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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

Kameron DeVasher

Mark Howard

01 The Beginning of the Gospel

I'm Cameron DeVasier and I'm Mark Howard and this is Talking Points.

We are now embarking on an entirely new study series all about the book of Mark.

I bet you I bet you're really gonna look at this lesson every week like oh what a good choice.

Now the book of Mark of course is the Gospel of Mark 1 of the 4 Gospels.

That's good, it wasn't just some cousin somewhere, it was this Mark.

All right, well obviously there's the Gospel of Mark, the Book of Mark is 1 of those 4 Gospels that covers the life of Jesus.

It's not about Mark of course, it's about Jesus and you actually put our talking points together this week, but I'm excited about the overall topic of just studying the life of Christ and looking at some of the details that we might refer to in other topical studies, but now we're gonna walk through the ministry of Jesus, and I'm already excited about what we're gonna learn.

Absolutely, it's gonna be a good quarter.

I should highlight, as we do each time we start a new lesson series, there are a number of programs that go over the quarterly Sabbath school lesson or the adult Bible study guide lesson.

Talking points is not just us going over the lesson, and it may appear that to some people, but the reason that we started talking points and continue to do talking points is that this is intended to be a training resource primarily for teachers or anybody in the class.

It's not like teacher exclusive, but the idea is we're trying to take a comprehensive lesson and draw out points that can be addressed in a Sabbath school time in a timely manner.

When I teach a sabbath school class, I don't teach it like I do talking points because we do all the talking.

You know, I'll ask questions, I'll engage in but when I when you do that as a teacher and you who've done teaching know this that the more you try to engage the class, well, there's a balance between trying to cover the material and get interaction.

And so, the benefit of having some key talking points is, when your points are clear in your head that you want to cover, It helps you to maintain that balance a little bit better and have the interaction in your class and yet still cover the substantial material.

Plus, I think it's really helpful to remember that the goal of the Sabbath school class is not to cover, quote, the lesson.

The goal of the lesson is to draw you to the scripture and the class is aided by that lesson, no doubt.

But it's the scripture and drawing out the truths from the Bible.

So don't feel this guilt as a teacher, like, man, I got to get through Sunday and then I got to get through Monday.

Now it's the time to really put flesh on these bones and make a really dynamic, engaging Bible study experience for everyone.

I'm glad you said that because I'm kind of skipping over Tuesday for that reason.

I just didn't have time to cover everything.

So this is what we're going to do this week.

I've got 3 talking points and they are as follows.

Well, I tell you what, before you tell our talking points, we should start with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this new day.

Thank you for the opportunity you give us to know you and to study your word and to, in a group setting, like the Sabbath school class, iron, sharpen iron, as we look closer and closer at the words of Christ, and by your spirit become more like him.

Please bless our time in this preparation resource now as we discuss this lesson and the things we can draw out of it, for we pray it in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, now our lesson this week is entitled The Beginning of the Gospel, a little play on words.

It's the beginning of the gospel of Mark, the book.

It's also the beginning of the gospel message as proclaimed by Christ.

And again, I've drawn 3 talking points out.

Talking point number 1 is Mark the author is a product of the gospel.

And I've taken that primarily from Sabbath, Sunday, and Monday's lessons.

And then talking point number 2 is the essence of Mark's gospel is the divine human Christ.

And I could have said the essence of the gospel is Christ, which would be true, but Mark actually draws out both the divine and the human aspects right there in the first chapter.

We're gonna see that and the lesson highlights that as well.

And then finally, talking point number 3, the gospel message was and is built on prophecy.

And I'm taking that from Thursday and Friday's lessons.

Already we can tell there's a lot to cover, so let's go back to talking point number 1.

Mark the author is a product of the gospel.

Okay, well let's start in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 12 verse 12, and This is the first record we have of, well, it may not be the first, we'll get to that in just a minute.

Well, it's the first explicit perhaps reference.

Yeah, it says, so when he had considered this, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying.

Okay, so the gospel author's name is actually John Mark.

The lesson highlights that John was probably Hebrew, how he was called in the Hebrew society, and Mark was Greek.

So it was a surname, and this is the first place we find him in this house of Mary.

So when Peter, when Peter gets out of prison and he comes to the house of Mary and you remember the story wrote, he answers the door and she's so excited she goes and tells everybody, forgets to let Peter in the house and all this business.

But the implication is that this was Mary's house.

The fact that she had a house speaks to the idea that she was probably more affluent and this plays into the story what we're getting here in in this first part is the backstory of the author.

Well and clearly he doesn't he doesn't just happen to be there it's Mary the mother of John Mark so the implication is he's not only familiar with you but likely lives there right?

That's right And if she is a little more fluent, so is he and again, you'll see how that plays in in a minute now As we go on to Acts chapter 13 If you would read verses 1 through 5 Sure now in the church that was at Antioch.

There were certain prophets and teachers Barnabas Simeon called Niger Lucius of serene Manan who had been brought up with Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul.

As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

Then having fasted and prayed and laid hands on them they sent them away.

So being sent out by the Holy Spirit they went down to Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus.

And when they arrived in Selemus they preached the Word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, they also had John as their assistant." So here it doesn't call him by Mark or John Mark, it calls him John.

We go ahead to verse 13 of that same chapter, it says, Now when Paul and his party set sail from Paphos, they came to Perga and Pamphylia, and John, departing from them, returned to Jerusalem.

Now it does not tell us here why he departed, but evidently it wasn't on the best terms because when we come to Acts chapter 15, it gives us a little more detail in verses 36 to 39.

Then after some days Paul said to Barnabas, let us now go back and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord and see how they were doing.

Now Barnabas was determined to take with them John called Mark, but Paul insisted that they should not take with them the 1 who had departed from them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

Then the contention became so sharp that they parted from 1 another.

And so Barnabas took Mark and sailed to Cyprus.

But Paul chose Silas and departed, being commended by the brethren to the grace of God.

And he went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

Okay, so now here you're picking up on the story that we see in Acts 13 and here it's very clearly spelled out that this is John they took with him, it was John Mark, and that Paul didn't want him to take because he had departed from them.

Well, and notice it didn't say had not gone with them to a destination.

So like the thing he was trying to get out wasn't the traveling, it was the working.

It was the something about the labor was so the idea we get here is that you know Mark comes from this affluent home and Christianity, especially in those days, was not attended with some of the more conveniences and comforts.

I mean, it's, at least in westernized culture, as much as we can say there is Negation of Christians a persecution of Christians.

It's not equaling New Testament Church Well, especially for the Apostle Paul who was not he was a divisive figure, you know Yeah, all kinds of ways and remember he was the 1 who always had made the case, hey, shouldn't I at least get paid from the gospel?

Like, he clearly, besides the shipwrecks and beatings, wasn't even being supported in the work like you would think of a minister nowadays.

02 A Day in the Ministry of Jesus

Continuing right along this week in our study of the book of Mark.

What a great study already and I'm just really excited about where we're just picking up the baton where we left off last week here in the first chapter of the gospel of Mark looking at what this lesson titles, A Day in the Ministry of Jesus.

So the gospel of Mark chapter 1 doesn't just include this 1 day, but it is a central feature that basically have 1 of the interesting maybe few times you actually have a zoomed in picture of what Jesus did in a particular day, and that day happens to be a Sabbath.

So we're gonna learn a lot of important lessons this week.

I don't know that we have any other announcements or any commentary at all.

Should I pray and then we'll share the talk points?

Father in heaven, we are so thankful for the testimony of your word and for the spirit of truth to give us understanding in spiritual things.

We pray that spirit would guide us now as we review this lesson, and that you would be with each 1 of the teachers and participants in our Sabbath school classes as they study this topic, that the Spirit of God would also reveal to each 1 of us those things that would draw us closer to you and help us to be more effective in ministering the gospel to others.

Well, as last week's was the beginning of the gospel, which is lifted directly from Mark chapter 1 verse 1, and it kind of covered some of the very introductory comments and background of who Mark was and the start of Jesus ministry, Now this week's lesson picks up essentially in verse 16, okay?

Because yours last week ended with, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, so he's announcing his ministry.

Now he steps into doing the ministry and the very first thing he does is call his first disciples.

Then it moves into a day in the life of Jesus and some ministry healings that he does subsequent to that.

So with that framework in mind, we've drawn out from this week's lesson 3 talking points.

Talking point number 1, Jesus called his disciples strategically.

We're gonna look at why he called, not just who he called, but the circumstances of their call, but why even have disciples and what was his aim and objective there?

Talking point number 2, Sabbath is for rest, worship, fellowship, and service.

That comes from Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, but basically that's the main thread of this week's lesson is looking at Jesus' activities on the Sabbath and the lessons we can learn from there.

And finally, talking point number 3, prayer is essential to successful ministry.

That taken from Wednesday's lesson, it looks like the prayer life of Jesus, who, going back to the human divine, he was divine, but he stepped into humanity and he maintained that connection with the Father through prayer, and we're gonna see what benefit there was to that and what lessons we can take away.

So, Jesus called his disciples strategically.

Now, when we teach our Emanuel Institute course, sometimes I like to ask the question, why did Jesus even have disciples?

And when I was growing up, I think if posed that question, I would probably say, well, you know, they were to watch what he did and document it.

Clearly, they have a gospel record and to let people know all the stuff Jesus did.

And while that witnessing of Christ's work was certainly an element, when we go to Mark chapter 1, if you want to read verses 16 and 17, let's just start there.

And as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

Then Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men." Mmm.

Notice he, from the very beginning, the opening, just like in this gospel passage, the time is at hand, we're teaching the gospel, now in his opening discussion with these disciples, which the lesson brings out that as you compare the gospel of Mark with the account in the gospel of John, you get a little backstory that they were, this wasn't their first encounter with Jesus.

He'd just walk up to them randomly and say, hey, you guys like fishing?

But they had been witnesses to John's ministry.

But now Jesus makes the approach and says, you guys want to take this seriously, come follow me.

But he doesn't just say, you're going to see more things as you follow me, just come along and make sure to take notes.

From the opening line, he says, I will make you become fishers of men.

So in my estimation, they knew what they were, or they should have known, what they were signing up for, that Jesus had a purpose in calling them more than just documenting his labors.

He was trying to turn them into laborers.

There's several things here that could be drawn out.

When it comes to ministry, ministry, effective ministry is strategic.

And for a lot of people, strategic or strategy sounds so human.

There's a mindset that, no, no, no, the Spirit of God just kind of blows where He wishes.

And almost to the point where, well, yeah, Jesus picked him because the Holy Spirit whispered his ear that 1 that 1 that 1 as If Jesus himself from his human standpoint had no Objective or that a human minister never has it like that would be wrong almost.

In other words you see You see jesus Being strategic even in the statement follow me and I'll make you become I love this verse As opposed to matthew's version follow me And I'll make you fishers of men Make you still implies, but I'll make you become.

Fishers of men implies that I know I'm gonna need to train you.

And once you have training, you have thought that goes into training, you have planning that goes into training.

Anybody who's ever trained anybody in any capacity knows that you don't just, I don't know, let's just, let's just do this.

You, it's thought out and it's planned and it's intentional, and you have objectives.

And so just in those few verses we see that Jesus is modeling something that is so essential and not just in professional ministry but for any Christian desiring to reach souls, you need strategy.

Well, in Jesus' strategy here, like he already knew, of course, We know he knew it was coming because he was, he started Hole's ministry based on the time prophecies.

He knew that this, his time here on earth was limited, that he not only, how do I say this without sounding a little bit odd, but Jesus' mission wasn't to share the gospel of the world.

His mission was to be the gospel for the world.

And then he would continue that work, but through his disciples, that message would go to the world, right?

So for instance, in John 20, 21, he says, as the father has sent me, so send I you.

Acts chapter 1, you will be my witnesses.

And so he starts from day 1 in his ministry, not only drawing people to who will remember what he did, but training them for acceptable service.

And There's a great statement about this in Desire of Ages 291, taken from when he later ordains the 12 for this ministry.

Jesus had called his disciples that he might send them forth as his witnesses to declare to the world what they had seen and heard of him.

Their office was the most important to which human beings had ever been called, and was second only to that of Christ himself.

They were to be workers together with God for the saving of the world.

As in the Old Testament, the 12 patriarchs stand as representatives of Israel, So the 12 apostles were to stand as representatives of the gospel church.

And so even in the not just the language of the call, but there's a there's a great little book and I'm not advocating us getting into the issue of women's ordination but there's a book about ordination by Clinton Jean Walleen that talk about the organization of the Apostles that Jesus called and it it brought to light something I'd never really realized before but there are several lists of because these are just the first 4 but at once the 12 are collected all together they are continually organized in a certain way so that Jesus and his ministry didn't just have a haphazard group of guys hanging out with him, he had teams, so they each paired up.

So even in this passage here, we see the first 1 is Simon who would be called Peter and Andrew, then James and his brother John.

So he's got a pair, then another pair, so you've got a grouping of 4.

Later on you'd have another grouping of 4 and another grouping of 4 so that when he would then send them out later in his ministry, they would already be arranged in 2 by 2.

So you're going to go 2 by 2, and then you're going to go to the places I'm going to go, then I'm going to follow up with you on that.

From the very beginning, he was organizing them for service.

And you could think, well, now that's a bridge too far.

Organizing the 12 into subgroups, where do you see any inspiration?

And just like every other fascinating thing that you ever study out, the Spirit of Prophecy gives us this insight, some Desire of Ages 292.

Says here, at the head of 1 of the groups into which the Apostles are divided stands the name of Philip.

And by the way, if you ever notice that every list of the Apostles starts with Peter, the fifth person is always Philip, and the ninth 1 is always James.

So it's almost you're following the captains of thousands, captains of fifties, captains of hundreds, captains of tens, philosophy of Jethro in the Old Testament, where this organization thing.

And what's interesting to me, even as you bring that up is When Jesus goes to feed the 5, 000 He turns to because they're in the region of Bethsaida He turns to Philip who the Bible says was from Bethsaida He says Philip where are we gonna find bread for all these people?

03 Controversies

We're on a third lesson now going through the book of Mark and we're on a chapter entitled or lesson week title controversies and I'll tell you 1 controversy that springs to mind is just reviewing what we're going to be covering this time is that it's going to be controversial how you're going to possibly fit all that you could fit into this week.

And you're gonna have to, I imagine, have to focus on some things and pull out other things.

And we don't want to have any controversy, but you had to know whenever the life of Christ was the topic at hand, there's gonna be weeks where there's just so much to talk about that it's gonna be hard to pick and choose.

Yeah, it is gonna be a little controversial too.

The methodology, not that the content also, but actually have 4 talking points this week.

There's controversy right there in itself.

All right, well, we're off to a roaring start here.

Let me have a word of prayer and you can walk us through those 4 talking points this week.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day.

Thank you for the opportunity you give us to study your word, to know you, and by your grace become like you.

Help everything that we discuss to be clear and help every Sabbath school class to be a wonderful Bible study experience for everyone involved.

Okay, well this week's lesson is actually reviewing, according to Sabbath Afternoon's lesson, 5 stories that illustrate Jesus' teaching in contrast to the teaching of the religious leaders.

You've got 5 stories, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

When you read the opening line, did your heart just sink?

Well, you know, so I already had to choose 1 not to do.

And or to conflate it with another and so now you have So I added a talking point which means so we probably need to clarify because we've talked to people before that say, you guys talk so fast on there.

Well, you know, we're trying to get stuff.

Here's a good thing about, you know, this day and age with YouTube and what have you, you can choose the playback speed and you can slow it down if you like.

But I want to, I'm saying that to say I'm not expecting that everybody would use my 4 talking points and we've made that point before.

Even if you will use the talking points, You may say I'll use 3 of those 4, but there were 4 things that jumped out at me that I thought were worthy of it.

So we're just going to do talking point number 1, and basically we're looking at Mark chapter 2 and then part of chapter 3.

Talking point number 1, faith is the evidence of things not seen, primarily from Sunday's lesson.

Talking point number 2 is Jesus' ministry was strategic.

That is drawn primarily from Monday's lesson.

And as this is a narrative and we're walking through, you'll see that this is kind of just going through the course of the quarterly this week.

Talking point number 3 is the Sabbath was made for man.

So I kind of conflated Wednesday and Thursday together a little bit or Tuesday and Wednesday together.

I'm sorry I believe no no Wednesday and Thursday were the sandwich stories, which we'll get into further.

And then talking point number 4 is the cause of God is priority 1, and that is taken primarily from Thursday's lesson.

So, Without any further ado, let's talk about faith.

So we go to chapter 2 of the Gospel of Mark, we have the healing of the paralytic man who, in fact, if you'll read verses 3-5, Mark 2, 3-5.

Then they came to him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by 4 men.

And when they could not come near him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where he was.

So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying.

When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, son, your sins are forgiven you.

Okay, so I probably should interject here.

Like I have preached entire sermons on this account.

So this makes this quarterly, especially hard.

This particular, you're going through, like you said, you're going through the Gospels, and the Gospel of Mark, there is no shortage of stuff that you can draw out.

And so you may each illustration, each story is a sermon or a study in itself.

Yeah, there's a lot in this story that I could draw out, but the 1 thing that grabbed my attention, and the lesson highlighted a little bit, was this idea of Jesus seeing their faith.

Now, specifically, the Bible says that when the friends brought the paralytic to Jesus, he responded when he, quote, saw their faith.

And very literally, the way that happened is when he saw the man being lowered down through the ceiling.

In other words, that's the thing that was happening that the Bible is pointing to, that that's how he saw their faith in those actions.

What it made me think of, first of all, the lesson brings this idea up that evidently from this passage faith is something you can see.

And you can see it because it's always manifested in action.

It's going to pour out in some kind of response.

And the text that came to my mind is Hebrews 11, verse 1, that says that faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen so something you hope for isn't seen and that's parallel the evidence of things not seen there are things that aren't seen there's an unseen eternal world reality mm-hmm But what the Apostle says there in Hebrews 11 is that faith is the substance and the evidence of those things we can't see.

So faith is in that whole interchange, faith is the thing we can see.

Interestingly, so what faith is, has that trust in the things we can't see, the faith itself is a thing we can see.

And it's kind of, you know, as I read different commentators on this, it was interesting that they would often point to the substance of the faith, you know, in other words, my faith in this thing, or my faith in that thing, or my faith in this person, what have you, which I'll touch on in a minute, but what Paul says in that passage, and I think what we're seeing in the Gospel of Mark, is that the faith itself, in other words, when you see another person's strong conviction that brings them to whatever corresponding action, that in and of itself acts as an evidence to other people.

Like how can you have such a confidence in which...

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Series

Talking Points 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

01 The Beginning of the Gospel

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

01 The Beginning of the Gospel

29m

02 A Day in the Ministry of Jesus

29m

03 Controversies

30m

04 Parables

29m

05 Miracles Around the Lake

29m

06 Inside Out

31m

07 Teaching Disciples Part 1

30m

08 Teaching Disciples Part 2

30m

09 Jerusalem Controversies

29m

10 The Last Days

29m

11 Taken and Tried

29m

12 Tried and Crucified

29m

13 The Risen Lord

29m

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