Top Highlights

• Who was Mark? The earliest and most important source of an answer comes from Papias, bishop of Hierapolis until 130 A.D., who said that Mark had been a secretary and translator for Peter, one of the first twelve of Jesus’s disciples or followers, and “wrote accurately all that [Peter] remembered.”
• If this world was made by a triune God, relationships of love are what life is really all about.
• There are, in fact, thirty healings recorded in the Gospels, all showing us that Jesus has authority over sickness. And over the first few chapters of his Gospel, Mark goes on to stack up layer upon layer of evidence to show that Jesus’s authority extends to every realm of life.
• Because the Sabbath is about restoring the diminished. It’s about replenishing the drained. It’s about repairing the broken. To heal the man’s shriveled hand is to do exactly what the Sabbath is all about. Yet because the leaders are so concerned that Sabbath regulations be observed, they don’t want Jesus to heal this man—an incredible example of m...
• And he says it all the time. Jesus refers to himself throughout the Gospels in a unique manner. He says, “I am the bread of life”; “I am the light of the world”; “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”; “I am the true vine”; “I am the Good Shepherd.” The use of the phrase “I Am” is significant because it is the personal name God uses for himsel...