Gtcotr/ss010321
Happy New Year! 2021 is a blank slate. Have you decided what you will write on it yet? It might be worth the time to take a look at some of your life goals in light of this incredible once in a year opportunity.
If you have been wondering what insights God has given me for the new year, I can confidently assure you that 2021 is going to be pretty much what we make of it both individually and collectively. Of course, life is and always has been that way. We don’t get to choose what we go through but we do get to decide how we are going to go through it.
As for me and my house, we are going to serve the Lord. And, I have decided we are going to Serve the Lord with Power, Confidence, and Courage in 2021. We have been given great authority by the Creator of the Universe to act in His name. Beginning to live your best life might be just one decision away.
Acts 1:8 “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
The power to be a living witness of Jesus Christ is resident in the life of every Believer. This power is activated when we speak in faith. Proverbs 18:21 says that both death and life are in the power of your tongue. God wants you to work with Him by speaking His Word and Will over your life and over your family. He needs you to speak to the mountains that stand in the way of His will and command them to move. In order to exercise the dominion God has given His children,
We must become the agent of our own uplift.
Each one of us individually and even more so collectively hold the power to not only set the tone of our lives in 2021 but also to set the tone for our families and things to come. With this in mind, we are going to begin this new year with a Sunday Morning Bible Study Series in the Book of Mark. We are going to increase our faith and stockpile our arsenal with God’s Word.
These next few weeks the Gospel of Mark is going to challenge you in your personal life and, if you keep your heart open to God, the Holy Spirit will lead you to discover, or rediscover, your purpose and to successfully pursue your destiny. Join with me each Sunday morning and you will experience steady growth in your faith, and you will learn how to release the power of the Holy Spirit that is already resident in your life. You will be able to impact circumstances, situations, as well as others around you, for the glory of God. This is what having faith is all about and God has trusted you with this great power.
Now, let’s begin our study of the Gospel of Mark remembering that faith comes by hearing the word of God. (Romans 10:10) Listen closely and today will increase your faith.
Mark 1
1 ¶ The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
In
the beginning … the beginning of the gospel, not the beginning of the world or
even the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, but the beginning of the Gospel – the
Good News! What Good-News? The Good News of Jesus Christ.
·
Jesus
“Jehovah the Savior”
·
Christ “The Anointed”
o Jesus Christ is God
the Anointed Savior
o God the Son – or as
Mark proclaims …
· The Son of God
Most agree that Mark wrote this Gospel proclamation in about the year AD60, give or take a few years, when he was in Rome. Some imagine it was dictated to him by the Apostle Peter and was specifically meant to impact the Roman Gentile population. He doesn’t bother with the genealogy, which would only matter to those who had a Jewish heritage, and he leaves off much of what Jesus says in favor of including mostly what Jesus did.
It seems reasonable, since the first Church in Jerusalem held its intercessory prayer meetings in his mother’s house, that Mark would have been one of the youths who was in the prayer meeting in the upper room on the day of Pentecost when God sent the Holy Spirit. It is evident from his writings that Mark had been filled with the Holy Ghost, spoke in tongues, laid hands on the sick, believed in the power of faith and confession, and was not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ knowing it was the power of God unto salvation for Jews and Gentiles alike.
The fact that Mark begins his written proclamation by declaring Jesus to be the Anointed Messiah and the Son of God should be understood in light of the times and the setting in which it was written. This statement is specifically designed to grab the reader’s attention. It serves to establish what this letter will be about, and it sets Mark apart from those who wished to be more politically correct, socially acceptable, religiously pious, or were more lukewarm in their faith.
In and around AD60, it was not popular to be a follower of Jesus in the Roman Empire. If the suggested later date of AD64 is allowed for this text, this written declaration is nothing less than a personal death sentence signed, sealed, and delivered by Mark in his own hand to the Romans under Emperor Nero’s rule.
Mark, who had earlier quit on Paul during a missionary journey, had evidently grown up and matured in Christ to the point where he no longer feared enduring personal hardship for the cause of Christ. Mark simply said: Jesus Christ is the Son of God! That, in and of itself, should be enough. What Good … What Great News!!! Make no mistake, Jesus is the Messiah and Mark wanted what he believed to be a matter of public record.
This is how the Gospel of Mark begins … in the beginning …
2 As it is written in the
Prophets: “Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, Who will prepare Your
way before You.”
3 “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the LORD; Make His paths straight.’ ”
As it is written in the prophets … two prophets to be exact.
· Verse 3 confirms an 800-year-old prophecy recorded by Isaiah:
Isaiah 40:3 ¶ The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the LORD; Make straight in the desert A highway for our God.
· Verse 2 corresponds to the prophet Malachi who wrote 400 years earlier:
Malachi 3:1 “Behold, I send My messenger, And he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, Will suddenly come to His temple, Even the Messenger of the covenant, In whom you delight. Behold, He is coming,” Says the LORD of hosts.
All
accounts confirm the same message … The Lord is coming!
·
The
Lord whom you seek
·
Will
suddenly come to His temple
o 1 Corinthians 6:19
says you are the temple of God
o 1 Peter 2:5 says you
are built as a spiritual house
·
Suddenly
o In a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye
o At a time and in a way
that surprises and excites everyone
o Like the sudden rush
of a mighty wind
·
He
is coming!
· Prepare
The beginning begins with a message to prepare for the coming of the Lord.
Thank the Lord that He is giving time to prepare. He gave an 800-year warning, a 400-year warning, and even directed Mark to give us a 2000-year warning … the Lord is coming … suddenly … so prepare!
Are you prepared for the coming of the Lord? What are you doing to help others prepare? This is not intended to be a message of salvation but rather a message of dedication.
Mark made a lot of mistakes in his early life. So many in fact that the Apostle Paul refused to be associated with him. Mark was even the cause of the Church in Antioch to experience some division. But that is not the last word we hear about Mark.
It seems Mark got back on track and, as a result, his relationship with Paul and became valuable to God’s plan for that day and for generations to come. We don’t know what all happened in Mark’s life to turn him around, but we do know that Mark surrounded himself with people who were strong Believers in Jesus Christ … people who were committed to the Church. Only the Church guarantees the continued spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world from generation to generation. At some point Mark decided that he needed to be a part of that.
No doubt this led him to make his faith a matter of public record in what was arguably one of the worst times of persecution Christians of any era have ever faced. Early Church writings leave us to understand that during the last year of his life, about AD64, Mark left Rome and travelled to Alexandria, Egypt, where he evangelized the lost, birthed a Church, and pastored it until he soon died. His work there continued for many generations.
Let
me ask you …
· Are you prepared for the coming of the Lord or are you still caught up in the struggles of this life?
Wherever
you are at this point, there are three things I am going to ask you to consider
in the very beginning of this new year:
1.
Surround yourself with godly Christians who are committed to Church.
2.
Make a public confession of your faith in Jesus as the Anointed Son
of God.
3.
Begin writing God’s will for your life on the still blank slate of
2021.
a. You can do this by
prayer, faith, and confession of God’s Word.
b. Serve the Lord with
Power, Confidence, and Courage.
