Sermon Tone Analysis

Mark’s gospel moves at a blistering pace.

He had used the “euthus” which means immediately or at once 7 times in 28 verses.

Reading Mark’s gospel is for our soul what an elliptical is for our heart.

It takes our breath away as Mark compresses three and a half years of Jesus ministry into 9 chapters.

Today’s text does something quite interesting.

It so subtle that we could easily miss it’s importance due to Mark’s pace.

Look at verse 35.

There is Mark’s favorite conjunction “and” but notice the subtle shift.

The adverb “immediately” has been replaced with the verb “rising”.

We have a break in our pace.

Is Mark tired?

Why the change of pace?

MARK 1:35

Mark slams on his writing breaks to show us a truth.

A truth that is needed for our spiritual well-being.

A truth so often ignored that its effects are not felt until its fruit is eaten.

Jesus is showing us how to care for our souls.

Soul care is an epidemic that plagues most all churches today.

I’m not talking about another book to read, or bible study to attend.

I’m talking about soul care.

This is foreign for most of us.

Soul care is found in those spiritual discipline that we often do not know much about or just do not practice.

The idea of spiritual discipline has disappeared from our minds, our mouths, our pulpits, and our culture.

We hardly know what discipline means in modern American society.

And yet, there is no other way to attain godliness; discipline is the path to godliness.

Mark’s recording of this account is by no means incidental but instructive.

He wants us to see the pattern and the purpose of soul care.

PATTERN OF SOUL CARE.

“The Bet,” is a story by Anton Chekhov, a Russian writer of the last half of the nineteenth century.

The plot involves a wager between two educated men regarding solitary confinement.

A wealthy, middle-aged banker believed that the death penalty was a more humane penalty than solitary confinement because “an executioner kills at once, solitary confinement kills gradually.”

One of his guests at a party, a young lawyer of twenty-five, disagreed, saying, “To live under any conditions is better than not to live at all.”

Angered, the banker impulsively responded with a bet of two million rubles that the younger man could not last five years in solitary confinement.

Convinced of his endurance, the lawyer announced he would stay fifteen years alone instead of only five.

They agreed on the arrangements, and the young man moved into a separate building on the grounds of the banker’s large estate.

He was allowed no visitors or newspapers.

He could write letters but receive none.

Guards watched to ensure he never violated the agreement, but were stationed so that he could not see them or any other human being from his windows.

He received his food in silence through a small opening where he could not see the one who served him.

Everything else he wanted—books, certain foods, musical instruments—was granted by special written request.

The story develops with a description of the things the lawyer asked for through the years and the observations of the guards who occasionally stole a glance through a window.

During the first year the piano could be heard at almost any hour, and he asked for many books, mostly novels and other light reading.

The next year the music ceased and the works of various classical authors were requested.

In the sixth year of his isolation he began to study languages and soon had mastered six.

After the tenth year of his confinement, the prisoner sat motionless at the table and read the New Testament.

After more than a year’s saturation of the Bible, he began to study the history of religion and works on theology.

During the last two years his reading broadened to cover many subjects in addition to theology.

The second half of the story focuses on the night before the noon deadline when the lawyer would win the bet.

The banker was now at the end of his career.

His risky speculations and impetuosity had gradually undermined his business.

The once self-confident millionaire was now a second-rate banker, and paying off the wager would destroy him.

Angry at his foolishness and jealous of the soon-to-be-wealthy man who was now only forty, the old banker determined to kill his opponent and frame the guard with the murder.

Slipping into the man’s room, he found him asleep at the table and noticed a letter the lawyer had written to him.

He picked it up and read the following:

Tomorrow at twelve o’clock I shall be free, . . . but before leaving this room, . . .

I find it necessary to say a few words to you.

With a clear conscience, and before God, who sees me, I declare to you that I despise . . .

all that your books call the joys of this world.

For fifteen years I have studied attentively the life of this world.

It is true that I neither saw the earth nor its peoples, but in your books I lived. . . .

I sang songs, I hunted the deer and the wild boar in the forests. . . .

In your books I climbed to the summit of Elburz and Mont Blanc, and I saw from those heights the sun rise in the morning, and at night it shed its purple glow over the sky and the ocean and the mountain-tops.

I saw beneath me the flashing lightning cut through the clouds.

I saw green fields, forests, rivers, lakes and towns.

I heard the song of the sirens and the music of the shepherd’s reed-pipes.

I felt the touch of the wings of beautiful [angels] who had flown to me. . . .

Your books gave me wisdom.

All that had been achieved by the untiring brain of man during long centuries is stored in my brain in a small compressed mass. . . .

I know I am wiser than you all. . . .

And I despise all your books, I despise all earthly . . .

wisdom.

All is worthless and false, hollow and deceiving like the mirage.

You may be proud, wise and beautiful, but death will wipe you away from the face of the earth, as it does the mice that live beneath your floor; and your heirs, your history, your immortal geniuses will freeze or burn with the destruction of the earth.

You have gone mad and are not following the right path.

You take falsehood for truth, and deformity for beauty.

To prove to you how I despise all that you value I renounce the two millions on which I looked, at one time, as the opening of paradise for me, and which I now scorn.

To deprive myself of the right to receive them, I will leave my prison five hours before the appointed time, and by so doing break the terms of our compact.

The banker read these lines, replaced the paper on the table, kissed the strange, sleeping man, and with tears in his eyes quietly left the house.

Chekhov writes, “Never before, not even after sustaining serious losses . . .

, had he despised himself as he did at that moment.”

His tears kept him awake the rest of the night.

And at seven the next morning the watchmen ran in to say that they had seen the man crawl through a window, go to the gate, and then disappear.

Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (pp.

221-224).

NavPress.

Kindle Edition.

There is something both appealing and transforming about silence and solitude.

When we consider it in the light of Scripture, we realize that it would be neither right nor desirable to be cloistered from our God-given privileges and responsibilities involving other people.

Biblical reality calls us to family, fellowship, evangelism, ministry, and other aspects of life together in the local church for the sake of Christ and His kingdom.

And yet, sometimes our souls crave separation from noise and crowds into silence and solitude.

Just as we must engage with others for some of the Disciplines of the Christian life, so there are times when we must temporarily withdraw into the Disciplines of silence and solitude.

Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p.

224).

NavPress.

Kindle Edition.

Whitney, Donald S.. Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life (p.

224).

NavPress.

Kindle Edition.

In her book Finding Focus in a Whirlwind World, Jean Fleming observed, “We live in a noisy, busy world.

Silence and solitude . . .

fit the era of Victorian lace, high-button shoes, and kerosene lamps better than our age of television, video arcades, and joggers wired with earphones.

We have become a people with an aversion to quiet and an uneasiness with being alone.”