Mark (Letter 41, Larry Crabb’s 66 Love Letters)

Jesus will take you back then forward.
God wants to get heaven into us but the real battle we’re fighting is going inside of us.
Our worst enemy is our own self-centeredness.
We desire for our lives to run smoothly and to feel good more than we desire to serve God with all the suffering that it might involve.
God’s intent is to demand nothing but surrender everything.
We think that the good news should include a life blessed with a certain level of comfort and freedom from hassle.
Mark yielded his desire for comfort to the privilege of servanthood and suffering. He planted the first church in Egypt and for his faithfulness was dragged through the streets, thrown into a dungeon, then burned to death.
The more clearly we see Christ, the more willing we will be to suffer any loss for his sake. Kingdom living consists of radical servanthood (the end of entitlement to personal comfort) and self-denying suffering with the hope of joy forever.
It can be easy for us to miss the point: there is no gospel without the cross, there is no obedience without servanthood, and there is no spiritual formation without suffering..

Book Name: MARK – From Ray Stedman

Click here for entire Bible Summary from Ray Stedman

The Gospel of Mark: HE CAME TO SERVE

The Gospel of Matthew is written to present Christ as the King.

The Gospel of Mark presents his character as a servant.

The Gospel of Luke presents him as the Son of man – as man in his essential humanity.

The Gospel of John presents him as the Son of God, that is, his deity, and there you find the greatest claims for his deity.

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many,” {Mark
10:45 NIV}. In this short verse, you have the divisions of the Gospel of Mark:

There is a brief introductory section that presents the credentials of the servant in the first thirteen verses of Chapter 1.

Following that is the ministry of the servant, from Chapter 1, Verse 14, to Chapter 8, Verse 30.

The rest of the book is concerned with the ransoming work of the servant.
In the section of the ministry of the servant, two things are stressed primarily:
First, the authority of the servant: Those who listened to him were filled with astonishment. In this section his authority over the powers of darkness, the demon world, is emphasized.

Mark also reveals his power over disease:

The introduction of the second theme: He came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many,

Chapter 8, Verse 31: And he began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

The sacrifices are meaningless from here on, because he is standing now as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Chapters 11 through 14 are concerned with the questions that people asked him.

Beginning with Chapter 15, you have the account of the cross.

When you come to the last chapter, the resurrection of our Lord, you learn he was silent and refused to appeal to Pilate or the crowd, because he was laying the basis for a coming day, when in resurrection power he would appeal to a far greater crowd, when every knee should bow and every tongue should proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
He would not let men take his life, but he voluntarily laid it down himself in order that he might overcome man’s greatest enemy – death – and forever deliver all who would believe in him from the power and awful sting of death.

That is the gospel.

MARK – David Jeremiah (Understanding the 66 Books of the Bible)

Key thought: The Son of God had supreme power, which He used to serve others with urgency and to sacrifice His life for the world.

Key Verse: Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant … For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many. Mark 10:43,45

Key Action: When we become disciples of Jesus Christ, we’re seized with urgency as we serve others and share His Good News with a needy world.