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Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions and the beginning of our study of the
Gospel of Mark. We're going to be talking these next several weeks together
about the new life that God can give you and me because of the life of Jesus
Christ. Mark is a great place to start.

It's a great place to start as a new believer. It's a great place to start when
it comes to your new life. It's a great place to start in a new year, in a new
direction.

It's just a great place to start because it tells the good news of Jesus Christ.
And as we start this study together of the Gospel of Mark, I would like on this
first day, before we jump into day one, verse one of Mark, which we're going to
look at tomorrow, I'd like to introduce for you real quickly this book and the
writer of this book. This is one of those books where knowing the writer helps
you to understand the message.

The Gospel of Mark was written, many scholars think, around 40 to 45 A. D. ,
which is only 10 to 15 years after the death of Jesus Christ.

It's the first of the Gospels to be written down so that we can understand the
life of Jesus. And it has a theme. It has a perspective.

Each of the Gospels have a different perspective. Matthew, for instance, the
perspective of Matthew is Jesus as the King. Mark, written to the Roman people,
has the perspective of Jesus as a servant, the one who came to give his life as
a servant for us.

By the time the Gospel of Mark is written, Peter and Paul had most likely been
killed for their faith, and Mark is sitting to write down their stories to make
sure that we understand. And it's important to understand as we begin this
Gospel that Mark was a friend of Peter. Mark writes down, under the inspiration
of the Spirit, what he's learned from his friend.

You could call this, in one sense, the Gospel of Peter, the Apostle of Jesus,
written down by Mark. You're hearing it from that perspective. And I want to
focus for just a few moments today as we begin this study together on the writer
of this Gospel and what this can mean for my life and for your life as we begin
this study together.

Because I believe this is a study that can change your daily life. It can change
the way that you live your life. As you and I look at the life of Jesus laid out
for us in Mark, it can change the way my daily life goes.

But it begins with a focus on the writer of this Gospel. One fact about Mark
that is probable, according to most students of the Bible, is found in the book
of Mark. Mark 14, 51-52, tells this story of something that happened in the
Garden of Gethsemane.

A young man wearing nothing but a linen garment was following Jesus. When they
seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. And that's all you get.

You never hear the young man's name, but many people believe, based on this and
a few other verses in the New Testament, that this was none other than John
Mark, the writer of the Gospel of Mark. And it just fits in this story of one of
his first experiences with Jesus. You might call him an unusual spectator at
that moment.

He saw something happening, and he knew that it was unusual. Jesus being
arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. And then something unusual happens to this
young man.

He tries to run away. They grab his garment. He has to run away naked for his
fear.

He remembered that moment. And out of that moment, God began to do a work in
John Mark's life. So by the time you get to the book of Acts, you find that Mark
has become a servant.

In Acts 12, 25-13, 3, he is what I would call an uneasy servant. He goes out to
serve with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey. And he doesn't
do very well.

He has a difficult time. He's a little uneasy in what it means to be a servant.
He's not sure of his place.

And so by the end of this journey, he becomes not just an uneasy servant, but he
becomes what I would call an uncertain servant. In Acts 13-13, the Bible tells
us that John Mark went home from this first journey. He just couldn't cut it as
a missionary.

He failed. He failed. And the important thing for God's servants is not how they
handle their successes.

But probably the most important thing for you as a servant of God is how do you
handle your failures? And for Mark, it wasn't always easy. By Acts 15, verse 38,
as you travel his life through the book of Acts, you find out that he's no
longer an uncertain servant, but now he's become an unwanted servant.

Paul and Barnabas are ready to go on their next missionary journey. And Barnabas
wants to take John Mark. And Paul says, "I'm not taking him.

" He failed us the last time. Let's take someone we know that we can count on.
In fact, this became such an issue between Paul and Barnabas, they went separate
ways.

Paul went on a missionary journey with some others, and Barnabas went on a
missionary journey of a different kind with John Mark. He was an unwanted
servant at a certain point in his life. One as great as the apostle Paul thought
that John Mark just couldn't cut it.

But that wasn't the end of the story. This could have been the end of his
ministry, except for the ministry of an encourager. And so in Acts 15, 37, and
39, you find that he becomes an unshackled servant.

He's freed from his past by the forgiveness of Christ, and he's also given a new
opportunity for the future, a new hope for the future. And much of that message
comes into John Mark's life through the ministry of a friend, a man by the name
of Barnabas. Barnabas was an encourager.

You know, when it comes to encouragers, God needs a very few Pauls. Paul was a
life-changing, world-changing man. He needs a very few Pauls, it only takes one
of those a generation, but he needs a lot of Barnabas' encouragers.

And by the way, without Barnabas, there would not have been a Paul. Barnabas was
the one who originally encouraged Paul into ministry and encouraged the young
church to accept Paul, who used to be an enemy of the church, into ministry.
Barnabas was responsible for the ministry of Paul, and he's also responsible for
the ministry of John Mark.

And so when you look at it, Barnabas is responsible for the writing of more New
Testament books than anyone, all the epistles and letters of Paul, and plus the
gospel of Mark. That's the incredible ministry that you can have as an
encourager. And out of all this, John Mark eventually becomes a useful servant.

He becomes useful to Peter. You can read about it in 1 Peter 5. 13, where Peter
talks about how useful John Mark is as a servant.

But even more amazingly than that, he becomes useful to Paul. You can read about
it in 2 Timothy 4. 11 and Colossians 4.

10 and Philemon verse 24. In all those places, he talks about John Mark and how
he's become useful to him in ministry. Things changed, God changed things.

What does this mean to me? What does this mean to you as a servant? Here are
some things you and I learned from this ministry of John Mark.

Three things. Number one, you have to move from spectator to servant. John Mark
started where we all start, as a spectator.

He was watching what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane. He ran away from it
out of fear, and that could have been a single moment in his life and he could
have forgotten it the rest of his life, but he didn't. He moved from spectator
to servant, to one who was struggling to follow Jesus.

You're at a point in your life where you're pretty much a spectator when it
comes to spiritual things. You've never really stepped across the line and
stepped up to what God wants to do in your life. One of the joys of us going
through this Gospel of Mark together is that God's going to challenge me and you
together every day to move from being a spectator to being a servant.

And being a servant is where the joy is. Being a servant is where the life
impact is. But you've got to move from just watching to involving your life and
following Him.

That's the first thing, move from spectator to servant. The second thing you and
I learn is that servants must grow. When I say, "I'm going to become a servant
of Christ," that doesn't mean immediately I'm full grown in all of my attitudes
and a perfect heart towards God.

Look at John Mark. He had to grow through uneasiness and through doubt. He even
had to grow through rejection, even rejection by other Christians, even
rejection by the most important leaders of his day who were Christians.

And yet he grew through it all. He grew through rejection and failure to become
a useful and important servant of God. One who was used of God to write one of
the four Gospels that we read today.

What an incredible story of how his sticking in to follow God's leadership in
his life allowed him to be used of God in incredible and powerful ways. And in
fact, God even used the failures that he'd been through and the rejection that
he'd faced to forge relationships that allowed him one day to be able to write
this Gospel. That's how God wants to use everything in your life.

But servants must grow. If I feel like the moment I become a follower of Christ,
I'm going to have it all together, I can forget that one. I'm going to be
growing the rest of my life.

And the third thing that I learned in this is the power of encouragement. I
learned I have to move from spectator to servant. I learned that servants must
grow and I learned the power of encouragement for the servants of Christ.

Barnabas is an incredible example to me. I want to be a Barnabas. I want to be
the kind of person that encourages other people around me to grow in faith.

That sees in them something they don't even see in themselves. That sees at a
point in their life where they feel like a failure and they feel like no use for
me anymore in my life. I see in them what Christ wants to do and I encourage
that out of them.

It's interesting when it comes to encouragement, oftentimes we wait to the very
end to encourage people. At the end of some successful project, at the end of a
job, even at the end of life, at somebody's funeral. I need encouragement.

I don't know about you, but I need encouragement along the way. Don't wait until
the end. Don't wait until some big important moment.

Don't wait even until the right moment. It is always the right moment to
encourage people. People can use encouragement while they're in the battle, not
after the battle is over.

So the question is, who can you encourage today? We talked to God, talked to
Jesus for a few moments. Let's talk to him about these three things we just
talked about from the example of John Mark.

Lord, we pray together that you help us not to just watch, but to serve. Father,
we pray together you'd help us to grow in you, grow closer to you. And we pray
together that our study together of this gospel of Mark would also encourage in
us the ability to be an encourager and encourage her about the life of Christ,
how we're experiencing it and how others can experience it in their daily lives.

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for the good news. And I pray that the good news
would set the tone for our life today.

In your name, amen. Well join us tomorrow. We're going to be talking together
about the radical introduction of Jesus to the world.