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Surveying the Text: Judges

Joe Harby on November 23, 2014

Introduction

The book of Joshua is linear. God supplied a faithful leader to Israel, and he took them into the land, conquering it, and they all moved from left to right. The book of Judges is quite different—it is a book of cycles, a book of ups and downs. It is a book that contains astonishing heroism and appalling grotesqueries both.

The Text

“And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthae; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions . . .” (Heb. 11:32–33).

Summary of the Text

The verses following our text go on to itemize some of the great works of faith that the great heroes of the faith performed. We all know that the Bible describes the flaws of most of these heroes—but the Bible describes them in heroic terms nonetheless. Some of these exploits were acts of triumph and conquest, and others were acts of sacrifice and martyrdom, but all of them were empowered by faith. The point of selecting this text is that it tells us that Gideon, and Barak, and Samson, and Jephthah, were all men of faith. Because the book of Judges is so grim, and because there is so much unfaithfulness in it, we sometimes fail to recognize how much actual success was achieved in the book. Ehud gave the people peace for eighty years (Judg. 3:30). Gideon gave them peace for forty years (Judg. 8:28).

The book of Judges spans approximately three centuries (from roughly 1382 BC to 1065 BC). Although it is unattributed, the most likely author for the book is Samuel.

Six Oppressions

The history of Judges gives us an account of six periods of oppression. The first was from the Hittite portion of Mesopotamia (Judg. 3:7-11). The second was the oppression of Moab, under their king Eglon (Judg. 3:12-31). The third was the oppression of some local Canaanites, from which Deborah and Barak delivered them (Judg. 4:1-5:31). The fourth was from the Midianites, and Gideon was their deliverer (Judg. 6:1-8:32). The fifth was the only home-grown oppression, that of Abimelech (Judg. 8:33-10:5). The sixth round came from the Ammonites to the east and the Philistines to the west, and the people were delivered by Jephthah (Judg. 10:6-16:31). Samson was also used to deliver Israel from the Philistines.

To this outline of this period of Israel’s history, we see the author added an appendix outlining two stories in greater detail. One of them concerns a Levite named Jonathan, who was hired by a man named Micah as a priestly hireling. This Jonathan was, according to some manuscripts, a direct descendant of Moses (Judg. 18:30). The next story concerns the Benjamite outrage, and we have to say the behavior of an unnamed Levite with his concubine was scarcely any better.

Despite the name judges, the only one of them we see actually discharging that particular function of the office was Deborah (Judg. 4:5). Overwhelmingly, we see these judges functioning as Spirit-anointed deliverers or saviors (Judg. 2:16). We would be better off to render this office as that ofwarrior-ruler. These were charismatically appointed saviors (Judg. 3:9).

The Deuteronomic Pattern

The predominant motif in this book is that of the cycle. There is a consistent pattern to it, and it is as follows: First, the Israelites do evil in the eyes of the Lord (e.g. Judg. 2:11). Second, God disciplines Israel by bringing in (usually) foreign oppressors (e.g. Judg. 2:14). Third, the Israelites cry out to God in their repentance (e.g. Judg. 3:9). Fourth, God shows mercy and raises up a deliverer (e.g. Judg. 2:16). Fifth, a period of peace follows until the death of the deliverer, after which the people fall again (e.g. Judg. 3:10-11).

Right in Their Own Eyes

A tagline for the book of Judges could be “when every man did what was right in his own eyes.” “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 17:6). The fact that there was no king introduces the two appalling stories in the appendix (Judg. 18:1; 19:1). And then the same line is used to conclude the book. “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 21:25). Right after everyone says yikes, the observation is made that everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

So this is not an idyllic utopia; this was no libertarian paradise. The political chaos meant that heroism was possible (and frequently necessary). The political chaos also meant that atrocities were just around the corner.

The Libertarian Temptation

When you are ruled by Eglons, as we are, it is very easy to see where the problem is. That being the case, it is too easy to yearn for an ideological “solution,” that of no government at all. Given what the Bible says about it, why would anyone want to live under such conditions? When you live in a time of chaos and anarchy, it is almost impossible to assign responsibility—and this is one of the great attractions of pure libertarianism, which is profoundly anti-Christian. Beware of systems that have universal explanatory power, like hyper-preterism and libertarianism.

Inexorable Mercy

When we read the book of Judges, we should be mindful of three fundamental realities. The first is that God judges sin (Judg. 2:11,14). The second is that God is extraordinarily merciful to people who manifestly do not deserve it (Judg. 2:16). And the last is the sinfulness and ingratitude of the heart of man. After each deliverance, once the judge in question was dead, they veered back and behaved more corruptly than their fathers had done (Judg. 2:19).

But God is full of tender mercy, and Christ has died and risen in such a way as to deal with the treacherous hearts of men forever. We can therefore concentrate on His mercy. “Nevertheless the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them” (Judg. 2:16).

Even the trials that God sent them were motivated by His grace:

“Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan; Only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof; Namely, five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites that dwelt in mount Lebanon, from mount Baal-hermon unto the entering in of Hamath. And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses” (Judg. 3:1–4).

The Lord Jesus fights for us, and He is our ultimate Judge. And this is what it means for God to judge—He delivers us. When God intervenes to judge, this is good news. “Let the floods clap their hands: Let the hills be joyful together Before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth: With righteousness shall he judge the world, And the people with equity” (Ps. 98:8–9).

Surveying the Text: Joshua

Joe Harby on November 16, 2014

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Introduction

The book of Joshua is a book filled with strenuous warfare, and yet the Bible clearly teaches us that it is a book that points toward rest. How is this possible? How does this work?

The Text

“By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace” (Heb. 11:30–31).

Summary of the Text

The book of Joshua can be divided into four major sections. The first has to do with crossing (Josh. 1-5). The second has to do with conquest (Josh. 6-12). The third section deals with how theyallocated the land that they had conquered (Josh. 13-21). The last concerns their duties of learning how to worship God as a united people in accordance with His covenant (Josh. 22-24). Let’s consider each of these in turn.

Crossing

The verb root for “cross” occurs thirty-one times in this section of Joshua (Josh. 1-5). The officers of the people cross through the camp (e.g. Josh. 1:11), or priests with the ark of the covenant crossin front of the people (Josh. 3:6), or soldiers even cross in front of YHWH (Josh. 4:13). But the great dramatic crossing, the centerpiece of all this, is obviously the crossing of the Jordan River. That miracle involved was a reenacted echo of the Red Sea crossing, and just as Rahab described their terror when they heard about the Red Sea (Josh. 2:9-10), so the inhabitants now saw the same thing happen again, right under their noses.

This was followed by the marvelous story of how God fought for them at the battle of Jericho, and how the walls fell down in a giant display of God’s sovereignty—to the deliverance of one Canaanite family, and the ensnarement of one family in Israel. Disaster for Jericho was salvation for Rahab and her family. Disaster for Jericho was disaster for Achan and his family.

Conquest

One of the words that is foolishly thrown around in discussions of the Israelite invasion of Canaan is the word genocide. This is intended to lump Israel’s behavior in with the specter of “final solutions,” where particular ethnicities are eradicated simply because of their ethnicity. But God’s judgments are always moral and ethical, not ethnic. This was a divinely-ordered, animated earthquake, a hurricane of soldiers, and it was for sin—not for racial or ethnic reasons. God had told Abraham that he could not yet possess the promised land because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full (Gen. 15:16). If God waited centuries so that His judgment of Canaan would be just, who are we to challenge Him and charge Him with injustice?

And on top of that, the family of a Canaanite harlot came out and was joined to Israel, with Rahab marrying a prince of Israel. How could the issues here be racial or ethnic then? And another family in Israel, the family of another prince was removed from Israel. The issue is faith and obedience, always. Achan was descended from Zarah (Josh. 7:1), the first born twin son of Tamar, the one who had a scarlet thread tied to his wrist at birth. And Salmon was descended from Pharez (Ruth 4:18-21), the one who pushed out ahead of his brother, and Salmon was the prince in Israel who married . . . Rahab, an ancestress of Jesus Christ (Matt. 1:5). Rahab had faith, and so she was grafted in. Achan was faithless, and so he was cut out. As Paul later says in Romans 11, do not be haughty but fear. You do not support the root—the root supports you. Again, the issue is faith and obedience, not ethnicity.

Allocation

Once they had conquered the land, the task of dividing it up was obviously necessary. This was decided by lot (Num. 26:55-56; 33:54; 34:13), which is obviously a fair way to decide something like this. This also provides us with a type for understanding ministry in the new covenant. The elders in the church are told not to lord it over the flock of God, not to be lords over God’s heritage (1 Pet. 5:3). The word for heritage is allotment. This means that the world is now to be understood as Canaan—the conquest of the promised land serving as a type of our evangelistic endeavors. Their warfare was the type, our evangelism is the antitype.

Another important “allotment” occurs in the book of Joshua, as we have just discussed. Rahab the harlot was justified by faith, our text from Hebrews says, and James adds that her works were involved as justifying her faith as true faith. Please note that the actual work that accomplished this great thing was telling the pursuers of the Israelite spies that they had gone a different way than they actually did (Jas. 2:25).

Worship

Sacrifices were to be offered in the promised land only. The initial place settled on for that was Shiloh. When Reuben and Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh built an altar on the wrong side of the Jordan, it was almost cause for civil war. Joshua gives his farewell speech, telling the people to remain faithful. And there Joshua made a solemn covenant with the people, that they should serve the Lord their God, and never forsake Him (Josh. 24:26-27).

We can easily lament the fickleness of God’s people in the Old Testament because they do things like this, and then we turn the page, and there they are, worshiping idols, having forgotten all that God did for them. But from the death of Joshua to the rise of Gideon we

have over two hundred years—just under the age of our nation. How easy has it been for us to forget our founding? Howdifficult is it for us to remember? And this is with our possession of libraries, and technology, and carefully kept records.

Joshua and Jesus

The name Joshua is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek name Jesus. “For if Jesus [speaking of Joshua] had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day” (Heb. 4:8). Joshua was a faithful servant of God, but he could not give the people rest, even though he gave them the land. Why could he not provide them with rest?

“Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it. For we which have believed do enter into rest, as he said, As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world” (Heb. 4:1–3).

We can only enter into rest by faith, and we can only have faith in the work that was accomplished by the greater Joshua, our Lord Jesus. We can only have faith in that work in this sense after it has been accomplished. When we enter into rest by faith, we are entering into Him.

Surveying the Text: John

Joe Harby on November 9, 2014

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Introduction

The apostle John was overwhelmed by the vastness of Jesus Christ. This fourth gospel is a cosmic gospel, but with profound ramifications for us here on earth. It is cosmic, but it is in no way removed from us. No, the ultimate and divine Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). The synoptics should be treated as a cluster of similar perspectives. The gospel of John appears to have been written later, with the intention of addressing various things that the synoptics missed. Very few things in John’s gospel overlap with the others.

The Text

“And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:30–31).

Some Background on John

Let’s begin with some things that we ought to know about John, but which we usually don’t. John was very likely the Lord’s first cousin on their mothers’ side. John was a son of Zebedee, and his mother’s name was Salome, which we can find out by comparing Mark 16:1 and Matt.27:56. Mark says that the third woman who went to the tomb was Salome and Matthew said it was the mother of Zebedee’s children. And then in John 19:25, it says that four women were present at the crucifixion—two Marys from Mark and Matthew, the Lord’s mother, and the Lord’s aunt. This helps make sense of how the Lord would entrust the care of His mother to John, which on this reading would be her nephew. It also helps explain the particular closeness of Jesus and John (John 21:7).

John was also from a well-to-do family with respectable connections. His father had hired servants (Mark 1:20), and Salome was one of the women who was a financial patroness of the Lord’s ministry (Luke 8:3; Mark 15:40). John was known to the high priest (John 18:15-16), and was able to get Peter into the place where the Lord was being tried.

We also know a great deal about John’s giftedness and related challenges. Jesus named him, together with his brother, a son of thunder (Mark 3:17). He was a fire-eater, and sometimes succumbed to the temptations that come with that—which would be misdirected zeal and ambition. He was one of the disciples who wanted Jesus to torch a Samaritan village (Luke 9:54), and it was Salome who made the request for James and John to sit at Christ’s left and right hand (Matt. 20:20; Mark 10:37). John was not formally trained (Acts 4:13), but was nonetheless a staggering genius. He was a tender and humble man as revealed by all his writings, but it is very plain that this was the result of the Spirit taming a lot of horsepower.

He remained in Jerusalem for a number of years—at least 14 (Gal. 2:9), but then moved to Ephesus, where he wrote his gospel (according to Irenaeus. That was the time during which he was exiled to Patmos. According to early reports, he lived until the reign of Trajan (which started in 98 A.D.)

Outline of John

The gospel of John can be understood as having three basic sections. The first is where Jesus Christ is revealed to the world (John 1:1-12:50). The second is where He is revealed in greater depth, this time to His disciples (John 13:1-17:26). We see this revelation in the Lord’s extended discourses to His disciples. And the last section is where Christ is glorified (John 18:1-21:25)—again, to the world, but with His disciples being the ones who understood how the nature of glory has been transformed, and who declare that to the world.

Features of John

John has an orderly mind, and likes to see things in patterns. For example, he uses three a lot—three Passovers, three condemnations of Christ, three words from the cross, three denials by Peter, a three-stage restoration of Peter. We also see seven quite a bit as well— seven great signs or miracles (John 2:1-11; 4:46-54; 5:1-18; 6:5-13; 6:16-21; 9:1-17; 111-44), seven “I am” sayings followed by a metaphor (John 6:35; 8:12; 10:7; 10:11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1).

Five Were, One Is, One Is to Come

There are many reasons for reading the gospel of John and the book of Revelation together, side by side. Let me mention a handful of examples, and then give one specific parallel in greater depth. If you read the two books in an intertextual way, side by side, you should notice many connections. Here is just a small sampling:

“He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth andheareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice” (John 3:29).

“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20).

“…and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

“And from Jesus Christ . . . and the first begotten of the dead . . . to him be glory” (Rev. 1:5–6).

“And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat” (Rev. 7:16).

But John is not just entertaining himself with mental gymnastics. There is a gospel point to this, a gospel center.

In John 4, Jesus meets a disreputable woman. “For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly” (John 4:18). In Revelation we meet the great harlot who rides the beast. “And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space” (Rev. 17:10).

Here is something a friend pointed out to me. Notice the mathematical pattern—five past, one now, one to come. But what is the point? When the disciples come back with food and find Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman, they are amazed (John 4:27). Everywhere in the Bible when you see a man talking with a woman at the well, you know that a wedding is in the offing (Gen. 24:16-17; 29:11; Ex. 2:17-18). How do you know that? The same way you know two things when a movie starts with a cute blonde waking up late, slapping the alarm clock. She dashes around getting ready, runs down the steps of an upscale brownstone apartment building, only to run over a young man who happens to be walking by. Now what two things do you know? First, you know that your wife tricked you into a chick flick, and second, you know that the colliding couple are destined for each other. You know this because motifs communicate.

In John 4, the one that is to come is Christ—the Father is seeking worshipers (a bride) for His Son (John 4:23). The book of Revelation makes the same point in a slightly different way. Revelation is all about the replacement of the old Israel (the harlot) with the virgin bride (the new Jerusalem).

But—and this is key—what is the raw material out of which God assembles this new Eve? That is right, the answer is a rib taken right out of the side of the old corrupt Adam. But there is more. God is able to take this rib out of two Adams at once because the second Adam was dying on the cross suffering the penalty that the first Adam earned (John 19:34-35).

Now John wrote all that he wrote so that you might believe. A strong theme in this book is the glorious future of women with inglorious pasts. The Samaritan woman believes, along with the rest of her town (John 4:39). The woman caught in adultery is told to go and sin no more (John 8:11). Mary Magdalene, out of whom seven devils were cast, met the Lord in the garden. Adam met the woman in a garden of life, with innocence behind her. The second Adam met the woman in a garden of death, a cemetery, and with all her innocence before her (Matt. 20:11-18).

Of course, Mary Magdalene is not the bride of Christ. But she most certainly is the type of the one who is. John told us all this so that we would believe. Do you believe?

Surveying the Text: Luke

Joe Harby on November 2, 2014

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Introduction

If Mark is the shortest and punchiest of the gospels, Luke is the most detailed and meticulous. Luke claims to have done very careful research (Luke 1:1-4), and everything about this book bears that claim out.

The Texts

“And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. And after he had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them” (Acts 16:9–10).

Some Background on Luke

It may seem odd, in a message summarizing the gospel of Luke, to have the text be from Acts. But when we consider that we are dealing with the collected works of Luke in two volumes, the picture changes somewhat. In this passage, the gospel has not yet come to Europe. Paul was in Troas, and had a dream. In that dream a Macedonian man appeared to him, and summoned him to come over into Macedonia. At that moment, the narrative of Acts suddenly adds the first person plural—we. Luke joins them there, and it is quite possible that he was the Macedonian man in the dream.

Luke was almost certainly a classically educated Gentile. His preface to the gospel of Luke followed the classical style, and his care shows up in many ways and in many details. An educated guess places the composition of Luke at around 60 A.D. and the book of Acts shortly after that. In Col. 4:14, Paul calls Luke the beloved physician, and says that Luke was with him when he wrote Philemon (Phile. v. 24). Paul wrote both those letters in his first imprisonment in Rome, and this agrees with the last two chapters of Acts. At the end of his life, Paul wrote “only Luke is with me” (2 Tim. 4:11). According to an early prologue to his gospel, Luke lived until he was 84, and died in Boeotia in Greece.

Unique Details

There are a number of details about Christ’s life that we would not know if it were not for Luke. These would include the annunciation (1:26-38), the angels appearing to the shepherds (2:1-20), the visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve (2:41-52). These instances would indicate that one of Luke’s sources was Mary, the mother of the Lord. Other unique details would include the raising of the son of the widow of Nain (7:11-17), the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:30-37), the story of the ten lepers (17:11-19), the story of Zacchaeus (19:1-10), and Jesus before Herod (23:6-16).

Marked Emphases of Luke

Luke contains a number of emphases that we do not find in the other gospels. Note that these are not contradictions or disagreements. But they are emphasized and given to us for a reason.

Luke emphasizes the Lord’s ministry to the outcasts of pious society. Not only did Jesus come for the lepers and other losers (Luke 14:12-24), but also for the rich and compromised—tax collectors, soldiers and courtesans. Zacchaeus was not a homeless bum. Never forget that there is more than one way to be an outcast from pious society. One is to be a meth dealer, of course, but the other is to work for the IRS, or to be a Marine colonel in the Pentagon.

In Luke, we see the marked beginning of the very Christian impetus to elevate the status of women, bring them both privilege and respect. There were the women who financed the ministry (Luke 8:1-3). The women were the last at the cross (Luke 23:55) and the first at the tomb (Luke 24:1). And after His resurrection, the Lord appeared to the women first (Luke 24:5-8).

Luke balances, in a wonderful way, the corporate and the individual. He alternates between crowd scenes and individuals in quite a striking way. For example, right after the feeding of the five thousand, we are told of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ (Luke 9:10-22). Another thing he does is “zoom in on” an individual in the midst of a huge crowd, as he does in the Zacchaeus story.

If you remember to include the book of Acts, it is easy to see that Luke has a particular emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit empowers individuals to speak God’s words throughout both Luke and Acts. This emphasis on the Spirit is likely the reason that Luke’s two volumes are characterized by songs in a way that the other gospel are not.

The Great Quest

The gospel moves in a very straightforward way, left to right, and in literary form, it is a quest. Jesus has a mission to complete, and the importance of the mission is apparent from His infancy on. The word must be fulfilled, the mission must be completed.

There is a long middle section in Luke that the other gospels do not have (Luke 9:51-19:27). “And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,” (Luke 9:51). Of course, in the subsequent chapters, He teaches and He heals as He goes, but He is resolutely determined to make it to Jerusalem. The reason for this is that His death and resurrection are the whole point. He goes there in order to fulfill the will of His Father, the will of the Jews, the will of Judas, the will of Herod, the will of the mob, and, of course, His own will. He does this because He is the appointed one, He is the anointed one.

As an aside, note that in the book of Acts we have the same kind of quest—Paul sets his face to go to the same city, Jerusalem, with the full expectation that bad things will happen to him there.

Back to the gospel—the Lord explains all of this after the fact to the disciples He met on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:27), and then again in His appearance at Bethany (Luke 24:44-47). The story is set in motion as the shining angels sing to the shepherds (Luke 2:9), and the story is completed with shining angels in the tomb (Luke 24:4).

That same story is continued as the Lord’s disciples fan out across the map in order to tell the story. And as the book of Acts is completed, we are heartened to realize that there is no place in the story where the Spirit is taken up into Heaven. That does not happen, and cannot happen. Everywhere the words of this story are spoken, the Spirit rests upon them. Everywhere we tell people that the Lord fulfilled His mission, we are fulfilling ours.

Surveying the Text: Mark

Joe Harby on October 26, 2014

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Introduction

This is the shortest of the four gospels, but Mark uses a number of devices to make it fly by even faster. This is a gospel of now. This is a gospel that is quite effective in presenting us with a sense of vivid immediacy. Mark uses the historical present tense consistently, he uses abrupt transitions, and he uses the phrase and immediately (euthys) 42 times. Story grip is easy while reading Mark. And in this sense, the hand that grips is the hand that saves. So one of our tasks here is to bring this story to life.

The Text

“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).

Some Background on Mark

Let’s begin with the place of John Mark in Scripture. All the manuscripts we have of this book contain the name of Mark in the title. So what do we know of this man from the pages of Scripture? He was a relative of Barnabas—“Aristarchus my fellow prisoner saluteth you, and Marcus, sister’s son to Barnabas” (Col. 4:10). We also know that he was son of a certain Mary. “And when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered together praying” (Acts 12:12).

Although he was probably from the Dispersion (because of the Latin name Marcus), the family at least had a residence in Jerusalem. This also indicates some measure of wealth (along with the servant girl Rhoda). He worked with Paul for a time. “And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem, when they had fulfilled their ministry, and took with them John, whose surname was Mark” (Acts 12:25). When they left Antioch, “they had also John to their minister” (Acts 13:5). This was on the first recorded missionary journey of Paul.

John Mark was the occasion for a falling out between Paul and Barnabas. “And Barnabas determined to take with them John, whose surname was Mark. But Paul thought not good to take him with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia, and went not with them to the work” (Acts 15:37-38). The next verse records a sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over this, resulting in them going in different directions. The good news is that Mark was reconciled with Paul later: “Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11). And, “touching whom ye received commandments: if he come unto you, receive him” (Col. 4:10). We are not told who was right in the initial dispute; we are told that it was resolved.

Years later, we know that Mark was with Peter at Rome. “The church that is at Babylon

[probably Rome], elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus my son” (1 Pet. 5:13). As we can see, the relationship between Peter and Mark was very close. It is likely that Mark’s gospel is his rendition of Peter’s account of the life of Christ.

There are other places where John Mark’s presence is hinted at. A few passages in Scripture maybe applied to our writer, although we cannot be dogmatic about it. It is possible that he was the famous rich, young ruler. This Gospel is the only one to record the fact that when Jesus confronted the wealthy young ruler, he “loved him” (Mark 10:21). If this is Mark, then we may obviously conclude that the rich, young ruler was converted later.

He may also have been the one who fled the night Jesus was arrested. In Mark 14:51-52, we find the odd inclusion of an odd detail — a young man who fled naked at the arrest of Christ. This also may be John Mark. Otherwise, it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with anything. If so, it adds a nice touch to the story—the rich young eventually did give up everything.

And last, it appears that John Mark was at least initially in sympathy with the Judaizers. John Mark left the entourage of Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey at the first opportunity after the gospel was preached to Sergius Paulus, a Gentile (Acts 13:13). This may account for the depth of Paul’s opposition to him (Acts 15:39).

We have just a few details about him from church history as well. The historical accounts concerning John Mark are remarkably consistent, and early. First, his nickname—the prologue of an early Latin version of the Gospel records that Mark’s nickname was “stumpy-fingers.” We can only speculate . . . my thought is that it was a lawn mower accident. As indicated earlier, his main source of information was the apostle Peter. This Gospel is written as a collection of Peter’s accounts of the works and teaching of Christ. We learn this from Papias (c. 60-130), bishop of Hieropolis in Phrygia, from Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215), and Irenaeus (c. 115-202), who was from Gaul. The church uniformly received this Gospel as apostolic precisely because of its connection to Peter. The early sources are also uniform in telling us that Mark was the founder of the church at Alexandria, and that he was the first bishop there. He died in 62 AD, and was succeeded there by Annianus.

The Son of God is Here

Mark begins his account with an unambiguous statement of the identity of the one is who preached in the gospel. In this setting, the title “Son of God” meant Deity to Jewish ears (John 5:18). We cannot know what Jesus did unless we affirm who He is. The words the beginning are reminiscent of Genesis, and we are hearing the account of a new creation.

Combine Mark’s use of the immediate with his three-fold testimony of the identity of Jesus—one at the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end of the gospel. The pitch is set in our first verse. This is the gospel of the Son of God. But there are three

epiphanic moments. At the baptism of Christ, the Father says, “You are my
Son . . .” (Mark 1:11). On the Mount of Transfiguration, the voice from the cloud says the same thing again (Mark 9:7). And then, at the moment of His death, the same testimony is confirmed by the Roman centurion (Mark 15:39).

This is primitive gospel preaching. This is Peter’s recollection. This shows that the scope of Mark’s gospel is exactly parallel to the early apostolic message—a message that began with John the Baptist and concluded with the resurrection (Acts 10:36-43; 13:24-37). This is the message, and everywhere it is preached in power, it has immediate effects. Why wouldn’t it? It is an immediate gospel.

Put it all together. Christ is God and Christ is here, now. Will you follow Him?