Sam, I. Sam. Good evening, ladies and gents. Glad to have everyone here tonight. Got a lot of our own out, but that's okay. We got the few, the proud, the faithful, the suckers. And we had good sloppy joes tonight. Those of you online missed. Missed that. And we had wonderful rain tonight. That's why Shelly. And not. Not tonight. Snow. This weekend. We didn't have electricity at our house for 36 hours. Just came on about hour and a half ago, so. So Shelly and Kay thought they had to have a shower. Yeah, it was. It was a stretch. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But anyway, glad, glad, glad we're all here tonight. And let's see, Sunday, we've got breakfast at 9am That's a new one for us. And we're going to have. It's. It's. It's for the men, for the women, for whoever, and the men are going to cook. And it'll be a. It'll be a full breakfast. We'll have just about everything. So come on and join us. Those of you online, it's only Wednesday. You've got till Sunday to be here and enjoy breakfast. And then we'll have our. A Mother's Day service. I think in the Mother's Day service, I'll probably preach from Ecclesiastes. It'll be just like any other service. How's that? I. I should look. Look ahead and make sure it's not some passage in Ecclesiastes that'll be like, you know, vanity of vanities. Women are all vanity. I better check this ahead of time to make sure I'm not going to get myself in trouble. But if so, I'll just say Solomon said it right there. So anyway, we won't really do a Mother's Day service, but we will have a Mother's Day breakfast and have some fun with that. So come join us. You can, and it'll all be good. And hey, next week, a week from today, Lucas teaching. Do you know how hard it is to twist his arm to teach? Because he gets scared to death standing in front of you people. I don't blame him, but he's going to do it. And just like I'm teaching Isaiah to be the minister of music, I'm teaching Luca to be the pastor. Oh, my goodness. Looking at the future is frightening. It's not. It's not. It's a bright future out there. Anyway, he's going to teach next week because I'm going to see my mother. That's what I'm going to do. And so I'LL be gone. Just. I won't be. I won't miss a Sunday. But I will be gone there in the middle of the week and go down and say, Happy Mother's Day to Mom. And so that'll all be good. And. Let's see. I forgot what we're having. We'll have. We'll have supper and everything next Wednesday night. So just like normal. Except. Except I won't be here. And Luca will. So he'll. He'll do the teaching next week. Okay. Let's. Let's do a little. You know, we've been working on Isaiah, teaching him how to sing. It's like the blind leading the blind. Me teaching Isaiah and so. So we. We worked one up. He's going to sing it mostly. I'll join in. You want them to join in on the chorus or just me? They can too. Okay. Victory in Jesus. Do we know the number? We probably don't. It's Victory in Jesus. By the time we get to it, you'll. You'll find the number. Isaiah and I got. Got the words up here. And Luca. Luke is going to join us and Isaiah is going to lead us on the. On the verses. And we're. We're going because we're trying to learn. Luca. And Isaiah and I are trying to learn how to get the pitch. Okay. Give us about 20 or 30 years. We'll be there. How to get the pitch. So we're doing this acapella with some acapella helpers rather than piano. So there it is. Isaiah will come, he'll tell us what number, and we'll get started. Doesn't he look nice tonight? Good afternoon. We're gonna sing Victory and Jesus in the Baptist hymnals. It's number 499. 499. We'll get started here. I guess they can remain seated, right? Yeah. Okay, you ready? Zoom in. But an old, old story. How a savior came from Glo. How he gave his life on Calvary who severet like me. I heard a bit of his precious blood atoning and I repented of my sins and won the victory oh, victory in Jesus My Savior forever He sought me and bought me with his redeeming blood he loved me ere I knew him and now my love is to him he plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing blood. I heard about his healing of his cleansing power Revealing yeah. It made them to walk again and cause the blind to see and then I cried, dear Jesus, come and heal my broken straight spirit. And somehow Jesus came and taught me the victory oh, victory in Jesus my Savior forever he sought me and bought me with his redeeming blood he loved me e' Er I knew him and all my love is to him he plunged me to victory beneath a cleansing flood I heard about a mansion he is built for me in glory and I heard about the trees of gold and the crystal sea about the angels singing and the old redemption story and some sweet day I'll sing up there the song of victory O Victory in Jesus my Savior forever he sought me and bought me with his redeeming blood he loved me e I knew him and all my love is to him he plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood. Good job, Isaiah. Oh, we practice that. Oh, victory. We were going to sing the chorus again and then I forgot. Yeah, yeah, you got it on the ukulele there. There we go. Close enough. He sought me and bought me with his redeeming blood He. He loved me E. I knew him and all my love is to him he plunged me to victory beneath the cleansing flood. There we go, Isaiah, you gotta have a good backup. Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. Hey, Isaiah. Now normally I wouldn't do this, but I was just curious. Isaiah is getting fan mail and I've been wondering all week what it says. So, Isaiah, I think you ought to open it and read it right here. Would you like to do that? Here, I'll bring the mic back up and you can. You can read us what the letter says this is from. Where is it from? Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas. Susan Zelensky. Susan from. From Austin. Okay. Who is Susan Zelensky? You ever heard of the rhinestone cowboy getting cards and letters from people I don't even know? Come over here and read the guard to us. Thanks for your kindness. Thanks for your kindness. I'll never forget it. Please turn over for note. Dear Isaiah, I am writing to you to say thank you for the beautiful created cross. Crafted. Crafted cross you presented to me after the east, the Easter service. It is so nicely made and I have it on the wall so I can enjoy it every day. It really touched my heart and I will always be grateful for your kindness and generosity. I also, I also enjoyed you singing at the service. Very beautiful. You are a very special person. Love and thanks. Sincerely, Susan Zelensky. Wasn't that nice? I just had to know what it said. Thank you, Isaiah. Okay, let's jump into Bible study here tonight. Let me lead us in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for the victory in Jesus and the blessing that, that is the blessing that Isaiah and so many others are here in our local church and spread around the world as well. And we're grateful as we come to study this man, John Mark in the scriptures that you would help us to understand a little bit more about who he is in Jesus name. Amen. Faithful footnotes is what we're studying, learning from the Bible's, the New Testament's lesser known believers. And I got a picture of him right here. There's John Mark. When I had AI make John Mark, I thought he looks an awful lot like Luca. But, but, but anyway, there, there, there we go with John Mark and that's who we're going to study tonight. And did you, did I get some notes here? And there we go. Thank you. There's, you know, these, these faithful footnotes. There's a, there's, there's some things that we know about them and there's some, some, some other things we piece together about them and try to figure out who these guys are. And we're just going to take a look here as we go through and we're going to go through, I don't know, roughly chronologically and, and well, a little bit mostly chronological, but we'll look at, we're going to put his life in order, going from the youngest times that we see him up into the, the oldest times we see him and we see him first of all in Acts chapter 12, verse 12. And there we go. Acts 12:12 is the first real introduction. Strange, because we just spent what, 70 weeks in the Gospel of Mark, whom we're going to talk about, we believe wrote Mark. And nowhere in the Gospels is he mentioned by name. Even in the first 11 chapters of the book of Acts. We've never seen him. We don't see him until it's really almost mentioned more of his mother. Acts, chapter 12, verse 12. Let me tell, let me remind you what is happening in Acts 12:12. James the Apostle. Peter, James and John. James the apostle has just been killed at the beginning of chapter 12. He was the first of the apostles to die, got his head cut off. He's one of the few, maybe the only one that we absolutely know how he died. And that's because it's in the Bible. So along with that, Peter was put in prison. And Peter was almost executed. But they had a prayer meeting and the angel came and miraculously opened the doors and Peter was able to walk out. And when he did, it says, when he had considered the thing, the thing is an angel just Came down and let me out of prison. Now, when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together, praying. Okay, that's the first introduction we got. Doesn't tell us a thing about him other than his. His mother's name is Mary, his surname. We talked about this a little bit last week with Barnabas, whose given name was Joses or Joseph, and yet they called him Barnabas. Surname is not like we would use it today, as in last name Randy White. But surname is also called. His real name is John, but everyone called him Mark. Sometimes we call him John Mark. We do that because it's. We don't want to mix him up with John, as in Peter, James, and John. And so we'll call him John Mark, or, you know, when we're. When we're talking about the Gospel of Mark, we almost never call it the Gospel of John Mark. I don't think in 70 times I ever said that. It's just Mark or John Mark. Now, he is the son of Mary, but this is all we know about him. And they. They lived in Jerusalem because Peter was in prison in Jerusalem. They must have had a house in which Peter would have said, where would I go now? Now that an angel has just gotten me out of prison and it's in the middle of the night and I'm standing here, where do I go? Have you ever thought about what you would do in that situation? Well, they go to the home of Mary, the home of John, Mark, and many are gathered together that, you know, it tells me that. That this had to have been a time in which you have a. A group of. A group of believers, obviously. And these group of. This group of believers has some kind of a meeting place where. Where Peter, excuse me, is assuming, hey, this would be the place I was looking for the date. And usher's date is 42 A.D. so, you know, we've been. Let's. Let's call it nine years. Nine years outside after the Ascension. And so this must have been a prominent place where Christians gathered, certainly a place anywhere where. Where Peter would have felt comfortable and felt welcome. Now, there's a lot of speculation that maybe the. The. The upper room, Remember the upper room where they had the Last Supper and they had the. The day of Pentecost was in this house with the upper room. A lot of speculation. Maybe this is the house. And sometimes we've made it such a tradition that sometimes we'll even say they were in the upper room. That was John Mark's house. It was up on the roof of John Mark's house. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. All we know is he must have come from a fairly prominent family that had enough room that a large crowd of people, many, many people could be gathered together. And there must have been some notoriety of saying this is the kind of place, so this is the kind of background that he has. He knows people, he is introduced to people and. But we don't know anything else about him. Now, that's the earliest time that we see him. There is this interesting little passage then that is given in. Where is it? Mark, chapter 14, verses 15 and 51. And almost everyone, if you look it up, look it up on the Internet. You know, the Internet never lied about anything. If you look it up on the Internet, almost everyone will say this. These two verses are about John Mark there followed him a certain young man. We're trying to figure out who this is. A certain young man having a linen cloth cast about his naked body. And the young men laid hold on him. And he left the linen cloth and fled from the them naked. Now, that very interesting little passage of Scripture is two verses stuck in the middle of the arrest of Jesus. And you do have to kind of wonder, why do we need to know about a young man who got caught where it says they. The. The. The young men laid hold on him, that the young man in context there is the. The police officers, if you will, the mob, the, The. The. The Roman officials who are going to arrest Jesus and they laid hold. That's the term that was used for arrested. They tried to arrest him, but he escaped by the hair of his chinny chin chin and nothing else. He barely got out of there. Now, if you look it up on the Internet, most will tell you this is Mark's way of inserting himself autobiographically into the story. Kind of reminds me, I know I've told you this illustration before now, I forgot his name already. Who's the guy that. Alfred Hitchcock. It'll come to me. Yeah, Alfred Hitchcock. You remember the Alfred Hitchcock Presents and all those little interesting little shows back in the 50s you remember, don't you, Ben? And they were what? I don't know, Mysteries, intrigue, who done it all, this kind of thing. Very, very well done and interesting. And I understand I haven't watched all of them, but my son has and he told me, I've watched all of the riflemen. But anyway, the. I understand that Alpha Hitchcock would, Would. Would insert himself somewhere in each one of Those. He was in a crowd walking by. Whatever. You. If you look closely, you find Alfred Hitchcock. I think it's called a cameo. Is that. Is that the word for it? Cameo appearance? Yeah. And it happens in art sometimes. We. I remember, you know, not too long ago, we had the picture Jesus and the. And the disciples on the stormy sea. And Rembrandt had painted it. And he was. He. He. He was one of the apostles, so they say. Anyway, now there are some who try to say, this is Mark putting himself in the story, kind of with humility, trying to say, hey, I was there. Now maybe so, but there really is nothing to go on. I think if I was trying to show that I had some degree of credibility on this issue, I probably would have picked a different story to stick myself in. This is not. It's not. It's not one you. You easily go by. You. You read that and you say, wait, could we pause that for just a moment? I would like to know more about this. And you kind of want to dig it. So a guy trying to humbly put himself into the story, or should I say modestly put himself in the story. This is maybe not the best one. I really think that this is not about Mark. This is about Lazarus. I think, because they're trying to arrest Lazarus. No reason to address. To arrest John Mark. They did. They weren't trying to arrest the other disciples. Peter was right there, you know, up in the courtyard. They weren't trying to arrest him. All the others that, you know, they kind of fled that night, but they didn't try to arrest anyone else. But they. We know from the Gospel of John, they did want to arrest Lazarus, who would have been a certain young man having a linen cloth. That's a rich man's cloth. Both John, Mark and Lazarus, probably pretty well to do, but having a linen cloth. And I think this is one of those things that the story that if Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark, he does put it in there to say, look, I know the inside info, because probably the disciples say, whoa, Lazarus almost got caught. You all remember that. And probably by nine years later, they were laughing at a little bit. He almost got caught there. But this is a way of saying, I know I, the writer, know all of the details of what happened that only an eyewitness would know about, because this wasn't in the papers. This was something that was. Was secret. But if we're trying to. We're trying to nail down the early life of John Mark, and many people would go here, I'm Going to say probably not. If so, it's pure speculation. Is this young man John Mark, or is it not John Mark? I think it's more likely Lazarus, but we'll, we'll leave it at that. So there you have the early life of John Mark. We know his name's Mary and we know people met at his house. That's about all we know. Let's, let's go on then and see about his ministry there. And we'll go to Acts chapter 12. We were in 12 earlier, but we're going to go down a few verses. Acts chapter 12, verse 25. It says Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem. Now Barnabas and Saul by this point are on their first missionary journey. And as we talked about last week with Barnabas, Barnabas is still the preeminent one. He's coming before the name of Saul, who would later be Paul, and later it would be Paul and Barnabas. But here early on, Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had fulfilled their ministry. And they took with them John, whose surname was Mark. Okay, once again, John, whose surname was Mark. Three times we're going to be told it's John, whose surname was Mark, not just Mark. Not just John, John, whose surname was Mark. That probably tells me a couple of things. One, well, the one thing it does tell me is he's John, whose surname was Mark. How's that? But probably a lot of people called him John. Probably a lot of people called him Mark. So you had to put both of those names in there. Here's John. You know, the guys a lot of people call Mark Barnabas is Joses, whose surname is Barnabas, but everyone called him Barnabas. So we only had to say that one time. So they took with them John. Now, what does it tell us about John here? We knew earlier in the chapter who his mother was, and now we know who not father, but Uncle Barnabas is the uncle. We'll find that out in, in a moment that Mary was Barnabas's sister. So that makes him what, the nephew? But he's introduced here as someone whom everybody knows. There's not a lot of detail. It's like, you know John. You mean Mark? Yeah, Mark, John, John, Mark. That's the guy. And seems to be presented as, okay, this is a guy everybody knows. But remember from our point of view, reading, let's say we started reading in Matthew, we read Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. The only thing we know about him is, oh, this is Mary's. Son at this point, if you go chronologically in the scripture or the order that the scripture books come, we don't even know that he is related to Barnabas at this point. We just know that Barnabas and Saul, you know, they left Jerusalem. They'd been sent out from Antioch, we know that. And they fulfilled their ministry there. In Jerusalem, they took with him John, whose surname was Mark. So Luke, the author of Acts, does seem to assume some audience familiarity with him. Okay, let's go to the next chapter, Acts, chapter 13 and verse 5, and we get a little bit more about him. When they were at Salamis, they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews. And they also had John to their minister. Okay, let's try to put that together here a little bit. As they are carrying around in Salamis, I should have looked up where that is, but Luca is here to minister, so he's going to look it up and find out. It's, I want to say Asia Minor, but let's, let's, let's check that out. So he, he comes here and all we know, again, he's still with him. They took him earlier in the previous chapter. He's still with them. It says they had John to. The word there is italicized. That means it was put in, in English. It's not actually there in Greek. They had John to minister to their minister, that is to do the grunt work. John did the grunt work. Where is Salamis, do you know? East coast of Cyprus. Okay, I, I, I had that idea because I do know from last week that Barnabas is from Cyprus. So they had, they had some, some connections there. How much he lived there, we don't really know. So the word here for minister is, is different than, than typical. Typically you get the word like Diaconus, from which we get deacon. And that's the word for, you know, serving tables, doing that kind of ministry work. This is the word. See if I can pronounce it right. Hyperatis. Hyperatis. Hyperatus is the one that, that would book the lodging, that would take care of the correspondence, you know, those kind of things. It's a support role that John Mark is doing. He's still, I would presume, a young man here. And so as we see him, okay, he's a guy that is trusted. He's a guy that can go out and prepare the way a little bit, make sure everything's done. Hypertis. Is that how you, how you pronounce that? I want to get that Right, Because I want to start calling Luca that. Hyper. Etis. Hyper. It's like every Wednesday night I turn to Luca and I say, go turn the lights on and unlock the door. That's what John Mark did. And so 61 years, is that right? Who's 61 years? Barnabas. Okay, I was thinking that was too young for. He's my high prettiest in training is sending me notes up here. So. Okay, there we again. Not much going on there, is it? He's a footnote. Let's go down in this chapter to verse 13. And here now we see something interesting begins to happen. When Paul and his company had loosed from Paphos, that's an island island in the Aegean Sea. They came to Persia in Pamphylia, and John departing from them, returned to Jerusalem. This is the first time that we don't have him called John Mark, maybe it's not the same guy, but almost impossible not to see him as the same guy because here we know traveling together are Barnabas and Saul or later on call Paul here and. No, he's still called Saul. No, he is called Paul here. I'll get it right. Barnabas and Paul and. And this other guy, John, whose surname is Mark here, he's just called John. Now it tells us he departs to return to Jerusalem. Why does he leave for Jerusalem? I'll tell you. I don't know. That's why he leaves for Jerusalem. Was it a good reason? Maybe so. Was it a bad reason? Maybe so I'm probably going to lean towards it was a bad reason. He, he got homesick, he got tired, he got stomach flu, and he could have just taken some Pepto Bismol, you know. And the reason I'm going to lean towards negative is because Paul is not going to be happy about this. And I kind of think that Paul, even though Paul was so driven, he was gracious enough that, you know, if your mother Mary died, I can understand you got to go back and you got to take care of business. So I'm assuming here that Luke just wants to tell us, hey, this is the point he departed. He's never going to tell us the, the full story. So we're going to have to do a little bit of work trying to put it together. But you know, again, it could be a thousand and one reasons and we could list a thousand and one reasons and find out it's a thousand and two. You missed it. You didn't even get it right. So he left for him is all we know now a couple of verses later, a couple of chapters later, chapter 15, verses 37 through 39, which is a couple of years later. So quite a, quite a bit of time has passed here. And it says Barnabas, they're, they're about ready to go on a meeting again. Okay, Barnabas and Paul, they, they've been sticking together, the two of them, without John, Mark. Now they go in Acts 15 to Jerusalem to a meeting. That meeting is over. They're about to go on another missionary journey together. Paul and Barnabas. And it says Barnabas determined. That's a pretty strong word there. Barnabas determined to take with him John, whose surname was Mark. Hey, we're going out. Let's call John again. Let's have him come with us. But Paul thought, not good to take him with them, who departed from them from Pamphylia and went not with them to the work. Now, by the way, I think I misstated that earlier on John, I, I stated it as. He was the only John that we knew that was traveling with him. But actually here we know this is John, Mark, and we know this is the guy that left them in Pamphylia. So there's no doubt about it. This is the same guy. He left them in Pamphylia, went not. And so here's Paul. Not good for him to go with us. Now let's go ahead and assume that Paul here is just practical. You get out there, it's kind of expensive to come back. It's kind of a hassle to come back. We don't have time to babysit. We don't, you know, whatever he's thinking probably had some, some decent reasoning to it. But Barnabas, you remember, he's the encourager. Barnabas is the one that says, hey, I'll vouch for him. Barnabas is the one that says, yeah, you know, this is gonna. He's, he's matured since then. He's grown up since. Since then. I've seen him at every family reunion. So you're going to be impressed with this guy now. He's, he's good. But Paul says, no, it's not, it's not good. You know, what do you do in a situation like that? Because I'm going to go ahead and guess Barnabas was a mature man. In fact, we know that he was full of the spirit and 61 years old, according to Isaiah's note. Full of the spirit, 61 years old. Just a. A fine fella. And what a. He's in the prime of his life, wouldn't you say? And then There's Paul. We know that Paul is directed by God, full of the Holy Spirit. And so what you've got here is two really good men, both with really good thinking, and yet their thinking is different. You can have two good men that have different thoughts on a particular matter. The problem with this one is somebody's got to decide, you know, how's this going to be? And Barnabas again is. There we go. Determined, strong word. Paul thought it not good, but they go on. The contention was so sharp between them that they departed asunder one from another. And so Barnabas took Mark and. And sailed unto Cyprus. And Paul chose Silas. I think, by the way, Silas is next up on our list to look at this. You know, Paul and Silas. We sang Sunday, Old Time Religion. It was good for Paul and Silas. It was good for Paul and Silas. Whoever. Silas. Silas is, right. So we'll look at him next time. But here again, they had a contention. It was sharp. They departed asunder. This. This was a. Let's go ahead and call it again, a legitimate disagreement that led two men full of the Holy Spirit, two godly men full of the Holy Spirit. It led them. I'll go ahead. Even though the words aren't here. I'll go ahead and say. To anger the words like contention. Sharp. That doesn't sound like. Well, let's just sit down and pray about it, brother. That sounds like. I can't believe you're thinking this. What in the world. It's a sharp contention that is between them. I am. The older I get, the more comfortable I am with letting people be human. You know, rather than cutting off all the sharp edges. And there's a. You know, we've all got to walk lockstep and everything's got to be perfect and godly and excellent. You know, it's just, hey, we're. We're. We're. We're men. We're women. We're human. We. We have. We sometimes get angry. We sometimes have a very good reason that goes against another guy that's got a very good reason. And maybe sometimes we go to blows at it. I don't know if they had a fistfight, but maybe they did have a fistfight. Who knows? They have a contention that is sharp between them. It sounds to me more like a. A verbal thing that went on. I wonder, would it be. Would it be fun to be a fly on the wall and see this contention that takes place there? Or would it make us uncomfortable? Or what. What. What would happen? You know, I. I think in the Church today. I'm gonna. Let me, let me venture off into a segment of psychobabble with Dr. White in the church today. We are way too afraid of disagreement. We sort of have to have this Kumbaya experience. Everyone get along and the only way to do that is it's like, like socialism. You know, for socialism to work, you have to have a communist dictator. And then it works great. You know, if I tell you you work in the, in the clothes factory and you work on the egg farm and you, you know, you slaughter the chickens and. But I, but I'm better at, I don't care. This is what we need, you know, so you have to have a dictator there to, to get that. It's the same in a, in a Kumbaya experience where everybody is just happy as the day is long. You have to force that in somewhere. And we become too comfortable to, too uncomfortable with disagreement, contention. Now maybe there was a day in the church and there probably was because I hear about the notorious old fashioned, you know, Baptist business meetings in which they were throwing chairs at each other. And okay, maybe, maybe there was a day back there when it went too far, but probably it would be better off for people to say, hey, wait, I don't see it that way. And, and maybe even at times to do like here, they departed asunder. That's why, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not near as Baptist as I used to be, but I do know Baptist ways in history because of my Baptist roots. It's pretty much why every church had First Baptist Church and Central Baptist Church, because Central Baptist Church didn't want to move. When First Baptist Church said, we're moving out to the suburbs now we are not moving. And so there was Central Baptist born there or Second Baptist or, you know, I was just going to say what I'm getting. One of the things that could have possibly happened between them and it happens with all of us at some point. You know, when you go on a trip, especially a ministry trip, they are disagreeing, but not about the ministry. They're disagreeing about where. Yeah, you got logistics things. Yeah. A Saul who doesn't want to lose his center and he feels that if he kept journeying with Barnabas that he would actually lose his sense. Yeah, you, you, yeah, you got, you got people who have a different view on the logistics of how this ought to be done, whatever it is. And so they, they split and Barnabas one way, Saul another way. And you know, honestly, in the end that turns out to Be a good thing we got two missionary teams going out now. We'll do that place and we'll do this place and, and we'll do them together. I can't imagine that for a little while they had good feelings towards one another. I just, you know, knowing humanity, I think, has been probably like, like, like, like my favorite musical fiddler on the roof, you know. Rabbi, is there a blessing for the Tsar? A blessing for the Tsar? Why, certainly. God bless the Tsar and keep him far away from us. There you go. There's the blessing for the Tsar. So, you know, God bless Barnabas. As far away from me as he can be. Said bless him, keep us apart. I, I can't imagine that, that those, those feelings immediately disappeared. But you all know, because you can think right now in your life where back, you know, five, 10, 15 years ago, you had a real strong contention and you didn't want to see that person. But now if you ran to. Ran into him, yeah, it would be congenial, it'd be comfortable. Maybe even you'd. You'd forget all about it and, you know, make up. I, I think I, I got to get to the study here, but I think about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who for a while hated each other politically and, you know, Jefferson beat Adams in the, in the what would have been the third presidential election and, and yet they died. Best of friends. Both died on the same day, July 4, 1836, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Hours from each other. That's right. So, you know, time. Time does kind of heal, which is what we're going to see as we continue. There's the sharp disagreement that took place Again. I don't even know what John Mark's feeling was in this. Was John Mark saying, hey, uncle, you know, I appreciate it, but you're going too far. Or was John Mark, you know, was he mad at Saul? Was what. What? We don't, we don't really know all of that, but let's look at a, A couple of passages here fairly quickly. It won't take as long because there's not a lot of information in these. But let's go to Colossians, chapter 4, verse 10, which says that's the wrong. Let me get there. Colossians 4, 10. Paul is writing, and he, he just mentions a bunch of people. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoners saluted you And Marcus, sister son to Barnabas, touching, whom you receive the commandments. If he come to you, receive him. Now there's a nice little note hey, if John Mark comes your way, receive him. And he's just giving greetings of people that he loves and cares for. And Mark is included there. There. He's called Marcus. Let's go to the little book of philemon in chapter one, verse 24, in which again, Paul is closing out his argument. And. And I've lost it. But I tell you what, I have it quoted. So we're going to go right there with your outline. Again, he's just mentioning Marcus Aristarchus, Demas Lucas. He calls them my fellow laborers. Okay, this is years later, second Timothy, chapter four, verse one. Again, I've got it quoted there for you. Only Luke is with me. And then he says to Timothy, take Mark and bring him with thee, for he is profitable to me for the ministry. Okay, this is the guy I want. He's at the end of his life and he says, hey, I want Mark with me. So what happened? I don't know. They split up, and years later he says, I want this guy. How does this work? I'd say human dynamics, maybe. Maybe when people disagree, we should not think it's the end of the world. We. We disagree, we go our ways. We. We're uncomfortable with each other for a little while. And after a while, it's like, hey, when are you coming back? You know, it's. It's time. It's. It's ready. And so we see this. I. I guess you would say a beautiful healing that takes place. Now, let me look at one more passage of Scripture real quick and then just say a few words about Mark after the scripture closes. First Peter, chapter 5, verse 13. Now, Peter is writing and he says, the church that is at Babylon. Would anyone like to guess where that church is at Babylon. Thank you very much. If you open up a commentary, it'll say, this is Rome. I don't know why you have to make stuff up. Babylon was a city then. Babylon hadn't been destroyed. Babylon wasn't like Narnia or something that was imaginary. So that Babylon, the churches that at Babylon elected together with you. That's. That's. That's Jews. Peter is a minister to the Jew. Saluteth you. And so doth Marcus, my son. Okay, this one I think is kind of interesting because Mark appears to be working both with Peter, who goes to Jews with the Gospel of the circumcision and to Gentiles, working with Paul, who goes to the Gentiles with the Gospel, then circumcision. So Mark is working both ways. Mark is a Jew. We know that because we know his mother, we know that it goes back into those Jewish days. We know that, that his uncle was a Jew. So here's a Jew. He's naturally with Peter, but he's also working with Paul, which tells me, you know, I talk a lot about the overlap during that time period that you have the Jewish kingdom gospel. And then over here on our side, you have the individual grace gospel. One is a national gospel. One's an individual gospel, One is a prophetic gospel, one is a mystery gospel. One is Peter's gospel, one is Paul's gospel. And this is why some of these things seem to conflict sometimes, but they don't really conflict. It's the whole different ball game over here. You know, imagine, imagine, I don't know, trying to play football with basketball rules. That'll, that'll get confusing real quick. Right, so here, here in this, as evidence for this overlap, or I think the two overlapped, is John, Mark. He works with Peter, he works with Paul, probably, you know, Gentiles, Jews, individual gospel, national gospel. He's got all of that going there together. Let me close out by saying one little word to this. There is a lot of tradition about Mark. First of all, let me say the biggest tradition is that he wrote the Gospel of Mark. Did he write the Gospel of Mark? It never tells us in the, in the Bible. No evidence whatsoever who wrote the Gospel of Mark. Tradition tells us tradition can. There's a reason traditions come about. Is it right? Is it wrong? You know, we have to look at the evidence. I, I mentioned this to Luke, my hyperetis this week. This. Today, Today I mentioned. I think it's funny how people always refer to the author of the Book of Hebrews and then they say Mark's Gospel. Well, neither one of them tell us who wrote it. Well, why are we. So why, why do we so quickly adopt tradition for the Gospel of Mark? But the world has completely rejected the same tradition for the, for the book of Hebrews. Tradition of the book of Hebrews as Paul wrote it. It's, it's, it's as strong as the tradition that Mark wrote. Mark. But did he write it? Did he not write it? I don't know. I don't think it makes any difference in the end. And it's easier to call it Mark's Gospel, isn't it? Because we've been doing that for a long time. Time. Now there is additional tradition that Mark went. After the close of the New Testament, he went and became the what, what today would be called the bishop of the Church at Alexandria, Egypt. Now, there was a large Jewish community in Alexandria at that point. And this tradition goes back into a lot of the early church fathers say that's what he did. The challenge with it is that the timing that they give for their tradition doesn't really align with when we think we could be wrong on something. When we think that Peter wrote first Peter and says he's in Babylon, or when Paul wrote Timothy and said, hey, send Mark my way. If he's the. The bishop of Alexandria at that point, it's kind of hard for him to be two places at one time. So either the tradition's wrong or maybe our timing is wrong. Something's. Something's not quite right there. Let me add one more thing, by the way. They. Traditionally, he was buried in Alexandria. Oh, he was martyred in Alexandria. They put a rope around his neck and drug him through the city. The pagans did. Is the tradition Mark. And did he die that way or not? I don't know, but that's the tradition. And that he was buried then in Alexandria. And about. I think about 848, if I'm not mistaken. There were some Venetian merchants who came and traded their way into getting the bones, the relics of Mark and took them to the city of Venice, where supposedly they lie today in the Cathedral of St. Mark. If you go to Venice, Mark is everywhere as He's. He's. It's all about Mark. Saint Mark's. He's the patron saint of Venice and whatnot. So. So supposedly his bones are in Venice. I don't know if they are or not. That's just the story. And now you know virtually everything about Mark. Isaiah, you had your hand up. Hyper. Hyper. Etz. You're hyper. He's very seldom hyper, though. This is the problem. I don't know if I can call him this. Me sometimes hyper, but I don't know about Luca. There we go. Thank you for learning a little bit about John Mark. There he is. And really, you know, obviously a faithful guy. Whether he died in Alexandria, is buried in Venice, or. Or died in Jerusalem, is buried in Jerusalem. You know, whatever. Wherever he was, whatever he did, he does seem to be someone that apostles from both sides really loved and appreciated and fought over. How's that? And a. A blessing. And one that we could say, hey, you know, I wouldn't mind being a footnote like that. Someone who was faithful all the way through. Let me lead us in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you again for preserving just a little bit of these lives and giving us a little encouragement from them some in. In a lot of ways everyday people and yet used to in such a fellow laborer way, in such a support way, in an encouraging way. And we're grateful for the work that they did and for so many faithful footnotes. Even today and down through church history, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Thanks for being with us. Look forward to seeing you maybe at breakfast on Sunday or at sermon on Sunday or here in Luca next week. And God bless you. You all are dismissed. It sa. Was okay. I'll. I'll check with some of the guys the morning. See who's going to be late. My birthday is on Mother's Day. So it's like I've been raised. Escaped. So I don't. You know, I'm not absolved of any obligations. Yes, yes, yes. I am your dud. So is seven year birthday. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. How old you be? 32. 32. Yeah. 23. Yes. You. You. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. You didn't know? He's 93. It doesn't say in the actual. I mean, I'm 63. Well, I still. I still can't get all this to grow improperly. I can do it. This is great. Yeah. Actually, I'll see you later. Have a good night. Have a good one. Yeah, you too. Thanks. Online. Have a good night. Thanks, Susan. Good.