New Sermon Series! Mark: The Gospel of King Jesus

This Sunday, August 18^th, Redeemer will begin our fall sermon series “Mark: The Gospel of King Jesus.” The word “gospel,” meaning “good news,” has its roots both in the Old Testament and the Roman Empire. In the Old Testament, the phrase “good news” is closely associated with the prophet Isaiah who prophesied the “good news” of God’s return to Israel to restore the Kingdom. In the Roman world, Caesar Augustus proclaimed “The beginning of the gospel concerning himself” whenever his reign and rule extended to new peoples and regions.

Therefore, when the first readers of Mark’s Gospel, persecuted in Rome, read “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,” in the opening lines, they would have responded with delight: Here is the true King who will liberate us from the oppression of the Roman empire! The first eight chapters do not disappoint, and are filled with an explosion of divine power: Healings, exorcisms, and new teachings flow from Jesus, and a refrain from the first witnesses, “We never saw anything like this!” (Mark 2:12). But then, there is a distinct shift. Yes, Jesus will conquer, but first he must suffer. “And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).

This Gospel is not what it seems: There is no forgiveness without repentance, no love without service, and no Kingdom without a cross. While there is no denying the Kingship of Jesus, his Kingdom is not the same thing as a kingdom in this world. You don’t seize this Kingdom with power and might, you receive it like a child. In fact, because Jesus is not the triumphant liberator that the people hope for, he is rejected. His family thinks he is crazy, he is thrown out of his hometown, the religious leaders try to trap him, the crowds turn on him, and his own disciples abandon him. But then, at the very end of the book, the least likely witness, a Roman Centurion, exclaims at the crucifixion, “Surely, this was the Son of God!” As we go through Mark this semester, we should see ourselves in each one of the characters around Jesus. We’re the rich who want to hoard our resources, the poor desperate for healing, the crowd of thousands who must be fed with five loaves and two fishes, and the little children he will not turn away.

One of the most repeated words in the Gospel is the word translated “immediately,” or “straightaway,”: "Prepare the way of the Lord, makes his paths straightaway” (Mark 1:3). In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus the King is immediately challenging us. He is directing his gaze right towards our hearts and demanding an answer: Will I receive him or give him the runaround? Will I allow the King to make inroads into my heart, or divert him away? The Gospel may begin with a grand story about the Kingdom, but the challenge is more personal: Am I willing to be this King’s disciple? “If anyone would come after me,” Jesus says, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 10:34-35).

Join us this fall at Redeemer as we study the Gospel of Mark.