Mark 1:9-15 - The Gospel of God

When it comes to the gospel, keep the main thing the main thing.

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Gospels: Week 2 - Jesus' Preparation & Beginning of Ministry

We're visiting a different book each day as we work through all four gospels chronologically over the coming months.

Mark 1:9–15 (NASB95)

⁹ In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

¹⁰ Immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him;

¹¹ and a voice came out of the heavens: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.”

¹² Immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.

¹³ And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him.

¹⁴ Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God,

¹⁵ and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Heidelberg Catechism

Q&A 123

Q. What does the second request of the Lord's Prayer mean?

A. “Your kingdom come” means,

Rule us by your Word and Spirit in such a way

that more and more we submit to you.

Keep your church strong, and add to it.

Destroy the devil’s work;

destroy every force which revolts against you

and every conspiracy against your Word.

Do this until your kingdom is so complete and perfect

that in it you are

all in all.

Summary

Mark's gospel was likely the first to be published. It's the shortest of the four, and his brevity is evident in today's passage. Whereas the other gospels give more insights into the various events and facets of Jesus' life and ministry, Mark keeps the pace moving. One of Mark's favorite words for keeping this pace is one that rarely gets translated: the humble conjunction and.

Here's how the passage looks if all of Mark's ands are included:

• And in those days, Jesus came from Nazareth...

• And immediately coming up out of the water...

• And a voice came out of the heavens...

• And immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness...

• And He was in the wilderness forty days...

• And He was with the wild beasts and the angels were ministering to Him...

• And after John had been taken into custody...

It's almost as if Mark is like a young child who can't wait to tell his parents everything he'd done while he was at summer camp, excitedly reporting each and everything that had transpired: "We did this and then this and then this and then this..." As we work our way through the four gospels over the coming months, we'll begin to see that each evangelist has his own particular style and personality that comes out in his writing. This is the beauty of God's Word - it certainly is divinely inspired so as to be perfectly accurate and true, but since God imparts this truth through particular men, we also need to know those men well to have a full understanding of what God is saying.

How about you? Do you share Mark's breathless excitement to tell others about who Jesus is?

  Dig Deeper  

People love to hijack the Bible in general, and Jesus in particular, to bolster their own pet projects and political positions. You should support this or do that, they'll say, because this is what the Bible says. This is nothing new or particular to our own day and age, it's happened all throughout history. For too many people, the answer to the proverbial question "What would Jesus do?" (WWJD) just so happens to perfectly correspond with their personal preferences.

It's not wrong to long for public policy that reflects God's will or to use Jesus as a model for how to love one another, but as has been said often before, remember to keep the main thing the main thing. In other words, although the Bible's ancillary points are valuable and important, they weren't Jesus' primary focus in His ministry.

Mark makes Jesus' primary objective clear: it wasn't healing the sick or feeding the poor, although He did both, rather it was preaching the gospel of God. More literally, Jesus came to preach God's good news. Certainly the good news is that Jesus died to atone for our sin and was raised from the dead to give us new life, but notice that the gospel / good news Jesus began preaching comes three years before His resurrection!

So what then is this good news? Simply that the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. In other words, Jesus' main message is that the time of expulsion, in which our covenant representative Adam was evicted from God's garden kingdom, has come to an end. Therefore, Jesus continues, you must repent. Literally translated, you must learn to think differently. Stop focusing on getting all this world's stuff and instead, as Jesus will go on to say, seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33).

AAA Prayer (About)

• ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who publically declared that He is well pleased with our new covenant representative, Jesus Christ;

  ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you would experience this comfort as you continually repent (literally: think different) and believe the gospel;

  ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:

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