Mark gets right into the action. Nothing about Jesus’ birth. His baptism and temptation barely get a mention. Due to this style, Mark 1 covers way more time in the first chapter than the other gospels. And, since we’re not going to break down the reading plan so granularly as to do a few verses here and a few verses there, just know that Mark 1 gets WAY ahead on the sequence. Most of the events described in this first chapter only take place AFTER the wedding in Cana in John 2.

Think of Mark as the Hare in Aesop’s Fable, The Tortoise and The Hare. While the other gospels plod steadily along giving great detail, Mark catches up and then zooms on ahead in a single chapter. Then we just have to let him sit there until we catch up to where he is.

You probably noticed already how different the Gospel of Mark is in tone. The pace is quick and to the point. It feels like this…

BAM! 🥊 Jesus casts out a demon.

POW! 💥

And immediately He goes to the house. And

ZING! ⚡️ He heals Peter’s mother-in-law.

Matthew was written to a hopeful but hesitant Jewish audience.

Luke wrote to a intellectual Greek audience.

John a universal human audience.

And Mark… Mark is perfectly suited to a Roman audience.

The Romans would go to watch people get killed in a fight or torn apart by savage animals for entertainment on the weekend. Their military is tough and disciplined in battle. They skip small talk and get straight to-the-point. But they also appreciate flair and showmanship, color and spectacle. They know real power and authority when they see it and they respect it. Romans are an odd mix of refined baths, leisure, competitive sport, advanced technology and art and calloused indifference to suffering and death.

Mark presents Jesus in a way that gets their attention.

The word “immediately” is used a lot which bounds the action from one scene to the next. Power-words are everywhere. The authority of Jesus over sickness and demons is showcased front and center.

Speaking of which….

We have now encountered a new thing in the Bible. Demons. They’re often called “unclean spirits.” People are said to be afflicted or possessed by them and Jesus commands them to either leave or “come out” of people (implying that sometimes they are outside attacking or attached and sometimes they had been inhabiting the body of the vexed individual).

We never saw an OT prophet encounter an unclean spirit, though there seemed to be plenty of demonic activity hovering in the background- with the human sacrifices and idolatrous witchcraft of the wicked.

I have already shared in previous posts how the standard “demonology” of the 2nd Temple period is spelled out in The Book of Enoch. Unclean spirits were understood by the rabbis and scholars to be the disembodied spirits of the dead Nephilim.

“Unclean” is certainly an apt designation. Genesis 6 makes it clear that it wasn’t just humankind that was corrupted by the fallen Sons of God. “All flesh” was corrupted. Every form of life made by God was meddled with and marred. I think the idea was to hijack what was made because they lacked the power to create from nothing.

I’ve often wondered if some of the enormous and ferocious-looking dinosaurs and other creatures whose fossilized bones we find were “biological experiments” of the rebel Sons of God.

Tell me these don’t look like gene splicing gone wrong:

And they were all huge. That last one- its fossil remains (complete skeletons) are the size of a grizzly. Some types were the size of Belgian draft horses or bison. Terrifying.

Archeologists dig up the weirdest stuff.

Anyway… back to Mark and Jesus casting out…who knows, spirits that maybe once inhabited strange animal monsters.

“What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”
‭‭Mark‬ ‭1‬:‭24‬ ‭ESV‬‬

This spirit speaks in plural and singular.

👿 pronouns: us/I

And the spirit recognizes Jesus as “the Holy One of God,” and that He has the power and authority “destroy” them. That is big-time stuff.

The fallen realm doesn’t know God’s plan or His timeline. They have access to what God has said in the scripture just like we do, and probably pay more attention to it.

They know Messiah will come in judgment and when He does, they are finished. I think the rebel kingdom is terrified of this passage in particular:

“On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth. They will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit; they will be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished. Then the moon will be confounded and the sun ashamed, for the Lord of hosts reigns on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and his glory will be before his elders.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭24‬:‭21‬-‭23‬ ‭ESV‬‬

When the spirit asks if Jesus has come to destroy them, it may be fishing for information. But Jesus doesn’t have a conversation with it. He only makes it leave.

The people are astonished. They know about demon-possession but they’re not used to seeing someone having the authority to command evil spirits to leave.

Jesus didn’t set the demonized man free with therapy. He set him free with authority.

Some situations need therapy. But I think we need to pray for wisdom and discernment so that we’re not trying to “therapize” thoughts and emotional chaos that may actually be a spiritual attack that needs to be met with the authority of Christ.

In the Gospel of Mark, right out of the gate, Jesus is busy healing one sick person after another, casting out demons, and miraculously healing lepers.

Since we in the modern West are the cultural descendants of the Romans, Mark is an important Gospel for us. It’s also the shortest. (Maybe be got our short attention spans from the Romans). I just hope I can keep up. And immediately we’re on to the next chapters! ZIP!💨