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IN THE TESTIMONY

I would like to raise the question, dear friends, as to how you are in the testimony and I am particularly concerned about our younger ones but it applies to all of us. I have selected Mark just to trace briefly his history, the influences that came into his life, and how finally God worked out His thoughts with him. I suppose he was present in Acts 12 and apparently he was brought up in an environment of a Christian household; his mother, it would seem was a Christian who had a house and made it available to the brethren as they required it for a prayer meeting. Mark maybe entered into that prayer because it was quite a time of crisis. Peter had been in prison and his life was at stake; James had been beheaded by Herod just a day or two previous. Mark was in such an environment, but how much was Mark attached to Christ? That is the question I want to go through this preaching. How much are you attached to Christ? It is good to be present at the meetings, and we all go to the prayer meeting, but how am I there? I could be there in a casual way as Mark might have been, though it seems in some way as though there was a measure of sincerity with him, but in any case he comes into a little bit of usefulness initially in the testimony. Paul, as going out in relation to God’s testimony, and Barnabas whom we find out later was Mark’s uncle, go out together and take John Mark with them. What a privilege to be in the testimony with Paul and Barnabas! But how is he in it? How is he fundamentally in relation to his links with the Lord Jesus? You could be in a position of privilege with a certain amount of prominence and, like John Mark, taken on a journey. Other young men might have said that Mark was privileged going out with Paul and Barnabas, seeing the great work the Lord was doing in the various cities, but how is Mark in his soul? That is the question I would like to raise with you all tonight. How are you in your soul? We can look at externals and see what is external, but how are you in your links with the Lord Jesus? How are you in your own soul? That is the root of the matter that becomes exposed in Mark’s history (the circumstances that bring it out we may touch on) but he goes forward with them so far and then no further, and he turns back. It says, “John separated from them and returned to Jerusalem”. It may be that he did not go out of fellowship—it would not look like that—but he turned back. The Lord says in the gospel “No one having laid his hand on the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God”, Luke 9: 62. Have you ever seen a man ploughing? I do not know very much about the skills that are required these days with tractors and ploughs, but in the old days, if you had a pair of horses and a plough and were going down a field, the ploughman set his eye on a mark at the other end of the field and he kept looking at that mark and never looked behind. He will draw a straight furrow if he looks at the mark; if he looks behind he will be all over the place; that is the ploughman. Mark laid his hand to the plough and he looked back and he is not fit for the kingdom of God. He is not being cast off as a total wreck, the Lord is not casting you off as a total wreck. He is not doing that; there is an opportunity for everyone to be recovered in relation to the greatest thoughts of God. It has been said that the coast is strewn with wrecks of better men than ourselves. Mark need not be a wreck on the coast; he can be recovered and I will show you how he is recovered. God has recovery in mind for every man. Mark goes back to Jerusalem and influences come into his life that do not help him.

In chapter 15 Paul and Barnabas are going again to visit the brethren to see how they are getting on and Barnabas proposes to take John Mark, but Paul thought otherwise, since he had abandoned them previously. God in His word does not miss the mark with any one of us; He brings home the truth to us that we might face up to it. “But Paul thought it not well to take with them him who had abandoned them, going back from Pamphylia”. You see how strong that word is, and if Barnabas had agreed with what Paul had said, he might have helped Mark at this point but, sad to say, he does not, and is influenced by the natural relationship; and not only is he out of the pathway actively for himself but he takes his nephew with him and goes away to Cyprus. Is Mark to be left at Cyprus with Barnabas or what is going to happen? Scripture is now silent about Mark until we come to 2 Timothy, which I intended to read, where Paul says, “Take Mark, and bring him with thyself, for he is serviceable to me for ministry”, chap 4: 11. What brought it about, dear young friend? What brought about the change in Mark’s soul? It is brought out in his gospel. You get an insight into the man’s soul history in his gospel. He tells you about himself and the exercises he went through until he became serviceable to the Master.

Now that is what I want to engage you with for a few moments, how Mark was recovered. “Beginning of the glad tidings of Jesus Christ, Son of God”. That is the day when things begin to change for you and me when the Son of God comes on to our view. Mark had been in a company with a man called Paul, formerly called Saul of Tarsus, who had met the Lord on the Damascus road and it changed his entire outlook in this world, and he begins to preach. What did he preach? “Jesus that he is the Son of God”, Acts 9: 20. Mark comes to Him, “Beginning of the glad tidings of Jesus Christ, Son of God”. No doubt he had ruminated over what Paul had preached in those times he had been with him, that Jesus is the Son of God. What does the Son of God mean? It means that Christ is the sun and centre of another world. You say, is there another world? I can only see the world of temporal and material things. Dear friend, there is another world, there is a spiritual world of which Christ is the sun and centre. Mark went back to the material side of things in Jerusalem, an easier line than what the testimony required, but then he comes through to the beginning of the glad tidings. Where did that begin? It began in his soul.

I will tell you of an incident in this gospel (see chap 14: 51). A certain young man was there, when the Lord was being apprehended, who had a linen cloth cast about his naked body, and it says “the young men seize him; but he, leaving the linen cloth behind him, fled from them naked”. Mark would say, That was like me, I was exposed because I was casually attached to Christ; publicly I was there, I was at all the meetings but I did not have an appreciation fully of what the Lord was going to go through. Mark’s gospel brings out more than any other gospel the depths of the sufferings of Jesus. “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him”, 2 Cor 5: 21. What does it mean? It means that He took upon Himself the state and the sins that attached to me and bore them in His body on the tree. That is what Mark came to, and he would say, I have to come to an end of the man after the flesh, the man that sinned, and Jesus took my stead there and settled the whole question of sin on the cross in those three hours of darkness. Think of the awful cry that came forth displaying something of the feelings of Jesus on the cross when He said “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”. Mark was changed through the consideration of the sufferings of Christ on the cross. Dear friend, are you only casually attached to the Saviour? Are you only casually attached to the people of God? Or does Jesus really mean something to you—do you understand what it was that He bore? Do you understand what it was that drew out that cry? Do you understand what it was when the darkness came over the whole land from the sixth to the ninth hour—why the Spirit of God leaves those words untranslated, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”, Mark 15: 34. Do you understand that in the state in which you are you cannot draw near to God in complacency? Man in this world seeks to enter into the praise of God without having resolved the question of his sins; that is Cain’s world and Cain’s worship and it is all around us. We do not want to be critical of persons but that is what is all around us. Nevertheless if the word of God is read it can reach the conscience of anyone. God intends that your conscience should be reached so that you are no longer casually attached but wholeheartedly attached to Jesus, and that is what comes about in Mark. He tells us of another experience.

When the women went into the tomb they saw a young man clothed in a white robe and they were amazed and alarmed—a young man in the light of the fact that Jesus had been crucified. He says “Ye seek Jesus, the Nazarene, the crucified one”; a young man who considered where the body of Jesus had lain, that it lay in the grave. Let it sink into your heart and soul dear young friend, that Christ lay there, lay in the grave, lay in the dust of death. And then he is a young man who says that He is not here: “He is risen, he is not here; behold the place where they had put him”; a young man who is now able to help others, who said “go, tell his disciples and Peter, he goes before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him”. O to be such a young man or woman in this world who is no longer casually attached to Christ but with everything set right in your mind and heart, no longer bored but in the joy of Christianity, and the joy that Christ is risen. Praise the Lord! Christ is risen and is seated above. “He that descended is the same who has also ascended up above all the heavens, that he might fill all things”, Eph 4: 10. He is my Saviour.

Thus Mark comes back serviceable to Paul for the ministry. Are you filling out the place in happiness that the Lord has given you to fill for Him in this world? You will only do it as you come to an appreciation of the death of Christ and the place that He has taken, and the awfulness of the distance into which He went as forsaken of God. “God commends his love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us”, Rom 5: 8. Paul says “no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me”, Gal 2: 20. That is what you come through to; that is what Mark arrived at, and he is prepared to be in the testimony at a time when Paul is awaiting martyrdom and there are reports of the people of God suffering.

Have you had to do with the Son of God, the One who imparts a quickening touch so that you live and live to God? That is what God has in mind, satisfaction in living to Him, fully satisfied, Christ everything and in all. The worldly man may say he has enough; the Christian can say he has everything because ‘I have Christ, what want I more?’ That is what Mark comes to, a full appreciation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and thus he is able to be a help to those around him. The Lord has in mind that you should be a help, and God has not only provided the forgiveness of sins but has provided the Holy Spirit as a gift so that we have that power to go through this world. It says in Peter’s epistle “If ye are reproached in the name of Christ, blessed are ye; for the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God rests upon you”, 1 Pet 4: 14. O to be in the gain of what we are speaking about, so attached to Christ that I am no longer casual! Peter was searched by the Lord in this very matter of attachment. He said to him “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?” John 21: 15. How the Lord searched him until he is fully amended and then he is given something to do. The Lord gives every one of us something to do. I recall Mr McCallum saying many years ago, There is work to be done and who is going to do it? That is still true. What a challenge to younger men and women! There is work to be done and who is going to do it? Mark was going to do it because he was firmly attached to the Lord Jesus and in appreciation of “the deep that lieth under”, Gen 49: 25. May the Lord bless His word.

BARNET

10^th July 1977

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