Walk Through the New Testaments: Mark

Scripture Texts: Mark 1:1-3, 11, 17-21; 10:44-45; 15:37-39

Introduction.

Who is Jesus?  That is a question that has been asked countless thousands of times by myriads of people.  It gets addressed in books, on magazine covers, in conferences and seminars.  And the answers all over the place.

Jesus was a teacher, even a great teacher, a rabbi, a philosopher, a sage, a social justice warrior, a visionary, a miracle worker, a healer, an end times prophet.  By the world, there are lots of Jesus’, hundreds of Jesus’.

What is the truth about Jesus?  Who should you listen to?  An excellent place to start would be to listen to the eye witnesses, those who knew Jesus personally, those who were his followers.

This leads us to the unique writings that open the New Testament.  The four Gospels are objectively true records of the events and words of Jesus’ life on earth.  They tell us what actually happened and what Jesus actually said.

As I have said before each Gospel presents a portrait or perspective of Jesus from a slightly different angle, but all four of them (along with the epistles that follow) portray the same recognizable man.  As one writer said, this “makes Jesus a unique figure in world literature: never have so many writers managed to convey the same impression of the same human being over and over again” (Thomas Cahill).