Bolstered Faith

Mark 9:1-13 · 2024-11-03 · Jason Wolin · Gospel of Mark | Cross and Crown

Mark 9:1-13 · Faith. Bolstered Faith — sermon from Cypress Bible Church on BibleSlides.

Bolstered Faith Slideshow for this message PDF Message Download Today we come to Mark chapter 9. And verse one has been the subject of a lot of discussion especially as it relates to how you understand end times views. And let me explain the reason there’s discussion. You can divide end time views into really two categories. You have some views that say the kingdom has already begun. And you have other views, like the view we teach here that the kingdom is yet to come. It’s future. Now Mark 9:1 is an oft cited verse in this debate. This verse DEFINITELY seems to comment on that. Mark 9:1 And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”” Now what’s the problem if you believe in a literal FUTURE kingdom for Israel? The problem is the explicit time references here. It seems pretty clear that Jesus is saying whatever the kingdom is, it has to take place in the lifetime of the disciples who were standing there. So amillenial and postmillenialists say, look, it can’t be anymore clear, the kingdom he’s referencing had to have begun during the lifetime of the disciples so Jesus must have been referring to the start of the church. I remember reading this passage and thinking that’s a really good point. How in the world can the kingdom be future with this ultra clear text? But then one of my professors gave me the theological key that unlocked the entire passage. It took 9 years of Bible school and tens of thousands of dollars to discover this key and I’m going to give it to you in 9 seconds for free. Here’s the key to unlocking chapter 9. You ready? Chapter 9 comes after chapter 8. Write that down somewhere. Now, it’s kind of a joke but not really. It’s actually really easy to forget this for this simple reason that this chapter break causes us to think that we have changed scenes and are into a new idea. This, in my opinion, is one of the most unhelpful chapter breaks in the Bible. So if you are learning this for the first time, keep in mind that the original manuscripts did not have any chapter or verse divisions. The first Bible to be divided into chapters was in 1227AD and it didn’t get formalized into what we have today until 1551. So our Bible divisions are very recent. The reason this is important is because these divisions are not part of the inspired text and do not represent inspired thought breaks. But even if you know that, psychologically, it still conditions us to read the text a certain way. We have to work pretty hard to remove that heading in our thinking to keep the context. So let’s do that work. Let’s recall the context of chapter 8 so we can read chapter 9 properly. Last week we considered this crucial turning point in the mini…

Cypress Bible Church · Full sermon loading below.