Well it was February of 1969 on a rainy Sunday
when I showed up at Grace Church in my late twenties with no idea of what the future held. As I said, there were a couple of things in
my mind. One was to teach the Scripture verse-by-verse
and the other was to train men. God has brought to a fruition of some kind,
anyway, both of those desires in ways that are way beyond anything I ever imagined. I was prepared to teach the Bible seriously,
but joyfully. I was prepared to teach it verse-by-verse,
word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase and letter-by-letter, if necessary, because I was compelled on one
great foundation, by one great motivation. I believe...I believed it then, I believe
it now...that when I held a Bible in my hands, I actually held THE living Word of God. I believe that. I have always believed that. And my faith in the accuracy and integrity
of Scripture is stronger every passage of my life. I suppose I could have started out at Grace
Church by doing a rather long defense of the Scripture. I didn't do that. I didn't do that because I didn't need to
do that. The Scripture will defend itself. It is its own defense. It's like a lion, you just open the cage and
let it out. I don't need to tell you this is the living
Word of God, you know it is. There is no other explanation for it when
you really dig down. It is so obviously divine. I'm really building on the work of others. I'm kind of the last guy in the process. My task has been to tell you what the Bible
means. That's really the end of the process. Before I can do that, I have to have the Bible. And before I can say this is the Word of God,
and you can see that it is the Word of God, it has to be the Word of God. What you hold in your hand right now, your
Bible, I can tell you is an accurate, English translation of the original manuscripts written
by the authors of the Bible. It is accurate. If I didn't believe that we had an accurate
translation of the original text of Holy Scripture, why would I endeavor to explain it verse-by-verse
and word-by word? It's very, very essential and very foundational
to understand that what you have in your hand in a twentieth century, if you had the NAS,
or twenty-first century if you have the ESV, English translation is an accurate translation
of texts that originated thousands of years ago. And the reason that I can say that is true
is because I understand the science and the history of manuscripts and the passing down
of Holy Scripture. That is one of the most important things you
learn in seminary because if you have any wavering in your confidence about the integrity
of your translation of the Bible, it will suck the conviction right out of your heart. That is why those who attack the truth, attack
first the veracity of Scripture. Because if the Bible can be shown to be inaccurate,
or an inadequate translation, or wrong, then we have no assurance of anything. So the basic question for anybody who is going
to give their entire life to the study of Scripture is, is the Scripture accurate? Now I will confess to you, I'm not limited
to the English translation. I took a minor in college in Greek, twenty-four
units of Greek, so that I could read the New Testament in its original Greek language. Came to seminary and took more and more and
more Greek and threw in Hebrew, so that I could be familiar with the original language
in which the Scriptures were written, Old Testament and New Testament. But that is the foundation. That is why that's so important in seminary. And I can tell you this, that I started out
believing the Bible is the Word of God, and I ended up believing that the Bible is the
Word of God even more strongly. Not because I've studied the science of manuscripts
through the years, but because I've studied the Bible and it is its own greatest defense. Now that leads me to have you turn to the
book of Mark because here somebody might say, "That issue of accuracy is called into question." Because there is this odd ending of Mark,
starting in verse 9 and running down to verse 20, you see a section in brackets, a bracket
before the word "now" in verse 9, and a bracket after the word "followed" in verse 20. And if you have a New American Standard, or
an English Standard Version, even if you have a New King James Version, there will be a
note in the margin explaining that this is a variant, this is a text that has been added
to Mark. That is a most providential way to end our
43-year study because now that you have 43 years, those of you who have endured it all,
43 years of absolute unshakable confidence in the veracity of Scripture, we can talk
about the science of it. This section at the end provides a very rich
opportunity for Bible students to be strengthened in the confidence that the Bible that they
hold in their hands is accurate. This section allows us to do something we've
never done in 43 years, and that is to go behind the text, below the text, the cherished
English translation that you have come to love and to dig down into the history of the
ancient manuscripts on which all modern translations in all languages are based. You hold in your hands that precious Bible
and you don't even think about the fact that there's an entire history behind it...a long
history, a long history of careful preservation of the original manuscripts, the original
text, so that thousands of years later when you read your Bible, you can trust that you
have an accurate translation of the original. This is the first element in the mind of a
Bible student, what did God say? Do I have His actual words? Then we can talk about the second element,
what does God mean? And that's where I come in. But first, we have to know what He said, then
we can talk about what He means. All translations of Scripture, all of them,
are based on ancient sources...ancient sources that have been discovered in libraries throughout
ancient times, treasures for those libraries. They have been discovered, they have been
studied, they have been analyzed for their accuracy. They have been compared by the most fastidious,
dutiful, thoughtful, careful scholars through the centuries so that I can say to you, unequivocally,
the Bible you hold in your hand, if you have formal equivalency, an actual translation,
I can assure you, you have an accurate...an accurate Bible. The Holy Spirit, who is the author of Scripture,
inspiring every writer of Scripture, is also the preserver of Scripture. Supernaturally, He moved on the writers without
disrupting their own words and thoughts and ideas so that they wrote exactly what He wanted
them to write. He moved on the preservers to make sure that
the Scripture stayed pure for history. The printing press didn't show up till around
1500. Everything up to that time was copied by hand. Scribes understood the seriousness of what
they did. There are some amazing stories about scribes,
listen to this, copying down the Hebrew Old Testament who wrote one letter, left, and
took a bath. Came back, wrote another letter, left, and
took a bath, and did that until they had written the whole Old Testament. Sort of ceremonial cleansing to remind them
after every letter of the importance and the sacredness of what they were copying. At first, they were copying the original texts,
written by Moses, written by David, written by Isaiah, written by Paul, written by Paul,
James, Mark, Luke. They knew what they had in their hands and
they copied it carefully because they understood it was Holy Scripture. Now, today, we have...let's just take the
New Testament cause that's where we've been working, we have twenty-five thousand ancient
manuscripts of the New Testament, twenty-five thousand. You say, "Is that all there..." Oh no, I couldn't even begin to tell you how
many there were that disappeared over the centuries, but there are twenty-five thousand
that are extant, that now exist. This is an abundance of manuscripts by which
we can compare them all and come to the accurate understanding that we need. Such an abundance shows how the Holy Spirit
preserved everything. That was the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
Old Testament manuscripts. When they were found, they were written before
the time of Christ and they are matched to the translations we have today, showing how
the Holy Spirit preserved Scripture. Nothing...nothing in ancient literature, even
comes close to the mass of manuscripts that we have on the New Testament. And what they demonstrate is the uniformity
and the consistency. There are, as I said, twenty-five thousand
ancient manuscripts. There are five thousand, six hundred or so
Greek manuscripts and they go way back. We have Greek manuscripts from the second
century, from the third century. Our Lord lived in the first century. There is a manuscript called P-52 and they're
numbered and named according to the people who found them, or the location, or something
like that. This one called P-52 has parts of the gospel
of John and it dates from 100 to 150 and John was living in the nineties. Somebody copied an original, most likely,
or a copy of an original, very near the original. There is another papyrus, they were writing
on papyrus so they're called papyri, there's another one called the Bodmer Papyri in which
we find John and Luke and it dates from 175 to 225. And then there's the very famous papyrus called
the Chester Beatty papyrus that has all four gospels and the book of Acts and it dates
around 200. They go way back. Here's the amazing part. There probably shouldn't be a lot of manuscripts
from those early years. Why? Because second century in particular and the
third century, for sure, was a time of immense Christian persecution, and an effort to stamp
out Christianity by the destruction of Christians and Christian scriptures. But the Lord preserved these ancient texts,
copies of those very close to the original. Once you get into the fourth century, around
325, or so, you get Constantine making Christianity legal. The persecution ends and now manuscripts proliferate. They're everywhere. And so by the time you pass say 325, the Council
of Nicea, we begin to see manuscripts in abundance. The two most important ones, one is called,
it's a Codex, this is called a Codex because it is a bound volume, rather than a scroll. The first one that is very important is called
Sinaiticus and it's about 350 and it's the whole New Testament. The second important one is called Vaticanus,
325 and it's the whole Bible. By the way, both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus
end Mark at verse 8. We also have eight thousand ancient copies
of the New Testament in Latin called the Vulgate. And the Vulgate dates from 382 to 405. We also have 350-plus copies of the Bible
in Syriac that goes back to the 200's. If I'm belaboring this a little bit, I'm going
to tell you why. We have all these ancient manuscripts that
when compared all say the same thing. The early church fathers, for example, before
325 because there was the Council of Nicea in 325, they're called the ante nicene fathers
because they were before Nicea, the early fathers in the 200's and 300's, if you just
read...there were these guys writing all kinds of theology, and all kinds of biblical study
material, if you take the church fathers prior to 325, there are among those fathers about
32 thousand quotes from the New Testament. There are so many quotes from the New Testament
among those fathers in the writings of the fathers, which we have, which are held in
libraries, that we can reconstruct the complete New Testament from nothing but the writings
of the fathers. That's another source to find what the New
Testament said in ancient times. The writings of the early church fathers also
confirm the accuracy of the gospels. There are over nineteen thousand quotations
from the gospels in the writings of the fathers. So whether you're reading a Greek manuscript,
a Syriac Bible, or whether you're looking at a Latin Vulgate or whether you're reading
a quote from a church father, it is crystal clear that they all had the same thing. They would be reading essentially in their
language what you're reading today in yours because yours is drawn from those ancient
manuscripts. Now let me give you something to compare with
all that. The second most common ancient document in
the manuscript world is Homer's Iliad. Remember that when you went to college? You had to read that epic poem called the
Iliad by Homer? Next to the New Testament there are more copies
of Homer's Iliad than any other ancient piece of literature. Oh, by the way, there are 643 of them...643,
small change compared to twenty-five thousand. And, oh by the way, the oldest one is from
the thirteenth century A.D. and Homer wrote in the eighth century B.C. We don't have anything even close to when
Homer wrote. Who knows whether Homer ever said any of that? Another familiar piece of literature to a
student of history is the Golic Wars, Caesar fought Golic Wars. He wrote the Golic Wars, the history of the
Golic Wars in the first century B.C. There are ten existing manuscripts of that,
the oldest one is a thousand years after Caesar wrote. Some of you may have heard of Herodotus, the
Greek historian. He wrote history. In fact, Herodotus could be the father of
historians, he was the son of the first historian. He wrote in the fifth century before Christ. We have eight manuscripts of Herodotus' history
and the earliest is 1300 years after he wrote. There's another one. Because I studied European history and have
always been fascinated by this, I'm even reading something about it now, the history of the
Peloponnesian war written by Thucydides, we have eight manuscripts of that, the earliest
is 1300 years later. Do I need to go on? Nobody bothered to protect those. Nobody bothered to preserve those. But, boy, did they work hard to protect the
Word of the living God. They knew what they had. With so many accurate manuscripts, you can
know with no hesitation that the Bible you hold in your hand is a true English translation
of the original autographs, as they're called, preserved accurately. One of the scholars that I've studied in years
past, is a man named A.T. Robertson. You'll see his name connected to matters regarding
biblical scholarship. A.T. Robertson says, "The vast array of manuscripts
has enabled textual scholars to accurately reconstruct the original text with...listen
to this...more than 99.9 percent accuracy." That's pretty good. More than 99.9 percent accuracy. What's so amazing about this, these are all
hand copies...hand copies. Now you say, "You mean, in all of that there
are no errors?" Oh, I didn't say that. They made errors. They put in a wrong word, put in a wrong spelling,
left something out, occasionally they even tried to clarify something, some of these
scribes. But guess what, we have so many manuscripts,
we know when they're doing that. We know when we're doing that. Plus, if something shows up in a later manuscript,
and it's not in any of the earlier ones, we know it was added later. It isn't brain surgery. And there's a science of textual criticism,
it's called lower criticism. The science of textual criticism...I'll give
you an illustration of it. If you came across a manuscript in Greek that
said, "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter
the Kingdom of heaven, you have your manuscript...it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of
a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." Hum. And let's say you found another fragment discovered
somewhere and it said this, "It's easier for a cord to go through the eye of a needle than
a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven." You certainly can't put a camel through the
eye of a needle, but you could put a cord through the eye of a needle. Which would be the correct one? What would your answer be? Not cord, because nobody would turn cord into
camel, but somebody might turn camel into cord. Oh, by the way, there's only one two stroke
difference between the word for cord and the word for camel. But we know when somebody does that. That's the science of textual criticism. Camel is right. We also know that because of the text, because
the text says, "It's impossible with man," and it would be impossible to put a camel
through the eye of a needle." You say, "Why in the world are you telling
us all this? Are you enjoying it? Is it helpful? Okay. Why am I telling you this? Because here we are at the end of Mark and
we've got this long textual variance on the end of Mark that we know did not appear in
the original autograph written by Mark. That's why it's in brackets. And, by the way, look at the bottom of the
page after verse 20 wherever you are, do you see another paragraph there in different type? That's another ending that showed up...a short
one. So you have a long one, and a short one. Why is this here? If it's not in the original, why is it here? Well, I think there's a pretty obvious answer. Verse 8, remember verse 8 from this morning? This is Mark's closing statement. "They went out and fled from the tomb for
trembling and astonishment had gripped them and they said nothing to anyone for they were
afraid...period." That's it. Can you understand that folks started to say,
"You know, this doesn't seem like an ending, that seems like stopping, not ending." The language is dramatic. The resurrection is shocking. The women are convinced of the resurrection
by the empty tomb and by the angelic announcement. It has dawned on them in their terrified bewilderment. They're gripped by the wondrous reality of
the resurrection and a few steps later they're characterized by great joy. They're speechless. And, oh, by the way, so is Mark. I like that. Verse 8 says, "They said nothing to anyone,"
and that was good enough for Mark, he didn't either. He just shut it down. How fitting that the end is so dramatic and
so powerful that neither the women, nor Mark could speak. And what do you need to add? You have an empty tomb. You have an angelic announcement. And you have the wonder of eyewitnesses. You know, Mark started this whole thing back
in verse 1of chapter 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. What was Mark working for in writing this
history? He wanted you to be convinced of what? That Jesus is the Son of God. Mark wanted the same thing that John wanted,
"These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of God." Did he make his point at the end? Are you convinced? Was it enough? Did these 16 chapters get it done for you? Is it clear that He's the Son of God? Mark didn't even let any human voice utter
that reality until near the very end. And of all strange people, it's a Gentile,
Roman centurion who is in charge of the crucifixion who says, for the first time it's passed human
lips, "Truly this man is the Son of God." What else is there to say? The proof is in the resurrection. And so, Mark is as speechless as the women
because his point is proven. But this bothered lots of folks early in church
history. Now they were used to a lot more post-resurrection
history. There's a lot more in Matthew, a whole lot
more in Luke, and a lot more in John. It just didn't kind of seem to match. So some have made some suggestions that Mark
would have interacted with Luke, since both were in Rome together at the same time. And maybe Luke said, "Look, I've got it covered. I've done pretty extensive work on post-resurrection
appearances and Luke's gospel would cover it all." And Luke's had already been penned. So maybe Mark didn't...didn't feel like he
needed to add that. Well, I don't know if that conversation happened. I don't know. I don't know if they agreed on that, neither
do you, neither does anybody else, so what's the point? Speculation doesn't work a lot in interpreting
Scripture. Others have said this, "Oh, remember now,
according to one church father, Papias, Peter was the source for Mark. Peter in Rome, Mark in Rome, Mark is in Rome
writing this gospel in Rome to the Romans and he's getting his information from Peter. And some have suggested that Mark stopped
because he didn't have access to Peter anymore because Peter got arrested and executed. Well maybe. I mean, there's not a maybe about him getting
arrested and executed, but maybe it was his arrest and execution that stopped the process. But it seems to me that if the Holy Spirit
wanted to keep talking, He could. Others might say, "Well look, you've got all
this information in John and all this information in Matthew, and if you go into Luke, you've
not only got everything Luke wrote, post-resurrection in his gospel, but then he wrote the whole
book of Acts. Isn't that enough?" And you might say, "Look, John in his gospel
omitted everything on the front end, starting his history of Jesus with the baptism of Jesus,
30 years into the story. So if John has a late start, what's wrong
with Mark having a brief ending? It's possible that they thought that way. I don't know. No one knows. I'm giving you these because this is what
I read that suggested to me as the reason this thing ends the way it does. But it is all sheer speculation. I don't know if these conversations ever happened
at all. Another popular idea is this, look, Mark was
intending to leave an open-ended rhetorical device. Really. Do you know what Mark was intending? Really? I don't know what he was intending, I only
know what he wrote. I don't know what he was intending. I don't know what he's thinking. Who knows what he's thinking? I can't know anybody's intention. So I think it's just better to stick with
the text. Well let's go back to the text and see if
we can't come up with an answer from the text. Verse 8, "They went out and fled from the
tomb for trembling and astonishment had gripped them and they said nothing to anyone for they
were afraid." The word tromos is the word trembling, ecstasy,
transcendent, bewilderment, the word ekstasis is the word here for astonishment. Phobia is the word for being afraid. Very strong language to express the terrifying
bewilderment that has gripped their minds as they begin to understand that Jesus has
come back to life. Yes it's abrupt. Yes it's a shocking ending. But it is incomplete? That was the complaint. Way back, the complaint was it's incomplete,
it's inadequate, so in very early years, very early years, second century, people started
wanting to add something to Mark. Some people said, "Well, there's an ending
somewhere, but it's lost." I read an entire section advocating the lost
ending theory. How in the world could you say something was
lost if you didn't know it existed? And if you did know it existed, it wouldn't
be lost. Others said, "Well, we've got to put an ending
on this. We can't...we just can't leave this." So endings began to appear, short ones, like
the little one at the end, "They promptly reported all these instructions to Peter and
his companions, and after that, Jesus Himself sent out through them from east to west the
sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation." That's true. Right? They didn't say anything that wasn't correct
in that little ending. They just added it. By the way, we have all kinds of manuscript
evidence to know that was added later. I told you the two most important manuscripts,
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus both end at verse 8, as do the other ancient manuscripts. Our translations are based on the most ancient
Greek manuscripts. And they don't have that short ending, and
they certainly don't have that long ending, verses 9 through 20. In the fourth century, for example, two of
the fathers, Eusebius and Jerome, wrote that almost all Greek manuscripts of the New Testament
end at verse 8. Did they know those other endings existed? Yes they did. They knew they existed. In the second century, Justin Martyr and Tatian
knew about other endings. Irenaeus, also, Irenaeus is in 150 to 200,
he knows about this long ending because he quotes verse 19 from it. They knew these endings existed. They existed early. But even by the fourth century, Eusebius says,
"The Greek manuscripts do not include these endings...the originals." Now if you happen to have a King James Bible,
or a New King James, you will find verses 9 to 20 in the regular flow of text without
brackets because the King James and the New King James are based on a medieval text...a
medieval text, based on later texts. However, since that time, we have discovered
the earlier texts, so all the later translations, NAS, NAS Update, ESV, NIV, etc., etc., are
all based on the more ancient texts. That's why if you have any of those, it's
bracketed; because the earlier texts omitted it. The external evidence indicates that this
doesn't belong and it's pretty good evidence. There are some other endings floating around
too, by the way, some others that you don't need to know about. So we would say external evidence argues for
exclusion, not inclusion. And that would pretty much cross the board
with textual scholars. There's also internal evidence. You're going to enjoy this...internal evidence. Let's look at this long ending...this long
ending. "Now after He had risen from...risen early
on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene from whom He had cast out
seven demons." By the way, what is said here is true. That isn't the argument. The argument isn't whether it's true, the
argument is whether it's included. I hope that what I say to you is true, but
it's not Scripture. "She went out and reported to those who had
been with Him while they were mourning and weeping, when they heard that He was alive
and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it. After that, He appeared in different form
to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the country. They went away and reported it to the others,
but they didn't believe them either. Afterward He appeared to the eleven themselves
as they were reclining at the table and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness
of heart because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, 'Go into all the world
and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized
shall be saved, but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. These signs will accompany those who have
believed in My name, they will cast out demons, they will speak with new tongues. They will pick up serpents and if they drink
any deadly poison, it will not hurt them. They will lay hands on the sick and they will
recover. So then when the Lord Jesus had spoken to
them, He was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God and they went
out and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the Word by
the signs that followed." Now let me just say a few interesting things
about this. The internal evidence here also argues for
exclusion. The transition from verse 8 to 9 is awkward. Verse 9 begins, "Now," that necessitates continuity
with the preceding narrative. However, what follows in verse 9 does not
continue the story of the women. It's talking about the women and then it says,
"Now, after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary
Magdalene." There's no transition there. It's abrupt, it's a bizarre change, lacks
continuity. He should be continuing the story of the women
based on the word "now," not jumping to the appearance to Mary Magdalene. Also, in verse 9 there's a masculine pronoun,
a masculine pronoun expects "he" as its antecedent, not the women. Why would there be a change in the pronouns? I'm just going to go by these quickly. Why would Mark also identify Mary Magdalene
as the one from whom Jesus cast demons, seven demons. Why does he introduce her here when she's
already been mentioned three times in the narrative. You don't introduce her at the end of the
story. The angel spoke of Jesus' promise to appear
to His followers in Galilee. All the appearances that are recorded in this
postscript are of appearances in Jerusalem. Furthermore, the vocabulary is not consistent
with Mark. It doesn't even read like Mark. There are eighteen words here that are never
used anywhere by Mark. The structure is very different from the familiar
structure of Mark's writing. The title, "Lord Jesus," is used here in verse
19, never used anywhere else by Mark. There's no reference to Peter here, although
Peter was mentioned in verse 7. And then you have some strange themes, the
theme of not believing in verses 11, 14 and 16. The theme of gospel proclamation, verses 11
through 20, they don't exist anywhere in Mark. They seem out of bounds for the subjects that
occupy him. And then you have thrown in signs. They don't appear in any of the four gospels. In no account, post-resurrection of Jesus,
is there any discussion of signs like picking up serpents, speaking with tongues, casting
out demons, drinking poison, laying hands on the sick. So both internally and externally, this is
foreign to Mark. You say, "Well where did this thing come from?" Well, we don't know who it came from, but
I know where. It came from...some people got together and
they started picking things out of the other gospels and out of some of the other New Testament
books and putting them together. For example, verse 9 is taken right out of
Luke 8:1 to 3. Verse 10 is taken from John 20, verse 18. Verse 12 is taken from Luke 24:13 to 32, the
road to Emmaus account. Verse 13 is taken from Luke 24. Verse 14 is taken from Luke 24:36 to 38; verse
15 is taken from Matthew 28:19, you know that. "Go into all the world and preach the gospel
to all creation." That's right out of Matthew 28:19. Verse 16 is taken right out of John 20:23
and verses 17 and 18, with all the signs and things, are drawn from a lot of sources. Back in Matthew chapter 10, Mark chapter 6,
Luke chapter 10, you remember the Lord gave to His Apostles the power to cast out demons
and to do miracles. We see the same on Pentecost. We see the same going through the book of
Acts. We're told by Paul writing to the Corinthians
that the signs of an Apostle were signs and wonders and mighty deeds. In the book of Acts, we know that Paul was
saved from a snake bite at the end of the book of Acts, twenty-eighth chapter verses
3 to 6. We don't have any illustration of drinking
poison, we don't know how that got thrown in. That doesn't appear anywhere else in Scripture. So what have we got here? We've got a patchwork collage that some early
folks felt needed to be thrown together, all of which is scriptural with the exception
of the kind of bizarre stuff about signs, in an attempt to help Mark get a better ending. Frankly, I think it's a bad ending. We have all that information. It's all kind of disjointed here. And I like Mark's ending. So let's talk about Mark's ending, and then
we'll finish. Why does he end the way he ends? Well, I think it's just the way he wrote. He started very abruptly...yeah, he did. He skipped...well he skipped everything like
John did, up to the baptism. He starts at the baptism. What about the Elizabeth/Zacharias promise
of John the Baptist? Annunciation, the angels, the virgin birth,
Bethlehem, where's that? Not here. In fact, he starts with the ministry of John
the Baptist in verse 2. And then Jesus shows up to be baptized in
verse 9. He has nothing before the ministry of Jesus
and he has nothing after the resurrection of Jesus. He's trying to prove a point that He's the
Son of God and he proves it by following Him in His ministry to His resurrection. I like the kind of people who make a point,
and they're done. I think he made his. But there's something else here that strikes
me. The last word that Mark wrote was the word
"afraid, fear." That's kind of a key. They were afraid. Not in the sense that they were afraid for
their lives or they were afraid of being harmed or that they were in danger. This is the word phobeo from which we get
phobia, which means an irrational experience. They're literally experiencing bewilderment,
amazement, astonishment, wonder. There are no human explanations. This thing ends in wonder. I want you to follow with me a little bit. Let's go back to chapter 1, you're going to
enjoy this brief review of Mark. Chapter 1 verse 22, "They were amazed at His
teaching." Verse 27, "They were all amazed, so that they
debated among themselves." He had just cast out a demon. Go to chapter 2 verse 12, "He healed the paralytic,
and they were all amazed and were glorifying God saying, 'We've never seen anything like
this.'" Go to chapter 4 and verse 41, "He calmed the
storm and they became very much afraid and they said to one another, 'Who then is this,
that even the wind and the sea obey Him?'" Chapter 5 verse 15, "They came to Jesus and
observed the man who had been demon-possessed sitting down clothed and in his right mind,
the very man who had had the legion and they became frightened." Chapter 5 verse 33, "He healed the woman with
the issue of blood, and the woman fearing and trembling, aware of what had happened
to her came and fell down before Him." Verse 42, "Jesus raised the little girl from
death and immediately, verse 42 says, they were completely astounded." Chapter 6 verse 51, He got in a boat and stopped
the storm, walked on the water and they were utterly astonished. Go to chapter 9. This is Peter, James and John at the Transfiguration,
and in verse 6, "They became terrified." Go to verse 15, "Immediately when the entire
crowd saw Him, they were amazed and began running up to greet Him." Go to verse 32, "He had just spoken of His
death and resurrection, they didn't understand the statement and they were afraid." Go to chapter 10, verse 24, "The disciples
were amazed at His words." Go to verse 32, "They were on the road going
to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking on ahead of them, and they were amazed and those who
followed were fearful." Chapter 11, verse 18, "Jesus goes in and attacks
the temple Tuesday of Passion Week, the chief priests, scribes heard it, began seeking how
to destroy Him for they were afraid of Him, for the whole crowd was astonished at His
teaching." Chapter 12, verse 17, when Jesus had escaped
the confrontation with the Jewish leaders, chapter 12 and verse 17, "He wisely answers,
'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, to God the things that are God's,' and they
were amazed at Him." Chapter 15 verse 5, Jesus stands before Pilate
and doesn't say anything. "So Pilate was amazed." Chapter 16, verse 5, "Entering the tomb, they
saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe...you read it...and they were
amazed." Could I retitle this book, The Amazing Jesus? What else do you expect Mark to say to finish
then that the women fled trembling, and astonishment gripped them and they said nothing to anyone
for they were afraid?" This is absolutely consistent with how Mark
ends everything. This is his pattern and this is the most amazing
thing of all. He's used this all the way along to punctuate
absolutely everything. And he moves from one point of amazement to
the next. So it ends where it ought to end. It's not incomplete. It ends where he loves to end. It ends with amazement and wonder at the resurrection. Are you amazed? I've been amazed since we started this thing. I've been amazed for 43 years. The story of Jesus is amazing. Isn't every lesson amazing? Isn't every word in the gospel of Mark amazing? Isn't every miracle amazing? Isn't every confrontation amazing? Isn't every insight amazing? Isn't everything about him stunning and overwhelming
and why not end it all with the glory and wonder of the resurrection that proves He
is the Son of God and we all walk away in amazement? I'm amazed. I hope you are. Lord, we thank You for this wonderful evening
we've been able to share together. Thank You for the journey of all these decades
and it is just one journey and we'll have more, and we look forward to them. But my, what a journey it's been. And we've been amazed through the whole thing
and we're amazed now and that's as we should be. Thank You for the amazing Jesus and precious
John Mark...John Mark who had to be rescued from being an unfaithful guy and restored
and recovered from his unfaithfulness he could be used to write the history of the amazing
Jesus, and by that history, not only to prove that He is the Son of God, but that everything
about Him is absolutely amazing...amazing. It was amazement really, not fear that marked
the women, just as it had marked them all as they met Him. I think of the hymn, "I stand amazed in the
presence of Jesus, the Nazarene, and wonder how He could love me, a sinner, condemned
unclean. How marvelous, how wonderful our song shall
ever be, how marvelous, how wonderful is My Savior's love for me." You amaze us all the time, Lord, and Your
amazement comes through Your Word it comes through Your providential care, it comes through
others in whom You live, who bring Your amazing reality to us. It comes in the myriad ways in which You bless
us. May we never lose our wonder. May we always be like the women, walking away
in amazement that who it is that loves us gave Himself for us, rose again and ever lives
to gather us into His eternal presence. We thank You and we bless Your holy name. Amen. There we are. Thank you...thank you. (Long applause) Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I need to thank you because you make this,
as always, a joy...a joy.
