Gospel of Mark: a Quick Overview | Whiteboard Bible Study

the Gospel of Mark is the second book of the New Testament and if you're familiar with the Bible then you know that the Bible falls into two big divisions there's the Old Testament that looks at the relationship between God and the nation of Israel and then there's the New Testament and that looks at the life and Ministry of Jesus and what happened with his followers mark is the second book of the New Testament and it's called a gospel because it focuses on the good news of Jesus who he is and what he did now mark is the shortest of the four Gospels it's only 16 chapters long and traditionally it was written by someone named Mark or John Mark we meet John mark in the book of Acts he assisted the Apostle Paul and accompanied him in Barnabas on various missionary activities and he's also mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament as someone who was helpful to Peter and of course Peter is the apostle that emerged as the main leader of the Christian Church after Jesus died and rose again and went to heaven according to the New Testament so traditionally mark spoke with Peter and pulled together Peters stories from his time with Jesus to write what we call the Gospel of Mark so it's pretty interesting that's that's been what church leaders have said happened and how we got this gospel for a long time now there are a few important aims to keep in mind when you're reading the book of Mark Mark's trying to do a few key things one is he's trying to present Jesus as the Son of God and this is really clear because that's how the book opens it opens with the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God pretty straightforward he also wants to present Jesus as what's called a suffering servant in the Old Testament there was a prophecy about a servant of God who would suffer on behalf of God's people and mark presents Jesus as that suffering servant he says that although Jesus is the promised king that should come from the line of David he says that Jesus doesn't go about his ministry as that chosen one the way everyone expected instead of coming in and throwing off all the oppressive regimes of his time and setting up a new order in a military fashion the way the kingdoms of the world did it mark says no Jesus comes in and he suffers on behalf of the people that he's trying to say he's not coming to be served by people but he's coming to serve them a few things to note about the Gospel of Mark like I mentioned before it's the shortest gospel it's also likely the oldest gospel so although the Gospel of Matthew comes before mark in the New Testament scholars generally believe that the Gospel of Mark was the first one that was written in fact it's possible that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke use what Mark wrote down as reference material when they're putting together their own Gospels so it's a very very very important work of literature in the New Testament it's it's really vital for us to understand so let's take a look at the Gospel of Mark now an interesting thing to keep in mind when you're reading the Gospel of Mark is that the book follows a general geographic trajectory it starts off in the region of Galilee which if you were to look at a map of modern-day Israel it's north of Jerusalem it's by what's called the Sea of Galilee it's a it's a little lake and then the the story of Mark works its way from Galilee to Jerusalem which was the religious capital of the region of Judea it's the place where David once ruled as king over Israel it's where the temple of God was that's where the the Jews would worship God and make sacrifices and observe various religious holidays so it's very important city and the book makes its way from Galilee and follows Jesus roughly from Galilee to Jerusalem so that's just a good thing to keep in mind while you're reading through the book of mark and then we can divide the book of law into three general divisions there's the there's a group of passages of the take place in Galilee and as Jesus starts moving from town to town around the area and then there's a section right in the middle where Jesus talks about his coming death and resurrection and then we see that fulfilled in the last in the last section of the book of Mark so very interesting it breaks down into these three big groups and there are smaller divisions in there that we'll look at right now so in the in the first section of mark we have the new king so mark introduces Jesus as the son of God we meet John the Baptist we hear about some prophecies about the Messiah and immediately Jesus comes in and he's the new king he says the kingdom of heaven is near or the kingdom of God is near repent and believe in the gospel he starts dismantling the devil's work he's casting out demons he's preaching and performing miracles and this is when Jesus starts gathering a core group of followers with him and at the end of this section we see the Jewish religious leaders rejecting Jesus and they're they're already plotting against Jesus right here early in the book this is a pattern that we're going to see in this first section of mark we have Jesus drawing people's attention to something very important and the section will end with someone rejecting him and then people move on so let's watch that play out in chapter 2 of this section the the first the first segment here runs from the beginning of chapter one up through chapter three verse six well then in chapter three verse 7 Jesus starts we start to see Jesus new kingdom so I met the new king now I have a new kingdom Jesus selects Twelve Apostles and that number 12 is very important to the ancient Jews because when that brings back the memories of the 12 tribes that started the nation of Israel and so Jesus is you know he announced that the kingdom of God is near and now we're starting to see that new kingdom takes shape he has Twelve Apostles that's he's starting a new Israel and new people of God and he starts teaching parables on the kingdom of God and what it's like and in this section he says a couple times listen he who has ears to hear let him hear and he tells this parable of a sower who sow seed and some of the seed lands on good soil and bears lots and lots of fruit and some of it doesn't land on good soil and it doesn't do so well and the point is that the kingdom has very small and humble beginnings this is this is very vital to the rest of mark because while while Jesus is the Messiah remember he's not going to come in and set up his kingdom the way the kings of earth did at the end of this subsection in chapter 6 verse 6 Jesus hometown rejects him and he stops doing miracles in that hometown so we see first the announcement of the new king and then the Jewish religious leaders reject him but it's not just the the elite it's also the people that knew Jesus best who are rejecting him so next we move into the third movement of this first section and this runs from chapter 6 verse 7 through the middle of chapter 8 where we see a new order so Jesus passes through waters we see Jesus calming storms we see Jesus feeding multitudes he feeds a group of 5,000 and a creep of a group of 4,000 he explains the Jewish law to the religious leaders and this sets Jesus up kind of like a new Moses Moses is the most important character in the first five books of the Bible he gives the people of Israel the law and the law of Moses is an agreement between Israel and God in which God says you're going to be my people and I'm going to be your God and here's how that's going to work you need to these rules well Jesus comes in and he performs some miracles that are very similar to Moses you know Moses leads people through the Red Sea Jesus takes his disciples through the Sea of Galilee Moses is there when manna falls from heaven for the Israelites you can read about this in the book of Exodus Jesus provides bread for two multitudes so there's a lot of a lot of positioning Jesus here as a new Moses for for his people and Jesus gives a warning he says watch out for the religious leaders and the governments of their time but the disciples don't get it and so we end this subsection with you know not only had the religious leaders rejected Jesus and not only have Jesus hometown people rejected him but also Jesus own disciples really don't see which is really interesting because what does Jesus do next he heals a blind man now this takes us into a really cool section of Mark and it illustrates something that mark does a lot in his gospel which we'll do another video about soon but Jesus begins to predict his death and he does this three times but right before he does that he heals a blind man and after he predicts his death the third time we have another story of Jesus healing a blind men and Mark does this from time to time he will sandwich stories between each other to help give context and help the readers understand how the stories fit together and they they illustrate one another it's very interesting that we go from the disciples not seeing Jesus says do you not understand do you not see what's going on to helping people who literally cannot see to see and in the middle of this Jesus predicts his death and he says I'm not like the I'm not like Herod I'm not like the Pharisees which were the government of their day and also the really the religious leaders respectively he says I am going to die I must suffer and he does this three times the first time Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus says I'm going to die and anyone who follows me needs to take up his cross as well and then we have that Transfiguration experience where Peter and two other disciples see Jesus in glory on a mountaintop and he's accompanied by Moses and Elijah these are two other very important prophets in the Old Testament who also had an interesting experience with God on top of a mountain God Himself speaks from heaven while this is happening and says this is my son listen to him so very very interesting the kingdom of God is indeed near and the Son of God is among the disciples so they get to they start to see this in the second movement Jesus says I'm going to die again he predicts his death a second time and he says the last will be first in the kingdom and he starts talking about how this kingdom is very very different from the kingdoms of the world Jesus blesses children he confronts a rich young man and he says that it's very difficult for him to trust in God and enter the kingdom because he relies so much on his wealth and he doesn't want to he doesn't want to give up his wealth for the good of the kingdom he also warns against infighting amongst the disciples and he makes a promise that if you're in the kingdom then you will get a hundred times the return of whatever you lose in this life and that calls back to his parable of sowing seeds and we talked about a crop that bore a hundred times the return of what the farmers spent on the crop and so again Jesus is saying remember the kingdom comes from humble beginnings it's not like the kingdoms that you're familiar with in today's world now the third time Jesus predicts his death he says the son came not to be served but to serve and this is the key point of all of Mark's Gospel and he says this but we also get this episode of two other apostles who say you know I want to sit at your right and left hand like we we want to be the greatest in your kingdom and Jesus says well if you want to be made great then if you want to be great in the kingdom you need to be the slave of all and then we see we have another episode of Jesus healing a blind man so very very interesting right in the middle of the book we have this triplet of Jesus predicting his death right after telling the disciples that they they don't see they don't understand what's going on and bookended by these miracles with the blind man very interesting next we move on to the third big section of the book of mark and this is where we really see Jesus as that suffering servant he comes into Jerusalem and we have in the in the chapters from 11 to 14 we see Jesus being entering Jerusalem as the new king he's like that new David he sets things straight in the temple he argues with the religious leaders and debates them on the finer points of the law he is a new and better lawgiver he is a prophet he says that Jerusalem is going to be destroyed it's going to come under judgment they rejected him which does come to pass in the year 70 AD when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and then Jesus is also the sacrifice we see the Last Supper where Jesus you know breaks bread and says this is my body broken for you initiating a new covenant in a new relationship that's available not just to Israel but to everyone through the person of Jesus the suffering servant well the suffering servant is betrayed and killed right after this and so we have this this run of bad things that are happening to Jesus we saw Jesus get rejected by the leaders and his own people and his disciples in the first section of the and now it's all coming back and then some Judas one of Jesus core group of Twelve Apostles betrays him to the religious leaders the disciples run away the Jews accused Jesus of blasphemy and get him in trouble with the government and the government execute Jesus while this is happening Peter the person who claimed to know who Jesus was in the second section he says I know you you're the Messiah Jesus Peter denies Jesus three times which roughly mirrors the three times that Jesus said I'm going to die and Peter denies Jesus three times and it all looks pretty dark but then something very interesting happens Jesus dies on the cross and a Roman soldier who's watching this happening says surely this man was the son of God very fascinating because as Jesus dies someone who's not even part of the Jewish faith recognizes that Jesus is who mark says Jesus is he's the son of God the soldier recognizes that this is God's Son fascinating but it doesn't end there in fact in chapter 16 Jesus is risen from the dead we have an empty tomb some women are going to the tomb and it's empty and an angel tells them that Jesus is risen so go and tell everyone go tell the disciples but then we have kind of a cliffhanger because where the where the original manuscripts end or where they seem to end is we have people that that say they're they're afraid they're afraid and they don't tell anyone and that leaves us wondering well are they going to tell people that Jesus is risen or are they going to reject Jesus yet again are they are they going to keep this to themselves and not tell people about him not carry on this message this is where as far as as far as scholars are concerned we know that the Gospel of Mark has at least this much material but there are some other endings of that that we found that are in some manuscripts and not in others that sometimes make it into our Bibles you might see these printed in italics we have a short ending which has the people saying yes we're actually going to tell people they go and tell Peter and the disciples that Jesus is risen and then the gospel spreads throughout the world like we see in the book of Acts and then we have a longer ending that's printed in most of your Bibles in italics and that has the disciples commissioned by Jesus to go and preach the word to all creation and so that is the book of Mark it shows how Jesus is the Son of God he's the suffering servant who came and did exactly what he said he would do and by doing this it shows that he is the Savior who came not to be served but to serve and he sets an example for us as well and that is what the Gospel of Mark is about if you enjoyed this video go ahead and hit subscribe that way you'll know when I publish new videos and you'll be able to follow along with this whiteboard Bible study thank you so much for watching I hope it was helpful

Channel: OverviewBible

Views: 64,893

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Keywords: gospel, mark, bible study, new testament, jesus, easter

Id: 5RJI1l6A06w

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 28 2018