Mark

A Brief Introduction 

Global Message for Today 

God is faithful to His Word. Even though the prophets had lived and died hundreds of years earlier, God’s Word is living and powerful and will accomplish His pleasure. The promised messenger (John) came in due time, as did the Lord Jesus Himself. The gospel is a declaration that God is faithful to His Word and that all His promises are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. God’s faithfulness calls us to be faithful to the Word as well, even when its fulfillment seems distant or even impossible. How can God’s faithfulness in Christ strengthen us to be faithful?

As soon as Christ received the Spirit’s anointing and the Father’s commendation, He was propelled into conflict with Satan, though not by power but by temptation. Unlike Adam, Jesus remained faithful and conquered the Devil by perfect obedience (Heb. 4:15). It is not a coincidence that shortly afterward the demons were cringing before Jesus. He can save us from Satan’s power because He has overcome the Devil’s temptations (Heb. 2:18).

When Christ calls men into the ministry of the Word today, He still says to them, “Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men” (v. 17). No one makes himself a true minister of the Word, but when Christ calls, He equips. The duty of the called is to follow Jesus in obedience and imitation and never to forget that the goal of fisherman is to catch fish. What implications does this have for pastoral ministry?

Christ is the Lord of all, God in the flesh. He is the sovereign Judge who sees the faith and His ways. Like the Pharisees in this chapter, many seem to want to repent or appear to repent, but there is no real fruit, because there is no true root. What fruit of repentance is there in your life? 

Christ came to John to be baptized not because He had a need for John’s baptism of repentance, but because He would be like His brethren in all things (Heb. 2:17). He became like sinners so that He might make sinners more like Himself. Better yet: He was made sin, that sinners might be made the righteousness of God through Him (2 Cor. 5:21).

All who will live godly lives will suffer tribulation (2 Tim. 3:12). This was true for Christ and is also true for Christians. The world is not simply watching us but seeking to win us over, to destroy our faith and obedience to the Word (Mark 4:17). To them we seem insane. Indeed, the greatest persecution may come from the most religious people, for their religion of pride and hypocrisy comes into direct conflict with Christ’s ways of love and obedience. However, in Christ God gives believers a new spiritual family, united by their obedience to God’s Word. How can members of the church strengthen and encourage one another to stay faithful in persecution? 

Apart from Christ we are enslaved to sin and Satan. We cannot stand against this strong man in our own strength. We need One stronger than the strong man. Christ’s coming into the world, His obedient life, and His substitutionary death deliver captive sinners. What are signs that a person is a slave of Satan? What are signs that Jesus has set someone free? 

Though the four soils represent different kinds of hearers, they also teach us about spiritual influences that resist the Word in everyone who hears it preached: Satan, sin in the heart, and the world. According to Christ’s explanation of the parable (vv. 14–20), how does each influence work against a fruitful response to God’s Word? How can we seek to overcome these evil influences by God’s grace so that we benefit from the preaching of the Scriptures? 

The two parables involving sowers have much to say to preachers of the Word (vv. 14– 20,26–29). What lessons for ministers do you gather from them? How ought these lessons to humble them? How should they encourage them? 

We do not read that the disciples consulted with Christ before the ship was in danger of sinking. Yet when they finally cried to Him they seemed to accuse the Lord of a lack of care. Can you see yourself in this picture? How have you responded to similar trials? How should we respond, in light of the fact that Jesus is the Lord who rules all things with His mere word? 

The Lord Jesus has the power to save from the most hopeless of situations. Whether He finds us dominated by Satan’s forces in a way that no one can control, suffering from a problem no man can heal, or facing the finality of death itself, Christ is able to help us. In this age He saves sinners from the guilt and penalty of sin and from the domination of sin and Satan. In the age to come He will deliver His people from death, illness, and all misery. However, salvation is neither automatic nor universal but received by faith, as the bleeding woman shows us. 

People respond in very different ways when they encounter Jesus Christ. Some, like the Gadarenes, desire only that He leave them alone, for He disturbs and terrifies them. Others, like the mourners at the dead girl’s home, mock Him because His Word makes no sense to their unbelieving minds. Still others, however, like the man rescued from the legion of demons, desire to be near to Him because He alone has the power to save them, and they are eager to tell others of His saving work in their lives. How have you encountered Jesus in His Word? How have you responded? 

The death of John was lamentable, though for John it marked his entrance into glory. What was infinitely more lamentable was Herod’s continued life in worldly splendor, with a guilty conscience and an unrepentant heart. Who would you rather be like, the dead John or the living Herod? Why? 

The disciples did not have what it took to feed thousands of people; yet Christ asked them to give food to the crowd (v. 37). Christ often asks us to do things that are impossible from our perspective so that we may learn His all-sufficiency through difficulty, faith, and prayer. 

Though they followed Christ, the disciples’ hearts were still so hardened (v. 52). How do you manifest hardheartedness against the Lord despite all that God has given you in the Word and through His providence? What should you do about this? 

Scripture alone is the divine rule of faith, worship, and obedience. Many people and churches follow a religion whose teachings and worship are based more upon human ideas than on the Word of God. They rarely ask, “What does God say in the Bible about this? Is this the faith and obedience that He commanded?” However, the Holy Scriptures reveal that God strongly objects to bringing Him worship that He has not required, for this does not honor His holiness (Lev. 10:1–3). Generally speaking, such man-made religion focuses upon outward acts such as following a ritual or saying a prayer, while neglecting godliness in the heart. As a result God’s Word is neglected and many sins defile people from within. How can a person test his church or personal faith through application of Christ’s standard of Scripture alone? 

Christ’s dealing with the Syro-Phoenician woman seems harsh; however, this was His way of maturing her faith. The Lord’s ways with us may seem harsh too, but when we are tempted to take offense we should ask ourselves, “Am I willing to humble myself completely before the Lord? Do I believe so strongly in my need of Christ that I will keep clinging to Him even when His ways are hard? Will I submit to whatever He gives me on His terms, not my own?” 

Christ healed the blind man in two stages to show that when God converts sinners they do not see all there is to see about their own sinfulness or the glory of Christ. Sadly, even the truly saved still retain blindness and hardness in their souls, even leading us to fight against God’s ways at times, especially the way of the cross that strips us of our pride and self-righteousness. Believers should pray regularly for God to give them more illumination and should learn to fight against their tendency to quarrel with God’s Word. 

The great determinative question we all must answer, and do answer by our life and actions, is “Who do you say that Jesus is?” It is not enough to be able to recite the views of others. You must come to an inner conviction of His identity. He is the Christ, God’s Prophet anointed to replace our ignorance with the knowledge of God, Priest to take away our guilt for breaking God’s law and give us a status of righteousness before Him, and King to conquer our sins and rescue us from all that would harm us. Who do you say Jesus is? Are you trusting in Him alone? Are you confessing Him before men? 

There is every reason to listen to God’s Son. He has now even more glory than on the Mount of Transfiguration, for now in heaven He is crowned with glory and splendor. God still says of Him, “Hear him” (v. 7). He is God’s appointed Prophet over the church, the Teacher who speaks through all faithful teachers of the Word. How should it change our attitude toward preaching and teaching to know that if the preacher or teacher faithfully explains and applies the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ is personally speaking to us? 

Faith and unbelief wrestle for dominance in the regenerate heart (v. 24). It can seem sometimes as though unbelief will grab faith by the throat and try to strangle it. Faith, however, cries to Christ for help, which Christ is sure to give. How does the father’s prayer, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief,” encourage us to pray? 

Having seen the glory of Christ, it is hard to believe the disciples would argue about who of them was the greatest (v. 34). Yet how prone we are as sinful human beings to boast and brag—even about spiritual experiences. We need to learn again and again the lesson of vv. 35–36. 

Marriage is an institution of God, defined by Him at creation, formed by Him in the bond between each husband and wife, and jealously watched over by Him. For this reason marriage is to be held in high honor and neither dismissed nor distorted. How is marriage under attack in your nation? How do Christ’s teachings (vv. 2–12) enable Christians to defend marriage biblically? 

The human heart is by nature deceitful and self-righteous, minimizing the severity of our sins even as we outwardly may seem very religious (vv. 17–27). Our pride flatters us that we have kept God’s commandments and can do what God requires to enter His kingdom. This horrible arrogance especially feeds upon riches and prosperity, falsely assuring us that God has blessed us because we are good. Christ shows us how to confront our pride: through the searching application of God’s laws to the heart, by the gospel call to follow Christ, and by the declaration of human inability and divine sovereignty in salvation. People may find these truths offensive and leave grieved, but they are the method of the loving Savior (v. 21) to win people to true discipleship. 

Christ asked the same question of James and John as of blind Bartimaeus: “What do you want Me to do for you?” (vv. 36,51). Their answers were markedly different. The apostles sought personal honor and glory among men, while the beggar sought mercy and healing. If Christ were to ask you this question, what would you say you most desire from Him? What would your answer show about your heart? 

Hypocritical religion pretends to be what it is not, but Christ will uncover it. Like a tree with many leaves yet no fruit, the religious hypocrite displays to the world many impressive activities of devotion and self-denial, but under the leaves of external religion the Lord sees that there are no fruits of Christian love for God and man, joy in the Lord, or peace by Christ’s blood. The Lord Jesus is patient, but the time will come when He will judge us all. If our godliness is only a form without His underlying power, He will curse us with a supernatural word of judgment that will wither us from the roots. Search yourself by this word. Is your godliness a matter of mere leaves? What spiritual fruits is Christ producing in you?

Prayer is an instrument of immense power, for it invokes the almighty arm of God. We should take up prayer with boldness, believing it to be the weapon by which God casts down every mountain raised up against the true worship of Himself. We should pray with faith in God’s goodness and generosity toward His children, and we should pray together with other believers in a spirit of love, forgiveness, and unity. How would you describe your prayer life now? How does this chapter stir you to desire a deeper prayer life? 

The parable of the wicked husbandmen appears to end in tragedy with the death of the son. It is indeed a horrible sin that the nation did not honor God’s Son, and we all by nature reject Christ. However, God had planned Christ’s rejection as the pathway to His exaltation. Only by being killed on the cross and buried could Christ become the cornerstone of a new temple of God, a living building composed of people who rest the full weight of their souls on Christ alone to save them from sin. Christ is the King seated at God’s right hand, reigning in absolute power and glory as the Son of David and the Son of God. His death has turned to triumph, and the same Holy Spirit who moved the prophets to write of Christ now moves sinners to submit to His reign. The great fruit of His reign in the heart is love—love for God above all and for our neighbor as ourselves that animates obedience to all God’s commandments. How does this chapter show you the beauty and glory of King Jesus? 

The foolish attempts of proud men to trap Jesus in His words only caused His divine wisdom to shine brighter. Jesus is the great Teacher, God-in-the-flesh come to reveal Himself. Sadly, the Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees did not benefit from His teaching because they rejected His authority. They did not come asking questions in a sincere desire to know the truth but with wicked motives. Even the scribe who was “not far from the kingdom” in his understanding of the Bible had not yet entered the kingdom by faith in Christ. The fundamental obstacle to all these men was their pride and love of human honor (vv. 38–40). Far different from them was the poor widow, who humbly gave her two mites to the Lord. Do you come to the preaching of God’s Word to submit to the Lord Jesus, learn from Him, and humbly serve Him with all you are? Or do you come to argue and exalt yourself as though you were Lord? 

Just as the Lord Jesus warned, the holy city of Jerusalem fell to the Roman legions in AD 70, experiencing a horrifying massacre in fulfillment of Christ’s own words. God’s judgment came and destroyed His own temple. However, God’s plan had not failed. Jesus speaks in this same prophecy of the salvation of God’s elect through all these tribulations. Even now God is gathering His chosen ones from among the Jews and Gentiles by bringing them to faith in Christ through the preaching of the gospel. Though the destruction of Jerusalem must have shaken first-century Jewish believers, they could rejoice that the kingdom of Christ can never be shaken. How can this comfort us if we see the church under persecution and great Christian institutions falling under God’s judgment because of gross infidelity? 

Jesus said that His disciples must pass through much tribulation and endure vicious persecution, even from religious leaders professing to serve God. The Christian life is one of perseverance under pressure. However, Jesus also said that believers wait for something well worth all our sorrows. Christ will come with visible power and glory to establish His kingdom. What a day of joy and vindication that will be! How can we make use of this hope to strengthen ourselves to endure to the end? 

At the conclusion of His teaching Christ repeatedly called His disciples to watch, watch, watch. The biblical doctrine of Christ’s second coming is not something to stimulate curiosity and speculation about a timetable of events. It is a summons to spiritual alertness and constant prayer, since we do not know when the Lord will appear. What does it mean to be spiritually sleeping? How can a Christian develop a daily discipline of watchfulness? 

Christ appears in this chapter as the sovereign Lord, walking purposefully to His death exactly as God had planned and revealed in the Bible. He knew that He would rise to rule over all the world as the promised King of kings. Yet He also appears as the submissive Servant, staggering under the weight of His burden but praying “not what I will, but what Thou wilt” to His Father. His obedience is everything to believers, because He went to the cross as their perfect Surety, paying their debts and drinking the awful cup of God’s wrath against their sins. Thus in the Lord’s Supper He presents Himself as the loving Savior who gave His body as a sacrifice and brings sinners into a gracious covenant with their God. How does this chapter show us that Jesus is infinitely worthy of our trust and love? 

The chief priests and Judas prepared to kill Jesus. The disciples failed to prepare at all. However, Mary understood something of the beauty and preciousness of the suffering Savior and prepared by pouring out her earthly treasure in love for Him (v. 9). Christ commends her good work to us so that we can learn from her example. How has Christ’s sacrificial love moved you to love Him in return? How can you show that love in acts of costly devotion?   

 The cross reveals man’s hatred of God. Our hostility against God is universal. Christ was rejected and reviled by religious and political leaders, Jews and Gentiles, high officials and crowds, soldiers and civilians. Our hostility against God, too, is violent and murderous. When God came to mankind in human flesh to love sinners like us, we tortured and killed Him. What reasons does this chapter give us to grieve over sin, humble ourselves, and repent? 

The cross reveals God’s sovereignty over man. Even as sinners committed the most horrible atrocities against the Son of God, they fulfilled the decree of God that He had announced centuries earlier by His prophets. Even as they callously gambled for His clothing, they willingly did what God had predestined them to do (cf. Acts 4:27–28). It was no accident that the cross itself proclaimed that Jesus is the King (v. 26). How does this chapter teach us to bow before God’s throne and worship Christ as the King who rules over all things? 

The cross reveals God’s righteousness and love for sinners. Rather than damning all sinners to hell forever for their sins, God sent His Son to die. We deserve to be cast into the outer darkness, but the darkness of divine wrath came upon Him. We should be rejected forever for our rejection of God, but instead God caused Christ to become Godforsaken. God’s justice for His people was satisfied in Christ, and because Christ was crucified believers are released from condemnation and punishment, as was Barabbas. What does this show us about the love of God? Why should it move us to trust in Christ without reservation?   

Jesus Christ died for sinners, but today He is alive. The full payment for sin has been made, and now Christ is applying the results of His redemption to the salvation of lost sinners. The living Lord reigns as King of the angels, sitting at God’s right hand. His kingdom has come in heavenly glory and operates through the power of the gospel. Though we still wait for His kingdom to come in visible glory on earth, believers can rejoice. Jesus is alive! Jesus reigns! How can this give Christians hope no matter what evil they face? 2. Christ’s final commission to the apostles has a wide scope: “to every creature” (v. 15). The apostles labored to spread the gospel to many nations, and Christianity spread in a remarkable way in its early years. However, the apostolic mandate still rests upon the church. Small and great, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, young and old, all need to hear the gospel. How is your church engaged in reaching the world with the good news?