Summary:—Nine beatitudes; eight woes; seven consecutive parables; ten consecutive miracles; five continuous sermons; four prophecies of His death.
MARK.
The four Gospels are independent of each other, no one was copied from the other. Each is the complement of the rest, and we get four views of Christ, like the four sides of a house.
Matthew writes for Jews.
Mark writes for Romans.
Luke writes for Gentile converts.
You don’t find any long sermons in Mark. The Romans were quick and active, and he had to condense things in order to catch them. You’ll find the words “Forthwith,” “Straightway,” “Immediately,” occur forty-one times in this gospel. Every chapter but the first, seventh, eighth and fourteenth begins with “And,” as if there was no pause in Christ’s ministry.
Luke tells us that Christ received little children, but Mark says He took them up in His arms. That makes it sweeter to you, doesn’t it?
Perhaps the high water mark is the fifth chapter. Here we find three very bad cases, devils, disease and death, beyond the reach of man, cured by Christ. The first man was possessed with devils. They could not bind him, or chain or tame him. I suppose a good many men and women had been scared by that man. People are afraid of a graveyard even in daylight, but think of a live man being in the tombs and possessed with devils! He said: “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God that thou torment me not.” But Jesus had come to do him good.
Next, the woman with the issue of blood. If she had been living to-day, I suppose she would have tried every patent medicine in the market. We would have declared her a hopeless case and sent her to the hospital. Some one has said: “There was more medicine in the hem of His garment than in all the apothecary shops in Palestine.” She just touched Him and was made whole. Hundreds of others touched Him, but they did not get anything. Can you tell the difference between the touch of faith and the ordinary touch of the crowd?