The words of our Savior in Mark
10, verse 45, give us a pretty good summary of Mark's gospel
and its message. Remember, as you turn into Mark
10, verse 45, that Mark's object is to present our Savior in his
character as Jehovah's righteous servant. And that's exactly how
our Lord describes himself here. He says, For even the Son of
Man came not to be ministered unto, not to be served, but to
minister, to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. In other words, he came here
to serve our soul's needs, and the end of that service is the
ransom of our souls with his precious blood. Each of the four
gospel narratives, I will remind you again, are distinct. Each
one presents our Savior in a distinct, specific character. It is a mistake
to read the four Gospels as though you were reading four biographies
of our Lord. They are not biographies. Sometimes
I mistakenly refer to them that way, but they are not biographies.
Rather, these inspired narratives of our Lord's life and the events
and teachings while he walked upon this earth, are really just
character sketches. The intent is to sketch out a
distinct character of the Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew shows us
the Lord Jesus Christ as the King who was promised of God,
that King who was typified by David and by Solomon, the King
who is himself named as David throughout the Old Testament.
Mark sets him forth as Jehovah's servant, that servant described
so eloquently in Isaiah 53. Luke speaks of our Savior as
man, the Son of Man, showing his manhood distinctly, showing
that he is truly bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.
And John describes him as God the Son, the incarnate, eternal
God, creator and sustainer of all things. Have you ever wondered,
though, why there are certain things clearly and apparently
deliberately left out of some of the gospel narratives? There
is no record of our Lord's ascension in Matthew or in John. No record
at all. I wonder why. Well, Matthew is
describing Christ as the King. He did not come here to be the
King. He came here as the King. He was the King from eternity,
and shall be the King forevermore. He simply came here revealing
himself as that one who has power over all flesh, that one who
holds the dominion of heaven and earth. So there is no need
to speak of his ascension when you are talking about him as
being King already. It would be redundant. John doesn't describe
the ascension, doesn't say a word about it, not a word. How come? John is talking about him as
God. And it would be a little redundant to talk about him ascending
to the throne of God when you talk about him who is himself
God Almighty. When you come to Mark's gospel,
Mark doesn't have a genealogy, doesn't say a word about our
Lord's history as a man, his early life, his incarnation or
his birth. It doesn't say anything about
his genealogy, not a word. How come? Mark is talking about
a servant, whoever looked up a servant's genealogy. He is
a real servant. And Luke gives his own record
of our Lord's genealogy as a man, but he gives a different record
than Matthew's, because Matthew is representing him as the king,
and Luke is representing him as a man. So when we read the
gospel narratives, we ought never to imagine that somehow something
is accidentally left out, even if it appears to our own minds
in our puny, immediate understanding of things, that there seems to
be contradictions in the scriptures. That which appears to be contradictory
is just here. It's just here. These books of
Holy Scripture are given by inspiration of God, and this is what that
These men wrote as they were moved, directed, and carried
along by God the Holy Spirit. Each book represents that man's
distinct character, but every word in the book is written by
divine inspiration. Let me see if I can illustrate
for you. I don't know of a better way than what I've often said
to you. If I were to say to you, Take
your pens out and write down Don. Just write out Don. That's all. Every one of you
would write it a distinct, different way, representing your own personality
and character, your own penmanship or lack of penmanship. But the
word written would be written by my direction. These men wrote
the scriptures. by the direct intervention of
God the Holy Spirit, and yet he used men to write the scriptures,
and so we have their distinct characters, and they wrote for
a distinct and specific purpose. When Mark speaks of our Lord
Jesus Christ, he only mentions the Ascension, because it is
his intent to show us that the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior,
as Jehovah's righteous servant, by his obedience unto the will
of the Father, has fully accomplished all that he came here to do,
and that the Father has now accepted him and has accepted us in him,
who worked out righteousness for us by his obedience unto
God. This is what Paul tells us in
Hebrews chapter 11. Every priest end up daily ministering
and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices that can never take
away sins. But this man, after he had offered
one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of
God. How come? Because his work was
over. From henceforth, expecting till
his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified. Now Mark's gospel narrative clearly
sets before us a joyful, distinct revelation of our Lord's miracles,
his ministry, his actions, his sufferings as our substitute.
It's all about his obedience to God Almighty on our behalf.
Again, I emphasize, he says nothing about our Lord's birth, but rather
he simply gives great detail to that which our Lord did. As
a matter of fact, Mark, though he is the briefest of the four
gospel narratives, gives us the greatest detail and greatest
explanation of the miracles. And at the same time, he says
the least about explaining our Lord's sermons and his doctrines.
His record of what our Lord said is the briefest of all the other
gospel narratives. And the reason is very simple.
Mark intends for us to see what Jesus Christ did as Jehovah's
servant in obedience to the Father. I cannot keep from being surprised
every time I start to read historical commentaries concerning various
books of the Bible, men who ought to know better, almost every
one I've read in preparation for this message suggests that
Mark borrowed a lot of what he said from Matthew and from Peter. Some suggest that Peter actually
told him what's right and Mark wrote it down. To suggest such
is to miss Mark's purpose altogether, and it is to undermine the inspiration
of scripture. There is no question Mark was
influenced by those men who taught him. But what he wrote, he wrote
by divine inspiration. Now let me tell you a little
something about this fellow Mark. It's important. This man who was used
of God to give us this gospel narrative is a man just like
us. A sinner, saved by God's free
grace. weak, faltering, failing. As a matter of fact, if it were
not for what we had before us in these sixteen chapters, if
it were not for the fact that God used him to write the gospel
of Mark, and one brief statement made by the Apostle Paul concerning
him, we wouldn't know anything good about Mark. We wouldn't
know anything good about him. In other places he's called John
Mark. He was the man who accompanied
Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary trip, but he was a
young man. And he couldn't take the pressure
of the work. He couldn't take constant opposition.
He couldn't take the long hours. He couldn't take the thankless
labor. And after a while, this young man decided to go home
to Mama. And that's exactly what he did.
He went back to his mother and stayed away from Paul and Barnabas.
And when he did, Barnabas and Paul, later on, had a falling
out concerning him. Barnabas wanted to take Paul
with him on the next missionary journey. Paul said, no, I ain't
going with him. And you never hear from Barnabas again. And
so they had a falling out concerning this man Mark. He was Barnabas'
nephew. Flesh and blood got in the way
of his judgment. And Mark, being the weakling
that he was, had caused the dissimulation. But let me show you a little
introduction to Mark. Look in chapter 14. Our Lord's
rest in Gethsemane has taken place, and the soldiers have
taken him. And the disciples, needless to
say, were horrified. There is a young man described
here who is not named. And I'm pretty confident that
young man is Mark. I won't say it absolutely. I'm pretty confident,
though. I'm pretty confident because it's not mentioned anywhere
else in Scripture. And I'm pretty confident because his name's
not mentioned. He just speaks of a young man.
Now look at it. Mark 14, 51. And there followed
him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his
naked body, and the young men laid hold on him. And he left the linen cloth and
fled from them naked. That's the fellow God chose to
write this book. And I stress that because I like
it. I'm tickled to death. You see,
if the Lord God is pleased to take an unfaithful servant to
record for us the record of the perfect faithfulness of that
servant whom God Almighty has accepted on our behalf, of whom
God says he shall not fail, then maybe he will be pleased to use
another unfaithful, weak, trembling, useless servant. Maybe he will,
and maybe even tonight. Now, a little encouragement.
If you look at the history of the scriptures, you'll see clearly
that certainly Peter had a great influence on Mark. In Cornelius'
house, when Peter stood up to preach, he tells us almost exactly
in brevity what Mark says. He began to tell him all that
Jesus did while he walked on this earth, as he accomplished
redemption for us. Clearly, Peter influenced Mark,
and it was right that he should. Peter calls Mark, He was the
man God used to teach him the gospel. Mark was converted because
Peter preached the gospel to him. Peter was his pastor. So
as you read the gospel of Mark, it's not at all surprising, but
it would be surprising if it were not the case, that you see
much of Peter's mind in Mark's writings, and that, too, by divine
inspiration. Peter taught Mark the gospel,
and Mark now teaches to us. what the Lord taught him. You
see, Mark and Luke were not apostles. Matthew and John were apostles,
like Paul and Peter, not Mark and Luke. Mark learned what he
did about Christ from the apostle Peter. Luke learned what he did
about Christ from the apostle Paul. The apostles were men who
had a direct instruction and a direct revelation of the gospel
from Christ in his body as the risen Lord. And those things
Mark and Luke didn't enjoy. But they were nonetheless God's
messengers. And these men used of God to
write the scriptures, learned of Christ the same way Bobby
Estes does. God sent a man to teach them his word. And faith
comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. But Mark
proved to be profitable after all. Turn to 2 Timothy 4. The
human author of this gospel is Mark. He was the son of Barnabas'
sister, Barnabas' nephew. Her name was Mary. Though Paul and Barnabas had
a falling out over him, and Paul refused to take them with him
in Acts 15 on their next missionary journey, Sometime between that
and the time Paul died, he and Mark did a little fence meeting,
and that's good, that's commendable. When Mark is awaiting his execution,
this is what he says to Timothy in chapter 4 of 2 Timothy, verse
11. Take Mark and bring him with
thee, for he is profitable to me for the ministry. God's people, you see, are men
and women, while they walk in this world, who are faltering,
failing, sinful people. But God's people are God's people. They are his servants, and he
graciously makes them faithful. He even uses our weaknesses our
faults and our failures to make us instruments of usefulness
in his hand. Let me give you an illustration.
Peter cussed and denied the Lord Jesus before that made. Three
times he did. No excuse. Horribly, horribly
evil thing. No excuses made for it anywhere
in the But I am fully convinced Peter would never have found
the courage to stand before the Sanhedrin in Acts 4 if he had
known what it was to tremble like a whipped pup before that
little girl. Our God graciously and wisely overrules all things,
even us, for our good and his glory. Now let's go back to Mark,
and let me show you Mark's message. Instead of opening with the record
of our Lord's incarnation and birth, instead of telling us
about his youth and early years, Mark immediately starts to deal
with his ministry. In verse 1 of chapter 1, the
beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He's
talking about Christ the man, and he begins by telling us,
this man I'm talking about, he's the Son of God. He is God the
Son. Now, this is the beginning, but not the end of the story,
because there's no end to this story. He's telling us the God
story of redemption, grace, and salvation by the Son of God,
who is himself a servant, the servant whom God has appointed.
He's Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our Redeemer. But our Lord
tells us that the story will go on forever. my mind slipping
me, I had to get Shelby to help me look this up. Over in Luke
chapter 12, just listen, you don't need to turn there. Now
this is almost too wondrous to even talk about, much less grasp.
But in that day that's yet to come, our Lord says, he shall gird
himself and make us sit down to meet, and will come forth
and serve. Jehovah's servant will never
cease to serve Jehovah and serve his people. In eternity, we will
continue to learn the story. He will continue to feed us upon
himself. The story, the gospel of God's
Son, our Redeemer, is an eternal message. And our writer tells
us in Mark 1.14, After he talks about the ministry of John the
Baptist and our Lord being baptized by him, he begins immediately
with our Lord's ministry. He says in verse 14, After John
was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel
of the kingdom, and saying, The time is fulfilled, the kingdom
of God is at hand. Repent ye, and believe the gospel. There has been so much bad stuff
said about those words, some good stuff has got to be Our
Lord here announces that the time which God had promised in
all the Old Testament, the time when God's promises of redemption
and grace would be fulfilled, the time when God promised that
a man would come, born in Bethlehem, that a man would come with healing
in his wings, a man would come whom men would look on, whom
they had pierced, that man is now here, the time is fulfilled.
In due time, Christ died for the ungodly. When the fullness
of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made
under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. And
our Lord Jesus comes on the scene now as he walks into Galilee
and he says, The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand.
What does that mean? Oh, that means the Lord's here
to present you with a rich, glorious kingdom. If you'll just pretty
please let him be your king. No. The kingdom of God is right
here. It's right here. The kingdom
of God is among you. The kingdom of God is in your
midst. The kingdom of God is right here, right here. How do
you get into this kingdom? Repent and believe. Repent ye,
for the kingdom of God is at hand." The way we enter into
this kingdom is by faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Repentance
and faith is looking to him in whom and by whom all things are
fulfilled. Then immediately after announcing
our Lord's appearance in Galilee, Mark describes the calling of
the first of our Lord's disciples, Peter and his brother Andrew,
James and his brother John. They were He met Peter and Andrew,
and he said to them, follow me. What's faith? That's it. That's
it. What is it to be a disciple?
That's it. Follow him. Follow him. Now, the only way
anybody will ever follow him is if he comes your way and calls
you to follow him. And if he calls you, now listen
to me, if he calls, you will follow. And to follow him means
that you forsake everything. Peter and Andrew, his brother,
left their nets and said, We're gone. That's the end of this. We've got a new life, a new master,
a new motive. That's the end of it. And they
followed him. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, they didn't
just leave their nets, they left the Father sitting in the boat
to mend them. He said, Follow me. And they forsook all and
followed him. That's what faith in Christ is.
As you read Mark's gospel, listen to these words. They are found
repeatedly through this gospel. Immediately, forthwith, anon,
straightway. They are used throughout these
sixteen chapters. Many of the chapters begin with the word
anon. And you read through what Mark's saying here, and if he
was standing up here talking to you, if Mark were just giving
it to us orally, you'd want to pull on his coattail and say,
Slow down, Mark! Catch your breath! Take a breather!
You're moving too fast! And that's exactly the intent
of the Holy Spirit. Mark is presenting the servant.
And what does the servant do? He serves. I must be about my
Father's business. He has no time for himself. He
has nothing of his own. Everything is devoted to his
master whom he has come to serve. And our Lord Jesus came here
to do the will of God. He says, I have meat to eat,
you know, not I. He said, this is my joy, this
is my life, this is my strength to do the will of him that sent
me. Oh, God, make me such a servant. Make me such a servant. Mark
moves like lightning through the miracles that our Lord performed,
declaring them just one right after the other. He gives us
display after display of our Lord's power and authority. He
spoke in chapter 4 of these four parables of the kingdom. He just
quickly runs through the parables, giving the highlights. He tells
us how our Lord came in chapter 5 to the Gadarene and cast out
demons from that man, that man who was bound with chains and
fetters, that man that could not be bound, though men tried,
that man who dwelt among the tombs, the Lord Jesus came to
him and cast out the demons. And when he did, the demons asked him, they said,
Let us go into this swine down here. He did amazing. You mean he has absolute control
over them? Absolute control. All right, you can go to the
swine. And the swine, as soon as the demons entered into them,
ran headlong over a precipice and they were all killed. And
you have a real strange prayer meeting that follows that. It
reveals so much that's in the hearts of men. But those men
saw their living was gone because of God's grace. And they came
out and said to the master, why don't you leave us alone and
get out of here? And he said, all right, I will.
And he left. Then there was a woman who came
who had 12-year issue of blood. She had never completely ceased
a menstrual cycle in 12 years. There's not a man here who can
begin to appreciate that. In 12 years, she'd never completely
ceased. She was bent over, helpless,
unclean, legally unclean. But she heard that the Master
was coming, and she had spent all that she had on positions
of no value and with no backup. And she said, I've heard about
him. I heard about that gathering. I've heard about him. If I could
just get next to him, if I could just touch the hem of his garment,
I'd be made whole. came in the press and crawled
between the legs of other folks who were just junked and horrified
that no one had even touched them. And she reached out and
touched him. And immediately she was made
whole. And Mark dwelt on that with more
detail than others. And then Jairus had come before
and asked the Lord to have mercy on him because his daughter was
sick with a fever. As they were leaving this scene,
his friends came and said, Don't trouble the master, your daughter's
dead. And the Lord Jesus said, You follow me, she ain't dead.
She was dead, but she wasn't dead. And he took her by the
hand and raised her up. Our Lord twice fed the multitudes
with a few loaves and fishes, one time 5,000, one time 4,000
men. That doesn't include any women
and children. We're just a few loaves of fish.
How'd he do that? He's God. This man's God. He blessed the
food. That is, he gave thanks. He lifted
up his eyes to heaven, gave thanks, and just began to break out the
fish and break out the loaves. And nobody was hungry, because
God takes care of his own. We read throughout this gospel,
I think four times I read today, our Lord had compassion on the
multitude. touched with the needs of men,
touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Now, these miracles,
our Lord clearly tells us, look at chapter 2, verse 9. Our Lord
clearly tells us these miracles are performed. They were performed
for the purpose of demonstrating with clarity and with unmistakable
clarity that he is God. Our Lord was not one of these
modern-day miracle workers. He didn't pretend to work miracles.
He didn't have a lot of fanfare. He didn't perform miracles on
folks who had a headache or folks who had any wrong hair. He performed
miracles that were miracles. Here we have a man who's sick
of the palsy, and his friends bring him, and they tear up the
roof of the house and let him down before the Lord Jesus. And
the Lord looked at them. He looked at them. and seeing
their faith, he said to that man, Your sins be forgiven you. Listen to that blasphemer! If
he's a man, a blasphemer. Look at verse 9. Our Lord says
to those folks who accused him of such blasphemy, Whether it
is easier to say to the sick of palsy, Thy sins be forgiven
thee, or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and But that you
may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive
sins, he saith to the sick of the palsy, Take up your bed."
That's his purpose. That being the case, David, these
miracles came to pass in God's good providence, specifically
to show us pictures of what God does for us when he saves us
by his grace. There was a leper who came to
it. So, Lord, if you will, you can
make me whole. You know what the Lord Jesus
did? This one who is the true high
priest did what no other man would ever do. He touched You
know what happened when it touched him, David? He became unclean
before the law. That's what it did for me. That's
what it did for us. He came down here and took us
as his own, and took our iniquity to be his own iniquity, and stood
before God's holy law as unclean. And having satisfied the justice
of the law by the sacrifice of himself, He touches us by the
omnipotence of his grace, by the virtue of his sacrifice,
and says, You're whole. And now we're completely clean.
The woman with the issue of blood, she was made whole because somehow,
I'm not going to attempt to explain it, and I'm not going to try
to explain it away. When she touched the Master,
when she believed virtue came out of him. He said, I perceive virtues going
out of me, who touched me? And he says, her faith did this,
she touched him. What happened? Believing on the
Son of God. We have a union of life and faith
with him, and now all his virtue comes to us, and we live by his
virtue, and by his power, and by his life. The Syro-Phoenician
woman, she was like us too. She came
to the Lord and said, Lord, have mercy on me, my daughter is grievously
vexed with the devil. And the Lord Jesus, he said,
it's not right for me to take the children's bread and give
it to dogs. Not right. And that's what she was, she
was a Gentile dog. She had no claim on his grace,
no claim on his mercy. Neither do you, neither do I,
none at all. But what did she do? Called me
a dog, I'll go home and bury my daughter. Oh no, my daughter
needs help. And I'm one with her, have mercy
on me. Lord, it's true, I'm a dog. But I'm your dog, won't you give
me a crumb?" He said, I've never seen such faith. Your daughter's
whole, because she believed God. Because she believed God. And
we receive his mercy, though we do not deserve or have any
claim on his mercy, simply because of his grace. Like that gathering,
we've been made whole, and been given our right mind. had been
set free by our Master's word of grace. Like the blind men,
our Lord Jesus has given eyes for us to see him, and eyes to
see every man clearly. I remember several years ago,
it's been at least three or four years, maybe longer than that,
Brother Rex Bartlett read to us, standing right here one night
from Mark chapter and started to make a comment. And I thought,
my soul, what an astounding observation. He said, the Lord put spit on
a man's eyes and then touched his eyes. First he saw me and
his trees walking, and after he touched them, he said, he
saw, he said, I see every man clearly. And now that God's touched
us by his grace, Rick said, we see every man clearly. We see
the first man, Adam, clearly. See, just what God did with him,
why he made him, what happened to him. And we see the last man,
Christ, clearly. We see this representative man
having accomplished redemption. And we see fallen man, clearly. You'll never see yourself as
you really are until he touches your eyes. And we see the new
man clearly too. In Christ Jesus we are new creatures,
made whole by him. Like Jairus' daughter, the Lord
Jesus has come with the tender hand of omnipotent mercy, and
raised us up from the dead, and caused us to live. And then beginning
in chapter 8, verse 31, turn there if you will, we see a marked
turn, a marked determination. in our Savior, Jehovah's servant,
he set his face like a flint to go up to Jerusalem to suffer
all the wrath of God as our substitute. Look at verse 31. And he began
to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things,
and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests and
scribes, and be And after three days, rise again. And so our Lord says, I've stood here before him, and he
opened my ear. And I'm not going to turn back. I gave my back to the smithers.
I'm not going to turn back. I set my face like a flip. I'm
his servant. I'm not going to turn back. And
I know I shall not be ashamed. I came here for this purpose,
and this is what I'm going to do. And then right before we
get to the crucifixion story in Mark's gospel, there's an
event in chapter 14. I want you to look at it. Our Lord describes for us what
a good work is. There seems to be just one person,
I mean just one, just one. Out of all the disciples, there
appears to be just one person who really understood what our
Lord said when he said, I'm going up here to die, and I'm going
to be buried, and I'm going to rise again the third day. There
was an old, broken heart, out of whom the Lord had cast
seven devils. And she believed what he said. And she came and brought with
her a box of spice. Precious. Precious. Worth 300
pence is worth a whole year's wages. Apparently she'd been
saving up a little all her life knowing that she wouldn't always
be able to make her living like she did. And she stood behind the master
in Simon's house. She didn't pour out a little
and slosh it around. She broke the box open and dumped
the whole thing out. And she knelt down and kissed
his feet, and washed them with her tears, and wiped them with
the hairs of her head. And Judas, being the crook that
he was, rebuked her. And so did the rest of us. So did all the disciples. But
somebody understood what was going on. Look at this. And Jesus
said, Let her alone. Verse 6. Why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work
on me. Verse 8. She hath done what she
could. She's come beforehand to anoint
me, to anoint my body for the burial. She knows where I'm going. She's come here to anoint me.
Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached
throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall
be spoken of for a memorial of her." Now, there are lots of
folks who like to talk about good works. And I've discovered
something. I've discovered the folks who
like to talk about good works. They generally think they've
done a good many. They're usually, now I'm not
talking about maybe, but I'm not like the ones that used to
be. And they all point to this thing they've done good, that
thing they've done good. What do you think of when you think
of a good work? What is a good work? Our Lord here tells us
what it is. A good work is a work of faith. This woman came here and did
this because she believed him. And she poured out everything
she possessed at one time. Oh, what a waste! What good did
that do? It didn't do for you, it did
for him. Done just for him. It's a work
of faith, a work of faith done just for him. A good work is
a work of spontaneous love wrought for Christ because of gratitude. It's not something somebody tells
you to do. It's not something somebody asks you to do. It's
just what you want to do. Because of good work is doing
what you can for Him. She did what she could. Oh, God give me grace to do what
I can for him. That's all. A good work is a
costly work, but it's not really. Because, you see, a good work
is always and forever remembered by our Master. He won't forget
it. And then in chapter 15, we begin
to see the story of the crucifixion. Mark's account describes the
crucifixion as an act of horrible brutality done by men in the
name of justice and in the name of righteousness. The Lord Jesus looks to be a
tragic failure, a defeated man, a lost cause. He hopelessly just
gives up. But that's not the case. The
high priest looked at him, covered with his own blood, covered
with the excrement of vile men as they passed by and spit on
him and beat him, hanging there naked, despised of earth and
rejected of heaven. And they said, you say this is
God, the Messiah? himself he cannot save. And never did men more accurately
proclaim gospel truth than those men in their vile hatred of him. That's exactly right. Because
he saved me, he could not save himself. If you read this account,
there are three that they could not get him to do. They just
could not make him do it. First, they couldn't make him
speak in his own defense. We're told in verse 4, Pilate
asked him again, saying, Answers thou nothing? Behold, how many
things they witness against thee! But as a sheep before her shearers
is dumb, so be open not his mouth. He could have just spoken and
called 10,000 legions of angels to come and deliver him, but
he's determined to die for us. And they couldn't get him to
speak. Then in verse 23, they gave him
to drink wine mingled with myrrh, but he received it not. I'm told, I don't know anything
about this, I'm told that's a mixture the Romans commonly gave to men
to ease their suffering. but our Lord refused to drink.
Why? Had he drunk what they gave him,
he would have saved himself the effect of the agony of the cross,
and the burden of hell in his body and in his soul. You see, what he suffered as our substitute
from hell and earth and heaven. He was determined to suffer in
the full consciousness of his being. He never stumbled. He never sagged. He never fainted. And he refused to drink. Now
I say, what else they couldn't do? They couldn't make him die. Look at verse 37. And Jesus cried
with a loud voice and gave up the ghost. He unspirited himself. He said, No man takes my life
from me. I'm Jehovah's servant. I have the power to lay it down.
I have the power to take it again. This commandment have I received
of my Father. And then when we get to the last
chapter and the resurrection of our Lord, we see why he endured
all this. Because Mark describes his ascension. Ascended up into heaven after
the third day, and he sat down on the right hand of God. And
the disciples went everywhere telling everybody about it. Him
working with them, confirming his word. He endured all, that
he might be Lord both of the dead and the living, and give
eternal life to whomsoever he will. Now, let me show you one
more time my favorite text in the Book of Mark. Chapter 16,
verse 7. I'd never thought about this
before, but it's not at all surprising to me that the one who wrote
this was Mark. He's talking about his pastor,
Brother Peter. And he writes it for Peter's
comfort and consolation, and for our comfort and consolation. You'll remember Peter had denied
the Master when he did. Do you remember what he said?
He said, boys, I'm going fishing. You remember back yonder in chapter
one, I left my nets. Me and James left the boat. I'm
going back to that. It's all over. I've lost everything. He went out and wept bitterly.
But the Lord Jesus told him beforehand, I prayed for you, that your faith
fail not. Satan's going to run you through
his sieve, and when he does, you're going to feel it. But it's going
to be all right. And when the Lord Jesus was raised from the
dead, this is the message that was given to those who stood
by the tomb. Go your way and tell the disciples,
and Peter, be sure you don't forget to tell Peter, that he
goeth before you into Galilee, and there shall you see him just
like he said he would. Mark says, Pastor Peter, I know
this is on your mind, and I know you've long since, long since
gotten over this thing, but I know it's on your mind, and I want
to tell you, since Christ died for you, and
since he died for me, faltering, failing, weak, worthless servants
that we are. Everything's all right between
us and God, and everything's all right between us and Him.
Be sure to tell Peter everything's all right. And that's the story,
Mark, of Christ the servant who accomplished redemption for us.
Amen.