E-Book, Englisch, 464 Seiten
Reihe: Preaching the Word
Hughes Mark (2 volumes in 1 / ESV Edition)
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4335-3841-4
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Jesus, Servant and Savior
E-Book, Englisch, 464 Seiten
Reihe: Preaching the Word
ISBN: 978-1-4335-3841-4
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
R. Kent Hughes (DMin, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is senior pastor emeritus of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and former professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hughes is also a founder of the Charles Simeon Trust, which conducts expository preaching conferences throughout North America and worldwide. He serves as the series editor for the Preaching the Word commentary series and is the author or coauthor of many books. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Spokane, Washington, and have four children and an ever-increasing number of grandchildren.
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SOME YEARS AGO one of the world’s renowned scholars of the classics, Dr. E. V. Rieu, completed a great translation of Homer into modern English for the Penguin Classics series. He was sixty years old, and he had been an agnostic all his life. The publisher soon approached him again and asked him to translate the Gospels. When Rieu’s son heard this he said, “It will be interesting to see what Father will make of the four Gospels. It will be even more interesting to see what the four Gospels make of Father.”1 He did not have to wonder very long. Within a year’s time E. V. Rieu, the lifelong agnostic, responded to the Gospels he was translating and became a committed Christian. His story is a marvelous testimony to the transforming power of God’s Word. Experiences like this have been repeated time and time again.
Whenever I begin a fresh study of one of the Bible’s books, I keep this story in mind, and especially the inviting questions: What will it make of me? What will it make of the people I influence? My own personal experience has been (and I think for many it has been the same) that when I have finished studies of sections in the Scriptures (for example, the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer, or the book of Colossians), I was not the same person as when I began. Positive changes have taken place in my theology and my prayer life. The Sermon on the Mount has enhanced my understanding as no other Scripture as to what the Christian life is all about. The Lord’s Prayer with its three upward petitions, three downward requests, and immense emphasis on God’s Fatherhood has greatly enriched my prayer life. The towering Christology of Colossians has made me see, as never before, God in all his fullness. What is this in-depth study of the Gospel of Mark going to make of you and me?
Mark is the oldest of the Gospels. Matthew and Luke made such great use of it in writing their own Gospel accounts that between them they reproduced all but a few verses of Mark’s! So in this Gospel we have for the very first time in history a systematic account of the life and words of Jesus. Mark was the beginning of a distinct and original literary form that we refer to as “Gospel.”
Also intriguing is the background of this Gospel. Virtually everyone agrees that the author was John Mark, a young man who had a shaky beginning in the ministry when he abandoned Paul on the apostle’s first missionary trip and decided to return home (Acts 13:13). Paul was so unhappy with Mark that he refused to take him on the second journey, thus beginning a bitter quarrel between Paul and Barnabas that ended with Paul and Silas going one way and Barnabas and Mark another (Acts 15:36–41). Although intimate details are lacking, Paul and John Mark later reconciled when Paul was in prison in Rome. Mark served as his aide and then as a delegate on an important mission to Asia Minor (see Philemon 24 and Colossians 4:10). Later Paul would ask Timothy to bring John Mark back with him to Rome because he was useful in service (2 Timothy 4:11). When the Apostle Peter was writing 1 Peter in Rome, he affectionately called Mark his son (1 Peter 5:13). It was Mark’s close relationship with Peter that motivated and enabled him to write an intimate portrait of Christ.
The very earliest statement about the Gospel of Mark was written by Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, about AD 140:
Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered, not, indeed, in order, of the things said or done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord, nor had he followed him, but later on, as I said, he followed Peter, who used to give teaching as necessity demanded but not making, as it were, an arrangement of the Lord’s oracles, so single points as he remembered them. For to one thing he gave attention, to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to make no false statements in them.2
What a recovery Mark made! He rose from failed follower of Christ, to devoted disciple, to premier biographer and honored martyr.
They on the heights are not the souls
Who never erred or went astray,
Or reached those high rewarding goals
Along a smooth, flower-bordered way.
Nay, they who stand where first comes dawn
Are those who stumbled but went on.3
After a promising start, some of us too have stumbled, and now our confidence is gone. For us, John Mark’s triumph is an immense encouragement.
The context in which John Mark wrote was, to say the least, dramatic: Rome right after the death of Peter and the Neronian persecution, sometime between AD 60 and 70. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, Nero made the Christians scapegoats for his burning of Rome and butchered them wholesale, so that the Church was driven into the Catacombs.4 It was during this time of misery that Mark wrote the Gospel.
The purpose of John Mark’s writing was to encourage the Gentile church in Rome. He wanted them to see Christ as the Suffering Servant-Savior, and so arranged his material to show Christ as One who speaks and acts and delivers in the midst of crisis.5 Mark has no long genealogy, no birth narrative, and only two of Jesus’ long discussions.
Christ is all action in Mark! Mark used the historical present tense 150 times. Jesus comes, Jesus says, and Jesus heals—all in the present tense. There are more miracles recorded in Mark than in the other Gospels, despite its being far shorter. Everything is in vivid “Eyewitness Newsbriefs,” brilliantly vivid and fast-moving. Mark uses the Greek word for “immediately” some forty-two times (there are only seven occurrences in Matthew and one in Luke). The conjunction “and” is unusually frequent (beginning twelve of Mark’s sixteen chapters) and adds to the rush of action. Christ’s life is portrayed as super-busy (he even had trouble finding time to eat—see 3:20 and 6:31).
It takes a slow reader about two hours to read Mark through at a single sitting; and if you take the time, you feel surrounded by crowds, wearied by demands, and besieged by the attacks of demons. You are also repeatedly brought face-to-face with the human emotions of Jesus and the astonishment of the multitudes. Mark is the “Go Gospel”—the Gospel of the Servant-Savior.
The acknowledged key verse, the one that summarizes the Gospel of Mark, is 10:45—“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” This verse is part of the answer to the question, what will the gospel make of us? It will make us servants like the Master, effective servants who do not run on theory but on action. He was (and is) Christ for the crises! Power attended his every action. This same Christ brings power to life now, and a serious study of Mark will bring that power further to our lives.
The Disciples’ Failure to Learn Jesus’ Servant Approach (vv. 36–41)
The irony is this: though Jesus had been with the disciples for three years as the ideal Servant, though the end was near and he had just given them a detailed forecast of his death (10:32–34), though he had taught them that his way was to be the model for their lives, the disciples (represented by James and John) now made a request that revealed that their way of thinking was virtually the opposite of Christ the Servant.
The request was outrageous: “And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came up to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And he said to them, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory’” (10:35–37). They dimly saw that the end was near and that it involved the possibility of thrones for the disciples. As part of the inner circle (Peter, James, and John), these two hoped to get the best thrones. Perhaps they wanted to ace Peter out, because he no doubt would try for the top. So they approached Jesus privately. Matthew tells us they even had their mother do the talking (Matthew 20:20, 21).
This all sounds pretty contemporary to me. “The Lord takes care of those who take care of themselves,” some say.
“Name it and claim it,” that’s what faith’s about!
You can have what you want if you just have no doubt.
So make out your “wish list” and keep on believin’
And you find yourself perpetually receivin’.6
Despite their association with Jesus and despite their piety, these disciples saw greatness according to the world’s definition. A bit later (v. 42), Jesus described the world’s viewpoint: “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.” James and John had fallen to the world’s idea that seeking the place of authority and personal power was right for them.
It is so easy to succumb to such thinking, as Robert Raines mused:
I am like James and John.
Lord, I size up other people
in terms of what they can do for me;
how they can further my program,
feed my ego,
satisfy my needs,
give me strategic advantage.
I exploit people,
ostensibly for your sake,
but really for my own.
Lord, I...
