Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, the hosts methodically show how Scripture is one cohesive story. Critical Thinking with a little bit of theology and apologetics and you have what this podcast is about. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity today must address woke, deconstruction, and progressive Christianity, all topics that are addressed if we go purposefully through the Bible. Join Glenn and Steve weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
S2 || The Deity and Role of Jesus || Mark 1:1-6 || Session 2 || Verse by Verse Bible Study
Discover the transformative power of the Gospel of Mark as we journey through its profound teachings. We promise you’ll gain a fresh perspective on how the opening verses establish Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God, drawing a stark contrast between human sinfulness and the redemptive hope found in Christ. Through personal stories of faith, we underscore the enduring significance of this gospel message as it continues to offer hope and salvation today. Join us as we draw lessons from John the Baptist's ministry, emphasizing humility, confession, and the centrality of God’s message over personal gain, ensuring a spiritual exploration that fosters growth and healing.
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May God Bless you!! - Glenn and Steve
Hello and welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible. My name is Glenn. I'm here with Steve. We have a ministry that we go verse by verse through the Word of God. One of the things we do is provide free resources. You can find those on our website. You go there and you'll find lesson plans and resources to help you and your church teach the Word of God. So I'm glad you're here with us today.
Speaker 1:If you have your copy of the Word of God open to the Gospel of Mark. We're going to start at chapter 1, verse 1, says this the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet Behold, I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness make ready the way of the Lord, make his path straight, steve. We have here this gospel Again. Mark is the gospel of going and doing, and he comes right out of the chute doing that. We have here, of course, john the Baptist, that he's introducing my messenger. We're going to find him in the next verses. But what does he mean here? In verse 1? He talks about the beginning and what is the gospel? It just sort of assumes that we know what the gospel is. What's he talking about here at the first part of this book?
Speaker 2:The gospel is the good news Jesus Christ. Christ. The Greek word means the anointed one. It's the equivalent of the Hebrew word for anointed one, the Messiah, and it says there right at the very beginning he's the son of God. So it sets the stage of how Mark is going to write his gospel. He just gets right into the action very quickly. And then. The second thing is is that this is the only place that he references the Hebrew Bible is here when he quotes Isaiah. For the rest of the book he doesn't quote anything out of the Hebrew text.
Speaker 1:Mark, of course was written to a Roman world and the Roman world at large not really interested, nor having all of the background. Of the Hebrew scriptures, he mentions, as you just said, this first one and that's here for a reason. But we'll find that the rest of the book is Jesus's accomplishments. So again, verse 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The word beginning there means the origin, the source, the first of or the start of. This is the origin, the source, the start of the good news of Jesus Christ. As we see through the book, this is the beginning and it goes out from here. It starts when Jesus is already an adult and he's already about to go into ministry. That's where Mark picks up the gospel. The origin or the source, the beginning history. That's where Mark picks up the gospel. The origin or the source, the beginning, the first of the gospel, the good news is when Jesus starts to do things.
Speaker 1:The beginning of Mark starts with the beginning. Of course this plays on several of the books in the Bible that talk about a beginning Genesis 1.1,. Of course, in the beginning God. The Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1, the beginning God. In the Gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 1, he was in the beginning with God, luke. The beginning of Luke says that Luke speaks of those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning. So here in Mark, this is the beginning of the Gospel. They want to make it very clear that here is where it starts. This is where the good news starts. Gospel means good news. Where does the good news start? It starts with Jesus. It starts with Jesus and his ministry. The bad news, of course, was prior to that, which is what, steve, we've all sinned right.
Speaker 2:We've all sinned. Sin is the Greek word. That means missing the mark. Think of an archer that's aiming towards a target on the range and the arrows keep missing the mark, keep missing the target or the bullseye. That's what sin is we're not making the mark or doing the things that God wants us to do mainly worship him and to have a relationship with him. Yeah, that's not good news, but now we have Jesus Christ, the Son of God. That Mark is going to tell us what that good news is about him.
Speaker 1:The bad news is that we're all sinners. This here, this is the beginning of the good news with Jesus Christ that he provided a way to pay for our sin. Steve, if this is the beginning, way back here in the Gospels, is this good news still in place today? Is it still continuing? If this is the origin, this is the first of, is the good news still?
Speaker 2:out there today. It is out there today as we in our life come to the realization that we don't have a relationship, we have a separation from God, and that we need reconciliation with Him. We need to be redeemed back to God. It is good news that somebody can say well, here's how you can have a relationship with God, the one that created everything, the one that created you. Here's the good news for you to have that reconciliation With me. It was at the age of eight years old that I became a believer in Jesus Christ. I think, glenn, it was with you in your mid-twenties, so that's the good news. That was several decades ago with us. It still happens today and it's going to continue to happen until Jesus Christ comes back once again. That is good news.
Speaker 1:We have here the first verse in Mark about the good news, the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The phrase the Son of God oftentimes we skip over that because many of us have heard it so many times. But we need to not miss this and not miss the significance of it. Mark here comes out, just like in the Gospel of John, with all guns blazing in the first verse with one of the most significant things that he could say he is the Son of God. Not just a Son of God, but the Son of God. Son of in the biblical sense means having the same nature as Remember. Jesus referred to the brothers James and John as the sons of thunder because they had a thunderous nature. Their personalities were thunderous, so they were sons of thunder. Here Jesus is Son of God because he has the same nature of God and he's not just a Son of God, he is the Son of God, which is a claim to deity.
Speaker 1:Chapter 1, verse 1 claims that Jesus is Almighty God. When it claims to be the Son of God, too many times in modern language we miss this. We miss the significance when it says he's the son of God. The Jewish leaders understood exactly what he was saying, because when he would say that, they would accuse him of blaspheming. It's not just a phrase that, like today, we throw around as some common thing. No, no, thousand times no. The son of God means he is the same nature as God. He is God Almighty. That's what he's claiming here is it not, steve?
Speaker 2:It is. We get a depiction of a king this reference back in Isaiah in verse 2, where it says I send my messenger ahead of you to prepare the way. That's language of a king coming to the people. Often, whenever a king would travel from one city to another city, he would send out ahead of him a messenger that would herald that the king is coming. That's the picture that we get here. We're going to be told here in the next few verses who that herald is. That's out there, the messenger that's preparing a way. But the language there is of a king, not only the Son of God, but also the king. The king is coming.
Speaker 1:The king is coming and John the Baptist is that herald. He's the one who would go before. So verses 2 and 3, as you said, has this quote. Mark is presenting quotes from really three Old Testament sources, including Malachi and Isaiah and Exodus. He attributes them all to Isaiah because the main point of what he's saying comes out of the quote from Isaiah. Isaiah is quoted because it presents John the Baptist as doing Again.
Speaker 1:Mark is the gospel of going and doing so right here at the beginning, john the Baptist is already doing something. He's preparing the way for the Lord. We're interested in what John the Baptist is accomplishing. That's what Mark is focused on. What's his purpose? John is presented for what he does. He goes before. This is John the Baptist, by the way, not John the Gospel writer, it's John the Baptizer he's quoting interesting here.
Speaker 1:One of the quotes he gives here is from the Old Testament book of Malachi, chapter 3, verse 1. Malachi, of course, is the closing message of the Old Testament says this, and I'll go ahead and just read Malachi 3.1. Behold, I am going to send my messenger and he will clear the way before me. The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Malachi closes the Old Testament with a prophecy that the Messiah is going to come. And Mark is opening the New Testament showing that Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophecy. The last Old Testament prophet was saying there's going to be this Messiah, he's going to come. Mark quotes this right here at the beginning of the New Testament, saying he's here. The quote there, steve.
Speaker 2:He says he's clear the way before who, the Lord, which that's again another term that's going to be used for a king or for somebody. That's royalty and also can also be taken as son of God, the Lord himself.
Speaker 1:Prepare the way for the Lord. There's two words for Lord and our translators typically translate them a little, at least present them in the text a little differently. When it has all capitals, capital, o, capital O, r and D in all caps, that is the name of God. The Malachi quote says he's prepare the way before me, yahweh. Prepare the way before Yahweh, the Lord, god Almighty. Here, when the inspired word of God in Mark 1 says prepare the way before Yahweh, what is that saying? John the Baptist is preparing the way before the Lord. What does that say? What does that tell us about the nature of Jesus Christ?
Speaker 2:Mark here by quoting this, that John the Baptist is the one that's out preparing the way of Yahweh and in the first verse says that he's the Son of God. It's equating Jesus to Yahweh, to God himself.
Speaker 1:Unless there's any doubt. Again, this quote is really more than one Old Testament quote. Malachi 3 says, speaking specifically the way before me the Lord of hosts is what it says. There's no doubt of who that is. The other one is quoting Isaiah 40, verse 3, quote a voice is calling clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness, make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. This passage is clearly saying prepare the way before God, prepare the way before Yahweh. It's very clearly saying that John the Baptist is preparing the way for the Lord God who is Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:This isn't a new concept, glenn. The quotes are from the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. But in the Hebrew Scriptures themselves the angel of the Lord is referenced several times. We have a session on the angel of the Lord is referenced several times. We have a session on the angel of the Lord, what that means, and it's very clear that it's God who came and visited with the people, visited Abraham came at various places and was represented in a human form to the people. In the Old Testament we hold in our session. We encourage the people to go listen to it that that is a pre-incarnate visitation of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity that came and visited.
Speaker 2:This isn't a new concept. Whenever Mark is saying here and quoting from there, here we have the King, the Son of God, the Yahweh, coming, visiting. He's here and we have John the Baptist that is preparing the way for him. So not a new concept. It's something that the rabbis and the other leadership were well aware of, of God from time to time coming in a physical form and visiting among his people and his creation.
Speaker 1:Three times in three verses. The first three verses of the book of Mark has Jesus presented as God Almighty. The doctrine of the deity of Christ is strong in this book, as it is in other books as well. Mark opens up with the most doctrinally profound statements that he could make. Jesus is God Almighty. Prepare the way for Yahweh is who we're talking about here. He is the Son of God. So three times in three verses he upholds the deity of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:If people deny the deity of Jesus Christ, they are outside the bounds of Christianity. They may be religious but they are not Christian, simply because if we deny our Lord and his nature, then we do not have a Savior that is able to save us. The quotes are also saying that John the Baptist was a fulfillment of two different Old Testament prophecies that were literally fulfilled. The Gospels make no question here about who they're talking about and what they're trying to say, because again he opens up, just like Matthew, just like the Gospel of John. He opens up with all guns blazing and they're making a very, very doctrinally profound statement right out of the chute. It's just so, so interesting. Steve, can you start at verse 4 and read down to verse?
Speaker 2:8? John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem, and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey. He was preaching and saying After me, one is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:And the first thought that comes to me, Steve, when I read that, is wow, quite profound. So what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Well, when John says one that's coming after me is greater than me and I'm not even worthy to stoop down and take off his sandals, that's a depiction that you had disciples that would follow certain teachers or certain rabbis and they would go with them and listen to what the rabbis and the teachers were and they would serve these rabbis and do things for them. But taking off the sandals of a master that was left up to a slave to do, that wasn't something that a disciple of a teacher would do. So, john is very clear here that I'm not even worthy of a slave's business of taking off the sandals of this person who is coming after me.
Speaker 1:Let's go ahead and walk through these verses. Verse 4 says that John came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. What does it mean to repent, Steve? What does that really mean?
Speaker 2:The word repent means a change of the mind, to change one's mind, to change one's thinking about something else. For the Jewish person, it was to change their mind in regards to who Jesus was, that he was the Messiah, he was the one that was promised For the Gentile who came out of a polytheistic and belief in him, to be firmly persuaded that that's who he was and that this God is the only one that could forgive their sins, that could then reconcile them back to himself From the beginning here.
Speaker 1:This is even prior to Jesus in his ministry, just yet. But the precursor, the one who went before John the Baptist, preached repentance. And you rightfully said, steve repentance means to change your mind, to make a decision. I'm stopping the way I'm going and I'm going the other direction. What this tells us is from the beginning, to be a true follower of Jesus Christ, you can't keep going the same way. You have to make a decision to say I'm going to stop living for me and stop living for the world, and I'm going to change. I'm going to make a decision and follow him. Can we do that and still follow the world? The answer is no. We have to make a decision to repent. You can't be a Christian and still follow the ways of the world. You have to have at least made a decision to follow Christ. It involves a change, a repentance. Repentance is one of these things that, in order to be what we would call saved salvation, to have a truly regenerated child of God, repentance is part of that, wouldn't you agree?
Speaker 2:It is part of it. It's the opposite side of the coin of belief. Whenever you express that belief, you're expressing that change of mind and turning from the world and turning towards God. It's through the Holy Spirit that helps us to be able to then change our lives, to living for Christ and become a new creature, as Paul says, and to become more Christ-like. We can't do that on our own power. Once we express that belief and receive the Holy Spirit that, we then will be able to continue on a progression of leaving the world behind and become more Christ-like not like the world, but more like Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:The reason I bring that up is because there are people in Christendom who, okay, were brought up to well. I go to church, I say prayers, I say a certain kind of prayer, I go a certain number of times, I light candles, I do these religious activities and many, most of those things. Nothing wrong with them. Well, going to church is good, but we're not made right before God by doing all of these religious activities. Before God, by doing all of these religious activities, the first step to becoming right with God is to change. Change your mind and decide to stop being worldly and start following Christ. John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. I sort of feel obligated here, steve, to mention a little theological rabbit trail In Acts, chapter 2, verse 38,. It talks about a repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Our friends that believe in baptismal regeneration is the idea that you have to be baptized in order to be regenerated, or either the obedience to the command to baptize or the physical act of baptism is the one that is an immediate, efficient cause of a person being saved. And the reason I bring it up here is because Acts 2.38 is the primary, or at least one of the primary passages where they teach baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And our friends that teach us say see, it's baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Well, my friend, I submit to you John 1.4, the exact same grammatical construction. John's baptism was for the forgiveness of sins, baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And if we're going to take Acts 2.38 and say that baptism causes the forgiveness of sins, then we have to go to Mark 1.4, say John's baptism causes the forgiveness of sins, which is heresy, because John's baptism didn't save anybody. So the solution is really to look in any good dictionary Greek English. Otherwise the little word for the Greek word eis can mean more than one thing. The last dictionary I've seen had 31 definitions for the word, for it can mean in order to bring about, or it can mean because of John's baptism. The baptism was because of the forgiveness of sins and not the cause of the forgiveness of sins. It's the same in Acts 2.38. Just wanted to mention that because here is one of the grammatical proofs for that.
Speaker 1:Moving on, john was in the wilderness. He didn't go to the large cities. If John were to have preached in the big cities. Who would have gotten the attention? Steve?
Speaker 2:The people that were in the big cities, the leadership and the people that were wealthy enough to live in those big cities, would have probably been the ones that would have flocked towards John. But by John being out in the wilderness, it was an effort for the people who lived outside of the city number one to go and see John and hear about this good news and his preparation of the way of the king to come. They were the ones that were hearing it first. In the next verses it says that everybody in the rural areas were going out to John and coming from the cities, but they weren't confined to the cities if he was only in the city.
Speaker 1:It also would have meant that if he went to the populated places, a lot of the attention would have been on John. In this case, john was out in the middle of nowhere where there were very few people doing his message. The few people heard about it and they came to him. John was not trying to bring attention to himself. John's message was he must increase, I must decrease. Everything John did was to point towards Christ. He intentionally did not go into a populated area just to bring attention to himself. He did it so that he could give a message. Anybody that wanted to hear the message had to go to John. Mark 1.4 tells us where John was and what he was doing no long speeches, all action. Then, in verse 5, quote all the country of Judea and all the people of Jerusalem unquote went out to see him. Did John have a big impact?
Speaker 2:He did have a big impact, so much so that in the other gospels they record that the Pharisees heard about this, the Sadducees the leadership, and they went out to John to confront him and ask him questions of who he was, what he was doing and who gave him the authority to do this. And we read about that accusation and confrontation in a couple of the other Gospels.
Speaker 1:Carry this idea into today. Do we have to be a pastor of a giant megachurch in order to get the message out, or can we go to a less populated area and still do God's will?
Speaker 2:Not only that, glenn, but look at what he was wearing In verse 6, he's in camel hair, big leather belt around his waist. What's he eating? He's not eating fancy foods. He's out there eating locusts and wild honey. This harkens back to Ezekiel. Ezekiel was dressed the same way. Yeah, john definitely isn't trying to draw attention to himself. He's also not out there trying to get rich or wealth off of the people that are coming to him. He is out there serving a mission to do just what the Scripture says prepare the way for the Lord.
Speaker 1:John the Baptist was dressed like an Old Testament prophet. He was acting like an Old Testament prophet and he had the message of an Old Testament prophet. He was the last of the Old Testament prophets. He was here on the pages of the New Testament because he's the connection to the Old Testament prophets. He is the one who acted like, dressed like, and I tell you what, steve, I felt camel hair, and it's awfully rough. It's more scratchy than wool. It's quite uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Locusts were indeed actually in the kosher diet of the Old Testament. Locusts were indeed actually in the kosher diet of the Old Testament. It tells us that, back in Leviticus, that locusts were clean insects. It seems, though, that this is purposely not doing something that was comfortable to John. I'm sure if we were to ask John, what would you rather be eating and doing, he would say well, my flesh wants comfortable clothes and nice food, but I'm here to give God's message. So what lesson can we take away from that? Most of us are not in the vein of an Old Testament prophet, but what can we take away from that? What should be our calling?
Speaker 2:if God calls us to a ministry, we should dress and we should do things that promote the message itself and not promote us. And that's what John's mission was. He didn't want to draw attention to himself through his dress or through his diet. He wanted to keep the message the main focus. That's what we should do. If we want to go out and get the message out, we need to make sure that we're not getting in the way of the message. So often, glenn, I hear these days and some of the pastors are talking about how many jets they have, how many cars they have, how big their house is. What does that have to do with the gospel message of Jesus Christ? It doesn't have anything to do with it. I'm just wondering the people that are sitting there listening to that message, who's it focused on? It's focused on those people and it's not focused on Jesus Christ. That's what we need to do. We need to make ourselves smaller and littler and promote the message and make sure that that's the main thing that's getting out there.
Speaker 1:We can learn a lot from John the Baptist. He had simple clothes and ate simple food, and he was doing it in a simple place. He had a very profound message, which was repent and confess for forgiveness of sins because there's someone coming. That's the same message that we can have today. His message was received. What was interesting is look at what he was saying repent and confess your sins. That's a message that focuses on changing from our flawed ways to our good ways. Even the churches that don't necessarily push the prosperity thing very few of them really talk about sin and repentance on a regular basis. And this was John's primary message Turn from your sins and live a holy life. Look at the end of verse 5, confessing their sins. It would seem that what they were doing was confessing openly to people. They would go out to the Jordan River, confess their sins, apparently in front of people, and be baptized. Now, steve, how important is confession in our day?
Speaker 2:It's important to the belief that you're expressing. In other words, when you confess your sins, you're acknowledging that that's what it is. You're acknowledging that that's what's causing a separation between you and God. And the first act of going on the path towards God is to confess. These are the ungodly things that God would not want me to do, and I'm confessing them to get them out there in the open so that I can be held accountable to not do them again.
Speaker 2:I think that's all part of the confessing of the sins. If you don't have that confession of the sins, glenn, then how can you really know that the belief that you're expressing is one that is a true belief? What I mean by that is that if you express belief in God, you're repenting, but yet you have some private sin back here that you want to keep back and kind of keep for yourself, that you want to keep back and kind of keep for yourself. I'm going to tell you that that's going to cause a little bit of a problem if you don't get it out fully, confess it and move on with it and put your whole faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:How important is it to confess specific sins. It's easy to shoot off oh God, forgive me of my sins. It's something else entirely to start listing them off specifically and say God, I messed up right here with this thing and name it specifically. How important is specific confession?
Speaker 2:Well, it's the same with what I just got through talking about it is it gets it out in the open. If you happen to do it with someone else, it then holds you accountable. That person can come back later. Not in a judgmental sense and some of these things might be done with a person that you trust but in a sense of hey, I'm just kind of checking back up on you how are you doing in regards to this particular area of your life? Are you still going to do it okay? Do you need any type of help with it? Do you need any prayers for it? Then, being able to work through that with somebody else that you trust, I think is important.
Speaker 2:If you hold some of these sins in, like I said before, they become a burden to you. Now you can confess them to God, and you should do that, but it's again acknowledging out front and to yourself and to God, this is an area that I need help with. This is an area that I don't want to do anymore and this is an area that needs to be corrected in my life. Then you say I'm either leaving it behind or I need help to leave it behind, whatever it might be related to it. If you don't express it, then it's going to be harder for you to leave it behind. And you don't have to express it, for God's sake. God already knows what it is. You're doing it really for yourself in order to acknowledge it, that, hey, this is something that I need to stop doing and leaving behind.
Speaker 1:It helps a great deal to confess specific sins and even confess it and verbalize it out loud to the Lord. As you alluded to, steve, I think it's also helpful to find another godly human. I had a pastor once that said find a very godly person that you can confide in, somebody who's godly enough to keep their godly mouth shut and not gossip around and confess to them and ask them to hold you accountable. That's what I think is helpful here. They were confessing specific sins and they were doing it openly. I think that's needed. We don't necessarily need to air dirty laundry in front of the church on Sunday morning. Need to air dirty laundry in front of the church on Sunday morning. But when I say openly, I mean openly to God and then possibly openly, but privately, to another godly person. We need to confess our sins. I think that's quite important. Probably a good spot to stop for today because of time. We're still here in the wilderness with John, and keep your seatbelt fastened because there's going to be more great lessons in the Gospel of Mark.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for watching and listening. May God bless you.
