If you look at the little details in scripture there is a bigger overall picture you can take away from what you read. There is tons of information underneath the surface. Here is a simple verse, which doesn't seem to give a lot of information beyond what you read. If you if give it a GoPro Cam approach and come at it from a different angle you see things totally different. You see it from the view of the person who wrote it and a larger dynamic look at what it says and has to offer.
Mark 1:1 - The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
It's a pretty simple verse, right? It tells us some good stuff: Jesus is the Son of God and the book of Mark is the beginning of Jesus' ministry. There are no genealogies, no birth story; it gets right into where Jesus starts his mission. Mark writes his gospel as all thriller, no filler, hence why it is the shortest gospel. If you rewrote Mark 1:1, you could write it as "the start of the good news of Jesus".
The word "gospel" translates to meaning "good news". If you think about all Jesus teaches us in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John it is definitely good news! There wasn't much good news at the time this was written. Roman rule had suppressed the Jews and Christians. The temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed a few years after Mark pens his gospel. This gospel is telling us there is good news in what Jesus does in his life.
Next it says "the Son of God." If you were a Jew in that time you would have known very well the prophesies and the writings of the Old Testament. The Son of God is a small prefacing for the Jews and Christians of who Jesus is and how he is above all. The name Jesus was a common name in that time, as common as Tom, Billy, or Steve, so Mark's telling that Jesus is the Son of God gives him distinction over all the others named Jesus. By this time as people started to read the first manuscripts of Mark's gospel Mark was making sure the readers knew Jesus Christ was the true Son of God. Twelve little words, taking into account each word and the context of the word, give you a much bigger picture to draw from and build on as you read more of Mark's gospel or any of the other three gospels.
The next "How do you read this thing?" post will be about resources to find information about all these little details.
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