All In

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. What do you do with somebody when they're in prison and you want to punish them? You put them in solitary. The ultimate punishment would be complete solitary. The ultimate, absolute opportunity that we have is community. Wouldn't it be grand? Wouldn't it be beyond imagination to live in perfect community, perfect harmony with one another? Wouldn't it be grand to have connections that are multiplied by the nth degree and every one of those connections in perfect synchronization? Carl, you're making this up. No, I'm not. That's God's plan for us. That's God's design for us. Last week, John was already preaching a sermon I should have preached. But he's the boss. What do you do? You got to give it up to him and let him do what he wants. But it's about the nature and the strength of the relationship that exists even within the Trinity, especially within the Trinity, whose origin is the Trinity. God has never presented himself as a singular entity. Always as connection, always as a relationship. Elohim. You got to practice that for a while. Elohim is the plural meaning for God. But he is addressed singularly from Genesis 1 on. Elohim. Last week, we find Jesus being baptized by John. We find the dove descending on him, the Father's voice. There always is a relationship. There's always a connection. There's always a harmony. There always was. There always will be. And here's the joy. You are called to be a part of that. Whatever that perfect communion looks like from the Trinity's perspective, whatever that is all about, you and I are called to be a part of that and exist in that forever, to be all in it. So, the goal of the message here today is to take the scriptures that we're walking through, the Gospel of Mark, Matthew and Mark. Mark is the second Gospel listed in the New Testament, but he's the first one to write stuff down, as far as we know. He's a good friend of Peter's. As a matter of fact, we think that he probably did a lot of interpreting for Peter. Peter was from Galilee, and he kind of spoke like a guy from South Chicago. He really didn't get along with a lot of folks. He only spoke Aramaic. I have no clue how you speak South Chicago Aramaic, so I'm going to avoid that completely. Whereas Mark seems to be able to speak Greek, and so was able to take many of the phenomena and the conversations and the experiences with Peter and put them down into writing. So, we're getting an angle of Peter and Mark, and what John has spelled out that we want to refresh on is that Mark's Gospel is a no-nonsense, no-theologizing, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. There's going to be a quiz someday. You're going to be in some trivia pursuit game at some bar in downtown Naples, and they're going to go, which Gospel's favorite word is immediately? Can you imagine that being in a trivia pursuit in a bar in Naples? No. But if it is, you're prepared. The favorite word that Mark uses in his Gospel is immediately. Immediately. Immediately. So, he doesn't want to give you any in-between. There's no pausing. There's no relaxing. There's no Jesus just chilling. And immediately, you're running around like some sort of newscast. That's important to know because Mark wants you to get to the point really quick, and that will be the case today. I knew that John had had me up for preaching, so I was hoping he wouldn't give you this little tidbit of Mark that will also appear at the same bar for the trivia pursuit doing that. And how does Mark sign off as the author? What authors used to do back then, by the way, this is not the sermon, so don't be watching your watch. I haven't started preaching yet. This is bonus material. So, how do you know that Mark? What authors would do back then is they would put their, some mark, something that was just specific about them. John put the beloved disciple so that you knew that he was the guy. Mark put something very unique and very special in it, and right there toward the end of the gospel, the scene is that Jesus has come out of the Garden of Gethsemane. He's about to be arrested. The Roman soldiers are looking to grab whoever they can to take them in, and they grab one guy by the, went to reach for him, and he slipped away, and they grabbed him by the tunic, and the soldier yanked the tunic away. And what was left? Don't tell them, John. Nothing. Maybe a pair of sandals. I'm not sure. So, Mark is the first streaker. Well, as far as we know, he was the first. Maybe Adam and Eve account. I hadn't thought about that. You got to have clothes for him to be a streaker. Okay. I forget I'm hanging with a pretty intellectual crowd. So, all that by way of saying, that's the gospel of Mark, and we're going to continue to unfold him in the weeks ahead. And I do thank you for the privilege of bringing the word of the Lord together and simply Jesus. I love the title simply Je...