After Disgrace: The Restoration Of John Mark - Sermon On Mark 1:1 Series

For audio or video of this message go to https://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=92172240386

Mark 1:1 The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Introduction

How many of you have ever totaled a car? It used to be that totaling a car meant the car was utterly demolished and couldn’t be repaired. But nowadays, it might just mean the air bags went off and there’s a dent – it’s so expensive to repair cars these days. If it’s a $1500 car, it’s easier for the insurance company to just give you a check for $1500 so you can replace it than to try to repair it. So because of repair costs, the lower end cars are almost disposable. Like a paper towel – you just use it up, and then toss it.

We treat cars that way, and very often in the church we treat people that way. As long as they are useful to us, we use them. As long as they have something to offer, then they have a place. But when they get ruined, and they no longer have anything to offer – they are more trouble than they are worth, they are set aside like a used paper towel.

And sometimes the person who is treating you that way, is you. We get down on ourselves and set ourselves aside. We get discouraged with our failures, and we quit. We make the decision that we are irredeemable or unrecoverable or disqualified.

But what is God’s attitude toward ruined people? Does God cast us aside? No.

Lamentations 3:31 For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. 32 Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.

We could do a whole study tonight just on all the passages where God expresses his heart to restore people who have failed and then repented (I will restore the years the locust have eaten, don’t gloat over me my enemy, though I have sinned and sit in the darkness now, the Lord will plead my case and bring me back, he heals the broken, restores my soul, brings renewal) – many, many passages in Scripture assure us that that is the heart of God toward us.

But it’s one thing for me to just tell you that piece of information about God; it’s another to actually see it. And so tonight I’d like to show you an example of it.

Review

Last time I showed you that Mark presents the gospel in three main parts – the 3-legged gospel. Who can remember what those three legs are? Leg 1 (first 8 chapters): Jesus is the Messiah. Leg 2 (last 8 chapters): The Messiah is going to be a humble servant who suffers and dies. Leg 3 (whole book): If you want to be his disciple, you have to follow in those footsteps of humble suffering and death.

That’s the gospel, and if you don’t know all that about Jesus, you don’t know anything. People who want to talk about Jesus as a good teacher or prophet or moralist or inspiration or an angel or whatever – any conception of him that doesn’t have the cross and the resurrection front and center misses all of it. That’s why no other religion works. If you’re a Buddhist or Muslim or Hindu or Orthodox Jew or any other religion – who dies for your sins? If Jesus doesn’t pay the penalty for your sins, who’s going to pay it? It’s going to have to be you. The cross is essential.

But that truth wasn’t any more popular back then than it is now, and no matter how clear Jesus was about it, the people just couldn’t grasp it. They couldn’t grasp it because they wouldn’t grasp it. They just didn’t want a lowly suffering servant Messiah. But Mark forces us to come to grips with that.

That’s the flavor of Mark’s book – Jesus as lowly, suffering servant, except for the first verse. There’s nothing lowly at all about his presentation of Christ in the opening verse.

Mark 1:1 The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

He starts with that, then goes on to write a whole book about how Jesus was real hush hush about titles like Son of God or Christ. Why? It’s because if you have titles like Christ, Messiah, Son of God, son of David, etc., during the lifetime of Jesus, it conveys the wrong idea. People were expecting a political revolutionary to come along and lead a successful military rebellion against Rome. And their titles for that person were messiah, son of David, Christ, etc. Jesus didn’t want to publicize himself using those terms before people understood the part about him coming to suffer and die.