Vocabulary to Know
Vocabulary words are bold whenever they appear in this post. Just scroll back up here to jog your memory about what they mean.Gospel - A word which can mean either the good news about Jesus (how he died for your sins, was buried and rose again - see 1 Corinthians 15:3-4), or one of the books in the Bible which tell that story (through Jesus' life). These mini-biographies of Jesus are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Synoptic - The three gospels which tell the story of Jesus' life from basically the same perspective (Matthew, Mark and Luke). John includes a lot of things the synoptic gospels do not and leaves out lots of things they include. The word means 'seeing together' (syn means together, and optic means seeing - like an optometrist).
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| John 'nose' things the other gospels don't tell. |
Text: Mark 1:1
Study
The Gospel According to Mark (just Mark for short) is a great place to begin reading the Bible. As the shortest of the gospels and as one of the synoptic gospels, it gives a clear, rapid-fire introduction to the life of Jesus. It is the perfect place to turn if you want to cut past all of your assumptions and traditions and really get to the heart of the question: Who is this Jesus guy? This isn't a new question - you will see as we study that lots of people asked it 2000 years ago. Many scholars believe that Mark is the oldest of the gospels, and provides some of the earliest material we have about Jesus' life and work.Without spoiling the story, let me tell you that Jesus was a man born in Israel around 4 BC (the inventors of the BC/AD system, working 500 years after the fact, got pretty close to the right year for his birth, but not quite) and was executed by the Roman government around AD 30. While alive, he gained a following for his teaching, and had a number of followers. His twelve closest followers were called the apostles; the three apostles who were closest to Jesus were Peter, James and John. Shockingly, three days after his death, a number of his followers became convinced that he had come back to life, and the scattered historical records we have seem to indicate that many of them died, including ten of these inner twelve, for refusing to take back their claims that Jesus had somehow broken free of death itself.
Peter had a friend named Mark, who apparently wrote down the material he had learned from Peter around AD 60. Even non-Christians agree that Mark then came down to us in basically the form we have it today (there is some debate about the ending we will deal with when we get there), where it has been translated into English for those of us somewhat unmoved by ὁ δὲ Πιλᾶτος ἔλεγεν αὐτοῖς· τί γὰρ κακόν ἐποίησεν; οἱ δὲ περισσοτέρως ἔκραξαν· σταύρωσον αὐτόν compared to "And Pilate said to them, 'Why, what evil has he done?' But they shouted all the more, 'Crucify him'" (Mark 15:14, ESV). So, the Bible you have in your hand, on your phone or on your computer records information written about Jesus within a generation of his death. No matter what you believe about Jesus, this is an encounter with some of the most significant history there is.
The first verse of Mark is probably the title, and is basically the same in all translations: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
This will provide an excellent starting point for our study. We should realize that this is only the beginning of the good news about Jesus, and that Mark intends to just get us started. Apparently from this title, he intends to specifically prove that Jesus is the 'Son of God,' whatever that means.[1]
A quick skim of the book of Mark shows that Jesus is called the Son of God five times in the body of the book (Mark 1:11, Mark 3:11, Mark 5:7, Mark 9:7 and Mark 15:39). Two of these are by God, two are by demons and one is by a Roman soldier. We will watch for these as major hints as we work our way through, and will see that they basically set up the structure, especially since there are other places Matthew and Luke record Jesus as the Son of God, but Mark makes a pretty big effort to get around that term.
I will close this lengthy introduction by giving you the three things we will look for as we move forward. We will keep a running list of the following things:
(1) What's the Big Idea? - We will summarize each chapter with a word, designed to help us remember the big picture of the chapter and as a little trick to jog our memories about the chapters before and after.
(2) Who is this Guy? - We will make a note whenever Mark tells us that people were asking each other who Jesus was. If we want to find the answer to that question, these moments are a good place to start.
(3) Son of God - We will make a big note whenever this big phrase comes up, so we can see what Mark is doing - and why it matters.
Application
God's big plan is to make you more like Jesus. As you learn about the life of Jesus, you start to get the picture of what God wants in your life. Pray as you read through this bookHomework:
Read the first chapter of Mark aloud before moving on to the next lesson. This will help prime your brain for what we will be talking about.Extra Credit:
To get the most out of this study, read straight through the book of Mark at least once a week, or listen to it on an audiobook. YouVersion has free audio Bibles built in, and you can listen to Mark straight through in about an hour. Even if it sounds crazy, just try it. It will help a lot.Check back soon! God willing, I will catch up and add a follow up for every Wednesday night lesson on Thursday.
Comments: What does the phrase 'Son of God' mean to you?
[1]
Son of God was a politically loaded term in the Roman Empire that Augustus had
given himself after he claimed his adopted father, Julius Caesar, had become a
god after his death. In fact, the ‘good news’ that Caesar ruled the world was
apparently the major meaning of the term gospel when Jesus entered the scene. Whatever
else we discover, Mark was a loaded political document, confronting the powers
of the day with his startling claim that the real king was not Caesar, but a man
killed by Caesar’s government.
