Preparing for the King: Mark 1:1-8

Well, we're beginning a new series this morning.

Um, perhaps you notice in your bulletin.

Uh, the Gospel of Mark.

This we're gonna be going uh in the next several weeks and months, um, looking at the Gospel of Mark uh following our prior series on thinking, praying, and living a missional life.

And our prayer and desire would be that we see Jesus more clearly and that we abide in him more faithfully as we continue to see him as he's presented in the Gospel of Mark.

And so I would ask you to join in that prayer with me as we uh in the coming months and weeks ahead.

But we begin with uh Mark 1, 1 through 8 this morning.

And you can find that on page Sim 85 if you have your cheer Bibles there or else in your bulletins.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Now John was clothed with camels here and wore a leather belt around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey.

And he preached, saying, After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.

I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

And through your word, that we would see Jesus.

And Lord, that we may have our hunger and our thirsts satisfied in you.

Lord, we pray, Holy Spirit, that you would work within us to move us, to transform us, and to shape us more and more into his likeness, even this day, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I wonder if you can think with me for a moment about a uh maybe an event or a moment that you attribute great significance to.

A moment or a season that stands out to you as a moment of great uh significance, a turning point perhaps.

Uh it may have come with a sense of being on the verge of something new.

Uh an inflection point that maybe ushered in a new day.

Um, as I thought about this this week, I thought of the turning of the millennium.

And uh for those of you who witnessed those days, it was a global conversation, wasn't it?

It was uh it was a uh kind of the questioning and wondering, well, what's gonna happen when that clock ticks from 1159 to 12, strikes midnight, and it goes from 1999 to 2000.

What will happen?

I mean, is this everything going to remain the same or is it gonna change?

Would there, would technology still function, or would there be this huge global glitch?

Uh a moment of great significance.

Or uh perhaps more recently you might think of COVID and the great upheaval caused by the global pandemic.

And and and the question, the global conversation is what's gonna happen?

How are we gonna contain this thing?

Uh perhaps it's the invention of the smartphone and all of the ways that that has changed the life that we now live.

These are examples of moments that have such significance attached to them that we're we're drawn into them, aren't we?

We're we're we're our attention uh starts to focus in on that.

They're drawn away from the other things that we're concerned about, and we start to focus our attention on these things, and we're directed toward these singular issues.

And the reason I say that is because it's hard, I think, from just a cursory reading of a passage like this to really grasp the significance of this moment in history.

We read of John the Baptist and his life in the wilderness, and we may ask ourselves, so, you know, why would people go out to see John?

I mean, why what's driving them to get out of the bed in the morning, to go out to a place that's in the wilderness, to see a man that many perhaps would think is perhaps somewhat on the crazy side, you know, a diet of honey and locusts and camel hair and all of that kind of stuff.

And the answer is because of the significance of the moment.

This was uh more significant than the turning of the millennium or a global pandemic or the invention of the smartphone.

Up to this point, there had been 400 years of silence from any prophet until now.

And so what Mark wants to communicate here is that this appearance of John is an incision point in history that would not only break the silence, but it would lead to an entirely new day, a new era.

And so we shouldn't look at John merely as a prophet.

Oftentimes we look at John and we say, oh, he's a prophet.

Well, yes, he is.

But he's also the one who was prophesied about.

And so that was a connecting point for people when he came on the scene.

And so John is both the fulfillment of a promise made by Isaiah many centuries before, as well as the one who was called to announce the coming of the Messiah.

And so he his coming is both fulfillment and preparation.

No other time, as he seeks to prepare the way for Jesus, had the ideal and the real been united in the person in a person.

Eternal life and humanity was wed together.

John saw this.

The Son of God in the person of Jesus Christ, one, divinity clothed in human flesh, able to be seen, touched, heard, understood.

And so heaven was brought down to earth in the person of Jesus Christ.

And now, on the verge of the inauguration of Jesus' public ministry, John is here preparing the way.

And so, right out of the gate, Mark wants to make it clear that this arrival of the Messiah, the Christ, is good news.

Uh the term gospel or evangel wasn't actually a word coined by Christians.

It was uh the concept was actually uh significant both in the surrounding cultures and in Jewish culture.

And among the Romans, it meant joyful tidings.

And Mark here is actually writing to more of a Gentile audience.

And so it meant joyful tidings.

And what would happen as a part of the cult of the emperor is that there would be these festive occasions, and his it would be his birthday, the attainment to majority, the attainment to power.

And these were all celebrated as an occasion of festivity for the whole world.

There were joyful tidings.

And Mark is saying that this new day, this new era, is one of joyful tidings.

Jesus Christ coming into this world is one of joyful tidings.

And he's very clear that this good news or good tidings are all about Jesus.

And so this gospel is all about Jesus.

This is about capturing the real Jesus.

This is about presenting the real Jesus.

Mark's concern is to give Jesus to us, his character and his actions.

And you'll notice if you look at the other gospels that Mark, unlike the other gospels, is a little shorter.

He doesn't include a lot of Jesus teaching necessarily, and so he kind of keeps things moving.

Um and it's very swift and to the point.

But it's the real Jesus that Mark wants to record.

And that's important for us because it's the real Jesus that we all need.

Why?

Well, because it's only the real Jesus who can truly transform us.

And so that's going to be our primary desire as we work through the gospel of Mark in these coming weeks and months, to preach from this gospel so as to preach the real Jesus.

Which means Jesus as he really is.

Jesus, not a Jesus on our own terms, not a Jesus that we might like to fashion more into our image, but a Jesus who is presented here clearly in this gospel.

And as a matter of fact, part of your profession of faith here, you might remember there are five questions.

And one of those questions you answered is, do you receive and rest in Jesus Christ as he is offered in the gospel?

And that language there, offered in the gospel, is there for this very reason.

That the true Jesus is the one that is revealed and presented in the gospel, and that's the one we're committing to.

That's the one we're receiving, that's the one we're resting in.

And ultimately, he and he alone is the one who can truly transform us.

And so there are two ways that Mark helps us to see Jesus.

The first is the preparation of the king, and the second is the provision of the king.

The preparation of the king, the provision of the king.

Many of us, I think, are aware of the importance of preparation, aren't we?

Preparation can have a good place in our lives.

We only need to think, for example, of a wedding.

Uh when someone's getting married, getting ready for the big day.

It requires preparation, right?

You need to find a ring, you find a venue, you need to get the invitations out, you want people to come.

And all of that requires preparation.

And so planning, we know, is important.

Preparation is important.

But the intention is for the preparation to serve the main event, not to become the main event.

And that's the case here.

John is preparing for the king as the main event.

He's saying, I'm not the main event, but I'm preparing for the main event.

And so he says later, he says, I must decrease, but he must increase.

And so John knows he needs to get out of the way.

But you see, what's striking here is where John's ministry originates from.

John's ministry is not in the temple where many might have thought he would have gone, but it's in the wilderness.

And he he turns the wilderness, we read, into a place of confession and baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

Now, we would ask the question so why go to the wilderness?

Wouldn't he be more accessible in the midst of all that was going on public life?

The reason John sets up camp, as it were, in the wilderness is because it was a way of saying, what is needed is a return to an original relationship with the Lord.

This means a return to the beginning of God's history with his people, which, as you might remember, with the Jewish people was a return to the wilderness.

One scholar pointing this out says this.

He says, Essential to the prophetic concern with repentance in the prophets like Isaiah and Amos and Isaiah is the concept of Israel's time in the wilderness as a period of true sonship to God.

A status into which the Lord is going to lead his people once again into a future time of blessing.

And so the summons to be baptized in the Jordan meant that Israel must come once more into the wilderness.

Just as Israel at the beginning had been separated from Egypt by a pilgrimage through the Red Sea, the nation is exhorted once again to experience separation, to come out of a second exodus, as it were, in preparation for this new covenant, this new era that was about to begin.

So that's all part of the significance.

That's why they got out of bed in the morning.

That's something that they knew about.

And so it's a place of exchanging pride for humility.

That was John's message.

An acknowledgement of Israel's history is one of disobedience and rebellion of God and a desire to begin once more and receive his blessing.

And so it's a call to renew sonship in the wilderness.

And why it's so urgent, I think, is because the crisis of God's final act was very close at hand with the coming of the Christ.

That day was on the doorstep.

And so it required their immediate attention.

And so the wilderness, I think, is a fitting description of John's ministry here.

But John's baptism, we go on to read, isn't the same as Jesus' baptism.

John came to baptize with water, Jesus came to baptize with the Holy Spirit.

And so this means that this isn't only a national issue, but this is a heart issue.

This is an issue that's not only for Israel, it's also an issue for us.

Today we tend to put a lot of emphasis on culture, and there's good things about that.

But culture, we must remember, isn't enough to satisfy us.

It's true that a culture is able to satisfy many needs, which are good.

But it also creates and stirs up needs.

But culture also brings with it certain drawbacks and dangers.

The Dutch philosopher and psychologist Gerard Haymans, he observed this.

He said, the more abundantly the benefits of civilization come streaming our way, the emptier our life becomes.

The idea is that when things are going well, we can attach ourselves to the benefits of a culture, but at the end of the day, by doing so, we can still lose a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.

In other words, culture by itself doesn't penetrate deep enough to really satisfy us.

We need a deeper, more filling satisfaction.

What affects us most deeply is not the state of our culture, as important as that is, or even our circumstances, but the state of our hearts.

And that is why Jesus came to baptize with the Holy Spirit.

As St.

Augustine said, our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you, O God.

And so the wilderness is a place of preparation.

When we tend to think of a wilderness, we we might tend to think of a remote place.

But that remote place might still have some form of life associated with it.

But that's not the case here.

And in terms of the wilderness here is a place that's barren and remote, that's that has no life.

It's a desert, and there are three things that we could say about a desert.

It's isolating, it's a place of hunger, and it's a place of thirst.

It's isolating, a place of hunger, and a place of thirst.

And we see actually, we actually see these things in the, for example, in the life of Israel in their time in the wilderness.

What happened in the wilderness for the Israelites?

Well, they were drawn away, as you might remember, from the other nations.

They were drawn into the wilderness to be a part of God's people.

They were isolated from others.

But it was also a place of hunger.

We have nothing to eat, they cried out.

We're gonna die.

And Jesus, God intervened, and he allowed manna to rain down from heaven.

And then later, uh it was a place of thirst.

They said, Well, we have no water.

We're gonna die of thirst.

You've brought us out here to make us miserable.

And God intervened and allowed water to flow from a rock.

A place of isolation, a place of hunger, and a place of thirst.

The wilderness is a place, in other words, of exposure and testing to reveal what's in our hearts.

When things are going well in our lives, you think about this.

When life is upbeat, that doesn't necessarily really reveal too much.

But when things are taken away, when we lack things that we look to in order to give us life, what do we do?

How do we respond?

That often is something that reveals things to us.

And so the wilderness is where our thirsts are are often revealed.

They expose where we are going to as a source of food and life.

But the wilderness is also a place where Israel saw God intervene in powerful ways.

God, you remember, intervened by providing uh direction in the form of a pillar of cloud and fire.

God gave them a front row seat to his provision and his power in their midst.

And so we might ask, well, why is the wilderness a place where we might often meet or encounter God?

And the answer is because the wilderness can't sustain life apart from the intervention of God.

Right?

It's a place of barrenness.

We and we all have our own wildernesses.

We all have had, no doubt, wilderness experiences along the way.

We all have times when our hearts are are dry, and I know that can be true of my own heart.

I'm no exception, and I've been subject to that.

The wilderness is a place where the things you have been relying on as a source of life to you are removed.

And God does that.

He allows the resources to dry up.

A deep drive that motivates you is exposed.

Something you feel you must have.

The resources that you've been drawing on to give you life are no longer able to do so.

And so these often, these drives, these deep drives are often attached also to fear.

And so if a primary drive or motivation, for example, is security, and your worst fear is of not measuring up, then when the boss comes and says, I no longer have a job for you, it feels crushing.

Or if a primary drive is money, and your worst fear is not to be cared for, and the markets take a heavy downturn, it causes your whole world to shatter or shake.

Or if a primary drive is morality, and your worst fear is of being rejected, and you don't perform to a standard, then you despair and you condemn yourself.

You see these deep drives that we look to, these thirsts that we have, and they're also attached to a fear.

A deep drive is exposed, a fear is often attached.

And so the wilderness is a place that can expose these things, reveal these places where we have been looking for life apart from Jesus.

And the question is not then for, Am I hungry or thirsty?

We're all hungry and thirsty.

The question is, where has your thirst been taking you?

Where have you gone to be fed apart from Jesus?

Those are the things that ultimately fail us.

Those are the things that ultimately lead from death, not life.

And so it's owing to God's mercy and his grace that he reveals those things so that we can see them, we can acknowledge them, and we can repent of them and turn to Jesus and find him to be the true and eternal fountain that satisfies our thirst and gives us the true bread that we need to feed on.

Food that doesn't grow stale.

Food that only leads to eternal healing.

And it's because of that we find God pleading with sinful people return to me with all your heart.

Render your heart, he says, not your garments.

He's concerned for our hearts.

And so the waters of baptism, we could say, and the significance of that is the waters of baptism are both womb and tomb.

Both womb and tomb.

A place for burial of the old self and a place for the birth of the new self.

The reality is we have to be poor in spirit before we can be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And so God opposes the proud, he says, but he gives grace to the humble.

Why?

Well, because it's there that he reveals his glory.

He makes it clear to us that he alone is what we need.

He alone is what satisfies us, that he alone can provide for us.

And so we bring our weakness and he offers us his strength.

We bring our inability and he offers us his power.

Our sin, his salvation.

Our hunger, his grace.

Our cry, his answer.

We're so dependent upon him and his glory, his grace.

And so that's the reason why John said, He must increase, but I must decrease.

And my question to you would be this morning is are you learning how to get out of the way?

Is Jesus the main event in your life?

Are you coming to him with your hungers and your thirsts?

He's preparing you.

That's the preparation for the king.

That's the preparation of the Spirit working for the King, for his visitation, for his deepening fellowship.

And so that's the first thing.

The second thing is the provision of the King.

John says of Jesus, he says, After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.

He says, I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

And so we see Jesus, both Jesus' power and Jesus' plan to baptize with the Holy Spirit.

His power.

When we think of a king, we tend to think of someone who requires us to conceal the worst about us and put forward the best.

And to conceal the worst.

And so we hide the worst and present the best, and yet we don't truly deal with those hunger and thirsts that lie within that need healing.

But see, the gospel frees us to acknowledge our thirsts and to admit our hunger and all the ways that we go awry, because it reminds us that Jesus as king uses power to bring salvation, not condemnation.

He meets us not in a palace or a royal dwelling, but in our barrenness and our dryness, at the point of our hunger, at the place of our deepest thirst.

Jesus' kingly power is used to serve and to sacrifice.

And we see that all throughout the Gospel of Mark.

And so when it comes to the Spirit's work in our hearts, his power is used to convict us so as to heal, not to condemn.

You see, the flesh wants to make us pull away from relationship rather than move toward.

The Spirit, however, wants to work in exactly the opposite way.

The Spirit works to move us toward rather than to pull away.

And that's very important because it's important for us to be able to discern the difference between the conviction of the Spirit and condemnation.

Conviction is due to God's love toward us as sons.

It's for the purpose of moving us toward Him, not away from Him.

How do we discern the difference?

Conviction leads us to repentance.

Condemnation leads us to self-hatred.

Conviction offers forgiveness.

Condemnation piles on guilt.

Conviction leads us to run to Jesus for renewed life.

Condemnation leads us to run from God and shame.

Conviction leads to peace and joy and freedom.

Condemnation brings more sin and adds regret.

Ultimately, you see, what lies at the root, what lies at the root of our deepest fears?

What really lies at the root of our deepest fears?

And the answer to that is an imperfect love.

The fear of not measuring up, the fear of being rejected, the fear of not being cared about.

All of these fears are really about acceptance.

And we may or may not have those fears relieved by others in our lives.

But there's only one who can.

There's only one way, really, for these fears to be cast out, and that is by a perfect love.

By a love that says, in my eyes you do measure up.

In my eyes, you will never be rejected.

And in my eyes, your failures will not define how I see you.

Not because you've managed to clean yourself up, but because of my provision.

And that provision God made at the cross and the sending of Jesus.

Because Jesus faced isolation from the Father, we are received by the Father.

Because he thirsted, we are given living water.

Because he faced hunger, we are fed with words of favor.

Jesus came to you and I to bring this perfect love and to shed it abroad in our hearts.

You see, only a perfect power that serves and sacrifices can speak into our sin and weakness to bring about healing.

And only a perfect power and only a perfect love can cast out fear.

Only a perfect power that serves and sacrifices can speak into our sin and weakness.

And only a perfect love can cast out fear.

And so the question is: well, can life grow in the wilderness?

And the answer is yes.

Only Jesus can do that.

Only Jesus can make the barren or dry heart bloom.

But he loves to do so.

He can take your heart and make your heart bloom.

His presence, his power, and his provision makes the dry heart spill forth with rivers of living water.

He's ready to receive you.

He's ready to bless you.

And so let's commune with him at the table and find him to be our deepest satisfaction.

Let us pray.

Oh Lord, we thank you for such a gift.

Jesus, we thank you for your service and your sacrifice that does and is willing to meet us in our barrenness and our dryness.

We thank you that you are the God who came down from heaven to meet us in the wilderness.

And Lord, we thank you for the way that you feed us in your mercy and your grace.

Feed our and satisfy our thirsts and our hungers.

And so Lord, we ask and we pray you'd continue to feed and strengthen us in these ways.

And through your table this day, in Jesus' name, Amen.