Unearth the untold stories behind the lives of the most influential figures in the Bible. This episode escorts you on an immersive journey with Pastor David Squyres as we take a captivating look at the life of John Mark, the young scribe behind the Gospel of Mark. We shed light on his early years, his commitment to his faith, and his pivotal role in the genesis of Christianity.
We unpack John Mark's profound influence within the early Church, exploring his vital role in the missionary expeditions. Discover how Barnabas, known as the Son of Encouragement, rallied Saul and John Mark to spread the teachings of God to the Gentiles. We probe into the dissonance between Paul and Barnabas that led to their separation, and John Mark’s ensuing journey with Barnabas to Cyprus. We delve into the factors behind John Mark's earlier departure from Paul's mission and the consequential role he played in crafting the Gospel of Mark.
Rounding up our discussion, we make a compelling statement about the significance of young adults in Christianity, drawing on John Mark's life as a testament. We discuss how their decisions today can shape their future, and how being disciples of Jesus is their greatest honor. Finally, we underscore the importance of community and mentorship within the church. This enlightening journey through the life of John Mark is not one to be missed as we unveil the real stories hidden within the sacred pages of the Bible.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealBibleStories
Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
Website: https://real-bible-stories.square.site
Check us out on these Streaming Platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1912582/share
Unearth the untold stories behind the lives of the most influential figures in the Bible. This episode escorts you on an immersive journey with Pastor David Squyres as we take a captivating look at the life of John Mark, the young scribe behind the Gospel of Mark. We shed light on his early years, his commitment to his faith, and his pivotal role in the genesis of Christianity.
We unpack John Mark's profound influence within the early Church, exploring his vital role in the missionary expeditions. Discover how Barnabas, known as the Son of Encouragement, rallied Saul and John Mark to spread the teachings of God to the Gentiles. We probe into the dissonance between Paul and Barnabas that led to their separation, and John Mark’s ensuing journey with Barnabas to Cyprus. We delve into the factors behind John Mark's earlier departure from Paul's mission and the consequential role he played in crafting the Gospel of Mark.
Rounding up our discussion, we make a compelling statement about the significance of young adults in Christianity, drawing on John Mark's life as a testament. We discuss how their decisions today can shape their future, and how being disciples of Jesus is their greatest honor. Finally, we underscore the importance of community and mentorship within the church. This enlightening journey through the life of John Mark is not one to be missed as we unveil the real stories hidden within the sacred pages of the Bible.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealBibleStories
Notes: https://sermons.church/archives?church=PalmsBaptistBibleStudy&id=126
Website: https://real-bible-stories.square.site
Check us out on these Streaming Platforms: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1912582/share
Hello and welcome to Real Bible Stories. Join us as we deep dive into the historic, religious, cultural, political and emotional context surrounding the real lives of real people in the Bible and the stories we've all grown to love. Hello and welcome back to Real Bible Stories. I am your host, emron Ward, and we are joined by my wife Selena. Hello, and for this next upcoming series, we are joined by Pastor David Squires.
David:Hello, I'm so happy to be here. Yeah, we'll be back.
Selena:Yeah.
Imran:It's been about a year now.
David:No, I don't think so.
Imran:I think it was around. No, it was on January. It was January. Yeah, there you are on it, so a little bit under a year since we've had Pastor David Squires on the on the podcast here. But for those that are just tuning in or haven't met you before, pastor David is the head pastor at Palms Church, who we're partnered with to kind of produce this broadcast, and Pastor Ryan Brown, who is the typical teacher on it. He is also one of the pastors at the church, so while Ryan is teaching Bible study during the kind of weekly Bible study that we do at the church now, pastor David is going to teach a couple lessons over here on the podcast.
David:It's so fun. He and I just trade off and so I'll teach Bible study for a while and he'll do the podcast and we just get to trade. I'm so excited about this upcoming series because it's literally when we talk about stories of the Bible, we're doing stories behind the story.
Imran:Yeah, so one of our big mission points of the real Bible stories podcast is to hit at the kind of background, history, context, cultural relevance of the Bible in it in the day and how that plays into kind of how we live our lives today. So this next series we're going to be doing with Pastor David, which is the story behind. The story is really deep, diving into the some of the specific characters that we learn about in the gospel and looking at some of their history, some of how they, how they grew up with the context they're going through at the time that the scripture was being written about them.
David:We should go be like we're going to be really deep and the truth is we're going to have so much fun and we're going to be really deep, yeah, like this is the stuff that just feeds you in Bible study.
Imran:Exactly, and I always think that this is the context that makes the Bible like, makes sense. Yeah, because, like, if you read the Bible on its own, you're like, okay, that was a great story, but how do I know it's true and it's like, well, diving into this, these types of like story behind the story, the history, the context, helps legitimize the story that we know to be true, or the book that we know to be true, which is the Bible.
David:What we want to do, is, chase some stories that you, if we chase these through the Bible, you'll see it kind of woven together, but you don't just get one passage that puts this whole thing together. Yeah, and so we'll look at, like Aquila and Priscilla, or at John Mark or the apostle John, what happened to John, where we're where, who was the community John was connected to, and all these little behind the scenes things that end up in our New Testament. So we're just going to chase the story behind the story.
Imran:Yeah, and I'm super excited and I love everything about that, because this is this is going to be a series that is perfectly in line with, like, what real Bible stories is about. I'm fired up, all right, so who is our first kind of character or person that we're going to be diving into?
David:today we are looking at a young man named John Mark. John Mark and how we got the gospel of Mark. Where did this thing come?
Imran:from. I was going to ask are we talking about the gospel mark or the gospel of John?
David:Yeah, I guess John Mark, because he's got two names you could you could go wait. Which one is it? This is going to be Mark, and then a little bit later on, we'll do John Okay. So I think when you think about somebody like John Mark, you're really looking at somebody who is young. He starts out young in the Bible and the stories that we encounter him. I like it because so often the Bible talks about how young people are used and we don't think about that often Think about David.
David:He was 17 when he went to fight Goliath. Samuel was just a boy when he was called by God.
Imran:Yeah, we talked about Mary.
David:Mary was probably a teenager, right so many people. Jeremiah was young when God called him.
Imran:Yeah, Even most of the disciples. In general they were pretty young, right it's like, wasn't Peter the oldest?
David:He was good. Well, we know he was, cause he was married. But we tend to think of the disciples as these old guys with bald spots that's how they paint them. The disciples were probably older teenagers. So they would have completed their work with Hebrew school, their your work as children, and then what we call college. They would have attached themselves to a rabbi. So some of them had already attached themselves to John the Baptist. Then they switched over to Jesus. Think of Jesus like graduate school. But these are young men. It's before you're fully employed. You go and you attach yourself to a rabbi and you learn. So it makes sense. Now, some of the fights they had, who are the greatest? They're just young man fights, they're they're. They're not men in their 30s, they're they're young.
Imran:The greatest among us is like of course, that's what like a teenager it is arguing about with the, with the son of God? Of course they would be.
David:And they're embarrassed when Jesus acts. Asks them what? What are you guys arguing about? We might have been arguing who was greater than who.
Imran:Yeah, I think I've 16. I would have loved them and called the son of thunder Right Primo the nickname given to me by Jesus Christ. That'd be sick.
David:So our young man that we're looking at tonight is named John Mark and give you a little bit of tradition about him, his family probably comes from Serene, and there's other people in the Bible that come from there.
Imran:It's in.
David:North Africa.
Imran:Okay.
David:It's probably. It's what the Bible says. It's where the man who carried Jesus cross came from, also Simon Serene. So there was a. There's a Jewish, a Jewish area in that that area.
Imran:So Jewish community in Northern Africa called Serene, uh-huh Okay.
David:So John Mark's father? Traditionally we understand that he was a Greek, he married a Hebrew girl and his mother's name was Mary, but not that Mary.
Imran:Oh yeah, that happens a lot.
David:Yeah, it's apparently everybody in Bible times and New Testament times was named John and Mary.
Imran:Everybody's named John and Mary, that's right. That's actually hilarious. I wonder what are the two like go to names of right now.
David:He would. So when he married her, she would have gone by her Hebrew name, not Mary, but Miriam.
Imran:Miriam, that's what Miriam, oh man. So Miriam is the.
David:Hebrew form of Mary. So I named a daughter Miriam, because it was so popular. To everybody's name Mary.
Imran:I was like well hey, I'll be the Hebrew version of that. Yeah, I'll beat the system.
David:There you go.
Imran:They named their son Did she respond to Mary, if you called her Mary?
David:No, she would not. No, this man marries from Serene. He marries a Hebrew woman named Mary Miriam, and they named their son a very Hebrew name, and so his Hebrew name is Johannon John. But they give him a Greek middle name and the middle name is Marcus, and so we would say John Mark.
Imran:And you can see it. Johannon Marcus, yeah.
David:And this kid is named John Mark. During that time, though, serene is under Roman control, and the population is always an uprising against the Romans. They're always fighting with them. The Romans cannot control these people, so you can imagine what a family is going to do. What would you do Like if there's constant turmoil in the streets? The Romans can't keep control. There's always a rebellion. Eventually, this fairly wealthy family they not only have a home in Serene, she has a home out toward Jerusalem.
Imran:Okay, so we know John Mark comes from a relatively wealthy family.
David:Absolutely yeah, so this family has multiple homes, they have a business. Well, eventually they just pick up from Serene and we don't know exactly why, but they leave there and they go to Jerusalem and they live now in her hometown of Jerusalem and his mom's hometown. Yeah, and it seems that by the time that Jesus comes along, the father has died and this mother is now living with her son in this home in Jerusalem.
Imran:That's really important. Where do we get some of this history in general about where John came from? Is it from the Apocrypha, is it from other just like scripts that were written at the time we do? Where did it typically come?
David:from. Well, one Christian tradition will give us a lot. You can find stuff. In a lot of times you find large historical movements and characters in the writings of Josephus. Okay, In places like that, give us those those background. Church Fathers often gave us the behind the scenes details of what it was that was going on.
Imran:Church Fathers, what do you mean by church?
David:Historians, tritilian, just people that Christianity has always been a writing people and so we've been writing and so we have the scriptures. But we also had people telling us what was going on behind the scenes.
Imran:but you've got to read them to kind of know who some of these people are so just like famous, not even just famous, but like writing from the church leaders of the day about the disciples, about their families. They were writing all this stuff down Exactly. That makes sense, okay, and we have all that, or at least we have most of it we have a lot.
David:What you always look for is the earliest person that writes on something, because over time, tradition changes, and so you always want to find the earliest accounts of what it is that.
Imran:I also love that about Christianity is that we always try and go back to what's the oldest, most and the oldest form of what was written.
David:Exactly.
Imran:It's the most accurate. So we're not just like changing over time.
David:Yeah, yeah, we know that this family. They own this house in Jerusalem. Show you something cool. They probably owned the home where Jesus ate Passover. So Mary owns the house and this church meets in the house all the time. It's probably the same house where Jesus ate the Passover, the last meal Jesus would have washed the disciples feet. John Mark, can you imagine this teenage boy and the rabbi is there and he's peeking in as these disciples are eating Passover, as they're talking with each other?
Imran:So was John Mark not one of the disciples?
David:No, he was not one of the disciples. He would have been really too young.
Imran:So the Mark. So Mark that wrote the book of Mark was Same guy. Was young in Jesus's day would have observed everything that took place, but wasn't one of the 12.
David:Exactly, just imagine a boy tagging along 13, 14, I don't know how old he is, but he just, you know, he lives with his mom and his mom is hosting this Jewish rabbi. Imagine that they're having Passover and this kid keeps peeking in. He keeps peeking in. What's going on? Well, eventually they go out to the garden. Jesus takes his disciples to the garden. We have a reason to think that John Mark followed them to the garden. Okay, so you know the G? Y in the gospel of Mark. So Mark is the one, of course, that wrote the gospel of Mark. There's a weird verse that so they go to arrest Jesus. And you see it, selena, this wonderful verse over here in Mark 1451.
Selena:And a young man followed him with nothing but a linen cloth about his body and they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.
David:Is that your favorite verse? Is that?
Selena:anybody's favorite.
David:No, why is that in there? Uh, they go to grab that. Is it a wonderful and not going to a little crazy something? That's not in Matthew and that's not not in Luke, it's only in Mark. But we usually believe that Mark was written first. It's called the priority of Mark, so Mark is written first and it's the shortest. Matthew and Luke had each had access to Mark and they copied off of him, but they added their own things. That means that about about 85 to 90% of Mark is repeated in Matthew and Luke. Every now and then. We get really interested when Matthew or Luke don't include something from Mark, when they skip it.
David:Yeah and the reason is that it would be something only Mark's hearers would be interested in. Like it was, it was unique to Mark. For instance, Mark includes Simon of Serenity who, um the the church there that Mark was writing to would have known about. The other authors don't mention, uh, the exact person who carried the cross, but Mark's like oh, we know that guy, we know, uh, why would Mark mention this guy who's in a garden? He's in a lint, like he's in his underwear, they grab him and he shimmies out naked. This is what we think is. It's there because it's autobiographical. That was Mark. That was Mark.
David:So, Mark sneaks out following the disciples. He watches them in the garden when everybody's getting arrested. They grab him and he just goes running. He's like Joseph out of his coat. He runs and he runs out of their naked. When he writes his gospel, he just puts himself as the streaker in the Bible. Um out, this kid goes running through the.
Imran:You didn't know there was in your Bible. Yeah, right there. There you go, that's what we've got to teach you. You know, um today, I was today years old when I learned crazy party. I read the entire book of Mark while on duty one night, Cause I was always told, this is not long.
David:Yes, not long.
Imran:It's the C Jesus, C Jesus run gospel. It is the entire thing on like a duty one night, and uh I don't remember reading that line. I was like why didn't I remember that that's hilarious Cause there wouldn't be a reason for it to stand out. Unless you had the context. Yeah, yeah, you'd be reading pretty slow.
David:Later, after Jesus dies, um rises again, ascends into heaven, the early church is meeting and one of the places we know they met, remember they got kicked out of the temple, so they're meeting in homes and there is there any large home in Jerusalem they can meet at? Well, they probably are meeting again at Mary's house, also John Mark's house, so his mom and this kid are hosting the early church. Okay, and we know that because there's another scene and this is just putting the story behind the story together. Yeah, um Acts, chapter 12, peter is arrested, he's thrown in prison. It says that he's sleeping and an angel came down and struck him. The church is um at the house and they're praying. I love the scene that the angel hits Peter Bam. Yeah, you know, like I think, when God said, hey, I need somebody to hit Peter, a bunch of angels said me, me, me, me, me first.
Imran:I'm currently outside his door. Can I kick him?
David:No, I just need you to hit him. Um, the angel strikes Peter and Peter wakes up and says you know, he just starts following the angel. It's, it's perfect Halloween stuff, because the doors of the prison just start opening and they're walking out. They're just walking out of there. They get down to the street and Peter realizes oh, this isn't a dream, I thought I was dreaming. So he walks to where his church is meeting, check out where it is that they're meeting in um Acts, chapter 12, verse 12.
Selena:He went to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and we're praying, isn't that?
David:cool. So he goes there. He's knocking on the door and it tells us whose house they're meeting at is John Mark's mother's house. Uh, mary, oh, wow, yeah. By the way, just a cool little note on John Mark. Um, in the intro to the Vulgate, the Vulgate is the Latin translation of the Bible. Okay, so Jerome translated the Bible into Latin.
Imran:Uh, when, when, what time period would that have been?
David:I don't know. Okay, I don't remember, that's fine, um, but I know this. I know that Hippolytus, when he, when he was writing the intro to the Vulgate, um, he said he was just one of the little notes that he had. So talk about where do we trace stuff down to Hippolytus? Hippolytus said that Mark was, um, mark had a nickname and his nickname was stubby fingers, and one reason they called him stubby fingers was, according to him, um, mark had made, as a young man, had maimed his fingers to keep himself from having to be forced in. This is like avoiding a draft so that he would not be forced into becoming a priest.
David:And so they they called him stubby fingers because he had done something to his his hand. Whether or not that's true, that's church church church, yeah, yeah, but Hippolytus is the one offering the, the Yaya, yeah, but I just love that scene of the early church meeting in this family's home, maybe the very home where the Lord supper was it took place?
Imran:Yeah, yeah, and so this is all happening in Jerusalem? Okay, yeah, um, so Peter was imprisoned in Jerusalem and then he was, uh, awakened by an angel broken out set free Um and then walked to where his church was meeting.
David:So excited isn't. It which is a home.
David:They're just because they've been thrown out of the temple. Okay, yeah, uh, mark not only has a mom named Mary, there's another family member that's really important to this story, and this guy's name is Barnabas, and Barnabas is super important to the early church. Okay, um, his name means son of encouragement, and that was his gift. Was he just encouraged people? He was a, um, he was a disciple of Jesus? Uh, in fact he may have been. You know, he was, I think, on the roster of maybe we should choose him to be an apostle. They chose someone else, oh, right, it was like.
David:to replace um Judas, yeah, and so he's really really important. What happened is that there was persecution in Jerusalem so early on in the faith, christianity was a Jerusalem faith meaning it mostly just was an Israel, it was the movement in Jerusalem.
David:It didn't really spread much further. Yeah, it was pretty stuck where it was. Persecution came and the church started scattering. Well, as people went, they have to leave their homes. They're talking about Jesus. Everywhere they go, they're talking about Jesus. Well, it says that when some of the Jews who believed in Jesus came to Antioch, some of them started talking to Gentiles and they started telling Gentiles about Jesus and the Gentiles, to everybody's surprise, start getting saved. Yeah, well, the early church are like wait a minute, what's going on over in Antioch? People are getting saved over the can, can people?
Imran:even be saved. Yeah, yeah, which is like exactly what we discussed in Galatians for the last few weeks.
David:Can a Gentile get saved? What are the rules for the Gentiles? It's all the stuff you guys just talked about. Yeah, that's what was going on. Was these people? And the church in Jerusalem is really suspicious of them. Like well, how do we know that they're they're really saved? You know, in fact, selena, do you see that there in Acts 1121? What does it say about these people, these Gentiles?
Selena:And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.
David:Well, the church in Jerusalem is super suspicious because they're Jewish and they're like I don't know, Can these people really get saved? So what they did to go check it out is they need. They're like we need a spy, we need somebody to just go see if this is real. So who's the most trustworthy person in our church that we could send? They send the Son of Encouragement, Like you think in our church. Who's an encourager? Ryan?
Imran:Brown.
David:Grover right.
Imran:More than Ryan Brown they they, they don't.
David:I hope he hears this they don't, they don't have Grover, they don't have Ryan, but they have a guy named Barnabas, and so they send Barnabas to the church to check it out. What's going on down there? Well, it says when he got there in.
David:Antioch. He's like whoa, this thing is real, these people are really following Jesus. It says that he saw the grace of God. He encouraged them. But as he sees all these Gentiles getting saved, he goes wait a minute, I need some help because I can't do this on my own. I can't be the pastor alone to this giant church that's forming Among the Gentiles. Yeah, I need some help. Well, he starts thinking who could I get the help me that wouldn't judge these Gentiles? And he goes wait a minute, what happened to that guy that was on the road and he was going to? He was going to persecute Christians and then he got hit with light. He goes. You know he's not doing anything important, is he? In fact?
David:Paul says he spent three years just communing with Jesus. He wasn't really that deeply connected to the church because everybody was scared of him. Barnabas goes I'm going to put that guy to work. We'll make him my associate pastor. Barnabas goes to Tarsus, where Saul is at, and he gets Saul to become his associate. And Saul and Barnabas because now, now, can you imagine this ends up being Paul, paul and Barnabas. Can you imagine a better ministry team? Barnabas is your pastor. Your other pastor is the apostle Paul yeah, um, these guys will start pastoring the first real Gentile church and making disciples of Jesus along with them, so I love that.
Imran:That ties back to like our first or maybe second Galatians episode where it talks about how uh, pete, not Peter, sorry Paul saw himself as the disciple up to the Gentiles, where Peter was the pillar of the disciples to the Jews and that they were needed to be on the same page and that's like kind of the whole first opening chapter of our relations. Exactly.
Selena:It all ties together. Who would have thought?
Imran:I've all actually ties together and make sense.
David:Well, to tie that together. Barnabas and Paul are power Our pastor in this church. Who do you think comes along with Barnabas to help him start this, check everything out and help him with this church? But his little cousin, john Mark.
Selena:So John.
David:Mark is there with uncle Barnabas or his cousin. They're not uncle, but he's there with his cousin Barnabas, and they are.
David:He's just part of the start of this, this church. One day, the early church in Antioch, they are worshiping God and the Holy Spirit. In the middle of their worship service it just says the Holy Spirit started speaking. I don't know how that worked. It probably a prophet got up and just gave voice to the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit said set apart for me Barnabas and Saul. And so what they did was that can you imagine? If you're in church and you're two best leaders, the Holy Spirit says send them on, make them missionaries. And so now the church is not going to have their leaders. They've gotten strong enough. Now they need to go be missionaries.
David:This is the first missions movement of the early church. So it's Gentiles sending missionaries out to reach Gentiles. So get it. It went from the Jerusalem church, the Jews, out to the Gentiles. Now the Gentiles are going to be reached by a Gentile church. They're going to send out Paul and Barnabas and John Mark. Well, what they do is they fast, they pray, they lay hands on them and out they go Out, they go to go share the gospel of Jesus in the crazy. This is like the Indiana Jones part of the book of Acts. Off they go, yeah, um, the first place they land is a place called Cyprus, which you would love. It's like the Hawaii of the ancient world. Oh my gosh. Yeah right, you're in, right, emron. Sure, as long as I don't have to get in the water, but it's, it's beautiful. It says in Acts 13, verse five, that Mark, that Mark, was helping them.
Selena:And so it's.
David:Paul, barnabas, john, mark, they're all on mission together and it's wonderful. They're preaching all over the island. As you can imagine, people are getting saved. The Roman procounsel there, the guy that kind of runs the city. You imagine him like a governor or a mayor.
Selena:Yeah.
David:He hears what's going on and he calls them in. He says what's what's going on? They're opposed by a magician, and I'm not kidding. The magician's name is bar Jesus. Bar Jesus, bar Jesus. What verse is this? This is in Acts, chapter 13. Acts, chapter 13. All right, he opposes them in front of the procounsel, and so they're arguing with this guy who's who's awful? And Saul turns around and he says to bar Jesus, he says you're a son of the devil. And right there on the spot, this guy is struck blind. Oh wow. Well, obviously the procounsel is like I think I believe. Yeah, I eat.
David:Just an interesting note, jerome in the who's you know, important to church history, jerome in the fourth century suggested that when Saul changed his name to to be a little more Gentile um reaching out to the Gentiles.
Imran:Yeah.
David:When he chose the name Paul, he chose it after this guy, Sergius Paulus, who was one of the first people he won to Christianity. Oh as this procounsel, this Roman procounsel.
Imran:That's cool I like that.
David:As they travel, they not only go to Cyprus, but John Mark and and Paul and um Barnabas, they go to Panphilia and something incredible happens there that's important to our story and that is that John Mark leaves the team and it's going to scar. It scars your new, it's like a scar in your new testimony, like whoa, whoa, something bad happened there.
Imran:Oh really.
David:Yeah, in fact acts 1313. So they're in Panphilia, which is modern Turkey. Um, you see that, selena, what's it? What's it? Tell us happened?
Selena:And John left them and returned to Jerusalem.
David:Yeah, so we're kind of like whoa, why did John? Here was this kid. He was so fired up for Jesus. Um, he's out on the mission field. He sees people struck blind he as they're traveling. Something happened on that mission trip that caused this kid to go. Oh no, I'm out of here.
Imran:Oh wow, right, no, yeah, um, I, I just wrote down, you know.
David:I don't know. What do you guys think? Why would he leave?
Imran:I'm trying to remember what happened in the beginning of Galatians because I feel I remember correctly, paul referenced that when he was writing back to Peter and like I think it was because, like John, mark didn't, didn't agree with the circumcision thing.
David:No, they were dealing with it is possible that John Mark was part of the circumcision group. I I kind of go with some practical stuff, not just so that is a political well, that is a suggestion is that John Mark disagreed with Paul's views on accepting the Gentiles in without circumcision. Yeah but we're pretty early in the missionary journeys there.
Imran:And so I just this man, if he's much younger than them as well. That's like.
David:I think the reality wrong you to have the realities of missionary life are pretty hard on a young person. So you can idealistically say, yeah, I mean, mark grew up in a rich home. His mom owned a house, multiple homes. Yeah, they own multiple homes. He knows what it is to be fed. He then his big move is just to go help them. Pastor this church in Antioch, and now they're out on the Wild.
Imran:West. That also Kind of ties into what Paul does actually talk about in the beginning of Galatians when he highlights how he was in prison. Be in stone To spring the gospel and spread it like it was not going smoothly. This was not like yeah, it's like oh well, you know, it's like Jesus and everyone believed. No, it's like there was a lot of persecution, there was a lot of Assault and and and stuff, trauma they had to deal with. That Perfectly said, imran is.
David:Christianity did not go out smoothly. It was a bumpy road. Yeah literally it is over of the people being stoned and killed and I think that John Mark, just the realities of missionary life might have been harder than he thought it was gonna be. Yeah, it's one thing when you guys are sitting around, you're talking at church and the Holy Spirit said go and like I'll go with you, guys, I want to go to the Hawaii, I want to go to share Jesus.
David:It's a different thing, actually get out there and people are getting hit, blind, and you're opposed and they were headed and you might be attacked.
Imran:It's like the look at mitten and street today people going out to Um the Middle East going out to China going, trying to go out to like places like North Korea when it's like you will be killed. You would be attacked in prison if you. I think he just got scared.
David:Remember what happened on the night Jesus was arrested? He got scared and ran. I think he just gets scared, and some people suggest that he got sick. But I want to suggest just one more. Maybe along with so he's scared, it's possible that he's struggling with Paul's doctrine that you Don't have to circumcise. He misses home. But I think there's one more thing that nobody ever puts on a list of why mark may have left, and it's this, and I hope people don't tune out as soon as I say this Are you ready?
Imran:brace yourself, I'm gonna guess he fell in love.
Selena:It was for a woman that would have been wonderful.
David:No, I think Paul was sometimes hard to get along with. I think Paul is a type A personality and there was only one apostle, paul, ever born on planet earth. In all time he didn't have a personality, he had the strongest. He is a strong cup of coffee. Yeah, and if you notice, we're drinking coffee as we say this.
David:If you notice, paul's missionary team is always changing and I think one reason is it is hard to be attached for a long time to a strong leader, type A personality, completely sold out to a cause. Yeah, so Paul's attitude is if we get stoned, we get stoned. God will raise us from the dead if he wants to. If we get whipped, we get whipped. I am ready. In fact, they said that when Paul was executed, he ran to the chopping block to have his head cut off. Yeah, that's how. And I would just say, when you're a young man Just stepping into Christianity and you're near a personality, that's that on fire for God, and God used the apostle Paul to set the ancient world on fire for Jesus. Yeah, but man, when you get that close, like whoa, Is this guy?
Imran:It's like uh, there's just plenty of places, places in the New Testament where the Holy Spirit is referred to as fire.
Selena:Yeah, and it's like Paul is like the embodiment of that fire.
Imran:You get close to it and you're getting burned. Can you imagine?
David:John mark may have been like man. My mom was a Christian, but she wasn't like this. This guy, he's gonna get us killed. Yeah maybe so whatever happened, whether it was sickness, it was doctrinal disagreement, it was just Paul's personality. Something bad happened on that trip and John mark went home, do we not?
Selena:know, like what he did back in Jerusalem.
David:Uh, we've got some hints on what happened when we get over there. And so the difficult thing and this is my transition, selena, like that, that's great. The the reason this is the story behind the story is we now have to piece together what happened to John mark, because the story typically follows Paul, but so if it branches off, we go. What happened to, um, john mark? You know, where did he? Where did he go? Well, this is what happened in acts 15. Paul says to Barnabas hey, let's go visit some of the places that we went and we shared the gospel. And Barnabas is like yes, let's go, let's share Jesus and mark, and, and. And Barnabas says you know, I would love to go with you, paul. And they're so excited they're talking about. He goes, oh, and, and, I can't wait, we'll get out there. Well, I imagine they're packing the ship or something's happening. Paul comes out with his luggage for the ship and he looks and John mark is on the boat with Barnabas.
David:Oh man and I'm just imagining it this way. But but could you imagine, paul looks up and he's like what's he doing here? And Barnabas is like he's going with us, and and Paul goes, he ain't going with us, oh man. And and Barnabas says he's going and they have this little, I don't know this, this argument About whether or not he can. Where is this taking place? Yeah, this is acts 15 Goes 39 in fact. Selena, do you see it?
Selena:There arose a sharp disagreement.
David:Yeah, in fact it was such a sharp disagreement they went two different directions. So Saul goes off on man.
Imran:Yeah, so they separated ways from each other. Barnabas took mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers of grace of the lord.
David:So the grace of the lord Paul goes off to Syria and that's where the story follows. The story behind the story is that mark and Barnabas go to Cyprus. Yeah, so what happened? A tradition suggests, tradition outside the bible suggests that for a little while he may have lost his faith, but he had some help. Here's what happened and we this is just piecing it together we know that mark was mentored by the apostle Peter, so he goes home. Remember Peter's in Jerusalem? Yeah, he's home. He may have had some questions about his faith, but pretty soon he starts popping up again in Christianity. The story behind the story, where he's popping up, is with the apostle Peter, and so this is first, first Peter, chapter 5, verse 13 Yep yep, yep.
Selena:She, who is that? Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings and so does mark my son.
David:So Peter says, hey, she who's in Babylon, that's christianity. Um sends greetings, but then he makes mention someone else is with him. Who's with him? Um, the person with him. Babylon, by the way, would have been um rome. So Peter's riding from Rome.
David:Yeah and so he's probably he may even be in prison in Rome. He's got somebody with him. The somebody he has with him is kind of exciting. It's a young man named mark. This is what it means is at some point, mark connected up with the apostle Peter and Peter began to mentor John mark, and so they're talking everywhere that they go, peter is bringing this young man with him, a young man that got kicked off of Paul's missionary team, but he's so eager yeah, can, and Peter's the perfect one to mentor him, because Paul's a little hard on failure, but Peter knows what it is to fail, so can you imagine?
David:if John, if John mark says man, I can't believe it. I failed the Lord so bad I left the missions team and Peter would go. Son, I know what it is to fail. I denied the Lord three times. In fact, the very night you ran naked through the garden. I stood at a fire and I denied Jesus. Is there a better person to restore John mark than the apostle Peter?
Imran:Yeah, I love that um.
David:So he attaches himself to Peter and pretty soon, everywhere Peter goes, this young man, we assume, is going with him. What tradition tells us is that John mark, the way his faith was deepened and discipled Was he would go around with Peter and he would listen to Peter preach and he would write down sermon notes as he went. He was just and what would Peter preach? Peter's just preaching Jesus.
Imran:Everywhere he goes, he's telling about what he's just preaching the gospel yeah he was there and so it's not that he has to say hey.
Imran:That's true, because Paul's the the one who's like very socratic, very well studied, very, because, like Peter was a fisherman, you got it. He's just preaching what he saw, you got it. But Paul's the one that went and did all the the dirty work of like figuring out how Judaism ties into modern Christianity, ties into the law, ties into like all that post Um, post death stuff that we, I guess, consider our kind of tradition. Now, that was most of that was figured out by Paul when his studies.
David:Paul and Peter got used in two different ways. So Paul's our writer. Paul writes letters and they're preserved forever for Christians to draw from. Peter's the great preacher of the early church. He preached Pentecost, he. He preached all over the ancient world. So he would go, people would fill houses, they would fill a city to hear him preach because he had seen Jesus. Yeah, he was there when these things happened. Tagging along with him is this kid who's listening, listening listening to the story.
Imran:I love that there's two. There are two sides, peter and Paul, two sides of absolutely critical coin and you can't take it, you know you can't have him out.
David:Yeah, you need falls apart.
Imran:You need Peter's witness and you need Paul's understanding.
David:Yeah, to really put the christianity together, If you in the ancient world wanted to hear a sermon, you would go hear Peter, not Paul. If you want to read a letter, you would read Paul, not Peter. Yeah, you know, because Paul is just the better writer. One time Paul was preaching and a guy fell out a window and died, and so that's kind of rough. No, that's kind of rough. Paul was a great preacher, but I just think the gift of preaching really fell on Peter the orating.
David:Yeah, we know that places that they would have gone. Peter and John mark would have gone to Jerusalem, rome, galatia, capedosha, bethenia. They're just going all over the place and think of I don't know, just think of some of the stories that Peter would have seen and talked about. He said, hey, there was a time I was fishing and Jesus was walking down the the path.
Selena:And he called me, or.
David:I don't know what. What do you think? What are some stories that Peter would have told?
Imran:I just think Of kind of Peter's journey as a man while he was walking with Jesus, because there were several points where he was. He talks about how he expected Jesus to rise up in army and take over Rome and he's like, hey, hey, lord, when are you going to rise up in army and take over Rome and all this stuff? And um, and then Jesus kept telling him like the son of man has to die, blah, blah, blah. And um, he just kept and it's like, and he didn't understand and that's right, it's like the.
Imran:This it says over and over again the disciples didn't understand. That's right. You know, that's what I think when I think of Peter is his journey and then the understanding that happens, like when Jesus dies and comes back, and it's just like lord, lord, you know that those early.
David:Imagine he would have been there. He would have talked about walking on water, not, and they got in the boat. He would have said we've got in the boat and we were out at sea and we were. It's all first person, as Peter shares it, sitting there taking notes as John mark this is what we believe happened. The notes that John mark took listening to Peter preach. He put them together into a single volume of what happened. That volume becomes the gospel of mark. Yeah, and so the gospel of mark is based on the preaching of Peter, or we would say the foundation of the apostles. So we say that we, the church, is based on the apostles teaching. It's important that the gospels themselves are eyewitnesses. The eyewitnesses Peter, he saw these things happened and he's out there preaching. And mark is the writer, he's writing these things down and god's going to use this young man To, uh, to share the gospel to preserve the gospel.
David:Yeah, yeah yeah, a couple couple quotes. I just wanted us to to grab, uh, one from papias and one from ucbs that described the, the formation of the um gospel of mark and how he was an eyewitness from Peter. So what do we have first? We have papias first, or ucbs.
Selena:Let's do papias.
David:All right.
Selena:So this is the first quote. Mark, having become the interpreter of peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, an exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of christ, for he neither heard the lord nor accompanied him, but afterwards, as I said, he accompanied peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the lord sayings wherever. Wherefore mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For one thing, he took special care not to admit anything he had heard and not to put anything fictitious into the statements.
David:So he listens to peter preach and he's putting these things together. And then there was a. There's a also Just the church. Father ucbs also helps us and he has a little note, a story behind the story.
Imran:I do.
Imran:I did want to kind of give a comment on on what you just read as well.
Imran:Uh, because it reminds me of kind of how I, how I teach, because, um, a lot of Of what I, when I'm teaching my students, I use a lot of the same examples and I I've taught basically the same classes for two years and when I would teach the students it's like we may be going through networking, we may be going through C2 applications, we may be going through the Marine Corps planning process or something like that. I use almost always the same kind of examples or similar examples from my time in the fleet, but I definitely didn't recall them all exactly the same way every time. I brought out the points in that memory that were relevant to whatever the topic I was talking about, what are the point I was trying to make in the moment. So the events were all consistent. The events were all true as they happened, but the details that were necessary to explain at certain points with a specific student, depending on the audience, right, we had different classes over a few years, that would change.
Imran:Like the necessary detail may have changed over time, it doesn't. It's just interesting, cause people will bring up like the gospel is like oh well, there's like inconsistencies in it and it's like well, just in that quote you read, it's like Mark was writing down what Peter said over a period of time. But Peter brought up what needed to be brought up to make his point in the moment, based off of what Jesus did. But it may not have been in the same order or every time, cause he wasn't like he was giving a, like a testimony to testimony's wrong word, or like a statement to a to an officer or something like that where he needed to go timeline order. He was trying to explain the point.
David:Yeah, he was preaching sermons. Yeah, he's preaching, and so somebody has to sit down together on a timeline. I think that's what Mark gives is. You know? I don't know if it was behind the scenes of all. Right, Peter, give me some order to these stories. How did these? Cause? I heard you talk about water, Was that before he called you? Oh no, he called me first, and then now, what about? I think that they sat together and worked out what order to these stories from, because Peter wouldn't have always preached every story, right in order.
Imran:Yeah exactly.
David:But the gospel puts it together in a in a clean fashion for us. What do we have from you, CBS?
Selena:A great light of religion shown on the minds of the hearers of Peter, so that they were not satisfied with a single hearing or with the unwritten teaching of the divine proclamation, but with every kind of exhortation. They entreated Mark, seeing that he was Peter's follower, to leave them a written statement of the teaching, giving them verbally. Nor did they cease until they had persuaded him and so became the cause of the scripture, called the gospel, according to Mark.
Imran:So that's most doctoral sounding statement.
Selena:Is that great?
Imran:That's a big brain way of writing. That was like oh, he's like as you were reading, I was like oh, that's hard to understand, my goodness.
David:Well the thing about it is awesome that says, as the people are hearing Peter preach, they're like we do not want to trust our memory to this. And they look at Mark and they're like you got to write this down, you got to write this stuff down. And it says they begged him, they entreated him. Please write it down. Don't just leave this to our memories. Don't, in fact, don't let Peter die with these stories in him. We got to get this preserved for the next generation of Christianity. What if the Lord tarries? What if he doesn't come back in this first generation? How will we tell future generations about what Jesus did if we don't write it down?
Imran:I think something else is fascinating about the Bible is that when the Hebrew one not Hebrew, but like when Jews began, like when Abraham was given the promise and then Moses was given the law, written language as we understand it today like didn't exist, like the Egyptians had, like hieroglyphics. The Hebrews had not established a written language by this point and Jesus waited until we had, like, a written language that could preserve what he did, so that it could be preserved accurately and clearly for the future, because if he had come before that time it would have been a lot. We wouldn't have such clear, accurate testimony from the time.
David:You know, the book of Galatians says at just the right time God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law. But just think about the words at just the right time when Jesus came. If he'd come earlier, there would not have been roads to carry the gospel out of that area. But the Romans came, they built roads, they gave laws. There was a common currency, so there was travel was possible.
David:And the entire known world at that time was connected because Rome had taken over and and they were connected by language too, because the Greeks had just come before them and given the whole ancient world the Greek language, and so the New Testament was able to be written in a language that everybody could read and it could rapidly expand, so it just gave way to this. Yeah, it's like the whole thing was planned by the Holy Spirit.
Imran:It only makes sense. That's crazy, Isn't that exciting? Wait, God had a plan, oh snap that's crazy, that's so cool.
David:Mark wrote down the first gospel. We call that the priority of Mark, Mark first. Even though in your Bible the order is Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the writing of it would have been Mark, Matthew or Luke, and the last written would have been John. But the priority of Mark is that he was the first one and that the others copied off of him and added their own unique details. That's important. So this primary gospel is coming out from Peter and the synoptic gospels are Matthew, Mark and Luke same. So same optics, same. The gospels that all sound kind of the same are coming from a similar source with unique details each, and so Luke would have had some unique details. He has the story of Jesus' birth because he interviewed Mary. He's got unique stuff, information that he adds. Matthew has unique information, but they're all drawing out of Mark and so we call that the priority of Mark.
Imran:Yeah.
David:And it's just. Mark is just action packed. It's not as refined as Matthew and definitely not, as clean as. Luke. Luke really cleans things up. He gives them medical terms, things like that. Mark just uses its action packed. His favorite word is immediately and immediately. Jesus got out of the boat and immediately. A man came at him immediately and you're just going bam bam, bam bam.
Imran:Thing after thing is happening in the gospel which, based off how you described his life up to that point, of a man who, as a boy, saw Jesus as Jesus was kind of doing his thing, saw him be arrested a few years past and he joins up with Paul and Barnabas and he's traveling around with them and then he leaves from Paul and Barnabas and he joins with Peter and then he's going around with Peter for a while and then he almost goes back with Paul and then ends up not and he's going off with Barnabas for a while as well and it's like that is, he didn't slow down.
Imran:He didn't, there wasn't it's like, and he took a break to go to formal Hebrew school to learn how to write well. Like he was just with Peter and Paul and Barnabas the whole time, getting all of this information.
David:Who better to choose that would God choose, or put the gospel together than this young man that saw these things, heard all this preaching, was moving in the circles of the early church and God chooses this kid to write the gospel. Want to show you something wonderful, and that is that Mark was restored to Paul. What happened? Because there's another little story behind the story, isn't there, guys? That something happened.
Imran:Yeah, the split between Mark and.
David:Paul. Yeah, what happened? Did they ever reconcile? We know that Paul commended the Colossian church to welcome Mark and so at some point they're back together. So Colossians, chapter four, verse 10, Paul says hey, welcome, welcome Mark. He like wait, wait, what happened? We also know that a little bit later he's with Paul when he's in prison, when the book of Philemon is written, and so Mark is mentioned at the very end of his life. The last letter the apostle wrote is second Timothy and second Timothy. You see it down there, Selena.
David:Verse Chapter four Chapter four verse 11 of second, Timothy mentions this guy, and so Paul's in prison now he's probably waiting for the final end and he makes a request of Timothy that he wants to see someone watch what happens.
Selena:Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.
David:That is beautiful. Earlier Mark was not useful to Paul for ministry. Paul was like you can't do ministry with me, you got to go to another church man you can't keep up.
David:You got to keep up man Like you might leave the team. You broke it. Whatever happened broke back there. What's beautiful are these two men have restored with one another Interesting? And so John Mark is once again with the apostle, with the apostle Paul, and at the end of his life Paul says to Timothy hey, would you send me John Mark? And I love the line he says he's useful to me in ministry and I just agree with that line. To me, john Mark is useful to me Because there's not a day that goes by that I don't read something Mark wrote because he wrote about Jesus. And every day I read something Mark wrote to me about Jesus. You know.
Imran:That's absolutely awesome.
David:It is, isn't it? Well, what happened? What happened to John Mark? Just tell you a little bit of what we know happened at the end of his life. We know that he ended up. He gave everything for Jesus. So, peter, it is taught. Peter asked him to go and preach in Alexandria, which is in North Africa, and Mark there's a whole tradition in North Africa about what happened to Mark. He traveled all over North Africa. He was preaching about Jesus. Mark was. He went to Alexandria and there in Alexandria he really found a congregation of people that believed in Jesus. They built a church and the church they built is called the cattle pasture. So we go to Palm's Baptist, they went to the cattle pasture. I like that.
David:That's the name of their church. That's pretty good, isn't it? Yeah, and it just had this huge influence on Coptic Christianity. Coptic Christianity is there in Egypt. In that area of Christianity, it was called Coptic Christianity. It had already been influenced by Jesus because, if you remember, jesus and his family fled to that area when they were hiding from Herod.
Selena:Now missionaries.
Imran:And so now, missionaries, come and they're sharing this is while he was young, right Before he went back to Jerusalem on purpose.
David:Yeah, Before he was baptized by John Baptist Exactly, jesus was raised in Nazareth, but when he was a baby, they hid him outside of Israel for the reason.
David:But now imagine the gospel goes to Alexandria, it goes to North Africa and he's preaching. What we're told by Christian history is that unbelievers became angry because people were turning from the pagan gods and they were hearing the message of Jesus. One day, mark was preaching in his church and a mob just forced its way in. They put a rope around his neck and they were shouting drag him into the fields where the cows graze which is an interesting line.
David:He passed us the church of the cattle pasture. They're like let him die, let him die out in the cattle pasture. Then they bound his feet up and they dragged him through the fields. That night they threw him in prison, bleeding and half dead, because he'd been dragged all day through the fields. The next day again they took an animal, a beast of burden, and they just dragged him through the fields. Again they wanted to burn him, but he died before they could burn him, and so they had dragged him to death. What's?
Imran:interesting this was in North Africa in that church.
David:Yeah, that was around where he was born too, it was actually a similar area, so there's a sense that he's home preaching the gospel and they just hate him. What's interesting is, when he died, those that were there then testified that it began to rain and, as if you're not gonna burn this guy, god just allowed him a peaceful death.
Selena:So this is how? Wait, I'm confused. Is this how John Mark died? It is Okay.
David:Yeah. So John Mark was preaching in his church, the mob broke in, they dragged him and they were gonna burn him, but they couldn't burn him. He died, and then it just started raining.
Selena:Wow.
Imran:It's phenomenal. So how you wanna go out past here, drag that up your church and I wasn't shooting that direction, but I mean if we have to we'll do it.
David:Is that where America's headed? I don't know, honestly at this point.
Imran:Right, that's rough. It's a crazy time to be here.
David:I just wanted to think about a young man like Mark and if I could, I don't know how many. There's so many young people that are committed to Christianity in a great way.
Imran:Yeah, I tell Selene all the time that our young adults ministry at the church is like the most I think the most powerful in terms of like witness.
David:I love them so much. I love pastoring a young church, even though you guys have ideas that are young and fresh and I'm like what we're doing, what we're just too fast.
Selena:Too much.
David:I would say that while I hear other pastors complained about young people in Christianity, I'm so encouraged by the young people. I think Christianity has a great generation stepping forward and I just maybe, at the end of the I just wanted to-.
Imran:The one part is it must it must for all time until Jesus returns have a great young adults group. If it doesn't, then it dies Amen.
Selena:And they're very active. Like they got a hike coming up this Saturday, that's right, absolutely Like little things like that, let's meet.
David:They did a breakfast a week or two ago and it was good. I saw pictures of you cooking. Oh yeah, they got it.
Imran:Yeah, burning sausages, it was great.
David:I wanted to just offer some, maybe just some things to young people. Can I just say this to young people? So I'm not young anymore, I'm turning 50. You guys are young.
Imran:Aw.
David:So I'll just look at you when I say it.
Imran:I appreciate it.
David:I would say this with all my heart I just want this generation to run hard toward Jesus. Run hard, and it's what I see you guys doing. I see you you step into a new military base. You jumped into your church and everywhere there was to serve that you could serve, to serve your church, even sacrificially. You've done it To me. You're a model of what people should be doing in their church is serving the Lord, because I think you would agree with this the gospel is the most important thing on earth. It's more important than our careers, it's more important than this military base. The gospel is the most important thing and God is moving his gospel forward. I would also say, just to young people, that the mission of Jesus is worth your youth.
David:And sometimes people are saying look, when I get older I'm gonna commit to Jesus, when at some point and you know what? You don't know how long you've got and it's worth it. It's worth it to serve Jesus while you're young. You're not gonna look back and say oh, you know people that think something. To serve Jesus is not like they look back and go. I'm so glad I spent those years drinking.
David:I'm so glad I spent those years at the party. But people that serve Jesus, they look back and they're like I'm so glad Remember those great times we had serving the Lord.
Imran:Something that I always not always, but I do think about often from Jordan Peterson's on marriage series and we're all just how you feel about Jordan Peterson he does have some incredible writings of kind of just like what's an effective way to live. Well, one of the things he talks about is how is that you should be living? With your future self in mind?
David:You should be living in service to your future self.
Imran:So if you are, living and you look at yourself as one who is not selfish. Like to be selfish is to just be focused on right here and right now. It's actually extremely selfish to not consider your future self, because everything you do now has impact on your future self. So if you're living with your future self in mind, you should be thinking about what am I doing today, that when I am old and age, am I gonna look back and be appreciative?
Imran:What am I doing to make sure that I'm surrounded by those that I love, with a family that loves me, with people that care for me, and so I can look back and know that I live the life worth living. And if you're not doing things now that are in service to that future self that you want, then you're ultimately gonna be. You're ultimately actually truly selfish, like that is true selfishness. It's even a betrayal of yourself.
David:And let's step forward one more step. Someday, you'll stand before Jesus and he'll ask you what did you bring me? What did you do for me? How did you serve me?
Imran:Yeah.
David:And the greatest thing that he can say is well done, good and faithful yeah.
Imran:I would say the highest honor you can receive is to be a good and faithful servant. Yeah, the highest honor, those are all your rewards are tied to that.
David:That he would say you did good. I also want young people to know this You're gonna mess up. You're gonna mess up. John Mark messed up. He left the mission field, he blew it. And I think it's important to know that that, hey, you're not gonna hit, you're not gonna just hit constant home runs. I've messed up. I messed up at Palm's Baptist. I've made mistakes, I mean, and yet you can be defeated by those mistakes and say, ooh, I just shouldn't be. Or you can say, hey, I'm gonna learn from this and grow from this.
Imran:The other big thing I just want young people to know it's like you can give up or you can be under grace.
David:Which is what your culture is, galations.
Imran:Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm about hyped up on Galations. You are, it's oozy.
David:If you saw the goo just oozing out, it says Galations.
Imran:It's all G Galations.
David:It's oozing out. One more thing I want young people to know.
Imran:It's not a bad thing.
David:I want you guys to know you need mentors, and so I worry about churches. Look, I love Jesus church. I worry about churches that have a target. We're gonna reach old people, we're gonna reach young people. We're gonna reach this demographic. The church of Jesus has no demographics.
Selena:Breathing our demographic.
David:And a church needs to have some young people that are kind of rocking the boat and it needs to have some old people that give us some stability, the grovers that you just mentioned. There's gotta be some people mentoring you and young people bring energy to a church.
Imran:I learned recently about Pastor Grover that he was an airman in the Air Force and he worked on B-52 bombers before he ended up becoming a pastor after getting out of the Marine Corps, and I'm like. This man is the coolest person I've ever met and I had no idea.
David:Not only that, he was the coolest person ever. He worked construction for years and his job was moving houses and so they would load them onto these trucks and move them across town. And so he's the. What if? He says you've gotta go, look, and you'll be looking at a bridge, Like, can the house go into that bridge? What's the other route? What if Will the Pope? What about those telephone lines? Are we about to bump those? All that was stuff that Grover would think about.
Imran:That man it I. It's like I've met him as a pastor and you only know what you know. So I assumed he had always been a pastor, all right, but like to just learn a little bit about his history. And literally a five minute conversation outside I was like this man is clearly the most interesting person I've ever met and I had no idea. Like do not, do not, do not look at the old among you and think that they are less than like they have lived an entire life. What does that mean? It means that they have decades of experience, decades of wisdom that you can learn from.
David:So one of the reasons we broke our church up a little different a lot of churches do Sunday school, where they have age graded. So it doesn't make sense to me. You take all the old people and you put them in a room, so all the wisdoms in one room. They take all the young people and put them over here, and and instead of what we do is, hey, let's have a marriage group, let's have a young adults group, but we're not separating them out. We want there to be more mixture in the church than some churches experience, and so we're just trying. Sometimes, in a marriage group, you need some old married people, some young married people. In a men's group, you need some old guys and some young guys. In a women's group, you need some older ladies and some younger ladies. And so we broke the church up in Bible study groups a little differently.
Imran:So that age is in the factor. We tried not.
David:So we do have a young adults group because they're going to go out and do hikes and stuff like that, but it was never our intention to as deeply, but still it's a broad age range.
Imran:It's 18 to 32. Like, that's a good range of people that have lived life Like to be I would argue that to be in your late 20s and 30s. You've lived life a little bit compared to the 18 year olds, and I know for a fact that the 18 year olds that I teach now in entry level training they look at me and they're like, sir, you are so old. And I'm like, please, please, oh gosh, don't just hit me like that. That's crazy.
David:Oh, I'm gritting ear to ear.
Imran:Like oh, I'm only 28.
Selena:I'm like, oh God, but that's 10 years. Yeah, Captain Trapp was like we don't call that anymore.
David:I was younger than you when I came to pass for this church.
Imran:Oh, my gosh. Yeah, isn't that cool? Yeah, and here I am trying to figure myself out.
David:You shave your head so we can't see if you have any gray hair. Well, why do you think I shaved my head?
Imran:It's true, I had a tiny, tiny little. It's not even a bald spot, it's just an area where the hair started to thin slightly and I was like I'm done with hair.
David:Wait, wait, turn. Let me see the back of your head. You can't see it.
Imran:You literally can't see it. It's just an area where the hair grows slightly slower than the rest of my head. It's not actually bald, it's just grows slower.
David:Yeah.
Imran:And I'm just like I'm done. I look good with a beard and in my head shape. So when I get on Marine Corps, that's going to be my thing, like Terry Crews. Yeah, Just bald head with a with trying to be a big black dude with beard and the shaved head. Some if.
David:I could summarize Mark this way just the big picture. Here's a young man who started out just following Jesus, chasing behind the disciples. He was early in the church. He was there when they went out on the first missionary journeys. He left and he messed up. But the person that discipled him was the apostle Peter. And out of that mistake he goofed, he left the missionary team. God took him, discipled him through Peter, and out of that we get the gospel of Mark. Yeah, how beautiful, and I don't know when. The last time you were just filled with passion for God. I think the gospel of Mark is a passionate gospel.
Imran:I think the man that is Mark is just like an incredible journey of a human being.
David:Here's a man that died for his faith. He was dragged for his faith and you were like, hey, what was you said? Is that what you're going to do, Like I?
Imran:hope not.
David:But I respect that so much and we are all supposed to be willing for that.
Imran:I always think back at one the persecution, as, like all the persecution that you see in Acts, like Christianity did not just expand outward easily. It was the disciples, it was early church leaders that were doing the hard, gritty work to spread the faith. And it's like, why were they doing that? Because they believed it, because it's easy when it's true.
David:That's right.
Imran:It's so easy when it's true Brian talked about. He asked, like one of the like, chat GPT, is Christianity real? And chat GPT's response to him was that I don't know if it's true, but when you look at all of the resources that I have available, it's very unusual that something like that took place and nothing like that has taken place since, and that it's the only religion that spread from a point and didn't come after a point. So it's like Jesus dying is where Christianity started and it grew immediately from that point. It wasn't something that was established later based off the life of someone X, Y, Z it was like the moment Jesus was raised from the dead. It was.
Selena:Christianity was born and how quickly it spread.
Imran:And also the rapidness of it, how quickly it spread. It's important, it's unique, extremely unique to Christianity. No other religion was like that.
David:It's important that these things happened in generation one, so Christianity isn't 200 years and then people started following someone that was dead. It needed to happen in the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. Peter saw Jesus crucified. He saw Jesus raised again and he would give testimony to his death. John Mark would have known if it was all a lie, and yet he gave testimony to his death that these things were true.
Imran:And almost all of the disciples did, I think. Who's the only one that died of old age? John, yeah, john, the apostle, john, and they boiled him and threw him up.
David:I mean, it wasn't really a get rich quick scheme. You know, but that's important. It's important to our story and our faith. That happened from generation one. We didn't make up a tale as it went. But we always reach back the deepest we can to the original sources. Yeah, exactly.
Imran:I truly appreciate that, and oh, this was only the first one.
David:And we're going to have so much fun.
Imran:We're going right into all the things I truly love about real Bible stories Me too.
David:This is fun.
Imran:Yeah, it's a good time, so I hope that you really enjoyed this episode and we've got what might be like five or six more that we're going to do over the course of the next couple of weeks, but this is it. This is the bread and butter of real Bible stories. We finished up our deep discussion into the history surrounding Galatians, the context around how Paul wrote and why he wrote it the way that he did, and now we're going to learn about the biographies, about some of the people that we know to be in the Bible. You've just scratched the surface and, oh man, what a scratch. I love it.
David:I love it.
Imran:This is great. So thank you so much, Pastor David, for coming on this week.
David:I had so much fun just seeing you. I love hanging out with you guys.
Imran:Yeah, and now you have to go pick up your kids from.
David:O'Wana. I do, I got to go to O'Wana.
Imran:Yeah, and I guess we'll tie in there that if you're in the 29 Palms area 29 Palms, california, the Joshua Tree area and you're looking for a home church, you're looking for a church that has a strong youth ministry, a strong young adult's ministry, we've got Palms Baptist Church as a home for you, for your family. If you're on the base out here, come check us out. We want to love on you, we want to share God with you. But, um, this is just what I love right here. Can I tell you just I know we're wrapping up.
David:Tell you something about church I think it's important. Somebody said what's the most important thing we as a church give the military? It's not look, we wanna have a deployed ministry, we wanna have. The most important thing Palms gives the community and the Marine Corps is it's a real church. So we're not a service, we're a real church with real problems.
David:And so they come and military come and they involve themselves in a real church. There's real ministry happening, there's real problems on the ground and for some young people this is the first church they've served in since the youth group. They're walking from youth group to boot camp to into Palms Baptist and this is the first church where they were treated as adults and they're not given a service.
Imran:And a church that consistently has needs because of kind of its rotating nature. It's I've talked to Ryan about this that there is a kind of a peak point that Palms can get to because of. Pcs season because of almost the corner of the church rotates every year. We're going to put you to work. And so you come in and there was a women's ministry director probably needed at that time. There's a men's ministry director probably needed.
David:So one of our gifts to the community Young adults is probably needed. Our gift is that it's a needy church. Hey, we need people, Exactly we need people giving to the church financially. We need people. You're looking for a place to serve. Oh man Serving yeah.
Imran:Serve, serve, serve, because there's always something that can be done and within the talents that you've been given, whether that's the ability to sing, play an instrument, work sound, build bulletins. We even work on the church sign, even drive a bus Like those are all needs that the church has.
David:In your little short time here at 29 Palms, what are some of the stuff you guys have involved yourself in, because it's big. I always wanted to count this down with you a little bit.
Imran:Oh goodness. So, dave, I guess you can go first, elena, sure?
Selena:Oh, we're doing both of each.
Imran:Yeah, you go through, go ahead.
Selena:Okay, so started off with the video.
Imran:With Becca right.
Selena:Yeah, yeah and actually yeah the video testimonies. And then graphics just doing graphics because I enjoyed doing that. So social media stuff, the podcast.
Imran:Yeah, photography as well. Do you remember you were doing?
David:we were doing social media posts and they were kind of just these generic things. And you're, you're, you're aligned to me was we got this pastor and I just thought they've got it. They've got it, it's their church, I'm going to let them have it and it's been beautiful.
Selena:Yeah, I mean we just it was more like just showing what the church was already doing. That's it Just capturing that and putting it out there.
Imran:Yeah, and I guess for me my big thing I walked in. I I'm a big sound guy I hope you can tell by the production of this podcast that I've tried to make it sound very nice. But I walked in, I didn't like how things sounded and I and I immediately it's like same same service, like if you had a service went over and was like Ashley hi, my name is Ken, can I please help with this? And I appreciate the trust that she put in me because she gave me like the codes to the building, like the same day, and I spent every night there for about her text to me that Sunday was.
David:I think I'm in love with this couple. She said they just came in and they're ready to serve. I can tell they just love the Lord.
Selena:What Aw?
David:Yeah, and that was the story behind the story Selena, yeah, yeah, the first time I'm hearing that.
Imran:It's like wait, she likes this. That's crazy, but I spent like every night for the first seven days. They're just trying to get to a place that I felt that it was stable and try to understand what was going on as well. And then it went into the sound treatment plan, which took about two years to kind of get all the across the finish line, but we got it done. The lights we read it all the lights inside the church that took about a year or so to get done and we got that done. The podcast that we started up there's like dozens of like a smaller, smaller things, like just being a part of the couple's ministry.
Selena:Well, don't forget those different events.
Imran:Oh this, yeah. So Selena's big thing was that she she basically rebranded like the church was trying to modernize kind of like how it presented itself and its brand, and Selena built this huge design for the church sign and now that's the church sign that you see up on the campus and that's the logo she came up with. So good is that. You know it's a good logo because you see it on everything. You know that your logo is good if people use it without you asking you know, here's what's neat.
David:Here's a military couple comes into their church and you guys just jumped in and everywhere, instead of saying we're looking for a perfect church, you're like, ooh, you guys have a problem with your sound. Let me help you. Hey you guys and each place that there was a problem. You said here's a community of believers I can walk with. It's not that they're perfect. They need help and I'm here to be part of that.
Imran:Yeah, and that's been my, I guess, my thing ever since I've. Actually there was a point where I was like I think it was like, right after you finished, the sound I was like is that it? It's like, have I culminated, have I done all the things that I wanted to do at Palms and now it's time for me to move on to another church? I don't know, and I was also around the time that I said it's like I think it's time for me to get out of the Marine Corps as well. So I don't know, I don't know, but I'm every I'm trying to continue to do everything Buy a house just buy a house out here.
Imran:I tried. It's too expensive. We looked and we're like this place is expensive.
David:All right, I love you guys so much.
Imran:All right, yeah, we love you too, pastor. This has been great. That was a little peek behind the curtain of kind of we haven't done a life update in a while, but I'm I know I'm tearing up over here.
Imran:Oh we're still here, yeah he's also getting like probably a thousand text messages from his daughters at this point. But until next week we hope you enjoy this, that enjoyed this episode of real Bible stories. I hope you're on fire for learning the story behind the story as we kind of go through this series with pastor David. All right, and we'll see you next week.
Selena:Thank you for tuning in to real Bible stories. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to leave a review, share and subscribe to be notified each week when we upload new episodes. Real Bible Stories is produced in partnership with Palm's Church in 29 Palms, California. If you would like more information or want to check out archive sermons and Bible studies, please check out the church website at palmsbaptistchurchcom, or check them out on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube. Real Bible Stories can be found wherever podcasts are found. Thank you again and we will see you next week.