The Person of the Gospel

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

In 1993, there was a translation of the Bible that came out, and it was called The Message. The Message was put out by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. It was very controversial when it came out because it was very unconventional. Although it does have one man's name on the front. It's actually 20 highly accredited scholars contributing to this work, but it is a translation of the Bible and it was, it was Peterson's attempt, it was the author's attempt to do something, in my opinion, that was very admirable. What he wanted to do by creating this translation was he wanted to take the message of the gospel and he wanted to make it accessible to everyday people. And so to do that, he used everyday wording to convey the passages. So just as a quick example, Psalm 23, you know, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Here's the first couple of lines of that in the message. It says, God, my shepherd,

I don't need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. That gives you an idea of what the kind of language that Peterson was using in the message. Now, listen, before you start writing the email in your head, I'm not telling you to go buy the message. This is in no way an endorsement of the message. I'm not receiving money from whoever puts out Zondervan. I'm not, however, however, The attempt to make the gospel more understandable by using everyday language, that is something that I can get behind. That's something that our church can get behind. Whenever you are talking about the message of the gospel, so he called his translation, the message capital, and I'm talking about the gospel, the message. And often, the gospel is referred to as the message. Eugene Peterson did not coin this phrase. He's borrowed it from a lot of other people that

have done that. The gospel is called the message. In fact, I almost named this whole series the message instead of the gospel. However, the gospel is actually much more than a message. The gospel is much more than a message. Now, it is a message. In fact, it is the message, capital M. However, it is also much more than that. And if we are really going to get Jesus, if we're really going to get Christianity, if we're going to get the gospel in our bones, then we need to understand that the gospel is big. We need to see the whole gospel. We need to see it in broad, panoramic, 4K view, right? We don't need to watch it on this small little screen, right? We need to understand the gospel is just, it belongs in an IMAX theater, okay? That we need, I mean, we can crane our head as much as we want. We still won't be able to see all of it. We need to understand that the gospel is big,

much like, I'll switch metaphors, much like a diamond. If you hold a diamond, right, a big one, okay, bigger than we've ever held in our hands, I'm pretty sure. If you hold the diamond though, and you can even see this with a small diamond, when you hold it and you kind of turn it a little bit, you see completely different aspects of the exact same diamond. In fact, it's tough for us to even comprehend. We're looking inside of a diamond and we see so much light. We see so many colors kind of doing everything, going around, we don't see different diamonds. We see more of the same diamond. The diamonds depth, the beauty, the layers, they're all there. They're all there the whole time. We just don't see it unless we take the time to turn it and examine it and see it's multifaceted beauty. The gospel is deep. It is colorful. It is broad. And it takes time. It takes turning it over in your mind a couple of different ways.

Maybe some ways you never thought about, but ways that are indeed scriptural. So if we're going to get the gospel on our bones, we need to see how it changes history, how it changes cultures, how it changes whole perspectives. We also need to see how it affects our relationships, our work life, our marriage. We also need to see how it affects our motivations, our aspirations, even our mental health. The thing that's changing history is the thing that's affecting our mental health. It's the gospel. It's the same. But it's so multifaceted that sometimes it's just easier for us to boil it down to a sentence or two. What's wrong with that work, however, what we're going to be doing here is the opposite of that. We are going to be, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be looking at the gospel from its many facets. And I just want to just show you all of them at once.

We're going to be talking about gospel identity, the who, the person of the gospel. We're going to be talking about the content of the gospel next week, the method, how the gospel goes out, the power, the force of the gospel, its application, how the gospel The gospel turns into this sacrificial life. The object, the goal of the gospel, what is the point? What is it seeking to do? What is its result? What does salvation in the gospel look like? What is its impression? How do people perceive the gospel? How do they see it? There are those that submit to it, there are those that resist it. What's going on there? Nobody's ignorant of it. If we are going to take this multifaceted, broad, 4K, IMAX view of Scripture, if we're going to turn the diamond, if we're going to see more of it, then we're going to have to look at it from a couple of different angles. And I thought eighth was at least a good beginning, just a good beginning.

And so to do this, to understand this multifaceted view, we are going to look into the four accounts of Jesus's life. Those are also called the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Particularly, we're going to be going into the gospel of Mark, although all the gospels are fair game. Now, because I keep saying gospel, and now I just use it in a different way, it is necessary to clear this up. Why do we have four gospels? Why do we call Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John gospels? Why do we call those four gospels? Well, we have four gospels because we have four authors. The original names of these things. So for example, we're going to be in Mark. And if you want to turn to Mark right now, we're going to be Mark 1:1. That's what we're going to start there, at least at the very beginning of the gospel of Mark. The long form of those names of Mark's gospel is the gospel according to Mark.

Okay. The gospel according to Luke and so on. These, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are four catalogs of Jesus's life written by specific people, okay? Which begs the question, how do they know? How does Matthew receive the information about Jesus's life? What about Mark? What about Luke? What about John? Well, they're all different. Depends on which one you're looking at. Matthew and John, for example, were both disciples themselves, okay? Matthew was also called Levi, so don't be confused. If you can't find him in the list, look for Levi. Levi and Matthew are the same person. But also John, the gospel of John is written by John, the brother of James, one of the sons of thunder, okay? Same guy who wrote the gospel of John, also wrote first, second, third John, also wrote Revelation. Okay, so you have a pretty prolific author right there in John. Luke, well, Luke was not an eyewitness.

So what did Luke do? If you look at the first couple of verses of his gospel, he cites multiple witnesses extensively. So Luke, you read through the gospel of Luke. It's the longest gospel that's written. Luke will name people, places, times, who was governor, what was happening then around the world. What he's demonstrating is he's saying, hey, Luke, this actually happened. So-and-so was there. If you don't believe me, ask them. Okay, that's what you've got going on in the gospel of Luke. So Luke was not an eyewitness firsthand account, But he's citing multiple first-hand witnesses, first-hand accounts. What about Mark though? Mark was discipled by Peter. There's very good evidence that multiple places, First Peter 513, Mark is receiving firsthand accounts

from Peter. So there's a couple of things in Mark. And we're gonna, you get details of it in Mark and you get details, for example, like when Peter, James, and John went with Jesus on the map of transfiguration, okay? There's detail there. And the reason there's detail there is because Peter's giving Mark that detail. Okay? This isn't Mark going into a trance receiving a vision. That's not what he says. What we see though is Peter's first-hand account. And you see Peter and Mark. And you also see Paul and Mark. And Mark also goes by the name John Mark. Mark was in the house. His mother was Mary, not all the other Marys that you know, a different Mary, because of course there's another Mary. Mark is in the house church, pretty much the first house church in Jerusalem. And his cousin is a guy by the name of Barnabas. You might have heard of Barnabas? So Mark is related to Barnabas.

He is a kid when the first house church is going on and it's in his house. His mom obviously loves the Lord. He's discipled by Paul. He's discipled by Peter. And by all estimations, he wrote the very first gospel. He wrote it before Matthew and Luke did. He wrote it before John did. We can't prove that obviously, but he's writing it. And this is how we can know they are trusted sources. All four of them, all four of these gospels, have one idea at the center, one given in their story. Right? And we see it in the first verse in the gospel, according to Mark chapter one, verse one. If you want to turn there, or if you want to read it with me, says the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Okay. I know that that sounds so obvious, right? But this is the beginning of Mark's gospel, and he's saying this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The central idea of the gospel is that God came to be with His people in Jesus. God came to be with His people in or through Jesus by sending Jesus. And so, hear me, the gospel is then a message of good news, but the gospel is also that God the Father came to deliver that good news in person. Okay? I really want you to get this. We are talking, the gospel does have a message. It has content. It is news. I understand that. But it is also news that is delivered in person. Jesus delivers this news in person. And we need to remember it's not just in person, but as a person, and not just as a person, but one of us. Jesus suffered like we suffer. He went through the human experience just like we go through it. And remember in Matthew, you know, that Jesus' name says, he will be called Immanuel, which means God with us. God is delivering this news in first person. This is the first

part of the diamond that we're going to see today. We're going to see that the person of the gospel is Jesus. In other words, Jesus embodies the gospel in all that he says and all that he does. Every word he utters is purposeful. Everything he says, all of his preaching, all of his miracles, all of his life, even when he chose to do things or when he didn't choose to do things, when he told somebody to tell people about him and when he told people to not tell everybody about him. This is all the gospel. This is the gospel on display. And it also means that even his coming, even the fact that he was sent is part of the gospel message. This is what Mark begins with. This is what Mark begins with. And I want to show you why I say that. Because when you're looking at the Gospel of Mark, it begins with Jesus coming, but then when you look in verses two and three, you see something different. It's kind of a hard left turn.

Verses two and three, it says, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I will send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way, the voice of the one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord make his paths straight. So this is the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus. You think that it would start with Jesus. You think that it would start with, and he was born in Nazareth, or born in Bethlehem, sorry. And he, you know, he grew up in Nazareth. You would think to hear something, some kind of childhood story, something, some kind of birth narrative, something. But you don't. What do you hear? You hear Isaiah. But Mark points further back. He points to over a thousand years before Jesus is born to show that this Jesus that's coming is the Christ. He's the Messiah. He's the one who has been prophesied about. Jesus is coming then is like this. It's an old beginning. It's an old beginning. It is,

It is, in other words, the culmination of years, centuries, and millennia of waiting, of waiting for something to happen. And when Jesus comes on the scene, what Mark is helping us understand is this didn't start, this story did not start a week and a half ago. This story started so far back that Isaiah was prophesying about it, and Jesus coming as the culmination of that. The gospel was not accidental then. The gospel was planned from eternity past. This is marking something that is a definitive, significant beginning, a mark in time, if you will excuse the pun. Verses 4 through 6, we are still not to Jesus. Mark 1, verses 4 through 6, it says, John appeared, Baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and being baptized by him in the River Jordan,

confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. So you have still, you have the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It begins with Old Testament prophecy fulfillment. And then you get this pretty much the last installment of an Old Testament prophet. When you read about John the Baptizer's clothing and where he lived and what he did, this guy sounds just like Elijah. He sounds just like Isaiah. He sounds just like Ezekiel. That he is from a bygone era. We know people like this, we think they're really uncool. They wear stuff that was popular in the 70s. They listen to jazz from the 60s, and they just kind of look around at social media and eye roll, and they're like, you guys don't know what good things are. This is John the Baptizer. John is coming on the scene, and he's in the wilderness.

He is dressed in rags. He's eating locusts and honey without complaint. There's this mysterious reverence that you get when you read this, that people are looking at him like, oh, this guy's weird, but there's something about it. We just can't ignore him. I don't care if he's out in the wilderness baptizing people. I don't care if he's pre-treat. So you get the sense that even though he's weird, even though he's out there, even though he's in the wilderness, people are flocking at him. Let's keep reading. So you get Old Testament flavor, verses one through six. Verses seven and eight, you get the content of what he's preaching. He said, and he preached, John the Baptizer, preached saying, after me comes he who is mightier than I. The strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

Okay. In just a few verses, what Mark has done for us, He's saying the gospel is about Jesus coming and the gospel is about Jesus coming and it's an old beginning It's something that that's coming from way back here And then we're finally getting to this point here But also in verse 8 what John is what mark is showing us is that Jesus is coming is also a new beginning It's marking something different John is saying even as he's baptizing people he's saying to them look I'm baptized you with water, but this thing is antiquated This thing's going away. This thing, it's going to be included and mixed together with something that's completely new. They're saying, I'm baptizing you with water and that's fine, we're going to baptize with water. But somebody's going to come and I can't untie this guy's shoes. This guy's going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit. I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty

sure that most of the people, 99% of the people, maybe 100, that were listening to him say that had no idea what he was talking about. Just zero. Just what? What? Right? I mean, you might as well say that somebody was going to be baptized. Somebody's baptized in water, but I'm going to come and make your hair like glass. You're like, what? It's just a critical, It doesn't even make sense to them. Baptized with the Holy Spirit. What is that? It's strange. It's a new beginning. Water then is only a shadow of what's to come. And then finally, Jesus is coming, old beginning, new beginning. Finally, in verse nine, we get Jesus entering the scene the scene in his own gospel, which is cool. Mark 1, we're going to go 9 through 12. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open

and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased. The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. Okay, there's a couple of things here that I want to point out. There's a lot here actually, but I'm only going to hit on a few things. First of all, verse 10, he said, he came up out of the water, so he's baptized with water, and immediately what happens? The Spirit, the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove. So Jesus then was baptized with water and with the Holy Spirit. So even what he's bringing is happening right now. Okay, you will find this a lot in Mark's gospel that Mark will not tell you what's going on. He will show you what's going on. He will say what somebody else said, and then he will prove it to you just by the action. And he won't come back around and go, you see what Jesus did there?

He's just going to say it. He's just going to describe it, and you're just left to kind of figure it out. Okay, and so whenever Jesus is, whatever, excuse me, when John the Baptist is saying, He's going to come baptize water and the Holy Spirit. Then we see it demonstrated in verse 10. Verse 11, what do we see demonstrated? We see God the Father looking down on Jesus,

God the Son, and we see God the Spirit descending on God the Son like a dove. Father, Son, Spirit, all in one picture. We see the Trinity right here. We see God in his, you know, in this threefold glory here, you see God announcing Jesus's ministry. God proclaiming his favor and his blessing upon Jesus. And he's saying, this is my son, I'm well pleased with him. And every sense, everything that you see, even the next verse tells you, something is about to begin. So, because verse 12 says the Spirit immediately, and that word immediately is gonna be all over the Gospel of Mark. Immediately this happened, immediately that happened, immediately this happened. Mark is a gospel of action. There's not too many sermons in the gospel of Mark. There's a few.

There's not too many sermons. Mark's the shortest gospel by far. 16 chapters and a lot of those chapters are shorter. And so with Mark's gospel, you get an emphasis on action and a lot of it, it's just rapid fire. It's just quick. And so immediately after he's baptized, he goes out into the wilderness. And I want to talk about the wilderness here because that's the third time we've seen it mentioned in the first 12 verses of Mark's gospel. Verse two says a voice, Isaiah the prophet, maybe verse three, saying, crying out in the wilderness, make way for the King that's coming. Make the low places high, make the high places low. The king is coming. That's a voice crying out in the wilderness. And then we see in verse four, I believe, it's that John came in the wilderness. And so where does Jesus go immediately after he's baptized? In the wilderness. What Mark is doing, what Mark is helping us understand

is that Jesus, The beginning of the gospel of Jesus is that He is coming to us on our terms, on our turf. He's coming to us in a way that is not fun. He didn't come in a palace. He was born in a manger, although Mark doesn't say that here. He didn't come acting like a king. He went out into the wilderness to be tested, to be tempted. Jesus comes to us in our situation. In other words, Jesus didn't wait for us. God the Father did not wait for us to figure it out and go to Him and just say, oh, oh, okay, God, I need to just figure this whole thing out on my own. I need to work it out on my own. And then I'm gonna be ready and I'm gonna go to you. No, that's not the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of Jesus Christ is that He came, God the Father sent Jesus to come in person, in our situation, in the wilderness, in the crazy of our own lives. We cannot know the gospel and miss Jesus.

We can't. We can't know the gospel and miss Jesus. The point, right, Philippians 3, 7 through 8 says it really well. It says, whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ, Jesus, my Lord, for His sake. I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish. and order that I may gain Christ. The gospel is the good news. It's a message, but it's a message about a person. And that person came to deliver that message in person.

You can't separate Jesus from the gospel. Getting more of Jesus is our cure. We pray for people in an apartment complex and we pray for the people that live all around us. What are we praying for? That they make more money? That they quit being sick forever? No, no. The people that we're praying for are gonna go through poverty. We're gonna go through poverty. The people that we're praying for are gonna physically die one day. We're all gonna physically die one day. What does Jesus, what does preaching the gospel do? It gives them the thing, the person, the relationship worth having, the only thing, the only cure, The only healing that is worth having. It's better knowing Jesus is better than being cured of cancer. Knowing Jesus is better than being promised a lifetime of no sickness. Jesus is the goal, seeing more of Him is our correction. There is no other fix.

All these other things are fine, right? Like, I mean, it is a good and noble thing to help people out of poverty, to visit the sick in the hospital, to be with people when they're going through tragedy. Yes, yes, yes, and amen. However, we don't put that over Jesus because knowing Him and being found in Him is paramount. It's the only thing. It's the only healing. Everything else just pales by comparison. Jesus. Jesus is the person of the gospel. I wanna encourage you, I wanna challenge you to seek to gain the person of the gospel today. Listen, in Philippians 3, 7-8, this is the apostle Paul talking. This is a guy that has walked with Jesus, that is writing scripture, that's planting churches, that's mobilizing leaders, that's appointing elders. I mean, Paul is doing a lot of things, and what does he say? He says, I'm still going for it. I haven't attained Christ.

I'm striving forward in knowing Christ. I'm still gaining Christ. I haven't figured it all out. I haven't experienced all there is to experience of the Lord, of a relationship with Him. Seek the person of the gospel today. Because Jesus is the one who came after generations of waiting. Jesus, the one who came into our world, into our wilderness, for us, in our condition. Jesus came as our King. Jesus is our King. The whole prophecy in Isaiah in verses two and three, that whole prophecy, the idea of sending somebody out to clear a path for somebody else, that was what they did for kings. When Isaiah's prophesied that, and for many centuries after that, the common understanding of that was that that was like a town crier. That was somebody that was going ahead, an emissary for the king, that was going ahead of that king and saying, hey, hey, this whole thing needs to be fixed.

My king is coming in about a day to pass through here, and he needs to be able to pass right through. This bridge needs to be repaired. Why? Because the king's coming through. And that was enough. That's what you see in Isaiah, that Jesus is our King. There is a grave danger in separating the message from the person. Grave. Because when you separate the message, the gospel message from the gospel person, the gospel then becomes just an idea. A principle. The gospel becomes something that we can kind of bend and twist to say whatever we want to say. The reality is that Jesus was a real person in time and space, a real historical figure. He was God incarnate. Jesus received worship from people. He issued new commands to his disciples. He healed people by his own authority. Jesus is God incarnate. The gospel then, it has to do with Jesus. It's not a moral idea.

I mean, it is a moral idea, but it's way more than that. The gospel is an ethical principle, if you will, but it's way more than that. Because when we have these ideas, these principles, like I said, we kind of get to contort them to do and say whatever we want to say. When you separate Jesus from the gospel, you really get into trouble because it's different answering to a person than it is being true to an idea. You see the difference? There's a person there. The gospel is God incarnate, delivering a message in person. And when that is the reality, then we can either swear allegiance to that king or we can reject that king.

I wanna encourage you to dedicate yourself to serving the king today. I'm gonna call Dan Heup and we're gonna have a time of response. We're gonna have a time of response and I just want you... I just wanna... I want you to take a second and see where your allegiance is. Not in talk, but in action. Not just because you're sitting here in a pew today and we're... But look at your life. See where your actions are. What is the Lord calling you to do today?

Because Jesus, he did come, but he continues to come. Jesus continues to knock on the door of your heart. He continues to lead you in new trouble, new anxiety, new problems. When we think Jesus just wants to eliminate all of our problems, That is exactly whenever we're gonna get into trouble. What is Jesus calling you to do? What is he calling you to pray for? We're gonna have a time of response, and Dan's gonna be singing over us. And I wanna just call you to pray. I'm gonna be down here. If you need prayer, maybe someone to pray with you, just come on down and I'll pray with you. If you want to follow Jesus in baptism, then come on down and tell me that you wanna be baptized. We'll get that train rolling. Maybe it's just to join our church. If the Lord's calling you to join our church, I'm gonna be up here, right here. And if you wanna come and join our church,

come on and do business with the Lord. We're just gonna sing. Dan's gonna sing over us because he lives. Whatever Jesus is calling you to do, I want you to do it as you sing. God sent His Son, they call Him Jesus. He came to love, heal and forgive. And I do by my pardon An empty grave is there To prove my Saviour lived Because He lived I can face tomorrow Because He lived All fear is gone Because I know the future Life is worth the living Just because he lives