Let me see. Okay. Alright, so welcome to week two of the Gospel of Mark. I'm very excited to get started into reading the text. I want to say hello to those in LA and Corona and all that stuff. I mean, we want to make them feel welcomed. You know, they're part of our church too, so I want to say hi.

Shout out to them. So, let's start off with a word of prayer and then we're going to get started. Okay, so let's pray. Father God, we thank you again so much for tonight and just allowing us to study your word once again. We thank you, Lord, that you have out of your love and your grace to us, Lord, you have left us with your word so that, Father, we may know the mind of our Lord and Savior, that we may know the heart that he has and to be amazed, Lord God, at the tremendous work of Jesus Christ.

And, Lord, I pray that the study of the Gospel of Mark would only heighten that kind of amazement, that kind of love for Jesus and that ultimately, Lord God, we would respond in a manner that would be pleasing to you. I pray, Lord God, just for tonight, we pray for attentive minds and attentive hearts, Lord.

Some of us have come from just a long day at work. Some of us have come from just a long day of just chores or whatnot. Lord, our minds can be fatigued, but Lord, we ask for your blessing that you would strengthen us so that, Lord, we may, again, be at full optimum capacity, Lord God, to understand your word.

And so, Father, we again thank you for tonight and may you bless it and very much fruit for your glory. We praise your name. Amen. All right. So just a quick review over last week. Last week we covered the authorship of Mark and just that the purpose of Mark and the various patterns that we found in the Gospel of Mark.

We know that the author of the Gospel of Mark is John Mark. We found him all throughout Acts. We found him in some of the letters of Paul and the letters of Peter. And as a result of our study, we realized and come to a realization that he was a ministry partner of Paul, even though initially he kind of got off on the wrong foot.

But he ended up getting reconciled with him. And on top of that, he was considered like the spiritual son of the apostle Peter. So that's the author of Mark. That's who he is. We also covered the threefold purpose of Mark and we found that in Mark 1.1. And we're going to go over it, we're going to go over with that in more details.

So we're not going to have to review over that right now. And we talked about the various patterns that we found in the Gospel of Mark. We talked about those, like the "go" gospel, right? Jesus is always on the move, immediately comes up abundantly in the Gospel of Mark.

We also talked about how Mark is filled with great details. And we're going to see that in Mark 3, Mark chapter 3 verses 1 through 6. And kind of highlight the emotions that Jesus exhibited in that chapter. And so that's what we reviewed over last week. I mean, you guys wrote your notes, so I don't think we have to go into much more details in regards to that.

So we're going to jump into like the new material. Any questions? No questions, right? Okay, good. I did my job last week. All right, the outline of Mark. There's a lot of different outlines that you'll find in various commentaries in regards to the Gospel of Mark. Some try to go by themes, try to outline the Gospel of Mark by themes.

But I think one of the things that makes the outline in the Gospel of Mark more clear is the fact that it's based upon movements, geographical movements, if I could describe it in that way. And so what we have here in the first box over there in the bottom left, chapter 1, verse 1 until verse 13, we find Jesus in Judea or in Jerusalem.

As you guys read, he was located in there. That's where he got baptized. That's where he was cast out into the wilderness. We'll talk about that. And then after verse 13, starting from verse 14 of chapter 1 until the end of chapter 9, Jesus is in Galilee. He's doing ministry in Galilee.

And yeah, so from chapter 1 to 14 until 9 to the end of chapter 9, we have Jesus just doing ministry in Galilee. Chapter 10 of Gospel of Mark is the hinge of the Gospel. That's when everything shifts geographically, and Jesus begins his way down to Jerusalem for one final time.

And then from chapter 11 all the way up into chapter 16, verse 8, everything takes place in Jerusalem. Okay, takes place in Jerusalem. And so that's just a basic outline of the Gospel of Mark. That way it's something that it's easy to kind of keep in your mind just by location and geography and just tracking Jesus's ministry.

And so when we take note of this outline, one of the things that we begin to realize is that most of Jesus's ministry took place in Galilee, right? More than half of the Gospel of Mark is in Galilee. And so again, it's really interesting that that's taking place because Galilee is not really known to be a scholastic center of society.

In fact, Galilee probably consists more of farmers and fishermen, right? So there's not much scholarly work being done in Galilee, but the Lord Jesus is found doing ministry mainly in that region. And so it's understandable, it's understandable that in John chapter 7, verse 40 to 52, that people were in disbelief that Jesus, who was considered a prophet, would actually come from a place like Galilee, a place of just fishermen and farmers.

And so with that being said, this geographical emphasis upon Galilee in the Gospel of Mark really indicates that Jesus's focus wasn't really upon those who were upright or scholarly, but his heart, his desire to serve was really with sinners. And we'll see that in Mark chapter 2, verse 17.

The servant of Yahweh came to serve the sick and the sinful. Any questions so far? You guys are just like, the movements and all that stuff. We're gonna be, we're gonna, I'm gonna pound this guys, pound this into you guys over the weeks, but that's, that's gonna be really important to help you guys kind of flesh out the Gospel of Mark.

There are more context clues that points to the fact that the Gospel of Mark is really centered upon geographical movements. Like I said, there's other outlines out there that try to emphasize the themes of the Gospel of Mark as being the structure, but there's more context clues that point to geographical movements as being the basis of the structure.

Yes? Okay, sorry, I thought someone was asked a question, but... And so there are additional context clues, and, and, oh yeah, so anyways, the context clues are basically the the fourth, four withdrawals and returns found in the Gospel of Mark that take place prior to Jesus's final trip to Jerusalem.

And so what we have right here is, in chapter 4, verse 35, it starts off by saying, he, you know, they're going to the other side. Let us go to the other side. Again, that's a withdrawal in Galilee, going to a different location. Chapter 6, verse 30, says, "Come away by yourself to a secluded place and rest a while." That's the second withdrawal.

Chapter 7, verse 24, starts off with, "Jesus got up and went away from there to the region of Tyre." Again, emphasis upon the withdrawal from Galilee to the region of Tyre. And then chapter 8, verse 13, also mentions, again, going to the other side. And so again, there's context clues within the Gospel of Mark that really point to geographical movements.

And so, yeah, a little picture of Jesus walking away with his disciples. And so as we see with the various withdrawal accounts, we see that Jesus is the one that's setting the agenda. Right? Jesus is the one that's saying, let's go to this place. Let's go to this place.

Let's go to this place. Let's go to this place. But one thing that connects all four of them is the fact that they always return back to Galilee, except for the last one, the last withdrawal. And so again, the emphasis of these geographical movements indicate that Mark is not really focused upon emphasizing Jesus's time in the temple.

We know from the other Gospels that Jesus made frequent trips down to Jerusalem for various festivals, various feasts, because Jesus Christ is a good Jew. He was a perfect Jew. But Mark doesn't take time to note this. In fact, the reason why is because he wants to emphasize Jerusalem as being a special location, especially in regards to the Passion Week.

And so that's one of the reasons why the trips down to Jerusalem are not emphasized in the Gospel of Mark. Okay? So again, that's the basic outline of the Gospel of Mark. So what are the chapters where Jesus is in Galilee? What are the chapters where he's in Galilee?

Huh? 1 through 9. Very good. There you go. From the back. And where is he-- what's the point of chapter 10? What's the emphasis or what's the important thing about chapter 10? Right, he's turning towards Jerusalem. And then from chapter 11 on, he's in Jerusalem, right? And so again, just keep that in mind.

It's a very easy outline. It'll help you guys as you just conduct your own study in the Gospel of Mark. So what we're going to do now is that we're going to get into the text. Okay? And we're going to start with Mark 1.1. I already know I kind of covered the trifold purpose of the Gospel of Mark with you last week.

But there's also other details that I want to share with you guys in regards to just the purpose of Mark and just this verse in particular. We know Mark 1.1 states, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." And unlike the other Gospels, like Matthew and Luke, Mark is not emphasizing the beginning of Jesus's life.

He's not emphasizing his genealogy or his birthplace. Rather, Mark just wants to get to-- wants to begin at the very start of Jesus's ministry. And the reason why is because, again, one of the themes of the Gospel of Mark is depicting Jesus as the servant of God, or the servant of Yahweh.

And because his focus is upon his service, it doesn't make sense to start off at his beginnings of his birth, but to begin at the beginning of his ministry. And so that's one of the reasons why we don't have a genealogy in the Gospel of Mark. That's not his focus.

His focus is simply upon depicting Jesus as the servant of Yahweh. Secondly, we go into the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Without the good news of Jesus Christ, the purpose of the Gospel of Mark is lost. And as we all know, good news cannot be truly good unless there's bad news.

And the bad news is kind of depicted in John the Baptist's ministry. I'm not saying his ministry is bad. I'm just saying that his call for repentance and to seek forgiveness is going to lack, and up until Jesus Christ comes onto the scene. And so the Gospel of Jesus Christ is going to address the issues of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, as you'll see in the Gospel of Mark.

Okay, slow down. Yeah, all right. Okay. All right. So again, the first point is the fact that John Mark wants to focus on the service of the servanthood of Jesus. Secondly, he wants to focus on the Gospel of Jesus. And thirdly, he wants to talk about Christ being the Son of God.

And so we know that Jesus is known as the Christ to the Gentiles or or to the Jews he's known as the Messiah. Both words mean the anointed one. Okay. And I think one of the most unique things that we'll find in the Gospel of Mark is the fact that Mark uses both titles of Christ and the Son of God in this book to the Gentiles.

And that's really unique because Christ, again, is a title that really resonates with Gentiles. They don't really, I mean, they probably have an understanding of the Jewish background, but it doesn't hold much significance if you call Jesus the Messiah. But the title of Christ is something that's significant to them.

And the fact that he calls him the Son of God is also significant. And the reason why is because it's like the highest title that he could give to Jesus. It's the highest title given to Jesus Christ and given the positioning of the title so early on in the book, right, in verse one of chapter one, indicates that Mark really wants to emphasize that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

And again, one of the one of the unique things about the book is that there's a bookend, right, there's a bookend to this where the title of Son of God is being used at the beginning, but also at the end, especially after Jesus dies. The centurion cries out that he is truly the Son of God.

And so with many Gentiles serving multiple idols, it's safe to assume that Mark is making clear that Jesus Christ is the only Son of God worthy to be shared, worthy to be proclaimed. And so he gets there, Mark gets the Gentiles' attention right off the bat by using the title Son of God.

And so again, there's a lot of importance with this one verse. It sets the tone for the rest of the book, and that's one of the reasons why I kind of want to go into more depth more than last week in regards to that. All right, any questions so far?

All right, I can move on to the next slide. All right, we're going to move on. Mark chapter two, or Mark chapter two, Mark chapter one, verse two and three is the only reference to the Old Testament in the Gospel of Mark. Again, the reason why is because, again, John Mark's emphasis is towards the Gentiles.

But he uses this passage from the Old Testament in order to introduce John the Baptist's ministry. And as we see here, that the ministry of John the Baptist is pretty simple and clear. His message was of one of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. All right, we see that in verse four.

And so there's a little difference in the Gospel of Mark and its depiction of John the Baptist's message and in the Gospel of Matthew, where in Matthew chapter two, or Matthew chapter three, verse two, it states, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And again, that's something different because, again, Matthew's focused on Jews, Mark is focused on Gentiles.

But as we continue on, what we'll see is that as John is preaching this message of repentance and forgiveness of sins, and as he's baptizing people, we see in verse five, right, in verse five, it says, "And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem.

And they were being baptized by him," John the Baptist, "in the Jordan River, confessing their sins." And I think that's something that's really unique because when he's talking about all the people of Jerusalem are coming out, he's including the Pharisees and the religious leaders of that time. John the Baptist's ministry was garnering a lot of attention, and so they want to get a piece of it, right?

They want to be a part of that movement. And so they come out, they want to get baptized, right? But one of the key things that they have to do for those who are going to get baptized is they have to confess their sins publicly. You know, they have to make a public confession of their sins.

And while Mark doesn't give away many details in the exchange between John the Baptist and the Pharisees, like we see in Matthew chapter 3, verse 7 and 12, he calls them like a brood of vipers and all that stuff, I mean, that was kind of like the main sticking point between John the Baptist and the Pharisees.

They would not confess their sins publicly. And as a result, as a result, they couldn't be baptized. Again, confessing their sins publicly for the Pharisees would be a tremendous blow to them, because a lot of them based their whole, their whole livelihood on the fact that they're righteous before God.

And so what we see here is like, we have John the Baptist preaching confession of sin and baptizing people. We see the crowd and they are confessing their sins, that they're being baptized. We have the Pharisees and the religious leaders there who are unwilling to confess, yet want to be baptized.

And then we go to verse 10, or verse 9. We go to verse 9, and it says, "In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan." So now we have Jesus, and here's Jesus with no confession, and he was baptized. No confession, and yet he was baptized.

Now imagine how the Pharisees must have felt in seeing this. Here you have the religious leaders, they're making their whole spiel about they're righteous and that they have like, you know, no sin before God. And because they have no sin before God, they have no sins to confess, and as a result, John the Baptist won't baptize them.

And yet you're here, here you have this man coming from Galilee, a land of farmers and fishermen, he comes in, and without a single confession of sin, he's baptized in the eyes of the Pharisees. Can you imagine just the anger that the Pharisees must have felt when they saw this happen?

They got upstaged by a Galilean. You know, and that's embarrassing. That was shame in their eyes. And yet the Pharisees, the reason why they felt that way is because they don't know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. They deny him. They deny the fact that he's the Son of God.

So even though Jesus was in the human flesh and had no sins to confess, John still baptized them because he is the Son of God with no sin. As you see in verse 10, or verse 9 through 11, we come to Jesus' baptism. And not much is detailed in the baptism, unlike the other Gospels, right?

I mean, the other Gospel accounts, we see Jesus and John kind of interacting with one another, you know, John's like, "I can't baptize you," and Jesus is like, "No, you have to baptize me." But Mark doesn't really go into that. And why? Again, John's dead-eye purpose is to emphasize the servanthood of Jesus Christ, and he wants to get straight into the ministry of Jesus Christ.

And so it's clear that the emphasis in Mark chapter 1, verse 9 through 11, is really upon the anointing of Jesus Christ and the beginning of his ministry. This is the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as you see in Mark chapter 1, verse 1. Now, so what happens after he gets baptized?

After he gets baptized, he's initiated by the anointing of the Holy Spirit that enables Jesus to perform the miracles. It doesn't mean that Jesus couldn't perform miracles before the baptism, it's just that he subjected himself to wait until the baptism for these miracles to be enacted. But what we also see in verse 10 is that he says, "Immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opening, and a spirit like a dove descending upon him." In other translations, it's translated as "seeing the heavens being torn open." Being torn open.

And now that word "torn open" in the Greek is a very vivid term. It's the same word being used in Mark chapter 15, verse 38, where it's depicting the veil being torn at Jesus's death. And so the tearing effect that we see coming from the heavens where Jesus is, after he's baptized and God sending down the the Holy Spirit and declaring to him, "You are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased." It represents a battle cry.

A battle cry against Satan. It's like a warning shot to Satan saying, "Here I am." The ministry of Jesus Christ is twofold. It's bringing salvation to the lost, which I believe all of us here can affirm. But it's also an affirmation of Jesus's mission to destroy the ministry of Satan.

And so this act of tearing open the heavens illustrates Jesus's official act of war against the prince of the power of the air. Like we talked about before, when we talked about the patterns of the book, we have immediate movement, just like this lecture tonight. We're going to be moving a lot immediately.

And we move on to the wilderness, right? Immediately the Spirit impelled him to grow out into the wilderness, as verse 12 says. And after the anointing of the Holy Spirit, after Jesus was baptized, he was driven by the Holy Spirit to face Satan in the wilderness. Now in the other gospel accounts, the 40 days of fasting and the three temptations of Satan are kind of separated, right?

You have the 40 days of fasting first, and then you have the three temptations from Satan. But because Mark's focus is upon, again, the actions of Jesus Christ, the service of Jesus Christ, the wilderness and the temptation accounts are kind of just mashed together. They're kind of combined. And so one of the things that he wants to emphasize in this passage, in this aspect of Jesus in the wilderness, is to really show Jesus being in a position of ultimate dependence upon God the Father.

Again, you just had the battle cry, right? You just had Jesus' baptism and the heavens being torn open, and God saying, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." And immediately the next scene that we see is Jesus being dependent upon the Father. It's not Jesus taking the battle upon himself, which he could, but he's depicting for us an example of how we too should be dependent upon God the Father.

So being placed in an area where wild animals are roaming around, and also battling the presence of Satan with his three temptations and physical hunger, Jesus Christ, the servant of Yahweh, the servant of God, had only one option. He had to utter dependence upon the Father. There we go.

That's my main point. All right. And so, and that's where we end with chapter 1, verse 13. Again, we cover the geographical movements, chapter 1, verse 1, all the way up until chapter 1, verse 13, Jesus is in Jerusalem, right? And now he's going to be moving on up, starting from here, Mark chapter 1, verse 14, up until to Mark chapter 9.

He's gonna be in Galilee now. And so, Mark chapter 1, verse 14 through 45, I titled it "The Beginnings." "The Beginnings." I think the reason why I titled it "The Beginnings" was because I think "X-Men First Class" came out that weekend, and I was kind of thinking like, "Oh, the beginnings of the X-Men." And I was like, "Oh, this is gonna be like the beginnings of, you know, Jesus Christ's ministry." So I titled it "The Beginnings." I know it sounds kind of lame, but just want to give you guys the context of how I came to that title.

But it's "The Beginnings." What we see here is John the Baptist is no longer doing ministry because he's in jail. And Jesus is beginning to preach the gospel, specifically the gospel of God. And we're going to go over that. Interesting. Yes, okay. The kingdom of God, okay, yeah, so the gospel of God that we find here is, entails a message that the kingdom of God is at hand.

Again, we had the contrast of the kingdom of heaven in the gospel of Matthew, and now we have the kingdom of God in the gospel of Mark. And so the kingdom of God, that term, is mentioned 14 times in the gospel of Mark. It's mentioned 14 times. And so the kingdom of God is something that's really important, something to keep in mind, especially as we get into the later chapters of Mark, especially when he's in Jerusalem, and he's going to do the majority of his teaching there.

But that will be something that we want to take note of. And so we see in verse 15, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel." And so Jesus' teaching ministry begins, and in the midst of all that, we're also seeing him gather his disciples, right?

Seeing him gather his disciples. And we see in verse 16 through 20 that Jesus is going along by the Sea of Galilee, and he saw Simon and Andrew casting a net in a sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men." And so we see here the beginning of his call to the first disciples.

And something that we want to note here is the fact that they immediately responded to Jesus' call. There was no second guessing, there was no, like, "Oh, I need to take time to think about this." You know, a lot of us Asians, we began to analyze this paralysis, you know?

We had to make a decision, we're analyzing it all different angles, and then all of a sudden it's like it's too late to make a decision, you know? But not with these first disciples of Jesus Christ, you know? He made--Jesus called them out, he said, "Follow me and I will make you fishers of men." And they're like, "I'm on board, I'm jumping off this boat, and I'm following you." And so that's something that's unique, and something that maybe we too should consider in our own lives.

How, you know, when the Bible makes it clear to us what we need to do, to respond immediately, but we'll move on. We also see that there's a promise being made to them, to these disciples. Jesus promises to them that he will make them fishers of men. And again, Jesus promised that he's going to transform them.

It's a promise that we find in ourselves too. Jesus promised us to transform us, to sanctify us, to be more like Christ. And to find that that is the motivation for the disciples to follow Jesus is telling of their heart for the Lord and Savior. Moving on, Mark chapter 1 verse 21 to 28, what we see there is Jesus's kind of first incident where he's teaching in the synagogues.

And we see here that he's being authoritative, and he's catching the astonishment of the synagogue crowd, even though it appears that Jesus has a lack of training, which is kind of hard to believe considering that Jesus was probably the one, you know, he's the center of the Old Testament.

He knows what he's talking about. And so we see here again, just the astonishment that the people in the crowd had for his teaching. And while everyone is kind of surprised by the authority in which Jesus taught, the one thing they didn't realize was that there's a demon-possessed man in their midst.

And that's kind of interesting. You know, I mean, who knows, like the guy sitting next to you might be demon-possessed. You know, I mean, that's just, I don't know, that's just really interesting to me. It's like that no one really noticed that there was a demon-possessed man sitting next to them.

And yet, there he is in the synagogue. So it appears that the demon was in full control of the man. And it's also noteworthy just the kind of reaction that he had to Jesus's teaching, calling him the Holy One of God. Again, Jesus never called out the demons. He never like said, like, "Come hither demons, I will cast you out." Right?

Rather, Jesus taught the Word of God, and the demon responded. And what we see here is great power to go along with his teachings as he casts out that demon from that man. Notice the immediacy in which he cast him out too. There was no battle between Jesus and the demon.

Jesus owned the demon. The beginnings of Jesus Christ continues on as he heals Peter's mother-in-law. And there's many other healings and exercising of demons going on. In Mark chapter 1, verse 35 to 39, we see the importance of prayer. In the midst of Jesus's busy ministry, we see in verse 35, "In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, went away to a secluded place, and was praying there." Now, Jesus is a remarkable servant, is he not?

I mean, he's going around healing people, teaching people, you know, casting out demons. And yet he still gets up early in the morning to pray because he's utterly dependent upon the Father, as we saw in Mark chapter 1. As he's out praying, the disciples are concerned, and they're looking for him, and they find him, and say, "Everyone's looking for you." But instead of Jesus complying to their demands of the people, he says to the disciples, "Let us go somewhere else to the towns nearby, so that I may preach there also, for that is what I came for." Jesus set the agenda.

And that's something to be amazed about, because considering he's a servant of God, yet he's also the son of God, and he had to fulfill his purpose. We go to the end of chapter 1, and we see here the account of the leper being healed. In here, I want to just, you know, the leper came by faith.

Jesus was moved with compassion and healed him. And then in verse 43, this is something that's really unique here. In verse 43, he says, "And he sternly warned him, and immediately sent him away." I think some translations call it like, "He was angry with him." And perhaps the reason why Jesus was angry with him, or gave him a stern warning in regards to not telling people of what's going, of what happened, or to go straight to the temple to show him that the leprosy has been removed, is that he knows the leper's tendency to be disobedient.

Back then, if you had leprosy, it was usually a sign from God that you were disobedient, you disobeyed the law. And so perhaps this man did something to to incur that kind of disease. And so Jesus knew this man was disobedient, and yet by faith he came, and Jesus healed him.

And Jesus wanted him to go to the temple to show him, to show the priest at that time that the leprosy has been healed. I don't know the exact reference in the Old Testament, but there is a process in which if a leper was healed of his leprosy, there's a process in which he has to go through in which the priest would be able to affirm that he's been healed.

Now, if my memory serves me right, I don't think in history, at least during this time, there was no one that has been fully healed from leprosy, right, outside of God's help, God's divine intervention. And so basically what Jesus wanted him to do was to go back to the temple and basically give a heads up to the priest, "Hey, this man's leprosy was healed.

There's something going on here. The Son of God is in your midst." And yet, Jesus' assessment of the leper was correct, because instead of obeying the commands of Christ, saying that, "See that you, you know, see that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded," instead of doing that, this former leper went out and began to proclaim it freely and to spread the news around to such an extent that Jesus could no longer publicly enter a city but stayed out in unpopulated areas.

And so again, this was, sometimes we take this and we're like, "Oh, he was so happy. He was spreading the gospel." He was not spreading the gospel. He disobeyed the commands of Christ. And so, despite the disobedience, despite Jesus probably already knowing that he was going to disobey him, he still healed him.

And again, that kind of, that shows you the servant of Christ. So there we end with chapter one, and we have a chapter and six verses to go. All right. Any questions so far? Just, any questions? I know you guys probably don't want to stop me while I'm on my roll right now, but all right.

Moving on. Mark chapter two, verse one, until chapter three, verse six, I title this "The Four Offenses." Again, what we saw before in Mark chapter one, there wasn't much offending going on. And yet, here we are in chapter two, and this is where things start getting a little bit confrontational.

Jesus is about to do things that are not going to make the Pharisees happy, to put it in nicer terms. And so, those are the headings. We're going to, don't worry about them. We're going to cover them right now. The first offense is found in chapter two, verse one through eleven, where it's Jesus healing the paralytic.

And we know this story where Jesus was healing, and people were coming to his home, and there wasn't any room. And so, these four friends brought this paralytic up onto the roof. They cut off the rooftop, and they lowered the paralytic down from the roof. So, we see here in this picture right here.

And as we read the text, the offense wasn't necessarily the healing, right? But the offense took place when, in verse five, it states, "Jesus, seeing the faith, said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'" And some of the religious teachers happened to be in that area when the paralytic was healed.

And they heard Jesus' statement, and they were like, "Why does this man speak that way? He's blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God alone?" So again, according to Jewish background, which is true, only Yahweh is able to forgive sins. And so, they're perceiving Jesus as taking upon the title of Yahweh, which is true.

Jesus is Yahweh. Now, it's not like the scribes were proclaiming this out loud, right? They weren't like going up to Jesus saying, "Hey, you blasphemer. What are you doing this, right?" It says in verse six, "But some of the scribes were sitting there, and their reasoning in their hearts." So this was like an inner discussion among all the scribes.

You know, they're having like a—I'm pretty sure some of us are like, we have these like discussions within us when we're deciding whether to say something to someone else, or we have like inner discussions within us. So these scribes are having the same kind of discussions. And yet, Jesus was aware of their reasoning, and he approached them.

And he says, "Why are you reasoning about these things in your heart?" And so, he approaches them and offends them by saying, "Why are you doing this?" And to prove himself as the Son of Man, right? To prove himself as the Son of Man, again, a phrase that the rulers, the scribes, the religious leaders would know of, he heals the man.

So he had the forgiveness of sins, and then the healing of the paralytic. And this brought a great offense to the Pharisees, or to the scribes and the religious leaders that were there. But take note in verse 12, in verse 12 it says, "And he got up and immediately picked up the pallet and went out in the sight of everyone, so that they were all amazed and were glorifying God, saying, 'We have never seen anything like this.'" And the reason why I say take note of that is because not once did they make reference to the fact that Jesus called himself the Son of Man.

They kind of like, like, like, you know, kind of like that. Like, "Hey, I'm the Son of Man." Kind of went over their heads. They're all amazed at the fact that this paralytic was healed. But that's something to take note of, because Jesus, again, gave many, many instances where he's proclaiming himself to be the Son of Man.

And so that's an example right there. The second offense that we have here is eating with the sinners in chapter 2, verse 13 through 17. In this section, Mark accounts Jesus calling Levi, the tax collector, into his ministry. And, you know, Jesus goes to his home to have a meal.

And the tax collectors, as we, I think some of us may have already know, were despised and seen by Jews as traitors. They were considered on the same levels as prostitutes in regards to their levels of sin, I guess. Same class of sinners as prostitutes. And as a result, it's a great offense to the religious leaders that Jesus Christ, the self-proclaimed Son of God, is eating meals with them.

Again, the most offensive thing a Jew could commit at that time is to associate yourself with known sinners. I think we all know that, like, the religious leaders at that time would take, they wouldn't have any part with prostitutes or with tax collectors. You know, tax collectors were kind of viewed as traitors.

And yet, Jesus had no problem associating himself with them. Again, Jesus made clear that his emphasis, the reason why he is there, is not to be with the righteous, but to be with sinners. And again, that kind of parallels with what John the Baptist did in his ministry, right?

John the Baptist, before you could be baptized, you have to publicly confess your sins. You have to publicly admit you are a sinner. And the Pharisees would not admit that. Now, take that principle and apply it in here. Here, Jesus is saying, "I only came here for sinners." So that's why I'm hanging out with the tax collectors and the prostitutes.

So what does that make the Pharisees, then? Are they not sinners? Right? And so Jesus is like indirectly giving a dig towards them, saying like, "If you just admit that you're sinners, I will be with you." You know? And yet, the Pharisees chose not to. And there's a second offense that Jesus gave to the religious leaders of that time.

The third offense is the neglecting of tradition, of traditions. In this section, John the Baptist's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Back then, some of the religious traditions required some people to fast twice a week. And so it just so happened on that day, the disciples of John the Baptist, which I mean, they should have just followed Jesus, but they didn't, John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting.

They're keeping up with the religious traditions of that day. And they come up to Jesus and they're saying, "Well, how come your disciples aren't fasting?" Trying to get a dig at Jesus' disciples, and Jesus just simply responds, you know, "While the bridegroom is with them, the attendants of the bridegroom cannot fast, can they?

So as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away, and then they will fast on that day." And then he gives the analogy of the new wine, old wineskin, and basically indicating the fact that the reason why Jesus was going, he was going to introduce a new system of worship.

And so the reasons why the disciples of John the Baptist and the Pharisees were fasting is going to be much different after Jesus is done. And so he's going to introduce a brand new system to his followers. So again, he offended the religious leaders, he offended the disciples of John the Baptist now.

So Jesus is like on a roll right now, he's going to, he's offending people left and right. Okay. All right. And finally, finally, sorry, do you guys want to go back to last slide? All right. One, two, three. That was a few seconds, right? All right. Any questions so far?

Any questions? Yes, Derek? Yes, it was a tradition of man. It was something they added on. Something that we're going to see later on with the Sabbath. The Jews are really good at making rules. They're excellent at that. Sometimes when we play Monopoly deal and I'm kind of like, I want to do something and like, that's against the rules.

And sometimes I feel like you're just adding rules to the rule book. But the Jews were very good at adding traditions and even John the Baptist's disciples were prone to that as well. Any other questions? Yes. Yes. Yeah, I think the reason why they were fasting is going to be markedly different than, you know, than for the old system.

The reason why we fast now is mainly to keep us sober physically and spiritually and also to make us, you know, understand that we yearn for something more than what this world has to offer. Obviously with the Pharisees and people who are under the old system, they fasted for other reasons.

But yeah. Okay, good question. Yes. What were the other reasons? Okay. Right. Well, perhaps one of the reasons why they're fasting is because it's a mark of righteousness. We noticed that in, I can't get the verse off the top of my head right now, but the Pharisees would make it known that they were fasting, right?

They would make it known to everyone that like, "Man, today I'm fasting today. Don't give me food." As a means of letting people know like they're being righteous. That was one of the, so that I think that's one of the reasons why they're fasting. Perhaps John the Baptist fell, their disciples fell into that.

And what was your other question? Jesus' disciples? I don't know. I think partly because maybe Jesus was teaching them. I mean, Jesus was teaching his disciples all throughout his ministry too. And so, perhaps that's one of the reasons why they chose not to fast. Because Jesus was saying to them like, "I'm going to introduce a new system for you guys." That could be one of the reasons why too.

So, I'll try to give you a better answer afterwards. So, good question. All right, I'm going to move on now. I'm just kidding. All right, the reason why I'm moving on is because we only have two minutes left and I want to give you guys plenty of time to pray afterwards.

So, good question though. The fourth offense. And this is the one that breaks the camel's back. The fourth offense in chapter 2 verse 23, until chapter 3 verse 6. And it's Jesus clarifying the Sabbath. Here, Jesus challenges the Jewish system of the Sabbath. And we see in verse 23 to 28, Jesus is challenging the Pharisees in their understanding of the Sabbath because the Pharisees accused Jesus' disciples of not upholding the Sabbath while they're plucking ears of corn.

Or ears of grain. All right. And so, Jesus responds to their accusation by by recalling a story of King David when he was fleeing Saul. And David comes to, I think it was a, I want to say a temple, but anyways. So he comes and he's hungry, his men are hungry, and he's eating the bread of, the show bread, as some of the Bible translation calls it, or the bread of presents.

And basically the point of that story that Jesus is recalling to them is that King David needed food to sustain his life. And God, in his grace, allowed a violation of the law to occur because the show bread, or the bread of presents, can only be eaten by the priest.

And so basically he's showing, he's teaching them that God's grace showed that human need overruled ceremonial regulations. And I got that from the commentary that I recommended last week from D. Edmund Hebert. And so human need overruled ceremonial regulation. And so his disciples were hungry, and it happens to be the Sabbath, and so they're working to get their food, working in the Jewish, in Jewish terms.

And the Jews were offended by the fact that they were breaking the Sabbath, which was very sacred to them. Now on top of that, we go in chapter 3 verse 1 and 6, he entered again into the synagogue and inside there was a man with a withered hand. And they were watching him, the Pharisees were watching Jesus to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him.

Again, breaking the Sabbath was a big deal to the Jewish leaders. And so they were watching him. They were watching him with great intent. Yeah, I was trying to think of an analogy right now, but I can't think of one, but anyways. And so Jesus goes to the man and he says, "Get up and come forward." And he, and he says to them, he knows that the Pharisees were looking at him, he says, "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?" But they were silent.

And what ends up happening is that Jesus looked around at them with anger and grieved at the hardness of their heart. Again, one of the patterns of Gospel of Mark is the fact that there's intense details involved. Jesus was angry at the Pharisees and he grieved. And he healed the hand of this man.

And that concludes the fourth offense. But like I mentioned before, that was the offense that broke the camel's back. And after the fourth offense, the Pharisees were filled with madness, right, in Luke chapter 6 verse 11. That gives you a little additional details. And they immediately began plotting to destroy Jesus.

There was an unlikely alliance between the Pharisees and the Herodians. And the Herodians were people who were like, they're more politically bound. They followed Herod. And their religious background was very diverse. And so you wouldn't think that the Pharisees and the Herodians, and later on the Sadducees, would come together to plot this plan to try to destroy Jesus.

But yet, because of their immense hatred for Jesus, they came together. The Herodians, again, they wanted to maintain the status quo and Jesus was like just messing everything up. And so they wanted to get rid of Jesus as well. And so that's how we end this section tonight. We see that the Pharisees and the Herodians were so angry that they want to murder Jesus.

And again, just something that came to my mind when I was reading this was that, you know, on the Sabbath, Jesus healed. But on the Sabbath as well, we had the Pharisees, the religious leaders of that time, plotting murder. And that's a stark contrast that we have between Jesus, the Son of God, the servant of Yahweh, and those who proclaim to be near to God.

And so with that, we conclude tonight's session. In conclusion, just we have the baptism of Jesus. I'm just highlighting some big points. We have the great battle cry. We have Jesus's authoritative amazing beginnings. We have the four offenses. And we conclude with the religious leaders plotting to destroy Jesus.

And so with that, we conclude our time. Any questions or comments, maybe even from your own reading, something that maybe stuck out to you that caused you to be amazed of Christ? Yes, Jason. What would you say, looking back to chapter one, verses two to three, when John Mark quotes Isaiah, that he not only involves Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 3, but also Malachi, chapter 3, verse 1, the beginning of his quotation?

What do I think of it? He says that he's quoting from Isaiah, yet also involves Malachi in his quotation. Mm-hmm. I'll get back to you on that one. All right. Yes. Yes. There you go. Glad to serve. Any other questions? Yes, Tanya. Yeah, there were, the Pharisees were looking at how they wanted to be baptized, but they weren't able to, because they weren't considered to be confessed.

And then Jesus came and they were able to be baptized without confessing. But then, when you say the crowd would be over here, God's voice, saying, "This is my Son, who I will always be with," does that include the Pharisees hearing this? Yes, the Pharisees heard. And I think it really depicts just the hardness of their own heart.

And they had multiple examples of Jesus proclaiming himself as being the Son of God or the Son of Man, and that they still chose to not believe. And so, yeah, it was made loud and clear to them. Does that answer your question? Okay. Any comments from your readings? Anything that encouraged you?

All right. Okay. So again, like we did last week, break off into pairs. Pair off with someone that you believe is a Pharisee at heart and is in need of much grace in their life. And remind them of the love of Jesus Christ. And pray with them. Pray with them.

Share with them your thoughts about the reading. And we'll conclude it there. If you have your homework, please turn it in the back. I think Dede is back there. Is the money still back there, man? Are you a tax collector? Who has it? All right, still there. All right.

Pray for Stephen. Pray for Dede. No, I'm just kidding. And also, in regards to your homework assignment, please keep up with it because at the end, I'm going to ask you guys to turn in like a big project. Basically, a project is like compiling all of it into one document and then put in a folder like what you have there now.

Or you can email it to me if you want to save trees. So again, keep up with your homework assignment. Yeah. 15 observations. I gave you the examples of observations in there. Basically, it's just you're kind of making simple statements and citing the verse that it came from. Yeah, so it's very simple.

15. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So go ahead and pair off with someone that you believe needs the grace of God in their life and then we'll conclude there. All right. Thank you.