Sermon Tone Analysis

BY GLENN PEASE

The painter Lundwig Richter, tells in his memoirs of how he and three friends set out to paint the same landscape.

They each were committed to produce as accurately as possible what they saw.

Nevertheless, the result was four different pictures, as different as the four personalities of the artists.

The same thing happened when four well-known artists painted the portrait of the United Nations hostess Maria Lani.

Each of them knew her personally and saw her from a different perspective, and the result was four remarkably different pictures.

This helps us understand why there are four Gospels in the New Testament.

One Gospel would give us the life of Jesus as seen from only one perspective, and that would mean a very inadequate portrait.

Jesus is too complex to be seen from only one perspective.

God inspired four men to write the life of Jesus, for each of them gives us unique insight into Jesus that you do not get in the others.

Mark gives us the perspective that is most popular in our modern world.

Wycliff Bible Translators have made Mark the most translated book in the world.

There is no other book in the world in so many different languages.

It is the shortest of the Gospels, and, therefore, the fastest to translate and to read.

But that is not the only reason for its selection.

It is also the Gospel most appealing to the Gentile world.

Matthew is written for Jews, and it is full of Old Testament quotes, and references to Jewish customs, all of which are of little concern to the Gentiles to whom Mark writes.

He writes for the Romans, and they did not care about genealogies and a persons pedigree.

They only cared about his deeds, not his decent.

The result is, Mark is a Gospel of deeds.

Jesus is a man of action-a man on the move.

It is a go go go Gospel, and Jesus is involved in one event and miracle after another, with hardly a breath in between.

If Jesus ever relaxed, it is not noted by Mark.

Mark does not tell us about birth stories and childhood.

He leaves that to Dr. Luke.

He is more anxious to get on with the story of the adult action of the Lord.

But this does not mean Mark is not interested in details.

He gives us graphic details the other Gospels do not share.

If you want to know exact names, times, locations, or the numbers and colors, you go to Mark for these details.

He is the detail man.

His portrait is of Messiah on the run, but he is no blur, but rather, a very concrete personality involved in very specific settings and lives.

Mark tells us more about the looks and gestures of Jesus than anyone.

Mark is the only one who tells us that our Savior was a carpenter.

Mark tells us more about our Lord's emotions than the other Gospels.

He brings Jesus closer to us as a man of like feelings.

The other Gospels just tell us of Jesus calling little children to Him, but Mark tells us twice that when they came He took them up into His arms.

Mark alone brings out a tenderness in Jesus that nobody else records.

We could go on giving examples, but the point we want to make is, each Gospel writer sees Jesus from a perspective that the others do not see.

You cannot know all there is to know about Jesus by reading just one Gospel.

There are four of them for a reason, and each is vital to the total picture.

Mark is the Gospel that is the first Gospel recommended for reading around the world, and this morning we are going to start a study of Mark in our goal to know our Lord and Savior better.

Mark begins his Gospel with the word, beginning.

The Greek has no article, and so it is not in the original, the beginning, but just beginning.

Beginning of the Gospel about Jesus.

Mark does not waste any time in getting the show on the road.

This is the greatest show on earth, and the greatest story ever told, and he does not give us page after page of background and introduction.

He lifts the curtain on this drama for act one just as the gun is fired for the race to begin.

Matthew is more like the educational channel with a long introduction of genealogies, exciting to those in the know, but boring to the majority of people who just want to see some action.

Mark is the Gospel for them, for he is like one of those action-packed films that starts off with a chase scene, or a few explosions, before they even list the characters.

Mark does not even say, "On your marks, get set": He just says, "Go!"

Now we could argue with Mark, and say the Gospel began long before John the Baptist came announcing the coming of Christ.

It actually began in the mind and heart of God before the world began.

This is, of course, the perspective of John's Gospel.

He starts, "In the beginning was the word."

He goes back to the eternal pre-incarnate state of the Son with the Father.

Or we could argue that the Gospel began with the birth of Jesus, and this would be Dr.

Luke's perspective.

You could argue that it started with the promise to Abraham, or go back to the promise to Adam and Eve.

This is Matthew's perspective.

There are a lot of places you can begin the Gospel, but Mark says, here is where the rubber meets the road: When Jesus actually began His public ministry, and began to demonstrate His deity in power and compassion for people.

That is where the good news really became a reality.

Before it was potential, but here it becomes actual.

All that went before was promise, but here begins the fulfillment.

Nobody else has to be wrong for Mark to be right.

Where the Gospel begins all depends on your perspective.

Mark's perspective is that it is the action of Jesus that really counts, and, therefore, here is where we begin: Where Jesus steps out of the shadow of His obscure and commonplace life, and begins to play the public role he came into the world to play as the Messiah of Israel, and the Savior of the world.

Every time you give an account of some event in your life, you have to choose where to begin.

You can start with what you had for breakfast, or where you went shopping, if these are relevant to the event.

Or you can start with the event itself.

Where you begin depends on your purpose, and on which details of the day are relevant to your purpose.

There was a time when Jesus was not a public figure doing miracles and drawing crowds by His teaching.

But then He began His public ministry as a man of action, and Mark shows this as the beginning of the Gospel.

This is where the light began to shine and produce new hope and dreams.

I have labored this issue because I believe it is a very important issue that Christians need to get into their thinking.

God has given us four perspectives on the life of His Son, and thus teaches us the validity of, and the value of different perspectives.

You can argue all you want about the importance of the birth stories of Matthew and Luke, or about the pre-existent Christ of John, but you cannot escape the fact that God inspired a Gospel to begin with the adult life of Jesus and John the Baptist his forerunner.

All of them are valid and of great value.

God is aware of the need to adapt the message to the needs of the hearers.

Thus, He had Matthew write with a Jewish perspective; Mark with a Roman perspective, and Luke with a Greek perspective.

What this means for us is that we need to be aware that we need to present Christ to those who do not know Him in a way that fits their point of view.

If you are dealing with an intellectual you will stress that Jesus is the Truth, and that in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

If you are dwelling with a person with all sorts of physical needs, you will present Christ as the Great Physician.

There are no limits to the ways you can present the Lord, for He has hundreds of names, and plays hundreds of roles depending upon the need.

One of the most important things we need to learn about our Lord is that He is adaptable.

Do not limit and stifle your growth in Jesus by locking Him into your culture, and into the framework of your own background and awareness.

Be open to the Jesus and multiple perspectives.

But this is not to be interpreted to mean that all perspectives about Jesus are correct.

There are all kinds of wrong perspectives on Jesus too.

History is full of them.

The New Testament has plenty of them.

People saw Jesus as a wine bibber and a glutton.

People saw Jesus as a lawbreaker and a blasphemer.

Some even saw Him as one of the prophets returned.

This was a positive perspective, but it was still false.

From the earliest centuries there have been fictional accounts of Jesus designed to make Him conform to the current values of the culture.

He was portrayed in many apocryphal Gospel as a sensationalist doing the very thing Satan tempted Him to do.

He used His divine power to make play birds fly away, and to make boards shorter without cutting them, and other crowd-pleasing miracles.

False perspectives on Jesus have been common.

The only way to discover what is false is to put it up against the four basic views of Jesus God has revealed in the four Gospels.

If any Christ is presented that is not consistent with these four portraits, then you know you are dealing with a false Christ.