synoptic problem” is an effort on the part of scholars to determine who borrowed from who.

It is generally assumed that, because Mark is so short, that Matthew and Luke borrowed from Mark.

There are several issues with that though - the first and most problematic being that it was generally accepted up until very recently (the 19th Century) that Matthew was the first Gospel written.

Another issue is why would Matthew borrow information regarding his own calling by Christ from Mark who wasn’t even there.

The facts are that the three Gospels share nearly all the same information and where they do differ the differences are not substantive enough to warrant the idea that there are sources that have yet to be discovered or that the Gospel writers borrowed from one another.

What is the best solution to this “Synoptic problem” is to recognize that each of the Gospel writers were inspired by God through the Holy Spirit to write the story independently in a way that would serve His purposes and are in accordance with His mandate of 2 Timothy 3:16-17 that all Scripture is God breathed and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

And so now with all that introductory and background knowledge we come to the beginning.

The Beginning

Mark really starts out his Gospel with a thesis statement - he is letting us know, and the original Roman audience that his Gospel was intended for, exactly what and why he is writing.

He starts off with beginning.

And this is a logical statement because of course where else would you start but at the beginning.

The beginning of the story, the beginning of the life being chronicled.

Except Mark starts at neither of those places.

Like I mentioned in the introduction, unlike John or Moses in Genesis, Mark’s use of the word beginning is not meant to pull our minds back to the beginning of creation.

It is not meant to remind us of the original family or original sin or even the first promise of the Gospel found in Genesis 3:15.

Commentators actually take different views as to exactly what Mark’s purpose was in this use of language.

Some think that it could be the original title of the letter - that this was the Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Other’s think, like I just mentioned, that this is really Mark’s thesis statement and that he is laying out the purpose of his writing right from the very beginning.

It seems logical that it really could be either of these two purposes but I think that there is another reason for Mark’s verbiage here.

Our modern translations rob a bit away from the language by adding an article and calling it “the beginning” rather than how Mark truly wrote it - Beginning.

Αρχη - or beginning.

This word can be defined as the commencement of something, as an action, process or state of being or a point in time at the beginning of a duration.

But this is not the beginning of Christ’s life - as Luke and Matthew chose to document.

Nor is this the beginning of the salvation story.

I think this is something else.

And seeing as this is the first weekend of professional football in the United States, I think we could look at the Super Bowl for a bit of an understanding of what Mark is alluding to here as he says Αρχη.

Every year there is a buildup to the Super Bowl.

And if you don’t like football - put any event into this blank that you would like - first there’s the season and the ebb and flow of hope and despair that the different teams and fans experience.

And then there’s the playoffs until finally there are two teams left.

Then the hype really begins - who’s hurt, who’s not, how will this team or this player fair against the other team.

There’s ample media coverage.

And then there’s even the day of the game.

But even that day is not the game.

If this were a wedding there would be the courtship or dating period followed by the oftentimes fumbling proposal and the groom-to-be just hoping that his desired bride will say yes.

And then there’s the planning, the invitations, securing a venue, color schemes.

And finally the day arrives - but just as the day of the Super Bowl is not the game, the day of the wedding is not the wedding.

Until the ball is kicked off.

Until the doors open and the bride appears and begins her walk down the aisle - it’s all just hope.

From the day that Adam and Eve fell in the Garden and the Lord made this great pronouncement

There has been 4000 years of hope, despair, righteousness and sin all building to this moment.

There was the Abrahamic covenant when Israel was promised a land and this was repeated to Isaac and Jacob.

This hope seemed to dim as the people moved to Egypt and languished under the Egyptian rule and slavery for four hundred years.

But then Moses came on the scene and maybe he was the promised seed that would once and for all crush the serpent’s head.

He even received the Mosaic covenant to provided a law for righteous living among the people - surely this would be him.

But then he too failed.

And there was another 400 year period, after the promised land had been secured under Joshua, when the people would be near to God and then wander away requiring rescuing and they ended up in such bad affairs that at the end of that period this pronouncement could be made of the nation that was meant to demonstrate God to the world

And then a king did come on the scene - first in the person of Saul and then David.

And another promise, this one to David, the Davidic Covenant that promised that one of his seed would remain on the throne of Israel forever

And again the question was - where is the one promised, where is the seed.

Then the nation and the line of kings failed.

The kingdom was split and king after king came and went.