Wednesday Night Service 7PM -

Good evening. How are you all doing? Good to see you. I don't know about some of your seat choices, but it's all right. Can you guys all come in and fill in the front two rows? I'm just kidding. We're not like that here. You all want to stand with me, though, and we'll open up in a word of prayer.

Dear Heavenly Father, I just thank you. God, I just thank you for giving us a family. Thank you for giving us our brothers and sisters that are sitting all around us, Lord. I just pray that, Lord, that you just fill us with your spirit this evening, that you would enable us to align with your will, God, that you would just empower us to have the godliness that we can only find through your transformation.

God, I just pray that as we're singing this evening, it would be our prayer to you, and that you would just soften our hearts, that the words of these songs would just speak to us, Lord, and I pray that your word would also speak this evening. In your name, amen.

You guys can all have a seat if you'd like.

Dear Heavenly Father, I just thank you for being the definition of love to us. God, that whenever we're in your word and we see how you treat us, the rules that you give us, God, not for your benefit, but for ours. God, the closer that we get to you, the more we're going to be able to love you. The more we realize in all the different ways of how you demonstrate love to us and show us how we should be loving the people around us, God. Not in a worldly, secular, watered-down

version of love, God, but a love that you can only demonstrate for us. God, I just pray that as Pastor Allen comes up and preaches from your word this evening, God, that your Holy Spirit would just fill each and every one of us. And just give us just clarity of what you're speaking to us. I just pray this in your name. Amen.

Good evening. I hope everybody's doing well. Okay. Wow, those lights are bright. Okay. What's going on is Pastor Ryan is spending time with some family, and that's an awesome thing. We need to spend time with family. And so he's asked me to come up and teach. And so what we're going to teach tonight, we're going to start looking at the book of Mark, the gospel of Mark, and

probably get through one chapter. And one of these days when I teach again, we'll probably do Mark 2. Okay. But right now, that's the plan. And so definitely be jumping into the gospel. It's the good news. It's the great news. And so before we get into it, let's open up and pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you so much for your love and your watch care over us. We thank you that you came to be the sacrifice for our sins,

because that was the only way that we could be made clean. And we praise you for that. And we just ask that you would speak to us through your word now, and that you would prepare our hearts and our minds to hear from you. Pray that you would speak through me and use the words that I share to get across what you want heard tonight. And if there's anything else that I say that doesn't need to be heard, just shut it down.

But Lord, we thank you for your love and your watch care over us. So lead and guide as we run through your book and see how you have this great news, this gospel. We can have incredibly changed lives through if we just seek to follow after you. We love you and we praise you. Thank you. Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Okay, so just kind of some preface stuff. You know, the gospel of Jesus, God's answer for man's

woes are sin. You know, right from the get-go, we kind of messed things up. Maybe not us individually, but us individually. When we were born, we did. But from the beginning, you know, God created us so that we would have a relationship with him. And that's a pretty awesome thing to consider, that the creator of the universe wants to have a relationship with us. And he showed this by including Adam in the naming of

his creation after he made Adam. And he showed this by putting him in a perfect place, a garden that had everything that you'd ever want or need. And he created a helpmate for Adam, Eve. And he actually created him out of Adam. And then the cool thing that I think is he spent time with Adam and Eve. He walked through the garden with them. He spoke with them. He talked with them.

And, you know, that's a desire that I think all of us have to some degree. We may not want to play by the rules that God has laid out, but we all want to know God, which is one of the reasons why we have so many religious stuff that goes on. Because that's man's way of traveling. We're trying to get to God, but God laid out a perfect plan. And that's what we want to see.

He wanted to have us have free will. Because he didn't want to force himself on us. And he wanted us to choose love, to choose to love and adore our creator. So he allowed distractions in our lives. You know, I think the distractions back in the garden were a whole lot. Less than they are today. We've got man has come up with as many distractions as you can probably count.

But. God wants us to have a loving, dependent relationship with him. And back in the beginning, Satan was the main distraction. And. Satan is still with us. around and he's still a master of deception and he causes us to question God's motives you know just like he did with Eve when he was talking to her about he was twisting the words that God said and because Eve didn't really have

a great handle even though she was with God on a regular basis she was deceived into believing that maybe this God really does have he's holding something over us and that's not the case our God loves each and every one of us he made us so that we could have a relationship with him so ever since the Garden of Eden and Satan's quote win with Adam and Eve sinning not obeying what God had laid out for them God was laying out and had laid out a plan to redeem us all back to him and as you read through the entirety of the Old Testament you'll see glimpses of that plan so as we begin looking at the Gospel account of Mark we're looking at the second of the four Gospel accounts that are in our word and you may have wondered why there are four and

actually from all that I read there were many more but the other ones were had some things in it that really didn't need to be there we're a little bit of twisted words but these four really give us a good picture of of who Jesus is you know you can break it down into four different groups he is a king he is a servant which is the one we're gonna be reading now which I'm gonna be reading which is the one we're gonna be reading now which is the one we're gonna be reading now which is the one we're gonna be reading now reading. He's a man and he's God. Matthew was written primarily to the Jews with many references to the Old Testament to show that Jesus is the promised king of Israel who was

to come and set us free from the laws of sin and death. Jesus is the Messiah. So the overarching theme of Matthew is that Jesus is the king. In Mark, Mark was written primarily to the Romans, Jew and Gentile together. And the theme shows that Jesus, even though he was the Messiah and the king, he's also active and powerful in being a servant. He cares for creation and mankind and is willing to go the distance for us

to bring us back to the intended relationship that he had in store and that God wanted with mankind. Luke was written primarily to a broader Gentile world with its theme being Jesus is the perfect, compassionate son of man, the savior of all people. And as Ryan shared this past Sunday, Luke was a Gentile and the beloved physician. And then the fourth gospel, definitely not the least, even though it's the last one we're going to talk about here.

John was written to reveal Jesus as the divine son of God, emphasizing his eternal nature and relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. The author of Mark is known as John Mark in other parts of the word. He was around Jesus and the disciples towards the end of Jesus's ministry. Basically, the thought is that he was probably in the 10 to 13 years old range. When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And one of the things that stands out in Mark's gospel is there's a note during this Garden of Gethsemane situation where there's this young boy who is there. And as the Roman soldiers decide to, take Jesus into custody, all the disciples flee. And this boy was caught by the Romans. And then he broke free. And he ran naked away from the soldiers. So he got away, but he was naked.

And it's the only one of the gospels that share that little story in Mark 14. 51 and 52. So as we go through the New Testament, you will see that he's very much in the group, sharing the gospel story and supporting the disciples. Ryan shared this past week about how John Mark left Paul while on the first missionary journey, creating a bit of a rift between Paul and Barnabas and John Mark.

But towards the end of Paul's life, things seemed to be settled down. And in fact, if you remember, he shared that John Mark was being asked to be brought to Paul because he is good for Paul. So what we learned is that John Mark was primarily with Peter. And that's where he heard the eyewitness account information that made it possible, for him to write the Gospel account that we attributed to him from most of the commentaries it's understood that Mark's Gospel was one of the first to be written followed by Matthew and Luke and then a little bit later you had John written so it's pretty much the lead-in to this great new message you will see when you compare the Gospels that Mark is really trying to communicate that

Jesus although the Son of God the Son of Man the Messiah the King of Israel he's gone out of his way to serve us and to bring us back into fellowship with God as well as exampling what we as followers of Jesus are to live like towards God and our fellow man so I'm gonna read through just the first eight verses right now we'll kind of break it up so that it is just not me reading and although the word being read is a wonderful thing so chapter 1 verse 1 of mark the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God as it is written in Isaiah the Prophet behold I send to you my son of Israel who from the dead has gone out to the earth to be a shepherd to the firstborn of the kingdom of God as it is written in Isaiah the

prophet behold I send my son of Isaiah to the firstborn of the kingdom of God my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make ready the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of the sins. And all the country of Judea was going out to him

and all the people of Jerusalem, and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. And John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey. And he was preaching and saying, After me, one is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

So... Basically, the gospel starts off with what's going to be led into the ministry of Jesus. And what you're going to see when you read through Mark is that Mark goes into detail, but he skips a bunch of things that the other gospels will tell you about that really don't grow your knowledge about Jesus, being that Messiah, being that servant, being our Lord and Savior. So, it starts off with Jesus having the cousin of John the Baptist.

And we started off with Isaiah the prophet and what was shared about what was going to come. When the Messiah would come. And, you know, he said, Behold, I send a messenger before your face who will prepare your way. So, he's preparing the way of the Lord coming. And, you know, when you're dealing with dignitaries and kings and people like that, there's normally a group of people who go out

and prepare the way. Prepare the path that they're gonna walk. Make sure everything is ready for this person to come. And that's exactly what John the Baptist did. He appeared to preach a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. So, what he was doing was he was getting everybody's hearts ready to understand that the way that we've been approaching,

you know, this life really is an error. We need, even though they had the law, they weren't really treating it the way God intended. God intended the law to show them that they really couldn't get there. They couldn't get to God through the law. But the teaching of that time was, oh yeah, you can, and this is how you'll do it. But John the Baptist came and shared

that you really need your heart changed, and you need to repent of your sins and seek after God. So John did all of his ministry out in the countryside.

His... His... His... His clothing was kind of unique, kind of made him like an Elijah. At least that's my picture of him. You know, wearing rough clothes, this belt, eating things that I would think is pretty crazy. But, and maybe the rest of the folks thought that too. But he spoke the word, and he drew folks in to, and these were folks from all over Judea and Jerusalem.

Everybody was coming to see what's going on. I think it's kind of like, you know, our perspective of the end times today. You know, we kind of expect something to happen. We don't know when it's going to happen. But back then, they had the idea that the Messiah was to come. And... And so when they saw John the Baptist, they might have thought of him, and they did at times think that he was the Messiah.

And he was pretty clear that he is the Messiah. He was preparing the way for the Messiah, who had said, you know, he is one coming after me that is mightier than I, and I'm not even fit to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. He says, I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Which, you know, you think about that. We, you know, what did these folks think about the Holy Spirit?

You know, when John shared that with them. Here he is baptizing them. They're understanding what John is saying. But I doubt they grasped this baptism of the Holy Spirit thing. And so after that, it came about in those days, verse 9, that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And immediately coming out of the water, he saw the heavens open and the spirits,

spirit like a dove descending upon him, and a voice came out of the heavens. Thou art my beloved Son. In thee I am well pleased. So basically, John had done all this preparation. And we know from the word that Jesus needed to come to fulfill prophecy that he needed to be baptized also. And we know from the other gospels that John goes, I shouldn't be baptizing you.

Jesus said, yes, to fulfill all that's written. So he was baptized. And when he was baptized, the Holy Spirit came upon him. And, you know, that was, that spelled out in three of the gospels really clearly. And, you know, I have always, before I really dug into this, I'd really wondered, did people hear God speak from heaven? Thou art my beloved Son, and in thee I am well pleased.

But the fact that this is written in three different gospels tells me, yes, they heard that. Everyone in the area heard that. And it would be my guess that they also saw this, this dove-like spirit coming down and resting on Jesus. So, pretty exciting and different times were going on when, when Jesus came. Now, the next section is basically about the temptation that Jesus has

with, through Satan. And it's only two verses in this section. It says, And immediately the Spirit impelled him to go out to the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness for forty days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild beasts and the angels were ministering to him. And that's all we hear about that. If you want more information on the temptation,

you really need to go to the other gospels. Again, because although it's important that Jesus was tempted and he didn't fail, it really isn't. It really isn't where Mark was trying to go. He's trying to get you to hear what, what Jesus, who Jesus really is as it pertains to you and as it pertains to him being a servant. You know, I was, I was thinking, you know, the hearts of the people

were being softened and prepared for Jesus. John tried to communicate who Jesus was, by comparing him to himself. But he makes it clear, maybe as mud, that the baptism is, is on a different plane. The one that they were involved with was on a completely different plane. Because Jesus is with the Holy Spirit. And so, in between, you know, the next set of verses here,

14 through 20, if you were to look at the chapter, I mean, the book of John, there's a lot of things that go on. John, you know, Mark isn't telling you everything. Mark is getting the meat that he wants to get across. But I did some looking, and in between this and the next section, starting in verse 14, there's, if you were to read John 1.19, through 4.54, all of that sort of thing happened.

And it talks about, more detail about John the Baptist and his disciples. It's when Jesus first started to request some of his disciples to follow him. The wedding at Cana occurred. The cleanup of the temple, when he went in and he took care of the money changers. He was teaching and healing. And Jesus had the encounter with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman at the well,

and the healing of the official's sick son. But Jesus was about teaching those who wanted to hear, listen, and follow. All things that we should be considering when we're reading the word. What is Jesus trying to get across to us as we read this? So, verse 14 through 20. And after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God,

saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, and repent and believe in the gospel. And as he was going along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And they immediately left the nets and followed him.

And going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who were also in the boat, mending the nets. And he immediately called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and went away to follow Jesus, follow him. So, basically, Jesus was out. This is the, if you will, the section that kind of covers all his teaching and what was going on, the things that we didn't see from the other gospels, but it's just kind of a continuation so we see that we had four of the disciples being asked to follow him.

And you get the impression from reading the other gospels as well as this, that there was some time that went on to draw all these men together. And Jesus was building this group of twelve so that he could, really pour into their lives so that they could become the disciples that would go on when Jesus passed and was raised from the dead, that they would, they would go on to teach the gospel and get it across to all of us. So, the next section is, verse 21 through 28, and what goes on there is, it shows that he has power over the demons. And they went to Capernaum and immediately, I'm missing a page, on the Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and began to teach.

And they were amazed at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as the scribes. And just then, there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit and he cried out saying, what do we have to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him saying, be quiet and come out of him.

And throwing him into convulsions, the unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice and came out of him. And they were all amazed, so that they debated among themselves saying, what is this? A new teaching with authority? He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him. And immediately the news about him went out everywhere into all the surrounding district of Galilee.

So, here he is, this is the Sabbath, you know, the Jews, all of them pretty well adhered to the Sabbath. And so, they couldn't travel much. They would, they would go to the synagogue and hear teaching. But in this situation, they went in and Jesus being there, he began to teach. Now they did things differently than we do. They would actually ask folks in the sanctuary to,

if they felt led to shame, if they felt led to share, they would share. And Jesus shared. And he shared as one with authority. Because, you know, when you consider all the other teachers that these folks had, they were all scribes and Pharisees. And what they would do is they would not teach the word like they knew the word. They would teach the word like they knew

what someone else had taught about the word. And so, they would always reference the, the person that they, they were telling about. You know, this person told, you know, reads the word like this. And so, and they would do that over and over where Jesus just taught the word. And, what a different, different learning was going on when Jesus taught the word. But,

in the midst of that, you have an unclean spirit. And I think that that's interesting that there was an unclean spirit in the synagogue at that point. And, you know, he, he tries to disrupt Jesus from what he's doing. And, Jesus just tells him to be quiet, calm, come out of him. And, if you can imagine what was going on in the people's minds that were watching,

all of a sudden they saw this man who they knew was special because of all the things that were being said about him and all the miracles that he's already performed. But, to basically call an evil spirit out of someone. No one had ever seen that. Not like what Jesus did. And so, they had an incredible experience and Jesus just kept teaching. And that's one of the things

that, you know, when you look at what the word is telling us, we need to be in the word all the time. So that we can hear from God because he really does desire to talk to us. He wants to commune with us just like he did with Adam and Eve back in the garden. And, sometimes in our busy world we, and in our distorted world, because, you know, you don't, until you come to know Jesus, you, you don't even grasp that God wants to really know us.

But, because of what Jesus did by coming and living amongst us and going through all the things that he did, we now, we can know, we can know God. We can know what he wants us to be about. And, that's so foreign to our world but it's exactly what our world needs because our world is running to and fro getting all kinds of, just getting wrapped up in sin. And, they don't even know that it's sin.

And, some cases they do and they want to ignore that. But, in many cases, I can remember when I first came to know the Lord, it was, some of the things, I was like, all of a sudden, oh, I'm not supposed to do that. And, and it really had more to do with how I dealt with other people. You know, I needed to be loving the way Jesus was loving to us. And, that's a hard thing

to fathom and to actually push through in your life. But, the cool thing is you don't have to do this on your own. We have a Savior who is taking care of that for us. And, as long as we desire that and we're obeying, trying to obey Him the best we can, He will help us accomplish what He wants us to accomplish. And, that's what He wants us to accomplish. So,

so they were in the, you gotta remember they were in the synagogue. And, uh, so, the next thing that goes on is after they were in, in the synagogue and, and you gotta remember that the, the Sabbath day is a late afternoon, early evening to the late afternoon, early evening. The day is when the sun goes down and when the sun comes up. And, uh, I guess, so, they left and it says in verse 29, and immediately after they had come out of the synagogue, they came into the house of Simon and Andrew and James and John, with James and John.

Now, Simon's mother-in-law was lying sick with a fever and immediately they spoke to him about her. And, he came to her and raised her up taking her by the hand and the fever left her and she waited on them. And, when evening had come after the sun had set, they began bringing to him all who were ill and those who were demon-possessed. And, the whole city had gathered at the door.

And, he healed many who were ill with various diseases and cast out the demons to speak because they knew who he was. But, I like this next section. And, in the early morning while it was still dark, he arose and went out and departed to a lonely place and was praying there. And, Simon and his companions hunted for him and they found him and they said to him, everyone is looking for you.

And, he said to them, let us go to the towns nearby in order that I may preach there also for that is what I came out for. And, he went into their synagogues throughout all Galilee preaching and casting out the demons. Jesus was all about helping others. But, he wanted to help others by helping them know what God really desired of them. And, God wanted them to live.

And, I think it's it's an awesome thing to consider that Jesus after going till late in the night because it sounds like everybody was there. Now, the towns weren't huge but people from everywhere were coming to have Jesus heal them. And, so, it's really important to get up in the early morning and go off and have a quiet time with the Father. How important that is for us.

We need to do the same thing. I realize sometimes our schedules don't allow that or appear not to allow that. But, that is so important as planned because He will show you what the day is going to bring. And, in those cases where He doesn't show you, He will guide you through the day so that you do know how to handle things. So, the last little section here,

verse 40 says, you can make me clean and move with compassion. He stretched out His hand and touched Him and said to Him, I am willing to be clean, cleansed. And, immediately the leprosy left Him and He was cleansed. And, He sternly warned Him cleansing what Moses commanded for a testimony to them. But he went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news about it to such an extent

that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city but stayed out in unpopulated areas, and they were coming to him from everywhere.

You know, when you read about that little story, I mean, so many pieces of this puzzle were put together way back a long time ago when Moses was telling us from what God said how things were supposed to be laid out. And if you remember, leprosy was kind of a, it was kind of seen as a sin just because it just gnaws at your body. And no one was supposed to touch a leper. A leper was supposed to stay at a distance, and while they stayed at a distance, if they came around people, they were supposed to yell out that unclean, unclean, so that no one would be caught off guard and would get too close.

But this leper realized that he was dealing with Jesus, and Jesus could heal him. You know, everything that I've ever read, everything that I've ever found, was that no one had ever really been cleansed of leprosy. So this, that law that was given way back in, I think it's Deuteronomy, was written for this man, which I just think is totally awesome. We have a God who thinks big picture, and he's looking at thousands of years down the road and set, set things up just so that Jesus could touch this man, heal him, and he could then be healed of something that hadn't been healed from, of before.

And the only negative thing that was done here was that the guy didn't listen to Jesus. He was so excited about what had happened, he went and he told everybody. And the negative of that was that, more and more people wanted to come around and be with Jesus, and wanted to be healed. Which, not a bad thing, but it made it so Jesus couldn't move around. It was getting really unsafe to be out and about.

So, that's our, that's the end of this section. And the takeaway, from my perspective, is Jesus is the real deal. He is God in the flesh, and very much at odds with the religious teaching of the time. That was one of the big things that Jesus did. He was trying to teach people what the Word said, not what the religious teachers had been teaching. And, you know, to think about it,

to not be at odds with Jesus, we will probably be at odds with Jesus. And, you know, to think about it, to not be at odds with Jesus, we will probably be at odds with Jesus. And, you know, to think about it, to not be at odds with Jesus. He was trying to teach you what the Word said, but not that the Word said. Jesus wants us to have a genuine desire to follow God

as He was teaching, which comes from the Word. So, with that, let's pray and have an awesome week. Lord Jesus, thank You for your Word. Thank you so much for all You've done, and thank you for your support. for us the story that the mark is sharing about you so that we can grasp that you are the Son of God but even in being the Son of God and being the Messiah the one who died for our sins you're the servant the servant God who

really was exampling what we're supposed to be living and so I just pray that Lord we we desire to be servants like you and and really touch other people's lives just by desiring to serve them we thank you so much for all you've done and we just ask that you would work in and through our lives so that we can share this message of joy and hope with everyone we come in contact with it doesn't know you Lord lead and guide us and watch over and keep us we love you and we praise you in Jesus name Amen have a great week