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It Is Written

Sabbath School 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

Eric Flickinger

Thomas Shepherd

01 The Beginning of the Gospel

Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

We are beginning a brand new series of studies on the book of Mark, a fascinating book, and we're going to be diving into it.

As we begin our journey, though, I think it's appropriate that we begin with prayer.

Father, we want to thank you for giving us an opportunity to learn more about you through our study of the book of Mark.

We ask that you will guide us on this journey, that you'll help us to gain insights into you, your character, your love for us, and how we can be strengthened for the journey through your spirit.

Well, we're grateful to have leading us along this journey, the author of this quarter's Sabbath school study, Tom Shepherd.

He is Senior Research Professor of New Testament at the Theological Seminary Andrews University, also pastors a couple of churches up in Michigan.

Tom, welcome, we're glad to have you with us.

It's Good to be with you, Eric, and be with you here in his written.

Tom, this Book of Mark, you've been studying the Book of Mark for a little while.

What is it that has made you passionate about the Book of Mark?

Why is it something that you have delved into?

And what is it really that touches your heart about the Book of Mark?

Well, 30 years ago when I was doing my PhD studies at Andrews University, I studied the Gospel of Mark with Robert Johnston.

I remember, actually, that's where I ended up doing my dissertation was in the book of Mark, and it all revolves around certain stories.

And so when I was trying to decide what I would write my dissertation on, I ended up focusing on Mark.

I've been involved in the Society of Biblical Literature for 25 years working with Mark studies.

It's a short gospel, but it's got a lot of power in it.

So what we're looking at here over the course of these next 13 weeks is the result of 30 years of research and study and passion on the Book of Mark.

Now, when you started studying the Book of Mark 30 years ago, you didn't know that you were going to be writing this particular quarter's lesson.

How did you get connected with what we're holding in our hands right now?

Well, since I did my dissertation in Mark, and I guess there haven't been a lot of Adventists who have done so, I've written a commentary on Mark for the new SDA Bible commentary.

And so it seemed natural evidently for them to ask me to write the Sabbath school lesson.

And that was what, 4 or 5 years ago, something along those lines.

And I think it was like about 2 years ago when I finished writing it.

The book of Mark, lesson 1 is the beginning of the gospel.

Help us get to know Mark as we're beginning the study in the book of Mark, who was he?

Yeah, so none of the authors of our Gospels list their name in the book.

But the early church traditions have tied them with particular authors and the Gospel of Mark early on and our early manuscripts say just according to Mark or the Gospel according to Mark And the Mark that's likely the author of this book is a young man named John Mark, who is introduced in the book of Acts chapter 12.

Peter is in prison and he's released from prison by an angel and he goes to the house of a lady named Mary, and her son was named John Mark.

He becomes a traveling companion with the Apostle Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey.

And there's quite a story about him where he leaves their mission.

And when they're gonna do their second missionary journey, Barnabas wants to take him along, and Paul says no, and the 2 of them split apart, and Barnabas takes John, Mark, and goes off to Cyprus.

And so he is redeemed from failure by Barnabas, his cousin.

So we're gonna kind of journey along with Mark here and allow him to help us to get to know Jesus a little bit better.

Let's talk for a little bit about some of the experiences that he had in his early life that kind of helped shape the gospel that we're reading here.

What were some of those experiences and how does that kind of help us understand the picture that he gives us of the Gospel?

Yeah, so I mentioned that he went with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey, and unfortunately, for some reason, maybe it was just too hard for him.

He split away from them, went back home to Jerusalem early on in the missionary travels.

And Barnabas, whose name means son of encouragement, helps redeem this young fellow, takes him on a journey.

And interestingly enough, later in life, he becomes useful to the Apostle Paul.

So Barnabas was right in helping to redeem this young fellow.

And when you read, he eventually ends up in Rome.

Peter refers to him in chapter 5 of his first epistle and calls him my son.

So there's also a tradition that the book of Mark reflects a lot of Peter's memories or Peter's understanding of the Gospel.

So what's interesting is that, of course, Peter failed terribly.

He denied Jesus 3 times, and Mark failed as a missionary.

And you sort of get maybe a sense that, well, these 2 had something in common.

And at the very end of his Gospel, when Jesus sends a message through the angel for them, disciples, to meet him in Galilee, he says, tell the disciples and Peter to come and see me.

So Peter and Mark both had failure, but eventually both became great leaders of the early Christian church.

And we know much about them through the Bible.

So the book of Mark doesn't start like a lot of the other, like the other Gospels.

It talks about Jesus' baptism, His temptation in the wilderness.

How do those events kind of shape the direction that the Gospel of Mark goes?

All right, so I'm gonna open to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, and it's really interesting.

The Gospel of Mark starts with an incomplete sentence.

The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way, the voice of 1 crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.

And of course this introduces John the Baptist, who points to Jesus as being somebody that's gonna be greater than him.

Now what's really interesting is you read this carefully, kind of like you're going between the lines a little bit, you find that Jesus is this both strong and weak, surprisingly, strong and weak character.

Well, when you think about it, who baptizes whom?

Well, John the Baptist baptizes Jesus, and we usually think, well, the person with more authority is the baptizer, you know?

Now, over in Matthew, of course, you read that John says, no, you should baptize me.

And then Jesus is baptized, and he goes out into the wilderness where he is fasting, and he's tempted by Satan.

So when somebody ministers to you, what's that mean?

It means that, well, you're on the weak side, you see?

So what we see is there's all these powerful kind of statements about Jesus, that he's the son of God, he's the Messiah, he's greater than John, and on the other side, we see this side of weakness as well.

Now, That's kind of, what should I say, under the radar a little bit.

Most people don't sort of catch that at the beginning of reading the book, but it kind of forecasts where things are headed.

Jesus is going to die on the cross, and of course that's the ultimate weakness, the ultimate shame that you would have in the Roman Empire.

And so we have this strong, weak Messiah, so that his Messiahship isn't going to be like what everybody expected, Not the powerful man, the strong, you know, macho guy that they wanted to free them from the Romans.

He's going to be a different kind of Messiah.

And you get that sort of already from seeing what's beginning here.

So Mark's giving us some insights that maybe some of the other gospel writers don't bring out quite so much.

02 A Day in the Ministry of Jesus

We're glad to have you back again with us this week as we are looking at lesson number 2 in our study of the book of Mark.

We are looking today at a day in the ministry of Jesus.

We're going to find that out here very shortly.

But before we do, we're going to start with prayer.

Father, we thank you for giving us an opportunity to take this journey through the book of Mark, to get a clearer picture of Jesus, His ministry, the Gospel that He had to share, and the lives that He changed and continues to change.

We ask that you'll bless our time together today, and we thank you in Jesus' name.

Well, we're grateful once again to have with us the author of this quarter Sabbath school lesson, Tom Shepard.

He's a senior research professor of New Testament at the Theological Seminary Andrews University and also a pastor of 2 churches up in Michigan.

So we're looking at a day in the ministry of Jesus.

Mark gives us some insights into the day-to-day life of Jesus.

And as we begin this gospel, as we're diving into this gospel, Jesus calls his first disciples.

And why we're, well, we're going to find out why they felt impressed to follow him.

But let's start with, with how Jesus called his first disciples.

All right, so I want to turn to Mark chapter 1, verses 16 through 20.

Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

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

And immediately they left their nets and followed him.

And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets.

And immediately he called them, and they left their father's ebony in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

Well, so what's interesting is you have these 2 sets of brothers that Jesus calls.

It almost seems so almost By chance, you know, he's walking along and there they are come follow me and they get up and off they go Now, you know you you think about that for a moment And if somebody were to just you know, come knock on your door and say hey, I'm starting a new mission Come come with me Most people would say well, where are we going?

It's just, you know, really direct words of Jesus, just follow me and off they go.

Now, we know that these men had, from other gospels, we know that they had had, you know, been following John the Baptist.

They had had probably some contact with Jesus.

And the reason he doesn't is he wants you to sense the power of the authority of Jesus when he says, you know, follow me and up you go and, you know, you're on your way.

The other interesting thing here is that there are 2 different kind of economic levels, it seems like.

Peter and Andrew are on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.

They're throwing a net into the sea, almost as though they don't have a boat.

Now, we know from other Gospels that, you know, Peter has a boat, okay, but here he's just described with his brother just casting the net into the sea.

James and John on the other hand, there's a boat, there's their father, there's hired servants, so they seem to be, you know, a little more economically on the up-and-up.

And so what we what we draw from this is that Jesus calls both the poor and the richer people to follow Him.

And the call of Jesus is not just for 1 group.

And these men become His very important early followers.

So he calls them, they've got some experience, some knowledge of him before this meeting, but why would they just drop everything?

I mean here they are and he invites them and they, again, the appearance is they just go.

No questioning about the health care plan and retirement benefits and so forth, as you mentioned.

But why would they leave all that and just follow Him?

Well, again, I think Mark is focusing on the authority of Jesus, and the Lord calls and you go.

Some of the other Gospels, Luke has this beautiful story of Jesus filling their boat with fish, And they have everything.

Now, somebody might say, well, that would be the least time that you'd want to leave is when everything was, you know, The boat's full, you have all this fish.

But of course, it's Jesus who filled the boat.

And if you're with him, you don't have to worry about the boat being full.

So, here in Mark, there's this strong sense of authority.

Now, we're going to see that the disciples come across as sort of people who don't quite get it always.

They're sort of bumbling along, you know, following him.

And we might tend to be a little bit hard on them.

Actually, there are some scholars who are fairly hard on them, that they're failures and, you know, Jesus gives up on them or something.

But I don't think that's the case at all, but rather that Jesus will provide and they're going to be with him.

So it's quite a powerful kind of presentation of the authority of Jesus in calling disciples.

Now last week when we came together you talked about this journey that Mark takes us on, this journey to the cross really.

I mean the book of Mark is a journey to the cross, But Jesus doesn't, His opening invitation doesn't say, hey, follow me, I'm going to the cross.

But He doesn't, that's not part of the invitation.

Why doesn't He tell His first disciples that that's where things are going to end up.

Yeah, so some people might fault Jesus on this and say, you know, it's a bait and switch.

You told us we were going to catch men and now we're going to take up a cross.

You see, the expectation of the Messiah in Jesus' day was that He would be a conquering kind of person who would free them from the Romans, and so they had the wrong view of what it meant to be Messiah.

So if you start off and tell them everything about what it's going to be, they wouldn't understand it.

They had to have experience with His preaching before they could carry the weight of what his true Messiahship was going to be about.

I like the illustration that is used for the front of the Lesson Quarterly and for the front of the companion book where it's like Mark is sitting there and there's a crown of thorns in front of him.

And talking about that, this was unfathomable.

They couldn't imagine that this would happen.

And so he doesn't tell them that at the beginning.

He's going to have them know him first so that they can trust him.

And then they will be able to bear the weight.

And even then, It was extremely challenging for them.

So that's probably why he doesn't tell them.

And of course they do become fishers of men.

And you mentioned they don't really know him at the beginning.

However, there are some who do know very well who He is, even at the beginning of the book of Mark.

I want to kind of shift over to this experience at the Capernaum Synagogue.

And let's talk about that experience and how Jesus is known by some but not by others.

03 Controversies

We're glad to have you with us as we take a journey through the book of Mark, a fascinating gospel.

Well, this is week number 3, and we're going to be looking at some of the controversies surrounding Jesus' ministry, and you're gonna have your eyes open to some very fascinating things.

But before we dive into this week's lesson, let's start with prayer.

Father, we thank you for giving us an opportunity again to delve into the book of Mark and to gain a clearer picture of Jesus and the gospel that we see through the book of Mark.

We ask that you'll bless our time together and we thank you in Jesus name, Amen.

Well we're happy to have with us once again the author of this quarter's Sabbath school study and that is Tom Shepherd.

He is the senior research professor of New Testament at the Theological Seminary at Andrews University and also a pastor.

We've kind of worked our way through Mark chapter 1.

Now we're in Mark chapters 2 and 3, and there's some controversy stories here in these 2 chapters.

Well, there are 5 controversy stories in chapters 2 and the very beginning of chapter 3.

These are actually mirrored by some controversy stories over in like chapter 11, 12 of the book.

So there's these kind of 2 sets, 1 at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, 1 at the end of his ministry.

And they show him in conflict, particularly with religious leaders, which might sort of surprise us because you think, well, he's the Messiah, so wouldn't the religious leaders be the typical people who would love to see him?

And the answer is no, they are not loved to see him because he and their authority don't match.

So he's a threat to their authority and power, And that's eventually what's going to bring him to the cross.

So what's interesting is these 5 controversy stories in Chapter 2 and the first 6 verses of Chapter 3 follow a concentric pattern, or kind of a circle pattern.

So the first story is the story of Jesus healing a paralytic.

And it involves 2 ideas, healing and sin.

The second story is a story about the calling of Levi to be a disciple of Jesus and it has to do with sin and food.

So you have healing and sin and then sin and food.

Then the third story is the story of question about fasting And so that's about food and Messiah.

And then the fourth story, very interesting to Adventists, is about Sabbath keeping.

So there's 1 word that sort of connects them each.

And then the last 1 is about Sabbath and healing, which links you back to the beginning again.

So it's a set of stories that you first look at it, you think, oh, that's just, you know, sort of, that's just the way they laid, they all happened in this order, and we're not saying they didn't, but they all happened in this order, and there's no relationship, just a set of stories.

Well, no, it's much more, you know, compact kind of tied together with this concentric pattern.

And so it's very interesting that you have this kind of layout.

And this story begins again, it says in verse number 1, and again he entered Capernaum.

So we keep seeing this theme or this city, Capernaum, as well.

It begins, as you mentioned, with this story of the paralytic.

It's 1 that we're, I think, most of us familiar with.

There's a crowd and people can't get through the crowd to bring the paralytic.

What's the paralytic looking for when he comes to Jesus, and does he get what he was looking for?

Well, we would imagine that what he was looking for was healing, and so he actually cannot walk, So his paralysis is at least of his legs.

We're not told what caused the paralysis, but he has to be carried on a bed to be brought to Jesus.

And so he has 4 friends who bring him to Jesus.

And when they can't get in the house, because there's so many people, they go up on the roof.

Now, in many places, at least in the United States, people think of the roof, it's slanted and everything.

In fact, often people would sleep on the roof when it was hot season.

And to open the roof was not a small deal, maybe not as big a deal as going through our roofs today, but they had mud and daub, they had to break through, and then there would be these beams, and they'd have to get in between there and somehow let him down.

Well, you can imagine that when this guy is brought to Jesus and they start opening the roof over your head, that everything stops and everybody looks up to see what's happening.

And then they lower this guy down in front of Jesus.

So he's looking for healing, but that's actually not what Jesus says.

And so Jesus could read the thoughts of people, he could read what they were thinking, and this man was burdened with sin.

And that may have been the result of why he got paralysis, was because of his sin.

And this telling him that his sins are forgiven would not just, it was spiritual healing.

And so that's, he was probably looking for that too.

And it was not just the physical healing.

Of course, Ellen White describes this in books as outrageous very nicely and says that when he received these words that he was forgiven, he just kind of laid back and he was at peace because God had forgiven his sins.

Series

Sabbath School 3rd Quarter 2024: The Book of Mark

08 Teaching Disciples Part 2

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