Why Mark?

The first sermon series we will be going through together as a church is the Gospel of Mark. To some people this may seem like an obvious choice, but others may be curious why we are beginning with Mark rather than something more topical, more practical, or a different Gospel book. To help you see why we’re beginning with the Gospel of Mark, I’ll answer three questions: Why a book of the Bible? Why a Gospel book? and finally, Why Mark?

Why a book of the Bible?

This church, and every true church, is built upon the Word of God, the Bible. It is the center of our gathering. We read the Bible, we pray in accordance with the Bible, we sing songs with lyrics taken from the Bible, and we preach from that same Bible. God has spoken to His people, so His words from His Book are our focus.

But I can preach the Bible in several different ways. The main options are either topical preaching or expositional preaching. Topical preaching takes a theme from the text and develops it. Sometimes topical messages will use one passage of Scripture and sometimes they’ll use several. And I will occasionally preach topical sermons or even topical series here at Pleasant Grove. But I’m beginning with an expository series because that will be the primary way I preach at this church. An expository sermon takes the main point of the text to be the main point of the sermon, and it’s typically walking through a book of the Bible one passage at a time, maybe even verse-by-verse. I’ll explain why expository preaching will make up the bulk of my sermons some other time. But for now, I’m preaching through a book of the Bible first because that’s what I’ll do most of the time.

Why a Gospel book?

Alright, fine, so I’m preaching a book of the Bible, walking through it one passage at a time. But why did the book have to be a Gospel book? Couldn’t I have done walked through a passage at a time in something shorter? Or maybe just started at the beginning of the Bible? Or even a book more immediately practical for a church which talks about church leadership or culture?

I’m preaching through a Gospel book because I believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ should be at the center of everything we do as a church. And what better place to get the Gospel of Jesus than from one of the four books of the Bible which are The Gospel According to ____? Jesus is the main character of all of Scripture, but this fact is most apparent in the Gospels. From day one, I want it to be crystal clear what, or more accurately, who our focus is. So we’re going through a Gospel together so we can see Jesus as clearly and obviously as possible to lay a foundation for who He is and what He’s done before we ever talk about a different subject.

Why Mark?

Now we’re down to four options, four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. While any of these books would have been great options which met the above criteria, I chose Mark for a few reasons. One, Mark’s Gospel is the simplest and most straightforward of the four. His writing style is clear and straight to the point. There are fewer details in Mark than any other Gospel, so the main emphasis of the story comes through more clearly in Mark than the other three where you have to be able to separate detail from main point. John, in particular, has a lot of details and stories that you don’t find in the other three. His style is more theological and can be more complicated to explain. Two, many scholars think Mark was the first Gospel written down. Most scholars think Matthew and Luke used Mark (and maybe another document we don’t have) to write their Gospels. So the other books start from Mark and then add the other details and stories they thought were important to include. The third reason I chose Mark, honestly, is because it’s the shortest Gospel. Now, it’s still fairly long and will take me around a year to preach through, but it’s significantly shorter in text than the other three.

Mark will help us see the big picture of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as we learn together and grow together under the Word of God preached expositionally from an account of the life of Jesus. I hope you’ll join us for this series; it should be a lot of fun together.