Day 6: What Good Is The Gospel Doing In You?

**Recommended Use**: Listen to the short sermon clip, read and think through the passages, summaries, and questions below, and then meet up to discuss it all with one or more followers of Jesus.

READING:

Mark 14-16

KEY VERSES: 

Mark 14:8, 22-26, 33-42, 50, 61-62; 

15:25, 33-39; 16:5-8, 15-16, 19-20; 

5:35-36; 9:23-24

BIBLE THEME TO CONSIDER:

What good is the Gospel doing in you?

BIBLE THEME AS SEEN IN MARK:

The Gospel calls us to believe that God is good and that He has made this known in His Son. God’s rule is good. God’s glory is to be enjoyed by us and reflected in us. Jesus is the only way to enjoy God forever. Apart from repentance from sin and faith in Christ, you will die in your sins under the eternal judgment of God. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus both warns of judgment and tells of forgiveness and eternal life. Some clearly refuse Jesus and His message, ending in their judgment. Others hear and receive Jesus and His message, ending in forgiveness of sins and eternal life with God. Jesus's gospel is good, but depending on how you respond to it, it will end in your judgment or your redemption. What is your response to Jesus and His good news?

QUESTIONS & CLOSING THOUGHTS:

Q: Presently… today, what good is the Gospel doing in you? 

Q: Has God’s Gospel changed you? Through it, has God given you a new heart that longs to follow and worship Jesus like the woman in Mark 14:8?

Q: Do you love to assemble with Jesus’s church and remember the eternal new covenant, as Jesus did with His disciples in Mark 14:22-26?

Q: Do you follow the heart of Jesus seen while praying in Mark 14:33-42 that longs to do the will of the Father, even when it means suffering?

Q: Do you hold fast to Jesus in the face of affliction and persecution? Do you help His followers do the same? Or, do you forsake Jesus like the disciples in Mark 14:50?

Q: Do you believe that Jesus is reigning over all things at the right hand of the Father, as He told the high priest He would soon be doing in Mark 14:61-62? Do you believe Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, as He confessed?

Q: Do you believe Jesus is the eternal Son of God who was crucified, as seen in Mark 15? Do you have the assurance that Jesus’s death satisfied the just wrath of God for your sins? Do you trust that Jesus died in the place of sinners who have mocked and sinned against Him?

Mark 15:25

… and they crucified him.

Mark 15:33–34

33 And… there was darkness over the whole land… 34 And… Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying… My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Jesus bore the wrath of God on the cross. He died in the place of sinners.

Mark 15:37–39

37 And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. 38 And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. 39 And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.

Jesus died for those who crucified Him. Through His death, Jesus opened up the door to God and is reconciling sinners back to Him.

Q: Do you trust that Jesus truly rose from the grave as seen in Mark 16? Do you believe that, by the same power, God will raise those He saves? How are you responding to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus?

Women followers of Jesus were the first to witness His resurrection. See what they are told by an angel and how they respond to the empty tomb.

Mark 16:6–8

6 And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. 7 But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you. 8 And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.

We have seen that response throughout Mark’s Gospel. Being amazed and afraid of Jesus is not enough. We are called to believe in Him. And believing in Him results in obeying Him.

We know that with all the mixture of feelings and thoughts these women had, the Gospel produced repentance and faith in them. They believed Jesus and went on to tell the others.

And Jesus did appear to His disciples over a period of forty days, instructing them to go preach this Gospel to all the world, commanding people by His authority to repent from sin, believe on Christ, and follow Jesus as a baptized member of His church. Jesus will return to redeem His church and to fulfill all God’s promises of judgment and the new creation.

Q: Does your faith in the Gospel move you to follow Jesus as a baptized member of His church and to preach the Gospel to others? 

The Gospel calls us to believe that God is good and that He has made this known in His Son. God’s rule is good. God’s glory is to be enjoyed by us and reflected in us. Jesus is the only way to enjoy God forever. Apart from repentance from sin and faith in Christ, you will die in your sins under the eternal judgment of God.

Acts 2 records Peter obeying what we read next and preaching the same forceful message of Jesus:

Mark 16:15–16

15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

Christ is presently reigning from His throne and through His church. We have been commissioned to tell the world His Gospel.

Q: Is your life joyfully surrendered to Jesus as the King of heaven and earth and to all His teachings? Do you believe He will return, judge the living and the dead, and make all things new?

The longer ending of Mark ends with these two verses, which summarize the next 40 or so years of the church following the risen Jesus who rules on the throne of God with the promise to return, like given in Mark 13.

Mark 16:19–20

19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. 20 And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen. 

So, the question is, what good is the Gospel doing in you? If you are Christ’s, it will produce in you eternal fruit to the glory of God. Do you believe what Jesus has said? Are you partnering with the church to corporately and personally share the gospel with others? Do you obey Jesus’s words with trust that He is ruling over all and with the expectation that He will return to judge the living and the dead?

Back in Mark 4, Jesus gave a series of parables that taught His disciples to hear His Gospel. Jesus’s teaching said that the heard Gospel will produce fruit of the kingdom of God in hearts that receive and keep it. Maybe this is the first sermon you have heard in Mark’s Gospel. Maybe it is the 55th sermon you have heard.

Q: Are you continuing to hear, receive, and guard the Gospel in your heart, as Jesus explained in Mark 4:14-20? Will you read those words and meditate on them?

Don’t let Satan deceitfully take away the message of the gospel from your heart. Don’t let affliction or persecution turn you away from it. Don’t leave here and get busy with the cares, riches, and desires of this world so that the gospel is mostly forgotten and unseen in your life. 

Hear, receive, and guard the gospel message in your heart, trusting God to bring forth eternal fruit of the Kingdom of God in your life. Treasure and keep the good news of Jesus, and be committed to Christ’s church, helping others do so. If you have not been, be baptized, and join a gospel-preaching church.

Maybe you are hear today and you still don’t think you believe the gospel. I want to conclude by pointing you to Jesus with two other people who also struggled trusting Jesus.

The first one is in Mark 5 when a Jewish synagogue ruler sought out Jesus to heal his daughter, but then she died. And before resurrecting her, Jesus said to him:

Mark 5:36

… Be not afraid, only believe.

Jesus was not telling the father to “believe it into existence.” Jesus was telling the father to believe in Him. Jesus would prove Himself to have power over death. Do you believe Him?

The second one is in Mark 9 when a father desired for Jesus to free his son from an evil spirit after Jesus’s disciples had failed to help his son.

Mark 9:23–24

Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

The man showed his dependance on Jesus for the faith necessary to receive Jesus’s healing for his son. You and I must do the same. We do not have the faith necessary to faithfully hold fast to the Gospel, but as Jesus taught, the Father gives the Holy Spirit and good gifts to those who ask Him. 

Ask the Lord to help you with your unbelief. Ask the Lord to help you hear, receive, and guard the Gospel in your heart and life. Ask the Lord to bear lasting, eternal fruit of the Gospel in your life and in the life of others. Like blind Bartimaeus, ask the Lord for mercy. Ask Him to save and heal you from your sin. Ask Jesus to be your King.

God’s gospel is the good news and Kingly announcement revealed in all the Bible that: the one true God created us to enjoy and reflect His glory in all His creation, and though we have rebelliously sought our own glory, earning shame and God’s just judgment for our sin, God—as planned and promised—sent His eternal Son in Christ Jesus to perfectly live, sacrificially die, victoriously rise, sovereignly reign, justly judge, and faithfully save sinners from God’s good wrath, reconciling back to Himself a beloved people born of His Spirit who, at the hearing of this good news, repent from sin and lovingly follow the Lord Jesus by faith now and for all eternity in the new creation to the glory of God.

You’ve heard the good news that: God eternally redeems and righteously rules a people who repent from sin and believe on the crucified and risen Lord of all—Jesus Christ the Son of God.

What good is the gospel doing in you?