Mark Review

Mark does not deal with the birth and childhood of Jesus but starts with the beginning of His ministry.  Mark has been called more of a book of action than some of the other Gospels.  Mark begins with the ministry of John the Baptist which he points out was a fulfillment of a prophesy.  John preached and baptized people to prepare them for the coming Messiah, whose sandals he said he was unworthy to even unlatch.  We are still just as unworthy.  Jesus came to John to be baptized, and as soon as Jesus came up out of the water, the Holy Spirit came down like a dove, and a Voice came down from heaven saying, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  Father, Son and Holy Spirit were all present, because They are One.  Jesus was immediately tempted by the Devil, but He was victorious.  Once we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, we can expect to be immediately tempted to try and keep us from making Him our Lord as well.  We have a record of John the Baptist being beheaded. We have the record of Jesus calling His disciples, not all at once but over time.  We are not all called to follow Jesus at the same time.  We have a record of the miracles Jesus performed, and of the times that the disciples doubted or became self-centered, and this can still happen today.  We have a record of Peter’s great faith and later great denial of even knowing Jesus, because he as yet did not know the resurrected Lord.  Until we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we at best will waver in proclaiming our faith in Him and denying Him the next time trouble comes.  We have a record of Jesus’s agonizing prayer in the Garden while the disciples with Him, Peter who was named the Rock for his faith and James and John who wanted to sit on Jesus’s right and left hand in His kingdom couldn’t even stay awake for an hour. We have a record of Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper, and of His betrayal by Judas shortly thereafter.  We have a record of Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection on the third day, and of the women finding the empty tomb and receiving the good news of His resurrection.  Then, we have a record of the ascension of Jesus into heaven and the disciples going to preach the Gospel to all men.  This is our task today.  This is not all that Mark tells us, but it is a few of the points that we find in Mark.  Next, we will look at Ezra.