Add To Cart$14.95
ISBN: 978-0-6151-7603-1
Printed: 340 pages, 6″ x 9″
Publisher: Pilgrim Platform
Copyright: ©2006

Understanding Jesus

There is much confusion in and out of the church about Christianity—Jesus’ life, Jesus’ teachings, Jesus’ death and Jesus’ resurrection. Is confusion about the gospel of Jesus Christ new to the contemporary world? When did the confusion begin? What is the confusion about? How have people dealt with it? These are the questions that have guided this commentary on Mark.

Marking God’s Word will help you see the gospel with new eyes, to help free you from a perspective that has been obscured by sin and selfishness. Yet, it does not offer a new perspective. Rather, it provides an old perspective that has a long and noble history of reformation and revival. It is simply a walk through the Gospel of Mark that will show you many gospel truths that you are not likely to be familiar with. Think of it as a new adventure down an old path.

Come, see Christ again, for the first time.

From the Back Cover

As Jesus began His ministry He was met with much misunderstanding and disbelief. No one seemed to know what He was doing or talking about. His friends and family misunderstood Him. Even the twelve disciples failed to understand the gospel until Jesus returned in His resurrected form to ex-plain it to them. We find story after story of Jesus being misunderstood or attempting to correct many popular misunderstandings that were in circulation at the time. Those stories and misunderstandings centered on the miracles and wonders that seemed to accompany Jesus wherever He went. People were tempted to make Him into a sort of magician. Crowds came, not to hear His preaching, but to see wonders and receive miracles. They came for what they could get for themselves or for their families.

The disciples, like most everyone else in Mark’s gospel, were focused on themselves and what they could get from Jesus. In exasperation Jesus finally contradicted their self-centeredness with a clear expression of His intent. “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). The disciples had been in it for own their glory, Christ was in it for the cross and God’s glory.

The instructive events of Christ’s childhood and maturity into manhood—as valuable as they are—are ignored by Mark. The earliest and briefest of the gospel writers, Mark pressed immediately and relentlessly to the primary purpose of Christ’s advent. Jesus Christ came to earth to save His people from aimlessness and sin. Mark was not concerned with looking back at Jesus’ birth, but with the importance of the Lord’s presence among them. The sense of immediacy that pervades Mark’s gospel cuts right to Jesus’ public ministry.

Briefly noting that John the Baptist set the stage for Jesus, Mark began his gospel record with Jesus’ public ministry. John’s ministry served as a preparation for the ministry of the Lord. John’s ministry was so important that Jesus submitted to him for baptism. By submitting to John’s baptism, Jesus acknowledged His debt to the Old Testament prophets, of whom John was one.

John’s preaching message was simple, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 3:2). John’s message was essentially the same as all of the Old Testament prophets from Noah to Malachi. Fallen humanity desperately needs to abandon their sinful ways. Jesus, as the Messiah, was the fulfillment of this Old Testament teaching.