[0:00] What a joy. We start a new series this morning. We finished up our Easter series.! We have finished up a number of books. And if you've driven by the sign and looked, or if you've heard in conversation, you know that we're turning to a gospel.
[0:14] So turn with me to the gospel of Mark. Mark chapter 1. The gospel of Mark. We will begin making our way through the book of Mark this morning. I am not, and I've shared this with you before, I am not an overly organized individual.
[0:30] Administration is actually one of my weaknesses. But one thing that I do try to do is I try to keep a record of where we have been through the Word of God as a church.
[0:45] And when I complete each account or each book or each series, I do that not because I want to say, oh, we've preached through this amount of books or we've done this. I do that because I take literally the Word of God where it says all of Scripture is profitable.
[1:01] And I want to preach the fullness of Scripture. I want to make sure that we are balanced. It was one of the leadings, I think the Holy Spirit placed upon me many years ago, where He led me to do expository preaching and to preach through large sections of Scripture, most often through books.
[1:15] Sometimes we go through series within books. But one of the convictions of that is because that is one way that I can ensure that by the leading of the Lord, we are preaching the fullness of Scripture.
[1:26] Because just like anyone else, I have my tendencies. I have my preferences. I have things in Scripture that resonate more with me. That is what leads to the conviction.
[1:38] Most of you know that on Sunday mornings, we're primarily in the New Testament. But on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights, when I came in 2016, we started in Genesis 1.
[1:51] And so we have been making our way through the Old Testament on Sunday nights and Wednesday nights. And now we're in 2 Chronicles. So we are trying to balance that out.
[2:02] Just because I believe as a pastor and as a teacher that I am held accountable for ensuring that the fullness of Scripture is declared from the pulpit. So I say that in that some people say, oh, well, I would rather us go here, I'd rather us go there, and I would rather as well.
[2:18] But in looking at that and praying through it, I know that it was time to get back to a gospel account. It's been a number of years since we've been through the gospel. And some of you have been with me the entire time.
[2:29] And the Lord be gracious and kind to you for doing that. And sometimes I'll think, it was just the other day that we preached through the book of Romans or it was just the other day we preached through the book of Acts. Actually, those were like eight years ago.
[2:41] Okay, so it wasn't just the other day. And I've got dates written down of when I've stopped. And some of you weren't even here for those. But as the Lord leads, we do it.
[2:51] So we'll get back here into the gospel of Mark. So if you're physically able and desire to do so, let's read together, let's stand together and read the word of God. Just in Mark chapter one, verses one through 13, we'll pray and then we'll introduce it properly and we'll come to the realization, hopefully, of where we're at.
[3:10] The gospel according to Mark, Mark chapter one, starting in verse one, reading down to the 13th verse says, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
[3:22] As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord, make his path straight.
[3:34] John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of 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.
[3:50] 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.
[4:06] I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth and Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
[4:17] Immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opening and the spirit like a dove descending upon him. And a voice came out of the heavens, you are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased.
[4:30] And immediately the spirit impelled him to go into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild beasts and the angels were ministering to him.
[4:42] Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you for the glorious opportunity it is to gather together to read the word of God. And we pray now, fathers, we have read it, that you would give us a clarity of mind.
[4:58] You'd give us ears to hear. You'd give us eyes to see, mind to understand, and hearts of willingness, not only just to receive the word, but to live it out for your glory.
[5:11] We ask that you would speak to us by the very presence of your spirit. And we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Each time we make our way into a new book of scripture, it is always a matter of setting the book within its proper context.
[5:31] Part of setting the book within its proper context to locate and to discern what we would call the key verses of that book. And it is the key verses not necessarily that define everything the book says, but normally it is the hinge on which the book swings.
[5:49] If we were to look for those key verses in the gospel of Mark, we would turn to the 10th chapter and we would see in Mark chapter 10, starting in verse 42, where Jesus begins to make the declaration to the disciples.
[6:04] We'll get to that eventually where when they are kind of bickering back and forth about who would be the greatest, and we've read this in other texts, but where Jesus says, it is not those who are over them and lord that authority over others that are great, but those who humble themselves and make themselves the servants.
[6:20] And he says there in chapter 10, verse 45, for even the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.
[6:32] So the key verses of the gospel of Mark refer to the reality of humility and humbleness and not longing to be served by others, but giving of oneself to serve.
[6:45] And as Jesus himself says, holds himself as the superior example of being one who came not to be served, but to serve. That helps us to understand a little bit of the context of Mark.
[7:01] And when we understand a little bit of the context of Mark, then we will begin to understand what is going on right here at the very beginning of it. And I want you to see this morning the beginning of the gospel.
[7:13] The beginning of the gospel. You say, well, pastor, you took your title right from the very first words. What better place to take it, right? The beginning of the gospel.
[7:27] Mark is one of those letters which has not been utilized extensively in church history. Now, in modern church history, it has been utilized, but it has not been utilized extensively in church history, but yet it was never in question throughout church history.
[7:47] That is, from its very first publication, from its very first insertation into scripture. Without a doubt, it was seen as authoritatively given to us by the word of God.
[7:59] There are other parts and portions of your scripture, which in history, we have seen that there have been doubts and questions. The gospel of Mark is not one of those. It was one of the earliest accepted portions of scripture.
[8:12] The early church fathers, and by the early church fathers, I mean those church leaders in the early 100s A.D., those that were just shortly after the authorship of this book, which, by the way, was probably near the end of the 50s, early 60s A.D., attest to the reality that this is written by John Mark.
[8:30] We meet him in the book of Acts. The very man that abandoned Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary endeavors. The very man whose mother had a home where the apostles and disciples would gather together.
[8:43] The very one, by the way, the home to which Peter went when the angels set him free from prison was John Mark's mother's home. So now we begin to understand a little bit of the man.
[8:59] He was someone that was early. Some people think, I don't know how much I lean towards this, that he is the one who flees from the presence of the crowd naked because the sheep was ripped off of him when Jesus was arrested in the garden.
[9:14] And the reason they think that is because the gospel of Mark is the only one that includes that. And who else would write it if it had not been him? So we have one here that was not an apostle of Christ, not one of the early disciples of Christ, but was exposed to it on an ongoing basis, so much so that Barnabas, who was his cousin, took him along with them on the first missionary journey, yet he was not strong enough to endure and left because he was afraid.
[9:51] The early church fathers testified to the reality that what Mark wrote was the record of the preaching of Peter. That after his uniting with Peter and as Peter went around proclaiming the gospel, that Mark was traveling with him and Mark later wrote the accounts.
[10:13] Now you need to understand these things because if not, it will kind of drive you nuts as you read this gospel in connection with other gospels. And you say, Pastor, you spent a long time setting the scene. You're right, because you have to set the scene.
[10:24] You need to know where we're going and how we're going there or you'll get lost along the way, right? And so what we understand, even the historians and the church fathers will testify to the reality. Mark did not try to write things chronologically, so don't let that bother you.
[10:40] He made no attempt, nor did he make a profession that this is the chronological order they happened. So we're not reading a chronological record of events, but rather he was writing the teachings that Peter proclaimed as he went, opening and unlocking the door of the gospel message into various regions.
[11:02] And more than likely, Mark wrote it kind of hastily to get it into the hands of the church. And I don't mean this in any way to cast doubt.
[11:12] We'll get to there just a little bit later. But the earliest manuscripts of Mark end with Mark chapter 16, verse 8. And if you read it there, it's kind of a cliffhanger. It kind of just leaves us hanging with the women leaving the tomb, perplexed and confused and not knowing what's going on.
[11:29] That's intentional, by the way, in the gospel when we get there and we read it in its proper context. Mark didn't have to have the things which more than likely were added as scribal editions later on to reconcile it with the rest of Scripture.
[11:43] Now that's not for you to say, oh, so I can just throw out parts of the Bible are wrong. No, it's not wrong. We'll get to that later. You just have to wait until we get to the end of the gospel of Mark.
[11:55] But we need to know why Mark wrote. Now, you also understand that a full 92 to 95% of what is recorded in Mark is also recorded in Matthew and Luke.
[12:12] So, much of this is repetitive. Almost without a doubt, Mark is the earliest gospel written. It's written first.
[12:25] But he did not write to give a full, concise, chronological order of everything that happened. That's what Matthew, the disciple, did.
[12:38] And that's what Luke, the physician, did. Mark wrote for a purpose. Now, stay with me because this defines how we interpret everything else.
[12:50] Mark wrote to the Roman church so that they would know what it would look like to be disciples of Christ. He was writing to encourage the church to live humble discipleship.
[13:12] And he did this in an extensive way because in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is the suffering servant. And he has no genealogy of Christ.
[13:27] There's no birth of Christ. There's no narrative of the very first 30 years, 33 years, or 30 plus years of his life.
[13:38] He starts with John the Baptist. And the reason, now I don't mean this to be offensive, but in the Roman world, the genealogy of the servant didn't matter.
[13:58] And Jesus is the suffering servant. Now, this is the divinely inspired word of God, and God led Mark to write what he wrote to who he wrote it to because God in his sovereignty knew that Matthew would write the coming king of the, here is Jesus, the king of kings and lord of lords.
[14:17] And he would write the concise genealogy of Christ. And he is the descendant of David. He's the son of David who is the long awaited king. And God in his sovereignty knew that Luke would come along and Luke would write with the physician's hand and he would write the genealogy that Jesus is the son of man.
[14:33] And being the fully son of man, he has the perfect genealogy that not only ties him to David but bypasses Coniah, Jeconiah, the one who has no right to the throne. And in his sovereignty, God knew that John would write the gospel in which there is no genealogy because in the gospel of John, Jesus is God.
[14:52] And God does not have a genealogy because in the beginning was God. And he didn't come from anything. He didn't derive from anything. So there's nothing to write where he came from. But in Mark, he's the suffering servant.
[15:06] Why? Because the church at Rome needed to know what it looked like to serve one another.
[15:18] So when we read the gospel of Mark, we don't find many teachings, not long discourses of Christ. Those are reserved for the other gospels. Matthew has the Sermon on the Mount.
[15:31] There's the end time prophecy found at the end of the gospel of Matthew. John records for us that fateful last night in John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. Luke records for us great teachings.
[15:44] In Mark, there are no teachings. If there are, they're very concise. But Mark records for us everything he does, the acts, and he's immediately doing, or straightway, or immediately, immediately, immediately.
[15:57] He's always moving and doing something. He is an active servant. Why? Because people come to faith in Jesus Christ based on what they see and hear.
[16:08] And even Jesus himself would meet a physical need before he ever declared a spiritual truth. So the church needed to know that the head of the church served first.
[16:26] So that the church would know how to serve. Discipleship is partly teaching. Sure, we ought to teach one another as iron sharpens iron. We ought to encourage one another.
[16:36] But it tells us in Scripture that not many are given to be teachers. But it does say that we are all called to serve one another. And so when Mark writes to the early church, Mark is writing to this church in Rome filled with Romans.
[16:56] He does not include many Jewish traditions because it wouldn't matter to them. But he is writing to the superpower of the world and telling them to serve one another.
[17:11] Transformational. And he introduces it by saying here is the beginning of the gospel. So with all of that in mind we see there's three matters as it pertains to the beginning of the gospel.
[17:28] Number one, we see the truth of the gospel. Now in light of everything we've just said, in light of the reality that the theme is that the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom.
[17:44] For many, Mark writes this, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now by the time Mark wrote the word gospel seemed to already stand for the declaration of the good news of Jesus.
[17:59] And this can be interpreted one or two ways and actually I believe it does its more benefit if we interpret it both ways simultaneously. It is the good news of Jesus Christ and it is the good news because that's the word gospel.
[18:11] All it literally means is good news. It is the good news of Jesus Christ and it is the good news proclaimed by Jesus Christ. It is not only the good news about him, it is the good news that he declared while among men.
[18:26] good news is connected to the theme of the book that God calls us to serve one another through loving discipleship. But then we meet this grand truth, this one that he's going to be writing about who's come to serve, the one who's come to give his life a ransom for many, the one who cast out demons, the one who is doing all these miraculous deeds.
[18:52] We meet this truth and it is very clearly declared at the very beginning of the gospel so that there would be no doubt as we read throughout the rest of scripture.
[19:04] The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, here's the truth, the Son of God. At the very beginning, Mark declares this truth, this Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
[19:24] God is the Son of God. What is unique about the gospel of Mark is that he introduces us to this truth in the very first verse. He is the Son of God and then when we get to the end of the gospel of Mark in chapter 15, I believe it's verse 39, when Jesus gives up his spirit on the cross, when he gives up his life, the centurion is there and when the centurion sees the way in which he dies, he makes this declaration, surely this is the Son of God.
[19:58] So do you see it? Sandwiched between everything that is declared about this book is the reality that the one that is being presented to us is the Son of God. He is not just Jesus Christ, the great man.
[20:10] He is not just the great prophet. He is not just the miracle worker. He is not just the one who does all these wonderful deeds. He is not just the one who came to mind to give his life. He is the Son of God.
[20:21] In the very beginning, it tells us he is the Son of God. And at the end, the centurion at the cross says, surely this is the Son of God. By the way, Matthew and Luke record that as well.
[20:32] And it is the same thing. But they are not like Mark in that they don't introduce him that way at the very beginning. But in Mark, he wants you to not miss the reality. From beginning to end, the one that he is presenting to you is the Son of God.
[20:47] God. Every now and then, our newspapers or news stations like to give us a break from all the bad news and they want to introduce good news or a good story for us or something uplifting.
[21:00] And they'll tell us something that some man or woman or boy or girl or some individual has done that seems to exceed expectations and it seems to be called to brighten our day and to make us feel better about humanity.
[21:12] But when Mark is going to set forward for us the greatest servant who has ever lived, who gives his life a ransom for many, and at the very beginning we are reminded of the reality that the one doing it is truthfully the Son of God.
[21:30] This is not just some man doing a good deed. This is the very Son of God coming to give his life a ransom for many. Look at the truth declared.
[21:44] Number two, we see the testimony given. The testimony given. Scripture resonates with this reality that on the testimony of two or three witnesses a matter should be settled.
[21:58] That we do not accept the testimony of one witness but rather we accept the testimony of two or more and those testimonies should be reconciled and those testimonies should be accurate. This is one of the things we have when we come to the trial of Christ at the end of his life with the realization that they could not find two testimonies that would agree.
[22:17] Two people could not stand up and give an agreeable testimony with one another about the faults that they found in Jesus Christ until they coerced two individuals to stand up and give the same lie.
[22:28] And they finagled the court system and finally found their two testimonies though they had been purchased with that blood money and though they had been bought off and paid off. Now we have our two testimonies. We can proceed but not so with Christ because with Christ the very beginning of the gospel starts with a resonating testimony.
[22:45] Look at what it says. As it is written in Isaiah the prophets. Behold I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way in the voice of one crying in the wilderness make ready the way of the Lord make his path straight.
[22:59] As a matter of fact Mark here quotes two prophets. He quotes the book of Malachi and he quotes the book of Isaiah. And he quotes these to remind us that that which is about to be written.
[23:11] That which is recorded about Jesus Christ the son of God was first and foremost and we've already seen this as we've looked at the Easter story and we've seen it even last week when we looked at Easter message that Jesus the first testimony of Christ is the testimony of scripture.
[23:28] Mark who is not a big proponent of quoting Jewish customs or Jewish traditions. As a matter of fact Mark does not quote very much Jewish scripture because he is writing to a Roman church that does not know the Jewish scripture.
[23:42] The Bible has not been put together yet right. So the Septuagint though it was the Old Testament that was in Hebrew had been translated into Greek. The Septuagint which is the Greek Old Testament was not circulated among the Roman church of Gentiles.
[23:58] That is not until we put the fullness of scripture together and we praise God that we can open up the Old Testament and we can study the Old Testament and then we get to the New Testament. But those that Mark was writing to did not have the Old Testament.
[24:10] But yet he finds it fitting to testify to the reality that the greatest prophets that have ever existed among any people testified to this coming one. He does not give much background information.
[24:22] He just lets us understand that this one has been testified to by scripture. The first testimony given of Christ is scripture itself.
[24:33] And it says and John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. The second that we have testimony is John the Baptist.
[24:45] John the Baptist is the last of the Old Testament prophets. Some of you say well pastor we find John the Baptist in the New Testament. I know that's where you find him but he is the last Old Testament prophet.
[24:58] prophet because the very last thing the Old Testament talks about is the coming of John the Baptist. He was just on a holding pattern for 400 plus years.
[25:08] And then we introduce him as the very first thing that we encounter when we come into the New Testament. He is the last of what we recall the Old Testament school of prophecy. And to validate that declaration we see that even the garments he wore made him stand out as an Old Testament prophet.
[25:27] Because you did not wear camel hair with a leather belt eating wild locusts and honey even in the time of Christ that made you kind of odd. You kind of stood out a little bit. Because the only people that ever wore that were the people in the Old Testament right.
[25:38] He is a number of hundreds of years behind his time. But that's okay because the word of God is not hindered nor bound by time. Nor is it constrained to custom.
[25:50] So now we have scripture testifying to the reality of the one coming. And now we have this last prophet John the Baptist or as he is often referred to as John the Baptizer. Because the Baptist by the way is not his last name.
[26:02] That's just what he did. Right. He was John the Baptizer. He was baptizing people who came testifying. And he came for a purpose. You say well pastor it says they were being saved because it says he came preaching forgiveness of sins.
[26:15] Preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It's not saying that he's preaching salvation. He came to the Jewish people doing something that was very offensive to them. We don't have a lot of time to flesh that out.
[26:27] But I just want you to know what he was doing is he was telling the self-righteous individuals that were believing and adhering to the law that they needed to stand up and say that they were doing about a bunch of bad stuff. And not only were they supposed to confess their sins that we were supposed to be the chosen people of God and these are all the things we do.
[26:44] They were to make a public display of that confession and go underwater in the Jordan River. Telling everyone I need to change who I am. And the whole time understanding.
[26:57] But the word there for the forgiveness of their sins. That word for by the way is not in the original Greek. Let me give you just a little bit of teaching on top of the preaching. Okay. You need a little bit of a teaching.
[27:08] Careful when you translate scripture and you build your doctrine on conjunctions. A conjunction being like for. For the forgiveness of sins. Be careful because the original language did not include conjunctions.
[27:22] The Greek and the Hebrew and Aramaic. The words there are so full and they're so vivid and they're so vivid. Can I speak it? No. But I can read about it and I can study and they're good.
[27:33] God has given us great scholars that are going to interpret that for us. Right. And while I would love to it's still Greek to me. But we can we can look over it and we can read the scholars. We need to know that the wordings.
[27:44] Is so rich with its picture that the English doesn't compare. So when we translate it to English we have to add these extra words conjunctions and what not so that we can kind of understand it.
[27:57] But the word for there does not mean in order to be forgiven. Because that's how we would interpret it. It should literally be translated because of their forgiveness.
[28:13] Which by the way when you say you're going to be baptized in order to be forgiven. is a lot different than saying you're going to be baptized because of your forgiveness.
[28:24] Big difference. Big difference. Don't build your theology on conjunctions. Build your theology on the fullness of scripture. Now enough from teaching.
[28:36] Let's go back to preaching. So we see this reality here that now we have scripture testifying. We have John the Baptist testifying. testifying. And you say wow that should be sufficient.
[28:47] But then we have the son of God himself coming. It says and Jesus came. In those days Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
[29:01] Mark doesn't even take time to tell us why he does it. Jesus says it's to fulfill all righteousness. We understand that. John the Baptist didn't want to do it. Mark doesn't take the time to explain all that to us.
[29:11] We are just overwhelmed by the reality that the son of God walked up to one of his own creatures. John the Baptist and submitted to baptism. But then when he does that it says and he saw the heavens opening and the spirit like a dove descending upon him and a voice came out of the heavens.
[29:30] You are my beloved son. By the way there's that truth again being declared. You are my beloved son and you I am well pleased. So let's look at the testimonies that have been given.
[29:40] Scripture has testified that one is coming. John the Baptist has come and said one is coming who I am not fit to stoop down and untie his sandal straps. Staying with the theme of Mark a servant serving.
[29:53] The lowliest servant was the one who would take your shoes off your feet. And John the Baptist whom Jesus declared to be the greatest man born among women up until that time said I'm not even good enough to do the lowliest of deeds.
[30:07] Now in your mind fast forward to the upper room and see Jesus taking the feet off the taking the sandals off the disciples feet and washing their feet. John the Baptist says I'm not fit to take his shoes off his feet.
[30:24] But here's the son of God so we have testimony of scripture we have the testimony of John the Baptist and now in case we missed it we have the testimony of God the father himself saying you are my beloved son.
[30:39] Without a doubt the one presented before us who came to give his life a ransom for many has been testified to and we accept that testimony because on the testimony of two or three witnesses a matter shall be settled.
[30:56] It's a settled reality. Third and finally we see the truth. And number three we see the temptation endured. The temptation endured.
[31:08] Immediately the spirit there are some words in which we wish they were not in scripture. There are some things that we wish that were not there because it makes us a little bit uncomfortable. Like we wish in our flesh I'm not saying in the spirit in our flesh.
[31:21] I wish that it was not Jesus who sent the disciples to the other side knowing the full time that they were on the Sea of Galilee they would be storm tossed and think that their lives were going to be in jeopardy. I wish that Jesus the master of the seas wasn't asleep in the front of the boat while the disciples thought they were drowning yet he put them there.
[31:38] And the reason in my flesh I wish that is because I would like to think that he would never put me in danger or put me somewhere that would make me uncomfortable. But we meet right here immediately the spirit that is the Holy Spirit.
[31:48] I hope it has a capital S in your scripture. The Holy Spirit the third person of the Trinity compelled or impelled him to go into the wilderness. So the temptation that Jesus faced was spirit led.
[32:03] It was not spirit come. That is God did not tempt him. I got a little loud sorry about that. God did not tempt him but God put him in a place to permit him to be tempted.
[32:17] And Jesus would say if it's happened to me it'll happen to you. That temptation was permitted.
[32:31] But why? And we need it there. It says the spirit led him to go out to the wilderness and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted. The word being tempted there means that for the entirety of the 40 days Jesus was being tempted.
[32:44] It was an ongoing temptation. There are not just three temptations of Christ. The three temptations are the three pinnacle temptations. For the entirety of the 40 days he is tempted day in and day out and day in and day out day in and day out without eating any food without drinking any water day in and day out tempted by Satan.
[33:03] For 40 days. And he was with the wild beasts and the angels were ministering to him. By the way it's only Mark that tells us the angels are ministering to him. Because in this passage we see the fullness of the humanity of Christ.
[33:16] That in his humanity he was weak. But we also see the fullness of the deity of Christ. That though he was tempted repeatedly for 40 days he never faltered.
[33:28] Never fell. Never stumbled. Think of it this way. This thought does not originate with me but it originates with Bible scholars from the past. The first Adam.
[33:41] You know him. Adam and Eve. The first Adam was placed in the garden of paradise in the land of peace and prosperity. When every animal was vegetarian.
[33:52] That everything was eating of the ground and of the trees and everything was eating of the fruits of the trees. Nothing was carnivorous at that time. So the first Adam was placed in a position of perfection.
[34:04] And was tempted and fell. The second Adam who is Jesus Christ according to the book of Romans. Went into the desolate wilderness. Was surrounded by the wild beast.
[34:15] By this time they're not eating of the trees and the leaves. And they're not eating of the fruit or the grass of the ground. By this time they're wild beasts. So the second Adam who is Jesus Christ. Went into the desolate wilderness.
[34:27] Was surrounded by wild beasts. Faced a repeated temptation for 40 days. And never fell. Because what man could not do right in a place of perfection.
[34:39] He absolutely completed in a place of isolation. The beginning of the gospel starts with Jesus Christ. Because the truth is he's the son of God.
[34:52] He's the son of God who has been testified to throughout the ages. By scripture. By man. And by God himself. And he's the only one who has overcome every temptation we will ever face.
[35:06] The Bible says in the book of Hebrews. He was tempted in every way. In every part. In every portion. Yet he did not sin. Where can you find good news?
[35:18] You begin by finding good news in Jesus Christ. Because he is the son of God. And he calls us. Not only to follow him.
[35:29] But to serve one another. In humble discipleship. For the sake of the kingdom. Let's pray. Father we thank you so much for this day.
[35:42] We thank you for your goodness towards us. We thank you. For your faithfulness. For your love. Your concern.
[35:55] We pray Lord. As we. Look to you. That we would draw closer to you. In our daily walk. Lord help our.
[36:06] Closeness to Christ. Lead us. To a greater commitment. To one another. And may it be. Good. Of us. And the glory.
[36:17] Of the king. We ask it all in Jesus name. Amen.