What We've Learned About Jesus

There’s no greater topic we can set our minds on than the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Grander than the highest philosophy, more interesting than cutting edge science

He’s a continual surprise. And when we grasp him - the real him, that the him we’ve made up - we are helped, comforted, encouraged, inspired, and motivated.

What have we been learning? We started Mark at the end of January, and I’m going to see if I can summarize some of the major ideas Mark has been putting forward. We’ve got three.

# 1 Jesus Has No Rivals, So Worship Him

The book begins in 1:1 with the words, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” We don’t need to go any further to discover that these words set Jesus apart from any other person in history.

His name, given by God (Matt. 1:20-21) is the Greek version of the Hebrew Joshua, which mean Yawheh saves, or Yahweh is salvation. His name means God saves.

Christos, and it’s the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word for Messiah. It means “anointed one,” and became the word to refer to the single great ruler who would come at the end of the age and set up the kingdom of God.

He is called the “son of God.” This is an incredibly bold claim. This is an outright claim to divinity. This isn’t a hint, hint. This is in your face. This man is the one in nature with God. He is coeternal and coequal with the Father.

If it weren’t clear enough, Mark quotes OT Scriptures: Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3. I want you to see what this says. John the Baptist is preparing the way for Yahweh. Who’s Yahweh? The Holy God of Israel. The Creator, the One who Called Abraham, the One who Gave the Law at Sinai, the One who is the Alpha and Omega, First and Last. Yahweh is coming - and Yahweh shows up and he’s called Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is God-incarnate, Yahweh himself. He has no rivals.

To confirm Jesus has no rivals, Mark records

Jesus’ baptism in 1:9-11.

Victory over Satan’s temptation in the wilderness.

Authority over the lives of men. verses 16-20,

The rest of chapter 1 demonstrates that Jesus teaches with authority, casts out demons, and heals the sick. He is unlike any other man to ever have walked the earth, because he is no mere man, he is Lord of all creation, he has no rivals, and he deserves our highest praise.

If we are creating a Mt Rushmore of biblical figures, you can’t put Jesus in it. If you put Moses and David and Paul, you can’t put Jesus in it. He’s not like them. He’s in a class of his own.

Where is Jesus in your life? Mark’s presentation is that he is to be worshipped and adored and treasured and admired and trusted and obeyed, because he has no rivals. Many people don’t know him. They claim to know him, but they’ve never actually read his word. They claim to love him but they don’t really know who he is or what he taught. They claim to follow him but they’re lax about obeying him. Some people set themselves at the center of their lives, and Jesus is a moon that orbits around their ambitions.

But Jesus won’t have it that way. He is the center of all reality. He is the Lord of all creation. He is the God of the Nations. He is the Sun around which all the universe orbits. You must not marginalize Jesus. A marginalized Jesus is an ignored and blasphemed Jesus.

# 2 Jesus has a Message, so Listen Up

In 1:1, look again at that word “gospel.” The word has the connotations of being an announcement. The word finds its origins in the military world, where a messenger would come with glad tidings that the war is over, peace reigns, the enemy is defeated. Jesus comes with God’s announcement to humanity, and this message is called “the gospel.”

John the Baptist is called a “messenger,” a “voice crying,” vs. 7: “And he preached.”

Jesus came, and what’s he doing? Vs. 14: “proclaiming the gospel of God.”

In fact, you need to realize this. God has a message for humanity, and Jesus came to preach it. It’s absolutely critical we get this right. Did Jesus come healing? Yes. Was it his main thing? No. Mark 1:38-39 make this crystal clear: there are people begging to heal him and he says, “Let’s go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” He is compassionate to heal the body, but his higher aim is the soul, and for the soul to be saved it must hear and believe a message.

Look at how frequently we see Jesus preaching:

1:21 “he entered the synagogue and was teaching.”

1:22 “And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority.”

1:39: “And he went throughout all Galilee preaching in their synagogues…”

2:2 “And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the Word to them.”

2:13 “He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them.”

Apparently, Jesus has a message that must not be dismissed, ignored, or misunderstood. On vacation, sitting around the campfire, our family played Telephone. You know how it goes - inevitably, by the end, the message is changed and we all laugh. That’s the point of the game. But could you imagine a message coming from the God of Creation, telling humanity the good news of how one can be saved from sin and reconciled to God, and we botch it up?

Here this: it is not through moral improvement that we are saved. It is not through religious exercise that we are saved. It is not through fanatic devotion that we are saved. It is through believing a message. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ.

Could there be anything more important than this? How devastating would it be for the church to get God’s message to humanity wrong? It would wreak havoc upon the church. Souls would pay eternally for the error. 1:15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

This is what Jesus is preaching. You must repent. You must believe.

What is repentance? Repentance denounces the kingdom of self. Repentance says there’s a new king I live for. I declare moral bankruptcy. I fire myself from the job of running my own life. And I declare my allegiance to King Jesus and say, “Save me, Lead me, Guide me!”

In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian meets several characters who he encounters on his journey but entered through the wrong way, and so they’re not going to be welcomed into the Celestial City. You Formalist and Hypocrisy -- who hopped the fence to get on the path.

There is one door that all must pass through if they would be reconciled to God -- and above the door these words are bold: Repent and Believe.

I’ll ask you -- have you repented? Has your mind embraced the Lordship of Christ, the filthiness of sin, and the need of God’s grace? Has your heart experienced the sorrow of your failure, the grief of your sin, has it been humbled by God’s holiness? And have you, now, in an act of the will, turned from those thing, removed them from your life, in obedience to Jesus Christ?

And have you believed? -- embraced him as your loving Lord, being confident that your sins are now completely forgiven, being sure that you’re now white as now, being certain that you share in eternal life? Have you embraced Christ as your treasure, and are now giving your life for the purpose he created you -- to love, serve, and worship Jesus Christ?

# 3 False Religion is Deadly, so Believe the Gospel

False religion is so effective because it is a chameleon. It blends in, and takes the colors and shades of the truth, but is actually something altogether different. The Pharisees in Jesus’ day would have been hailed as the most religious and spiritual men in the community, but they were so far off from the true gospel, and Jesus revealed that.

We can piece together how the Pharisees were wrong through these confrontations.

First of all, they were unwilling to see their own sinfulness. 2:16 “the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’” They put themselves in a different category. Those ones are the sinners. They didn’t see their own sinfulness. This is always the first step toward false religiosity, is that we’re blind to our own need.

Secondly, they adopted formalism - the externals of godliness without the heart of godliness. You can see this in 2:18 when there seems to be an expectation that Jesus should be fasting. You see this in their anger when Jesus plucks grain and heals on the Sabbath. The way to avoid address the reality of sin in the heart is by weaving robes of false righteousness to hide your issues. They were avid rule-keepers.

Thirdly, they completely missed who Jesus actually was. You see this in 2:1-12, when Jesus forgives the sins of the paralytic and they say, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” You see, they didn’t have a problem with sins being forgiven. They just didn’t think Jesus had the authority to do it. They didn’t realize who he was. That he is God-incarnate, Yahweh, the one who has the right to show mercy to whom he pleases.

There are false gospels that deny the depths of sin, promote externals to impress, and thus miss the heart of the Christian message.

We, however, embrace the reality that we are much worse than we ever dared imagined, much more helpless than we ever dared think, and yet, through faith in Christ, more loved than we every dared hope -- completely, totally forgiven.

Listen: Jesus has no rivals, we must worship him, and follow him whatever the cost. We must listen to him amidst the noise of this world. And church, we must not slide into the religious formalism that retains a Christian shell but has no Christian heart. Confess your sin in repentance, bringing your very heart to Christ, recognizing that he is our God, our merciful and mighty Savior, who can forgive your sins and transform you from the inside out.