 Good morning once again, before we begin, is there anyone who would like to open the class in prayer? Okay, I can pray and open the class. Father we just thank you Lord for this time. We thank you for bringing us all together here. Thank you Lord that you are the one who has given us your word and you have given us your Holy Spirit to open our eyes to enable us to understand what you want to communicate Lord through your word. Father we pray that as we begin this class and as we finish the last hour of class for today Lord that you would give us the energy, the strength, the inspiration to stay focused to hear from you Lord. We pray Father that we would hear your voice speaking to us Holy Spirit. We ask that you would be our teacher, that you would be the one revealing your truth to us Lord. We thank you for the opportunity to be here together, to learn together and Lord to grow in you together. We bless this time Lord in the name of Jesus and we pray Lord that you would guide and lead us in your presence would be in our midst. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. So on Monday we finished a little bit of a discussion on the book of Matthew. I won't go back into that but we did start with the book of Mark. So I'll just do a recap of what we did from Mark and then we'll continue into the Gospel of Mark. So we looked at the fact that the Gospel of Mark was initially a gospel that was not given a lot of importance because it was so much shorter than the book of Matthew and Luke and Matthew was the popular gospel in the early church. But in present day scholarship Mark has increased in importance because of this recognition that Mark was used as a base or a source for the writing of the other synoptic gospels which is Matthew and Luke. So this is why Mark has now gained importance generally among Christian circles. So Mark presents Jesus mostly from the perspective of the things he did. So we see a lot of action, a lot of activity, a lot of ministry happening in the book of Mark. We see words like straight away immediately just that sense of Jesus moving from one thing to another responding to needs around him. If you read the book of Mark you will see that there's just constantly one miracle after the next recorded. So there's not a lot of narrative or not a lot of teaching, not as many parables as the book of Matthew. Most of it is focused on the miracles of Jesus. And the book of Matthew was written primarily for the Gentiles, so for Roman Christians. And we looked at one example between the book of Matthew and the book of Mark and how they recorded differently based on the audience that they were writing to. We also discussed how Mark is pretty honest in his record of the life and ministry of Jesus. So he doesn't try to paint the disciples as perfect or superhuman. Neither does he do that with Jesus nor with the disciples. He shows us how the disciples don't understand Jesus' ministry. They don't understand his miracles. They don't understand when he's telling them that he's going to die and be raised from the dead. All of that, even though they're with him, they're walking with him, they're seeing his ministry, they're seeing his power. It just doesn't fully settle in their minds. And even though in the middle of the book of Mark Peter declares Jesus as the Messiah, he still doesn't understand what that means for Jesus to be the Messiah. Because right after that we see the record of Jesus talking about his suffering and Peter rebukes Jesus for talking about himself in that way. So that understanding of Jesus as this Messiah and Jesus as one who would suffer, those two things didn't really, wasn't something that the disciples were able to comprehend during Jesus' ministry. And so Mark presents that very honestly, especially considering that the disciples were the leaders of the church, he didn't try to paint them as perfect in any way. We see Jesus' relatives who misunderstood the work that he was doing, his family who didn't understand what he was doing. And then he also presents Jesus very openly presenting Jesus' anger, his sadness, his amazement with people's lack of faith. All of those things are presented in ways that people can relate to Jesus and relate to the disciples. And then we started on this part of Mark's portrait of Jesus. So here we see right in the first verse of the Gospel that Mark presents Jesus as the Son of God. And so we see his intention in the book very clearly being put down in words right at the start. So one, one, he says the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Let me just open that up if, yeah. So the good news was Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. And then in verse 11 of the same chapter is where Jesus is baptized and then the Father affirms Jesus as his Son. And we see at the close of Mark 1539 where Jesus is crucified that the Roman century and also says surely this man was the Son of God. So kind of like at the start of the book and at the end of the book, the Son of God being a very central part to Jesus' identity that Mark wants, wants his readers to grasp. The second part of Jesus' identity that he is talking about is that Jesus is the Son of Man. Now when he's talking about the Son of Man, we know from Daniel 713 where there's a clear reference to a Son of Man coming. And so when we see that in the Gospels and when we see that in Mark, it is a reference back to the Messiah, the Messiah's return. But this is the Messiah's second coming. So Jesus' second coming where he will come back to establish fully, establish his kingdom and to judge the world. So the Son of Man points to Jesus as Messiah, but it also helps people identify with Jesus as someone who is one with them in their suffering. He's someone who has identified with people suffering. He's come as a human being. So we see as Mark talks about Jesus that he talks about Jesus' spring, Jesus spending time with sinners, with the common people. So Jesus is very much human. Although Mark presents him as the Son of God, he also presents this very human side of Jesus. And then the last part is Jesus the Redeemer. And we'll talk more about this later, but Mark is very, very focused on Jesus' suffering, much more so than the other Gospels. In fact, one-third of this Gospel, of Mark's Gospel, talks about the passion narrative. So one-third of it is dedicated to Jesus' crucifixion. His death is resurrection. So we see just from the amount of content that he's written that suffering, Jesus' suffering was very, very central to his recollection of Jesus' life, Jesus' ministry and Jesus' purpose for coming to the earth. And so if we can just read these, I don't think we can read the 14 to 15, but we can just read 10, 45, maybe Mark, 10, 45. And someone can read that for us. Mark, 10, 45. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Thank you. So this is actually something that we see throughout Mark's Gospel, where Jesus is constantly telling his disciples that he's going to die. He's constantly bringing up his suffering and his purpose for coming. So that is, we'll also look at why Mark did that, why did he focus so much on the suffering of Christ. So who wrote the Gospel of Mark? So the early church fathers attributed it to John Mark. We have a few verses here. Maybe we can quickly just read each of these verses in sequence and it'll give us an understanding of who John Mark was. So we know where this author is coming from and his background. So Acts 12, 12, Acts 12, 25, and then we'll go on from there. Anybody can open to it and read, please. Acts 12, 12. So when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together for reading. And 25th verse, and Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry. They also took with them John, whose surname was Mark. Thank you. Colossians 410. Colossians 410. Our star, Kus, my fellow prisoner greets you with Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, about whom you received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him. Thank you. Acts 13, 5, and 13. Acts 13, 5. And when they arrived in Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. They also had drawn as their assistant. And was the dean of the same chapter. Yeah. Now, when Paul and his party set sail from Papus, they came to Perga in Pamphylia, and John departing from them returned to Jerusalem. Thank you. And then Acts 15, 37 to 39, sorry. Acts 15. 37 to 39. Now Barnabas was determined to take with them John called Mark. But Paul insisted that they should not take with them the one who had departed from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work. Then the contingent became so short that they parted from one another. And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus. Thank you. Paul. Yes. And then 2nd Timothy, 4, 11 and 1 Peter 5, 13. 2nd Timothy, 4, 11. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry. Thank you. And 1st Peter, 5, 13. 1st Peter, 5, 13. She who is in Babylon, elect together with you, greet you, and so does Mark, my son. Thank you. So what all have we read about Mark from all of these verses? What do we know about Mark? We know about Paul. Sorry. If you repeat that, sister. He's a apostle with Paul. He's an apostle with Paul. Thank you. So he served alongside Paul. So these first three points that we have here on the PowerPoint is about his family, right? He's the son of Mary. He's called John or Mark. And he's a cousin or relative of Barnabas. So those are the three things regarding his family. Then we know about his ministry that he went with Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey. So he accompanied them as they were going to minister. But in the middle of their journey, he returned to Jerusalem. And Paul was very upset about this. And so on the second missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas have a dispute about whether they should take him along with them on the second missionary journey. And because they can't come to agreement on this, Paul and Barnabas separate and Barnabas takes Mark with him while Paul takes Silas. And so we see here for some reason, we don't know very clearly why John Mark had left Paul and Barnabas in that first missionary journey. But Paul saw it as him abandoning them in the middle of their mission. But we still see that he is restored to Paul in 2 Timothy 4, 11. We see Paul talking about Mark as someone who is useful to him. And we see, I don't have the reference here, but there are other references where Paul talks about Mark at a later stage. And then first Peter 513 is where we see that John Mark was with Peter serving with Peter. And so most of this gospel of Mark is attributed to Peter's recollection of Jesus's ministry. Because John Mark was serving with Peter, he was able to record Peter's account of Jesus and put that down in this gospel. And so he was able to get an eyewitness account from Peter himself, who was one of the closest disciples. So we see in Mark a few instances where Mark talks about where Jesus took Peter, James and John. So he gets that inside look at Jesus's ministry, even into those parts where only the three of them were with Jesus and the rest of the disciples were not around. And what is amazing about this is that he records Peter's denial of Jesus as well. So it's a very, like we talked about a very honest account of Jesus's ministry and the disciples' experience of Jesus's ministry. He doesn't try to present Peter as perfect even though it's Peter's own account being recorded here. So we know that Mark, John Mark wrote this, but who did he write to? We talked about, he wrote to Roman Christians. So it was not a primarily Jewish audience as we saw with Matthew. And so how he records his account of Jesus is quite different. The first thing is that he records Jesus as someone who is always on the move. So something that would fit the Roman mindset. He uses transliteration. So Latin was used among the Romans. And so instead of translating those words because the Romans would understand those words, he just simply transliterates it, which means he wouldn't put English alphabets. He would put Greek alphabets to the Latin word when he was using it. So the examples are Daenerys and Praetorium, where he doesn't try to explain what those words mean or to translate those words for his audience. He doesn't use a lot of Old Testament quotations like Matthew does. He does definitely reference the Old Testament, but not to the extent that Matthew does and not with the same purpose like Matthew talks about fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. Mark doesn't do that as much. Mark also explains a lot of Jewish words and customs in his books, in his book. So he explains the day of preparation, when the day of preparation occurs. He explains what happens at the time of Passover. So things like that, that will help his audience understand what he was talking about when he mentions the Passover, when he mentions the Sabbath, when he mentions the day of preparation. He also talks about the Jewish practice of washing their hands before they eat. So things like that, where he's giving an additional explanation to help his audience understand why certain things were being done and what was the background, the cultural background behind it. He also doesn't include, he has very limited parables compared to Matthew. But in his parables, he doesn't include parables like the Good Samaritan or the parable of the Pharisee, the tax collector. Things that would be very, very relevant to Jews, but wouldn't make as much of an impact on a Roman audience. So he doesn't include those kinds of parables in his account. So he wrote to this Roman church or the Roman Christians, it is thought that he wrote because of the persecution that the church was facing. Now there's a lot of uncertainty about the date of writing of Mark, as is true of most of the books in the New Testament because all we can do is estimate a date. So from early AD 60 to late AD 60, there's a slight difference in views on when it was written. But one purpose for writing the book that most people kind of agree on is that it is written to the persecuted Roman church, specifically relating to Nero's persecution. So in AD 64, Nero had blamed Christians for a fire that happened in the city and brought a lot of destruction. But what was quite suspicious was that Nero was completely safe during this fire. So it was thought that it was something that he himself had done, but then he blamed Christians for the fire and he used that as an excuse to start persecuting Christians. He burned Christians alive. He used them as torches to light up his gardens during the night. He killed other Christians in very severe ways. He fed them to wild animals, so using that as entertainment for the public. He murdered thousands of Roman Christians, but still there were many Christians who were able to escape his grasp. So even though there was so much killing of Christians, there were other Christians who were able to escape, but were still facing persecution because of that. So Christians saw Nero as a prototype of the Antichrist. They saw him as someone who was kind of a picture of what the Antichrist would be. And this letter is written to encourage that persecutor church, that church who is seeing so much death, so much danger, so much violence being committed against them. So we understand why Mark then focuses so much on the suffering of Christ. And he not only focuses on the suffering of Christ, he focuses on discipleship and disciples being called to suffer, to follow Christ in his suffering. So let's just look at these verses listed here, starting with Mark 1, 12 to 13. 1, 12 to 13. Immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness and he was there in the wilderness 40 days, tempted by Satan and was with the wild beasts and the angels ministered to him. Thank you. So here we see the Holy Spirit baptizing, Jesus being baptized, being filled with the Holy Spirit and then being led into the wilderness. To face a time of temptation, a time of testing. So to say that the Holy Spirit empowers you, but the Holy Spirit will also allow you to face temptation, but will also strengthen you in that temptation. So that is one starting right from the first chapter, Mark is talking about testing and temptation. Let's look at Mark 3, 22 and 30. Mark 3, 22. And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, he has Beelsburg and by the ruler of the demons, he casts out demons. Mark 30. Because they said he has an unclean spirit. So here where the people saw Jesus' ministry, saw that he was doing good work, but still found ways to challenge his work, to challenge his ministry. Another encouragement for the church that even if they were engaging in good work, there would be people who would come against them. Who would find reasons to speak against the work that they were doing. Let's look at Mark 8, 34 to 38. Mark chapter 8, 34 to 38. When he had called the people to himself with his disciples also, he said to them, whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him the son of man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels. Thank you. So I would say these few verses from Mark 8 kind of give us a summary of the whole book. That call through the disciples to follow Jesus in the way that Jesus suffered, in the way that Jesus' life was directed to the cross. His identity as a Messiah was closely connected to his suffering. That's what Mark is presenting to us. And so when Jesus is calling his disciples, he's saying, if you are to follow me, then you have to follow me in this suffering. And this kind of summarizes what Mark is talking about throughout this book to tell the church that we are called to suffer as Jesus' disciples, as Jesus suffered to also follow him in his suffering. Can we read the last one, Mark 10, the three verses mentioned there? Can I read sister? Yes, please. You can start with verse 29 I think and go right up to verse 34. Okay. Verse 29, So Jesus answered and said, And in the age to come eternal life, but many who are first will be last and the last first. 32 also sister? Yes. Okay. Now they were on the road going up to Jerusalem and Jesus was going before them and they were amazed and as they followed they were afraid. Then he took the 12 aside again and began to tell them the things that would happen to him. Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem and the son of man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes and they will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles. And they will mock him and scourge him and spit on him and kill him and the third day he will rise again. Thank you. So here as well we see Jesus's promise, the sacrifices you've made in this life, you will receive a hundred fold in this present age, right? In this present life you will receive a hundred fold along with persecution. So even though there is a promise of restoration of things that are being sacrificed, there's also the promise of persecution that they are going to face. And then again Jesus talking about his suffering and preparing them for what is to come. So why did Mark do this? He wanted to remind the church that God would move through their faithful witness. So if they would remain faithful even in the face of the persecution that they were facing, God would move powerfully through them. Just as he did through Jesus's death and resurrection. But he also at the same time, he talks about discipleship leading to suffering, discipleship including suffering, also the possibility of persecution. But at the same time, he presents the weaknesses of the disciples, especially Peter's denial of Christ. So just to encourage them that even if they are not in that place of completely giving themselves over, giving their lives for Christ, God would help them to get to that place of commitment like he did with Peter as well. So that hope that they can grow, that they don't have to be limited or they don't have to limit themselves to their failures or to their lack of commitment at this time. They can believe that God would work in them to help them grow in their commitment to Jesus. So the main theme like we've looked at is that Jesus, the Messiah, is a tireless servant of God and man. And that is that he is constantly working in this in this gospel we see he's moving from one place to the next from one miracle to the next is just he heals somebody. He delivers someone from possession. He raises someone from the dead. He moves on even the midst of his healing somebody somebody else comes comes in and needs healing or ask for deliverance. So there's constantly Jesus working constantly being surrounded by crowds that were too large to fit into the places where he was ministering. Even when they're trying to get away to take a break to rest the crowds follow them even to those places. So it is a gospel that just presents Jesus as someone who is constantly working he doesn't doesn't have time to even stop to eat in some cases. And another theme that we see here is the fact that Jesus is a Messiah but he's not. He isn't at this point in the book of Mark as his ministry is being recollected in his ministry he didn't want everyone to know that he was the Messiah. So one of the reasons could be that people wouldn't understand his mission until after his resurrection. If we can just look at Mark nine nine and someone can read that for us Mark nine nine. Now as they came down from the mountain he commanded them that they should tell no one the things they had seen till the son of man had risen from the dead. Thank you so. Here we see that Jesus was okay for them to talk about this is specifically with the transfiguration post his resurrection because until his resurrection people were not going to understand. Understand his ministry fully and so he didn't want to reveal himself as a Messiah. Before that time could come he want to fulfill his mission and then then declare himself or have his disciples go out and declare who he was and what God had done through his ministry. Another reason that we see in the gospel itself is that Jesus didn't want the large crowds to be following him because as the crowds grew it kind of constrained his own mission. He had to continue to move on to other places but there would be large crowds would gather or would be waiting for him would be searching for him. So it gave it restricted sometimes his ability to keep moving on at other times it made it difficult for him and the disciples to get rest. And especially one of the challenges was that the more attention he got the more the leaders of the Jews became hostile towards him. And so he didn't want that attention and popularity to grow too quickly before it was time for him to go to the cross. So we look at just a few accounts that are given Mark 145 and look at that maybe 44 and 45 just to give us some context Mark 144 and 45. Mark 144 and 45 and said to him, see that you say nothing to anyone but go your way, throw yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing those things which Moses commanded as a testimony to them. However, he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the matter so that Jesus could no longer openly enter the city but was outside in deserted places. And they came to him from every direction. Thank you. So we see that right in the beginning. Let's see if we can read one more example. Let's read Mark 3 9 to 10. Mark 3 9 to 10. So he told his disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for him because of the multitude. At least they should crush him for he healed many so that as many has had had afflictions pressed about him to touch him. Thank you. And verse 20 of the same chapter Mark 3. Then the multitude came together again so that they could not so much as eat bread. So we see just that crowd coming around Jesus because of the miracles. And so this was something that Jesus didn't want to become public information when he was healing people. Especially we see whenever he was delivering people from demonic possession. He always silenced the demons because the demons knew who he was and they were they would declare who he is that he's the son of God. And so he would silence them before they could say anything else about him so that it would not become public knowledge at this point. So we talked about the date of writing of the gospel. So there are different dates given some so iranious and some modern scholars and this is an early church father had updated it later in 8060 so 6768. Some church fathers had put it before 8062 because they say it was used by Luke and Matthew and they say that Luke was written while Paul was still in prison because acts ends with Paul's ministry in while he's in prison and that was around 8062. So some people think that this book Mark must have been written before 8062 for Luke to have written his account based on the book of Mark and also the fact that people believe that Mark wrote this while he was in Rome, which was around 8061. So those are some reasons why people say 8062. But many present day scholars say 8064 because specifically they're relating his writing to the persecution by Nero and so to be able to account for why he is talking so much about suffering to the early church to the Roman Christians. To relate that back to what they were experiencing at that time. They say that it would be around 8064 that he wrote the book so all of these dates are usually approximate. We don't know for sure but in in the 60s is when it's usually thought to be written. And this is the first of the gospels. So some of the distinctive features about the book of Mark is that it's the shortest gospel. It opens with the divinity of Christ. So like the book of John talks about Christ, about Jesus being divine, Jesus being present from the beginning with the Father. Mark also presents Jesus as the Son of God right from the start. But instead of presenting him in the way that John does, John does it a lot through his explanation of that word logos. Mark does it through recounting Jesus's miracles. So proving Jesus's divinity through the work that he did through his power, through his authority over all kinds of sickness and disease and demons. And nature, all of those things proving Jesus that Jesus is divine. Again we see Mark presenting both the divinity and humanity of Jesus, talking about Jesus's emotions. Especially as he's going to the cross where he's praying and asking the Father to take away the cup if it be his will. So presenting that human side of Jesus as well. And then, like we said, Mark presents more of the miracles, the work that Jesus did rather than the teaching or the prophecy fulfillment or prophecies that Jesus made about the end times. He doesn't focus so much on those things. So Mark records 19 miracles that Jesus did during his ministry. So we have a list of all the miracles. So miracles where he was healing disease, that's with Peter's mother-in-law, the healing of the leper, the paralysed man who was healed. This is the paralysed man who was lowered in front of him while he's inside the house preaching to a large crowd. Then the man with the withered hand, the deaf and dumb man who was healed, the blind man of Bethsaida, a woman with the blood issue. That's a woman suffering for 12 years. And then Bartimaeus, who is also a blind man who was healed. So eight miracles of healing from sickness. And then there are five miracles that prove his power over nature. So where he steals the storm, he feeds the 5,000. He walks on the water. He feeds 4,000. And then he curses the fig tree because it doesn't have any fruit. So those are miracles over nature. And then we have four miracles over demonic forces in Jerusalem, in Gadarenes, the Syrophoenician and the Demoniac Sun. So let me just open the Mark 1.25 really quickly. So this is the first Mark 1.25 is the first demon possessed man that is accounted in the book of Mark. And here is where he silences the demon. And we also see that in other accounts as well. But here Jesus goes into a synagogue and there's someone who's possessed and that person says, I know who you are, the Holy One of God. So that's the first account of Jesus freeing someone who had been possessed by demons. In Gadarenes, we know it's the man who is possessed by the legion of demons. The Syrophoenician woman is, her daughter has been possessed and she asked Jesus for a miracle. Jesus says, I've been sent only for the people of Israel. And then she says, even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the children's table. And so Jesus heals her daughter. And the Demoniac Sun is where the disciples are unable to heal the son that is possessed by a demon that throws him in fire, that makes him fall down and form at the mouth. And so when Jesus returns after his transfiguration, the father of the son asks Jesus to heal his son and Jesus heals him. So, and then the last two is Jesus, two miracles that prove his power over death itself. The first is Jeres's daughter, so Jeres is a synagogue leader and he asked Jesus to heal his daughter. His daughter dies while Jesus is still on the way and then Jesus still continues to go to the house and raises her from the dead. And then the resurrection of Jesus himself proving his power over death. So you can see in a very short Gospel, 19 miracles recorded. So we'll stop here. We'll continue from here on Monday. Thank you all for joining. And if you're able to read through some of Mark before Monday, please do try and do that. Thank you.