Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Jesus is King | The Gospels | Mark 1:1-15

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. If a plane takes off in Los Angeles towards New York City, the pilot needs to set a specific trajectory to land where he intends. If the pilot is off by just one degree, he won't end up in New York City. He'll end up in Washington, D.C. It's easy to think that small decisions and small habits don't generate big changes in your life. But what's true of a flight pattern is even more true of a lifetime. Small choices amplify over time for good or ill. As we come into a new year, it's a time where a lot of people try to course correct.

Starting point is 00:00:48 We amend our exercise and eating habits. We try to curtail our addictions to smartphones and screens. We recommit ourselves to having healthy relationships with our friends, our spouses, or our children. But there's one small decision that I promise will either make, or break the trajectory of your life, reading the Bible. A daily habit of being in God's words sets you on a trajectory towards the city of God. A daily habit of ignoring his word? Well, that lands you in the city of man. A daily habit of reading God's word makes you a more selfless and sacrificial person. A daily habit of ignoring it will make you a more selfish and myopic

Starting point is 00:01:28 person. A daily habit of reading God's word will uproot sins grasp on your life and make you more humble. A daily habit of ignoring God's word will cultivate sin in your life and make you proud. It may just feel like, and I know, it's such a small decision to get up and read your Bible every day, listen to this podcast, and dig into it. It may just feel like a one degree difference, but given enough time and that trajectory creates amazing fruit or tragic consequences. That's one reason that Keith and I started 10-minute Bible talks in 2019. It's because we believe in the power of Scripture, because we believe that it is the living, breathing Word of God, the voice of His Spirit, and we believe that it has the power to cut hearts and souls

Starting point is 00:02:15 and re-forge men and women into saints after the image of Christ. Over the years, we've gone through almost all of the Bible on this podcast, but this year we're going to do something different. Rather than going through large sections of Scripture, we're going to slow ourselves down and focus on one of our favorite sections of the Bible. the Gospels. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that that it's one of my favorite parts of the Bible, but it's just true. It really is. And it's true for a simple reason. The books of Matthew Mark, Luke and John, are our only biographies of Jesus. These are the books where we learn about his infancy and childhood, of his ministry, of his teaching, of his miracles, and of his confrontations

Starting point is 00:02:55 with darkness. Of course, it's where we learn about his death for our sins, about his resurrection, and about as enthronement as the king of the universe at the right hand of God. And one of the benefits of slowing down and spending a whole year in the gospel, just doing short chunks at a time, is that we really get to savor every moment of Jesus. We get to read and reread these passages and let them sink deeply into our hearts. And again, I know that might sound small, but a year of delighting in Jesus could really change your life.

Starting point is 00:03:29 So I'm glad you're here. And my prayer is that you'll be here with us every day. Not just listening to the podcast, but also reading along in your Bible. We have a Bible reading plan that goes along with every episode, and you can download that by clicking the link in our show notes. And if you do that, you'll be able to turn Bible reading into one of your daily habits if it's not already. So make sure to click that link, download the Bible reading plan, and set your life on a different

Starting point is 00:03:56 trajectory. I also want to encourage you to check out our sister podcast Not Just Sunday. Today we dropped our first episode of the year and it's also the first episode in a series called How to Read the Gospels. If you visited Mind Keith's office, you would immediately notice that we have a hilarious number of books on the Gospels. I mean, we both just love the Gospels. And so our goal on Not Just Sunday is to summarize everything we've learned so that when you read the Gospels, the stories are going to jump off the page. They're going to come to life. They're going to land in your life. So make sure you check out not just Sunday on your podcast player so that you can learn more about how to read the Gospels as you're listening along. The first gospel that we'll be discussing

Starting point is 00:04:40 is the Gospel of Mark. And again, I know I'm not supposed to say this, but it is my favorite gospel because it's just jam-packed with action. Jesus is like an unstoppable stone rolling down a hill towards his ultimate mission of dying for sins, rising to life and being enthroned as king. That last idea, the idea of kingship. It's in the foreground of the first 15 verses of Mark. But it can be really easy to miss, so I want to show it to you. Let me read you the opening words of the gospel. This is verse one, the beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, son of God. Did you hear all the kingship language in it? It's okay if you didn't because honestly, it's super easy to miss. The first thing you should notice is that Jesus is called the Messiah.

Starting point is 00:05:25 That title comes from a Hebrew word messiah, which simply means anointed one. Most of the time, the New Testament uses a different word for this title, Christ, because Christ is the Greek word for anointed one. And you can remember that by thinking of christening. When you christen an infant, you anoint them with water or oil. So what does all this have to do with kingship? Well, it all goes back to the Old Testament. Because in the Old Testament, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ, well, that was none other than the King of Israel. Check out Psalm 2, which opens by describing opposition to the King of Israel. Okay, Psalm 2, verse 2, the kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord, against His Anointed One. Now, this could be translated as

Starting point is 00:06:13 against the Lord and against his Messiah or against the Lord and against His Christ because in ancient Israel an anointed one was the king a Messiah was the king a Christ was the king and the Psalm goes on and so when Mark introduces Jesus as the Messiah he's not simply saying the person who will save you from your sins he is saying this is the king of the universe and in fact as Psalm 2 goes on, we read yet another title for a king that Mark uses. In verse 7, God says this to the king. He said to me, the king, you are my son. Today I have become your father. You see, when we hear a son of God, we make associations with Jesus's divinity, and that's true, but in ancient Israel, the son of God was also a kingly title. And this was even more of the case in ancient Rome,

Starting point is 00:07:05 where they actually believed that the emperor was God incarnate. In fact, there's one more connection to kingship in Rome that's really relevant in this passage. I want to reread verse one again. The beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the son of God. Now that little phrase, good news, is sometimes translated as gospel. Now, when we hear gospel, it doesn't necessarily have political overtones for us. But in the ancient world, good news or gospel had political overtones. And that's because a gospel was an announcement of a king's ascension. It was the good news of his enthronement and rule. Around the time of Jesus's birth, a stone inscription was made in a city called Prienne, and it was celebrating the rule of Caesar Augustus. I won't read all of it here,

Starting point is 00:07:52 but I want to read a few important bits, because you're going to hear echoes of Mark's introduction in this ancient inscription. It says this, Providence sent him, Augustus Caesar, as a savior, both for us and for our descendants that he might end war and arrange all things by his advent the birthday of the god augustus was the beginning of the gospel for the world did you catch it the birthday of the so-called god caesar was the beginning of the gospel for the world now let's reread mark one and you're going to suddenly realize how charged and controversial this single verse probably was in rome mark says the beginning of the gospel about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. Mark could not have been more clear. Jesus isn't just a teacher. He wasn't just a healer. He was something far greater. He was a contender for Caesar's throne. In fact, he was a contender for every throne because he came from the start as a king. Jesus himself understood this. In the last verse of this section, Mark summarizes Jesus' entire message this way. Verse 15.

Starting point is 00:09:03 Jesus said, the time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the gospel. Jesus is a king. And here's the thing about thrones. They're all one-seaters. Jesus is claiming authority and power over everything and over everyone. And this year, you will face an important question. We face it every morning when we wake up. There is a throne on your heart. And it's also a one-seater. So who will sit on it? Jesus or you. If anyone or anything sits on that throne but Jesus, your life trajectory will move towards sadness, emptiness, hurt, and destruction. Jesus is the one person who takes the throne of your heart and fills you up, pours his love out, and makes you whole. That's why his kingship

Starting point is 00:09:55 really is good news, isn't it? The question is whether we will repent and believe and give him the right to heal and guide us.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Jesus is King | The Gospels | Mark 1:1-15

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