Power to Resist

Mark 1:9-13 · 2024-01-14 · Jason Wolin · Gospel of Mark | Cross and Crown

Mark 1:9-13 · Jesus, Temptation. Power to Resist — sermon from Cypress Bible Church on BibleSlides.

Power to Resist Download discussion questions (PDF) Slideshow for this message can be viewed HERE Last week we began a new series in the gospel of Mark. And you will remember that the gospel begins with this sentence. Mark 1:1, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” And we made the point that the word gospel means good news. NEWS. That’s a genre. That’s a reality claim about something that happened in real life. The book of Mark is essentially a first century newspaper. That’s what it’s claiming to be. Now, why did we stress that point? If something is going to be helpful, it must be real. If you break your wrist you don’t story about a doctor who helps people. You need a real doctor. Someone with real medical training. If you are going to be helped in the real world, the forces of that help have to intersect your physical domain. And so it is with the gospel. The gospel is that God has come to dwell among us. Immanuel. That’s a Hebrew word. IM With – anu = us el = God. God has come into our domain to help us. Well how he would enter our domain would shock everyone. Introduction to Jesus. Well, that real history began with John the Baptist as the Forerunner. His job was to run his plow through the hearts of Israel to prepare them to receive this message. What message? This impossibly difficult message that God had come in the flesh. We said last week, he’s introducing Jesus as a man but preparing their hearts and minds to receive him as God. He’s leaking out hints. These hints come in several forms. Last week we talked about the fact that John identifies Messiah as one whose sandal he’s not even worthy to untie. Here’s another hint we didn’t talk about last week. In John’s gospel we read John 1:29-30, “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said,”Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’” Now think about that. what do you mean that Jesus came before him. In what sense? If you compared birthdays, who came first, Jesus or John the Baptist? John the baptist by six months. – If you compared the start of the ministry of John the Baptist and Jesus, who was first? John the Baptist. In terms of rank, who had more followers, John the Baptist or Jesus. John the Baptist. By any metric you can think of, John the Baptist was before Jesus. In what sense was Jesus BEFORE John the Baptist? John knew that in the beginning was the WORD and the WORD became flesh and dwelt among us. He’s leaking out hints. So last week we looked at WHERE John was Baptizing, we looked at HOW he was baptizing. Now today we see WHO he’s baptizing as Jesus enters the scene. And the text today is short. We have two settings. Jesus…

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