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2:46Well, we're going to be going through just a portion of this. This is called Christianity Explained. And as far as giving the gospel, I'm, you know, Young compared to many of you who have been doing this for many, many years. In fact, four of my mentors or models for soul winning are in this service. Well, I guess my mother's out somewhere. But my father, and my mother, and my mother-in-law, Margie, and my father-in-law, Ron Ronald McDonnell, and they have modeled what it means to be a gospel witness, not just in deed, but in word. So, just a couple things that I've seen in their lives that have helped me and encouraged me and challenged me oftentimes, and my wife and family as well, that are simple things.

3:47I wanted to give you one quote here, really quickly. You're always supposed to start out with a quote, right? This is from Spurgeon. And just, you know, they call him the prince of preachers and all that. He said, there was a time in his life when he was first saved that he was petrified to talk to anybody about the gospel. In fact, he wouldn't. He was so scared. But he said, the least I could do was hand somebody a gospel tract. So this is a long time ago. So none of us have any excuse. He said this: when preaching and private talk are not available, you need to have a tract read. Get good, striking tracts, or none at all. But a touching gospel tract may be the seed of eternal life. Life, therefore, do not go out without your tracks. And I always see my father-in-law and my dad always have a track in their pocket, and they're always ready to give that to somebody. My father, actually, this track here, I don't recommend all chick tracks, but this is a good one. My father was in at Disney in California, and my mom, my dad sat and waited for my mom as she went into the bathroom. And she came out with this track and handed it to him, and this is what convicted him to come back to Christ and to come to Christ. And so, this had a big impact on his life, and therefore had an impact on all of our lives. And now, all of his grandchildren that are able to understand the gospel have claimed Christ also as their Savior. And so, just a little track that somebody left. I mean, we can do that, right? You can leave a track on a gas station pump or in a bathroom or wherever you go, or better yet, hand it to somebody. Even better than that, talk to them about what it says. But the least we can do is that. I was with my father-in-law the other day, and a lady in the store, and a lady was saying, Oh, something was really good, and you've done something really well. I don't even remember what it was, maybe you remember, but he said, Yes, that's really good. But you know what's even better? Let me show you, my father in heaven is even better than whatever it was. It could have been like a chocolate bar or something. My father in heaven is even better than that. And let me give you this, and then often we'll go into the gospel. And Margie and my mother have done the same. One other thing that we saw an old friend of ours do for a long time, and my dad and mom in particular picked this up as they're at a restaurant. I know many of you go to restaurants after church and things. My dad and mom, as they get their meal, and the server will come, give them their meal, and they'll say, they'll stop her or him and say, Listen, we're about to pray for our meal. Is there something that we can pray about for you? And I cannot tell you how many times, I mean, dozens, more than that, hundreds maybe of times that has led to serious gospel conversations. And somebody literally pulls up a chair or breaks down right there and says, Here's what's going on in my life. And they unload because somebody just cared enough to say, Can I pray for you? And so it can be very simple to get into gospel conversations. So that's one part of it. But another part is we're afraid to get into gospel conversations because we don't know how to speak to somebody about the gospel, right? We're nervous about, well, how do I, if they ask this question or that question? Well, that's why we get into God's Word and why we go through things like this to understand what is the gospel. Is it that complicated? How do we talk to people about the gospel? And so we'll talk a little bit about that today.

7:39We have done this particular Christianity explained course. It's a six-week course. The way I do it, it usually takes at least 12. But it's because I just take my time, there's no rush. By the way, when you present the gospel, you know, it's not a race. It's not us trying to get somebody saved because we can't save anybody. It's us allowing God's Word and the Holy Spirit to work through us and in that person's life. And sometimes things happen quickly, and sometimes it takes a while, and you have to go through and answer lots of questions, and sometimes people don't respond to the gospel, and that's okay. We don't have to worry about that because it's God who is going to call them, and God who, you know, the Holy Spirit that's going to work through them and draw them to himself. And so we have done this Bible study with a number of different groups, but just let me give you an idea of who it can work with or who we've used it with. We've used it with Cedars group, which is a group of people all over the age of 70, who admittedly, and I'm not trying to be funny here, but say we just do not remember what we remembered years ago. And so you need to just please. Please be as simple as possible and help us to remember things and understand what you're going through. And so it's a very basic, but can also be much more than that. And so we've gone through with a group of about eight people and went through that. We believe we saw one lady that may have come to Christ through this in that. And then a group, another ministry, asked us to come and talk to their workers, who are all African ladies, speaking different languages. English was, I don't believe, any of their first language. And so we just sat down with them at their lunchtime once a week and go through this just little by little. And the questions that come out are amazing and just really fun to talk to people. And there's many things my father-in-law and father in particular will tell you that I don't know. Okay, lots of things. And so people ask a question, I'll say, you know, that's a good question. Let me get back to you to give you a good answer on that. And people appreciate that, and that's not a problem. So don't be intimidated by that either. We don't always have to have the answer right then and there. And so we've done that with that kind of a group. And then the group that we went that we've tried to start a church with in the shantytown that I was talking about this morning, people from all different nations, literally. I don't even know if there was one South African. In there, people from Malawi and Zimbabwe and Nairobi and Nigeria, and so their language, their grasp of the English language was very rudimentary in some cases. Very intelligent people, but you know, didn't have a good grasp of the English language, and yet we were able to take simple concepts and give them the gospel and just talk them through that. And so, the first thing we would do is just introduce ourselves and have everybody introduce themselves. We're just sitting down and talking through scripture. But starting out by introducing ourselves, letting people know you won't be asked to pray. So, you might do this with a group or your neighbor, one person, two people, ten people, twenty-five people, whatever it is. But you won't be asked to pray. You won't be asked to read the Bible or answer any questions that you don't want to answer. We're just here to tell you to literally explain Christianity. Have you ever wondered what is Christianity? What makes it different from any other religion in the world? Well, let me tell you what makes it different. I just want to explain that to you, and then you have a decision to make, and we're not going to force you to make any decision. We just do ask that you come, that you do some reading that we'll ask you to in the book of Mark. It's the shortest of the gospels, so it'll be easy for you to read and go through. Some of those things. And then we'll start out giving the gospel according to the book of Mark.

12:07The only detailed records that we have about Jesus Christ are the four biographies, the first four books of the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And we want to go through one of those biographies with you and tell you about this person, Jesus. We'll start out by giving this story, and especially in the African context, this is helpful. At the age of 16, Robert Moffat left for Scotland to go to England to work as a gardener. Later on in his life, Robert Moffat was one of the great African or missionaries to Africa. A lot of people in Africa will know about him or know something about a work that he planted somewhere. And we can tell them, well, he did this here in this area, and maybe in your country he was here, and there are churches planted over here and there. And so people will connect with that. But when he was 16 years old, as he was leaving Scotland to go to the UK, his mother, as moms do, and again, this is in any culture, right? Mom is going to want to go with their child and see them off on their journeys, whether you're African, Afrikaans, English, whatever you are. And so we say his mother. Walked him down to the docks that day, and she said something to him just before he was leaving. She said, He says, Moffat writes, When we came within sight of the spot where we were to part, maybe never to meet in this world again, she said, Now, my Robert, let us stand here for a few minutes. I want to ask you one favor before you leave me, and I know you will not refuse what a mother asks. Many of you heard that before. What is it, mother? I inquired. She said, Promise me that you will do what I am now going to ask, and I will tell you. No, mother, I cannot tell, I cannot promise until you tell me what your wish is. Mom said, Oh, Robert, can you think for a moment that I would ask you, my son, to do anything that is not right? Don't I love you? Yes, mother, I know you do, but I do not make promises which I may not be able to fulfill. Moffat then says, I kept my eyes fixed on the ground. I was silent, trying to resist the rising emotion. She sighed deeply. Can hear that right?

14:40I lifted my eyes and saw the big tears rolling down her cheeks. I was conquered. And as soon as I could recover speech, I said, Oh, mother, ask what you will, and I will do it. She said, I only ask you whether you will read a chapter in the Bible every morning and another every evening. I interrupted by saying, Mother. You know, I read my Bible. I know you do, but you do not read it regularly, or as a duty you owe to God, its author. And she said, Now I will return home with a happy heart if you promise me to read the scriptures daily. Oh, Robert, my son, read much in the New Testament. Read much in the Gospels, the blessed gospels. Then you cannot easily go astray. If you pray, the Lord Himself will teach you. And so then we say, I want to turn to one of these blessed gospels that Robert Moffat's mother was talking about. And I want to show you who Jesus is and what the gospel is about. And so let's turn to the book of Mark. This is the shortest of the Gospels. It's the simplest, we would say. And it's written most directly to non-Jewish Gentile audiences, like most of us in here. Most of us are Gentiles, and so it's written to people like us.

16:00Mark chapter 10, let's just, we're going to kind of bop around here in the book of Mark. So you'll need nimble fingers. Mark chapter 10. If I can get there, Mark 10, verses 44 and 45, talk about one aspect that Mark really emphasizes. It says, This is Jesus, and whoever of you will be the greatest. Will be servant of all because even the Son of Man came not to be ministered to, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. And so Mark emphasizes some things about Jesus we're going to talk about today.

16:48And one of those things is that he emphasizes Jesus as the servant king. So he is a king who came to earth with the express purpose to be a servant. And how many unsaved people will think about that, take the time to think and go, wow, that's amazing, a God or a king that would choose to be a servant. There's something a little bit different about this gospel. And so where did Mark get his news about Christ? Since Mark was not a disciple, he wasn't an eyewitness as far as we know. Where does anybody here know? I know somebody does, you can't answer. Does anybody here know where Mark got his information? We believe.

17:36Who said it? Nice and loud. Peter. Peter. Very good. Okay, we believe. History tells us that he probably got his information from Peter. And so getting it from Peter would give him special information that other writers might not have, or special insight, or the viewpoint of Peter. You know, we've all Thought about the scenario where there's an accident and four different people have watched that accident happen, and they often will have four different perspectives about the same accident. Sometimes you think, is that even the same story? But you put it together and you understand yes, and that's how we get to put the gospels together and see a more complete story. And so, Mark had a unique viewpoint, having Peter, who was one of Christ's inner three disciples, and Peter was there, and of course, Peter's personality is going to come through. And we'll see how Mark's personality comes through in this gospel as well. And it's so neat to see how God uses different people and different personalities. He uses me to speak in one way, and your pastor is going to speak another way, and others that have come here and different personalities. And He can use that all for His glory with the Holy Spirit working in and through us.

19:00Mark's gospel is really tailor-made for people living a fast-paced life, especially in the big city. So, we'll talk to our people in Joburg that we're speaking with and say, This is very appropriate for people in Joburg, a big city. Everybody around South Africa, from other cities, will say, Well, Joburg is, they call it Mordor. You know, that's the evil city. And so much goes wrong in Joburg. And they say, Man, the pace of life in Joburg. Is crazy, and you can understand that. I know here at College Station it's busy, and Houston, and the big city, so it's very appropriate. We believe that he probably wrote this from Rome, and so another big city at the time where things were happening, and you know, culture was happening, and they were taking over the world, and all of that. It's the most concise and fast-paced of the gospel, it's been called the go gospel. The word immediately is used 42 times at least in the book of Mark, he says, and we'll read in just a couple minutes some of those verses. Others will say other times at once or without delay or as soon as. In the original manuscripts, the original writings, the conjunction and is unusually common. It's used 34 times just in chapter 3. So it really comes at us rapidly. It almost leaves you out of breath. It's like, have you ever heard a child tell a story? I have. I've heard a few children tell stories. And we have three, five-year-olds, in case I haven't told you that already. And the other day they had seen a train. And they were saying, they came to me and said, Dad, we saw this train, and the guy was going along, and he was going so fast. And immediately, no, they didn't really say that, but they said, and he was going along, and all of a sudden he hooted his horn, because in Africa, or in South Africa, we say hooted instead of honked your horn. So he hooted his horn, and then we tried to race and catch up with him, and then he was waving out the window, and you know, and that's the pace kind of that Mark goes on in his gospel. And so, and it's an exciting gospel to see, and it's very appropriate to go through a Bible study talking to people about this. Well, often in Mark, we see that Jesus tried to get some solitude, and so now we're starting to introduce this person of Jesus, not just Mark. We're kind of making that shift because that's what the gospel is all about. And Jesus is very busy in the Gospel of Mark. If you go through and read Mark, if you get a Bible that doesn't have the chapter breaks, it's very helpful in Mark because you're just going and you're going, oh my goodness, this guy is just going on and on and on. And these stories are amazing and all that. And twice, Mark shows that Jesus was so busy, we talked about one of these this morning, that he couldn't even find time to eat. In Mark chapter 3, verse 20 and Mark 6:31. And then the large crowds. He's always saying there were large crowds around him. And as I mentioned this morning, and we'll get into this with groups that we're giving the gospel to and talking about, we'll say, you know, he talks about all these miracles that Jesus was doing. And he was over here doing a miracle, and then he went there and did a miracle, and then he healed all the people that came to him in this area. Then he went over across the sea, and he started people started coming to him, and he was just being thronged with people. And you can imagine, okay, just like we talked about, if there was somebody here in college station that was actually healing and it was verifiable that they were healing people on a regular basis, and then more people came to them and they healed them. And we were seeing people that had been blind for life get healed, and people that have been lame for life get healed, and all of a sudden he's going to be thronged. You would not, that guy would not be getting any rest, would they? We would want to go see them. I would want to go see that person and see, is this real? And if it's real, I've got some friends I want to bring along and make sure that they can get healed too. And so that's the tempo of what Mark is trying to tell you: that Jesus was busy and couldn't find rest, hardly could take time to eat. Mark focuses more on the doings of Jesus in his gospel than on the sayings of Jesus. You'll find he's always, Jesus is always doing something. Finally, when we get to about chapter 11 or so, it starts to slow down a little bit as he gets to where Jesus is headed to the cross and his last days, week maybe or so, a little more than a week. And so he goes through and things slow down a little bit. Some have said he's just giving an introduction and then he's really hitting the meat of what he wants to get starting in chapter 11 or so. So he emphasizes the doings of Jesus. Mark is really custom fit for those who say, don't just tell me, show me. I want to see. His focus is more on Jesus' miracles even than prophecy. Not that he doesn't have that in there, but he's showing Jesus actually did what he said that he would do, or what we've told you that he's done, or what the prophets said he would do. And this is Jesus. I'm showing you. I'm telling you. You know, think of Mark, don't think of Mark the book and this guy that lived a long time ago. Think of Mark standing with us or writing to us and saying, I want to show you, this is what Jesus did. This is exciting. You're not going to believe. Here's the stories. Here's what Peter told me that Jesus did. I want to give you a little bit of the insight in there. In fact, when Mark starts, you look at Mark chapter 1, he jumps right over Christ's birth, doesn't even talk about it. He jumps over the first 30 years of Jesus' life altogether. He wants to get straight to the point about the mighty deeds of the Son of God. And so we see Mark emphasize the servant king. We see him emphasize the Son of God. Okay, and we see him emphasize the Son of Man as well.

25:22It's as if Mark is saying, Enter with me into Christ's world. Feel how the crowds were just around Jesus so much so that. They were suffocating him. Feel how Jesus was weary by demands, how he faced up to these demonic attacks. You know, again, we think of it as these stories in this book, the Bible, that we've read hopefully many times. But can you imagine Jesus facing a guy with 6,000 demons at least living in him? I mean, that's got to be tiring. You get out of a boat, and all of a sudden, here's this guy screaming and coming at you and screaming at you.

26:02That affected him, humanly speaking, as well. Let me transport you back, as one commentator says, back to the first century to walk with Jesus under Palestinian skies, to hear him preach and teach, to watch him perform miracles, to see him dispute with religious leaders, and to witness how people reacted to Jesus. And Mark talks a lot about people and how they reacted to Jesus. So let's look at Mark 1, chapter 1, and we'll have people turn there.

26:37And we're going to start in the very beginning. Why? Because it's a very good place to start. When you sing, you begin. No, okay. All right, Mark chapter 1, verse 1. Did I pray? I don't think I prayed, did I? Let's pray. And then we'll get into this. Lord, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for the gospel. It's exciting. It's exciting to see more. Mark and kind of get a little bit into what he was thinking and what he was saying, and just help us, Lord. We want to give the gospel. We want people to come to know you. And Lord, we pray that you would use us and even use this tonight to encourage us to go out and tell people about the gospel. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. I just want to say too: you know, when I started out on this, I was a businessman. I owned an insurance agency and some real estate.

27:34I'm not a pastor. I'm not a, I haven't ever been to seminary. I'm not saying that pridefully at all. I would love at some point to get the chance to go. I'm just saying this isn't a job just for pastors. Okay? This is something Matthew 28 is very clear about and tells us we are to go and preach and teach and tell others, make disciples of others. And so all of us can do this, no matter your age, no matter your sex, no matter your mental capacity or lack thereof or whatever it is, we can all do this. Mark chapter 1, verse 1: the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. What does this mean that Jesus is the Son of God? Well, in verse 1, Mark is introducing a message to us that is called the gospel. And by the way, Way, as I do this with one-on-one, one-on-two, one-on-ten, whatever it is, it's very interactive.

28:38I don't want to be preaching necessarily in most of the situations, so it's a little bit different than we're doing here. But I want really people to want to ask questions, and that's why it generally takes longer than the six weeks to do this because I want people to ask questions, and we can go through those things and answer that as we go along. But this gives you, I mean, the course, by the way, there's like 15 pages in the beginning about this: how to do the course, in case you're nervous about doing these kinds of things, because a lot of us are. And now I don't really use that anymore. I kind of have adapted it to whatever situation, but it'll literally take you step by step. You can do it in six weeks. You can go right through and just do this, and people are going to get a great idea of what the gospel is. And so, Mark's introducing us to this thing called the gospel. This is a Greek word. This Greek word is a word that was used by messengers when they were to announce something important. So, usually, if an army had won a victory, it was called they were coming to give the gospel. This is, we want you to know this good news. We're coming back and telling you this good news. Or when an emperor wanted to celebrate his birthday or his enthronement, good news. Good news, good news. Something big has happened. Okay, well, that's what we're to do too. Good news. I've got some good news I want to bring to you and tell you about something that is very important to you. But Mark is not just giving us a good news. We would say as Christians that Mark is giving the good news. He's giving the joyful tidings. He's giving the news that is better than any news you will ever hear in your life. And it will literally impact your eternity. And so it's important. Please take time to listen to me. In one, verse one, part, the second part, we find that Christianity is not just about a system of beliefs or truths. At the heart is a person. The gospel of who? Jesus. Jesus Christ. That's what I would say is one of the biggest differences in Christianity, true biblical Christianity, is we are talking, as we mentioned this morning, about a personal relationship with our God. It's not this set of rules that we have to do. It's not try to be good and hope good outweighs the bad. There's nothing good in us. We can't do that. And so this is a person. So who is this person? Is this man that Mark tells us right from the beginning is at the core of the gospel? Well, he gives three descriptions of this person.

31:40Let's see here. Whoops, wrong page. Let me flip it over. He is Jesus. Okay, that's a word. It's a human name. His name, he would have been called Jesus. It's a common name in Israel. Yeshua means God is salvation. Mark's gospel shows us a lot about Jesus's humanness. We read that Jesus sighed deeply in his spirit. Look over at Mark 7:31. And again, going from the coast of Tyre and Sidon, he came to, whoops, hold on one second, 7:34. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said unto him, Apapha, that is be opened. I think I'm reading the wrong verse here. Hold on. And 8, verse 12. And he sighed deeply. Yeah, no, 34, he sighed, yeah, and then 8, 12, and he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, and so we see, you know, you've had that sigh in your life before, right? Something happens in your life, you see something, your kids have done something, or you hear some bad news, and you just go.

33:00Right? Something has impacted you deeply. And you can imagine Jesus doing the same thing. He was moved with compassion in Mark chapter 6. We see him all over the place. Mark chapter 6, verse 34. Jesus, he came out, he saw the people. This is when he was about to feed the 5,000. Why did he do it? And he was moved with compassion towards them. In other words, he saw 5,000 people out there. And his heart was struck. And he said, I feel for these people.

33:36I want to help them. I want to show them something physically that should prove to them that I am who I say I am, that I am God, that I am the Messiah. And he loved them. He had compassion on them. In Mark chapter 6, verse 6, he marveled or he was astonished. Later on, in Mark chapter 3, and 8, and 10, he was moved with righteous anger. So we see that Jesus could be angry. Everybody seems to know that story of Jesus going into the temple and taking the tables and overthrowing them, right? That's a famous scene. Almost anybody will think of that or have seen that on a TV show or a movie or whatever. And so we know Jesus had righteous anger. He loved the rich young ruler in chapter 11, verse 12. And oftentimes, by the way, I'll go through and read all these verses and we'll talk about what's going on in the story around. He became tired and needed to rest at times, as Mark says in Mark chapter 4. While the boat was, you know, being tossed about on the ocean, and we'll kind of talk about that story. And what's Jesus doing? Sleeping. You know, why? Was it just because he's God and he knew what the outcome was going to be? Well, that might be part of it, but I think really he was physically tired and needed to sleep. You've probably been in that situation, and there's lots going on around you. And when our daughter Allie was just a couple months old, we had trained her to sleep. She was our best sleeper out of all our kids, and we've had some good ones. But Margie had come up, and my mom was there, and we went to a basketball game, and it was a small basketball court. It was full of people. They were screaming. It was like a playoff game or something. And Allie was sitting there, and she was dead asleep. And my mother and mother-in-law kind of whispered to each other, Do you think she's deaf?

35:35Because we didn't know yet, you know. No, she was just tired and needed to sleep. And so Jesus was really physically tired as well. And so he's on a boat that's being rocked about and he's sleeping on his pillow. And the disciples are coming in a panic and saying, Don't you know what's going on? We're about to die here. Hello? But Jesus was physically tired, and he was shocked. Showing them that he had power over these things too. So, if you've ever doubted, as we talk with people about the gospel, if you've ever doubted whether God understands your pain or whether he can relate to your physical ailments or things that you're going through, come to the Gospel of Mark with me and let me show you this Jesus, the Son of Man, and His humanness. Mark will assure you that Jesus does feel your physical pain as well. And let me tell you, in any context, that's very appropriate to talk about, but in the African context where people have nothing and are literally dying, our average age, life expectancy is age 35 in Africa, in South Africa. And so, when people are experiencing that, a God that will feel their pain means something. So, he's the Christ, it goes on in there to say, His title, Messiah, the Anointed One, the long-awaited chosen one who's fulfilled many prophecies. We're going to look at those as we go through the book of Mark, promises a deliverer for Israel who will establish God's kingdom and bless the nations with salvation. And this is what Peter confesses. And we'll go to that passage that talks about in Mark chapter 8, though Peter didn't really understand exactly what he was saying. But who do you say that I am? You're the Christ, the Son of God. Of the living God, right? So Peter confessed that. By the way, I don't know if you know who Mark Ben Shapiro is. He's a political commentator. I like a lot of his stuff. He's Jewish. And the other day I saw him being interviewed as a Jewish person, and they were asking him who he thought the Messiah was. And he said, well, it wasn't Jesus, first of all. Secondly, none of the Old Testament prophets or any Jew has ever thought that Jesus is the Messiah as in God, that he was ever intended to be the God-man. This is a very intelligent, conservative commentator. He said that's a mistake that Christians have perpetuated down through the years. He said he was only ever intended to be a political figure, never intended, no Jewish person ever thought that he was to be God. That was not what the Old Testament was talking about. You can look it up on YouTube and see it for yourself. He's just a political figure, and I do believe he's coming at some point, but he's not coming to save us from our sin. He's coming to save us politically. And that goes right along, right, with what the disciples and many people in their day thought, that Jesus was a political figure. He's coming to free us from Rome. But that's not the Jesus we see in Mark. We see Jesus, the suffering Son. Servant, the servant king. Okay? So he's the Christ. And then finally, in verse 1, he is the Son of God. What does it mean that he's the Son of God? Well, the cults love to say that this means that he was somehow less than God. By the way, we have Mormon missionaries that come and really put us to shame oftentimes in Joburg and go around and do their mission there. We have Jehovah's Witnesses that go out and go, you know, gate to gate. We can't go door to door in Joburg, so gate to gate, knocking and trying to talk to people. And this is what many of them would say. The ancients would speak of rulers or heroes as sons of God. But to the Jewish mind, as we see it in Scripture, what did this title, the Son of God, originally mean? Well, in the Old Testament, the Son of God could refer to the promised Messiah, who would have a special relationship with God as God's appointed king and his ruler. 2 Samuel 7 talks about this, the one who would redeem God's people. But in the New Testament, it's very clear that the Jewish people understood exactly what it meant for Jesus to claim to be the Son of God. In John chapter 5, I would turn there, but for the sake of time, verse 18, he says it goes through, and Jesus is talking and doing some things there. He had just healed a man, I think, that couldn't walk. And it says it can. To a point in 5:18, it says, They tried all the harder to kill Jesus. Why? Because he was calling God His own Father, making himself equal with God. The Jewish leaders of his time weren't angry just because Jesus was claiming to be some guy that God sent that, well, I'm a special prophet or something. No. Jesus was saying, I want you to know I am the Son of God. And the book of John particularly goes through and hits that many, many times. But to the Jewish mind, it meant they knew that he was saying, I am God Himself. I'm making myself equal with God. Son of God meant that Jesus bore the very characteristics of his Father and was the same essence and nature. This Jesus of Nazareth was no less than claiming to be 100% God and 100% man. He is God with us. And so this becomes a central theme in Mark's gospel. And if you look at your papers there, where did I put mine? It went somewhere here. You'll see a three-legged stool there. Okay?

41:42Ah, here we go. You'll see a three-legged stool on there. And this is our wrap-up of what we've gone over and we're done now. But we would go through here and say, okay, Jesus had the authority as a teacher over evil spirits. And that's a good one in African contexts. People every time will ask, Well, what does that mean that he has authority over evil spirits? Because we know about evil spirits, and our ancestors have done this and that, and I've seen the witch doctor do that. And what about the charismatic preacher who has claimed to heal people? And is that true, or is it not true? And so, we get, I try not to get into too long of a discussion, but afterwards, I'll take those questions and answer them. And so, all of these things that you see here, but through the first three weeks, we're going to hit on three parts of the stool. Number one, Mark tells us that Jesus is the Son of God. These are three things that you have to believe in order to be a Christian. Number one, Jesus is the Son of God, meaning he is God Himself, He claims to be God. Number two, Jesus died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin. That's the second part of the stool. And number three, Jesus rose again, He conquered death. Okay? And we'll close with this for today, and usually how I close the lesson, but you can't get away. It's in here, actually. Jesus is called the man you can't ignore. He's either a liar, he's a lunatic, or he's Lord. Maybe you heard that before. Josh McDowell, I think, and C.S. Lewis also would use that. So he's either a liar because he knew that what he was saying when he claimed to be God was false. So that's one option. Okay? He's a lunatic. Because he said it and thought it was true, but he was just crazy and it wasn't true. Or he actually is who he said he was. Those are the only three options. And if he's a liar, why would you follow him? And if he's a lunatic, why would you follow him? But if most people will say, well, he was a good prophet. He was a good man. He's, yeah, he's a good person. Well, if he's a good person, I mean, as a lunatic, what we would say is a good person. Maybe he has some good attributes. Is a liar a good person? No. But if he's Lord, then you better listen to what we have to say and what the Gospel of Mark has to say. And so that's what we would do in giving the gospel. So I'm just right at the end here. Thank you. Let me close in prayer, and then I'll turn it over. And thank you very much for listening tonight. Lord, help us. We want to give your gospel clearly.

44:25We want to know what it is. Help us to care enough to study and to get into your word and to listen and learn and then care enough about souls, dear God. Give us a burden for souls that we would go and tell others because that's what you've told us to do. And we want others to come and be with us. We want you to use us, dear Lord. What a privilege it is for us to be able to lead others to you. And your Holy Spirit, use us to draw people to you. And the Holy Spirit, go to them and draw them, Lord. We pray that you would give us these opportunities, that we would take these opportunities, Lord, and not Not just let them go by. Thank you, Lord, for bringing us together tonight. We love you. We're thankful for all you do for us, Lord. We pray in Jesus' name.