“What can God do with me if I have failed Him?”
As a pastor, I often hear that or something like it. Is there an answer to believers who are less than perfect? Yes! Failure for a believer is only temporary; for the lost, it is permanent. Have you ever failed, quit, or walked out on an assignment from God? We serve the God of the 2nd chance, a Lord so gracious that His strength is made perfect in our weakness. He is the God of new beginnings. And our life in Christ is just a series of new beginnings!
Every time you open your Bible and find a book named Mark, you are looking at a testimony to the God of Heaven who has mercy on those of us who fail, and know it, and flee to Him – and He lets us have a new beginning!
There are 4 Gospels in our Bibles. Each is a Gospel by Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John. Each is a snapshot of a Perfect Jesus.
Matthew captures the Perfect King of Israel – His ancestry, Birth, Life, and Death.
Mark Captures the Perfect Servant, as opposed to all the imperfect ones that have lived.
Luke captures the only Perfect Man who ever lived in a world of imperfection, fallenness, death, disease, and despair.
John captures the Perfect Deity in a world of false gods, fallen gods, and feeble gods as the real God of Creation.
But back to the Gospel by Mark – Jesus is the Perfect Servant. The only perfect servant God has ever had was His Son – all the rest of the countless men and women, boys and girls He has used, have been imperfect!
That is comforting for me. The longer I live, the more aware I am of my imperfections, failures, and shortcomings, and painfully aware of my sins – aren’t we all? So this morning we have our first choice to make as believers – wait until we can perfectly minister (never) or get started now and serve as we grow and are shaped by the Lord.
That is exactly the testimony of the book we turn to this morning. The Gospel by Mark is the second book of the New Testament and the 41st book of the Bible. It is the clearest picture I know in all of God’s Word of “What can God do with a failure”.
As we open to the Book of Mark, we open to the words of Mark capturing the experiences of Peter.
So, this book reflects two different lives. This morning we will examine the human writer of this Gospel. Next week, the man behind this Gospel is a man named Peter.
As we turn to the Gospel by Mark, think with me. One of the greatest honors imaginable is getting to be a part of the Book of Books. God wrote a Book that He says is “forever settled in Heaven”. So the special servants He chose to use to communicate that book are quite a select and special group.
God has several groups that He highlights in His revelation to us. There are the pre and post-Flood Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Twelve Apostles, and the 40 or so Scripture Writers.
This morning as we open our Bibles there is a name linked to the book we are studying. We are in the Gospel by WHAT? RIGHT, Mark!
For as long as believers live on Earth, we will call these 16 chapters. Whenever we read this account that captures Christ through the eyes of Peter, and under the flawless breath of God’s Spirit – we’ll never forget its from the pen of Mark. So as the words of the Gospel by Mark lay before us, we are faced this morning with a sobering reminder of our Gracious God. Look who God used!
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