Good News in Troubling Times

Good morning.

It's good to be back again.

And uh a little hectic getting here this morning.

I thought I left myself plenty of time to get from Fargo up here this morning.

And uh I think Patrick was getting a little nervous as the clock approached 10 o'clock this morning because as I'm driving, there's the road construction south of um, I don't know, north of us, south of you between us.

About 10 miles, and trucks are doing 45 miles an hour.

It's pouring rain all the way down there, and I'm just getting a little nervous.

Well, before, even before I left, I got about um five miles out of town and realized I didn't have my phone, and yesterday my car had died, so I figured I should have my phone just in case.

So I had to turn around, get my phone, got held up by traffic, so I was getting a little nervous.

And uh my daughter and her friend came with this morning, and and uh on the way up here, all of a sudden I'm smelling sweet pea, the lotion from um I don't know what's that place, not Bath and Body Works.

Bath and Body Works, it is Bath and Body Works, and apparently there was an explosion in my daughter's friend's purse, and then so I've got sweet pea on me, and I smell very nice.

If there's any redeeming moment to the trip up here.

Uh I'm curious, how many of you in here have seen Tim Hawkins in concerts?

He's coming, I think, down to Bethel here in August.

I think I saw just show of hands, raise it up high.

If you've seen him there, maybe you've seen the skit, so I don't want to do his skit.

He does it much better than I, but there's this one he talks about, oh, it's the worst.

How his teenage daughter was always talking about, oh dad, that's the worst.

And that was kind of how it was this morning, oh, it's the worst.

And uh, you know, the daughter was going to go to a mall, and at the mall, her friends were going to be there though, and she didn't want to be left there, didn't want her parents, didn't want him to drop her off and their friends not to be there because uh, it's the worst, right?

And everything is the worst.

And, you know, then he goes on to the, you know, it's funny how we use that word, and the Chilean miners, can you, you know, a few months, years, I don't know how long it's been now, but the Chilean miners down there trapped in the in the mines for days on end, sitting there, we have no food, we have no place to go to the bathroom, we have no water, and the air was quality was poor, and they can think, oh, it's the worst.

But at least we don't have to be at the mall by ourselves.

You know, it's amazing how perspective changes things so often, and so often we find ourselves in the worst moments of our lives.

You know, it's like uh, as you know, as I've shared with you a number of times, I've been in transition from ministry for a while now and was working at Medicare uh for just over a year and just ended that about a month ago, and so for the last month I've been working out, I got out of the cubicle.

I broke free from the cubicle world, and now I'm doing lawn care, and uh which is great because a year in the cubicle I put on 20 pounds.

So far, I've lost 15 pounds in three weeks of doing lawn care because I'm walking a half marathon today, spraying, pulling a hose behind me, spraying weed killer.

So there's some great things to it, but in this time of transition, it's very unsettling.

But then it was only less than a month ago that I saw on the news a woman who in Fargo who had been murdered, and her husband, who had been living in Washington, they were separated, had flown back, murdered her, and killed himself.

All of a sudden, my issues are not that great.

Turns out that that woman was the mother of one of the boys on my son's baseball team.

And when it hits that close to home, you begin to put things into perspective a little bit more, and things, you think, oh, these times are terrible.

And you just uh, you know, look into the iPhone, or there's this old thing, you open it, you read stuff, it's called a newspaper.

I don't know you've heard of it.

Um but the newspaper, you read the newspaper, or you check your news feed on your phone, and and and people are wondering about all these things that are going on in this world, the the racial unrest.

The uh ISIS is on the move, and we begin to really question about these troubling times that we find ourselves in.

You know, right now the economy isn't so bad, so that's not the center of our attention, but it could be in a few months or years.

Um but there's always a new crisis and a new trying time and a new troublesome experience that we find ourselves in, isn't there?

It just seems to continue to come and to return.

And so this morning we're going to talk about good news in troubling times.

And we're going to look at the book of Mark in Mark chapter 1, verses 1 through 13.

Mark 1:1–13

It's really the prologue of the entire book of Mark, the Gospel of Mark.

If you have your Bibles, you can turn with me to Mark chapter 1.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

If you have a pew Bible in front of you, it's on page 836.

You know, I don't take that lightly to tell you what page it's on.

I remember when I was a very new Christian, and I had no idea what the books of the Bible are.

And still today, you know, somebody says, turn to the book of Habakkuk.

I'm like, okay, let's see, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus.

I get there eventually, but you know, sometimes it's flipping around.

So, and I remember sitting there in the pew and the pastor saying, I'm page 836 of your pew Bibles, and then, oh, there it was.

It was so much more convenient.

So there it is for you, page 836.

In Mark chapter 1, beginning of verse 1, the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

It is written in Isaiah the prophet, I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way.

A voice of one calling in the desert.

Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.

And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him, confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

John wore clothing made of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locust and wild honey.

And this was his message.

After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.

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

At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open, and the spirit descending on him like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven You are my son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.

At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan.

He was with the wild animals, and the angels attended him.

You know, so when we consider our state of life right now, it's interesting, isn't it, that oh certainly prior to World War I, there was a lot more utopian dream.

The desire for a place, a perfect society, right?

In fact, to his fault, isn't that what Hitler was trying to create in his mind was a utopian society?

Now, of course, I would highly disagree with his methods and his means and his ultimate goal of how he defined it, but there was a desire, an expectation in so many people, and there was always kind of this element of hope that was found in the culture that said there's something better, there's always improvement.

Today, a more popular genre in literature is not utopian literature, but dystopian literature.

Books really beginning with George Orwell's 1984 was one example, which was written a number of years ago, is a dystopian tale, which sees the future not as a promising place, but a place to be feared.

And the hunger games, for example, very popular today, is a dystopian tale, where the world and society has crashed and crumbled, and you're left to fend for yourself.

This is kind of the attitude, the perspective that we enter into this world with is this assumption that things are falling apart, not that things are getting better.

There was always this hope, wasn't there, that technology, that knowledge would help improve society, that things would go forward, that there would be progress.

Today we've seen some of the destruction caused by knowledge and wisdom, from nuclear wars to cyber criminals destroying things and taking our, you know, movies.

Really a minor thing, isn't it?

But we don't have that hope that's in us anymore that longs for a better place to be realized in this world.

If you just look around at the messages of the movies, it used to be, you know, back in the 80s when all the great movies were made, it was always the underdog rose, you know, the mighty ducks.

Quack, quack, quack, the quack attack.

You remember the quack attack, anybody?

And Rocky.

Rocky is the epitome of the underdog who rises to win.

While there's always this hope for the underdog to rise, there's there's more this realization that it's man versus machine, man versus the system.

We've kind of lost hope in our world today.

When the book of Mark was written, it was written by a young man named Mark, who really wasn't intimately involved with Jesus.

Of course, he was there contemporary with him, but most of what was written was really a tale that was told to him by Peter.

He was probably 12 years old when Jesus was crucified.

And so the gospel that he writes is considered to be an experience as Peter listened to the stories, or as Mark listened to the stories of Peter, as he shared about the times that he walked with Jesus and experienced the life of Jesus.

Peter, through much of Peter's ministry, had obviously had the front row seat, and now he shared that with Mark, who then has shared it with us.

It was written during the reign of Nero Caesar.

In 64 AD, Rome was ravaged by a fire, and as a result, well, they believed that actually who started the fire was Nero, but to turn attention away from himself, he began to look for a scapegoat, someone to blame.

And he turned to the Christians, and Nero was ruthless.

He began a campaign to persecute the Christians to great extents with gladiators.

Now, we watched the movie like The Gladiator, and we think, you know, it's very romanticized, right?

It's, you know, that's cool, he's a gladiator.

Power, you know, on this, but that's not what it was.

It was a circus, is really what it was, where Christians were taken and they were sold into slavery to fight in the arena to their death.

Sometimes they were thrown in with bears or lions to their death.

Other times Nero would take the Christians and impale them and set them up on a stake in his garden, cover them with oil, and light them on fire, like human tiki torches, to light his fire by night.

You know, they were torn in two, they were just persecuted like we could not imagine.

And this is the time in which it is written, and what does he say?

The beginning of the gospel.

This word gospel is an interesting word.

It's the word good news.

The beginning of the good news.

How in the world can you find good news in the midst of persecution?

There's gladiators, lions, tiki torches, saws.

But in the midst of this, there's hope that Pete that Mark shares with us.

And our ordeals, whatever they may be, as great as they may be to us in the moment, all of a sudden become held in comparison to the reality of beheadings and torches and lions.

But it's in the midst of these trials that Mark introduces us to good news.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Now, gospel comes from this word Yuangileon, which is that.

It means good news, but really what Mark is doing here is he's creating a new genre.

It's not just saying, this is good news, but this is a style of writing.

This is not a biography.

As you see, as you look at the book of Mark, one thing that's blatantly missing in the beginning of this that you see in Matthew, for example, is a genealogy.

You have no story like Luke of when Jesus was born or where he was born or any of those things found in here.

And the whole idea of gospel, it's a genre, it's a way of writing.

It's not a biography.

It is a biography with a purpose.

There is a reason for everything that is included.

Mark chose the stories, the experiences to make a point.

And as we begin to read this prologue in the book of Mark, we see that the point is this: good news.

The purpose of this biography is to point us to somebody greater than the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

As you and I know in the marketplace of ideas, there are all sorts of opinions, all sorts of options, so-called sources of hope, aren't there?

Answers to what has gone wrong with the world.

You know, when we consider worldviews, that's really the biggest answer that the world is trying to, really three.

Who are we?

Where did we come from?

Okay, we'll make it four.

What has gone wrong with the world, and what must we do to fix it?

So the world offers all kinds of options of what we must do to fix the world.

For example, the feminists might say, what has gone wrong with the world is men.

Wait a minute, that was a hearty laugh.

Way too deep of an agreement.

And so to fix it, what we must do is either empower women or lower the status of men.

Same thing with, you know, European.

Well, what the African American might say is what has gone wrong with the world is the European male.

And so what we must do again is empower the African America or reduce the power of the European.

On the other side, we might say what's gone wrong with the world is, well, what has gone wrong with the world?

Ultimately, what we know it to be is sin, is what has broken the world.

And as this story unfolds, we'll address Mark addresses it further down.

But we're all trying to answer what has gone wrong with the world and what must be done to fix it.

There are countless ways to define the good life, right?

I'm from Nebraska.

That's where I grew up.

And uh the sign as you come into the state of Nebraska says the good life.

So if you were wondering what the good life is, it's Nebraska.

That's a very bold statement.

Because in each of our minds we define what is the good life, don't we?

Good life is family, good life is friends, good life is wealth, good life is fill in the blank.

We're all defining what is the good life.

And here is Mark in the time of persecution saying to us, here is the good life.

But his solution isn't that which can be found within the human will.

If we just will our way to the good life, if we work hard enough, if we we get educated, then we will find the good life.

If we get a good job, we will find a good life.

You know, isn't that the thing?

When we grow up, we are always in this situation of what gets me out of bed in the morning?

That's another question we ask a lot.

What gets you out of the bed in the morning?

Not your lawn clock, not your wife elbowing you in the side.

You know, why do you get up and get out of bed?

Well, uh, you know, for students, well, I get up so I got, so I go to school because my mom makes me, right?

But why does your mom make you?

Because she has a goal in mind, so that you can get an education.

But why do you need the education?

Well, so that you can get a good college, you know, degree or get good grades, get to college, why do you need to go to college so that you can get a good job?

Why do you need a good job so you can have a nice house?

Why do you need a nice house so that you can raise your family so that your kids can get a good education, so that they can get a good job?

And the cycle goes on and on because we're all always trying to, in this rat race, chasing that which is to come.

And we're looking for something more.

We're trying to figure out what it is that drives us, what, what, you know, is it is it virtue that gets us out of bed in the morning?

I just want to live my life with honor.

Is it pleasure?

For so many people, that's what they live for, is pleasure, hedonism.

Or is it reason?

Well, we just need to live reasonable lives.

We all have solutions of what defines the good life.

Early on in Greek history, you know, what were the were the children raised to be?

They were raised to be good citizens, but what defined good citizens?

They were willing to fight and to die for their society.

So we all have these goals and these purposes in our minds.

So what makes Mark's good news unique in the marketplace?

Separates it above all else.

What is it that drives him?

What is it that he would say, the reason you need to get up in the morning is this?

Good news.

To be certain there are plenty of so-called saviors in the world.

Things that offer hope, whether it's reason or virtue, a good job, a good house, a white picket fence.

Are these the things that you put your hope in?

This morning I want to look at some credentials that makes the good news that Mark shares, the good news about Jesus Christ distinct in the marketplace.

And the first one is this is fulfilled prophecy.

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, it says in verse 1, the Son of God.

It is written, verse 2.

It is written.

Now it's interesting.

The good news about Jesus Christ, what?

The Messiah.

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The Messiah, the one, the anointed one, the promised one, the one that from the very beginning of time was the hope that people longed for.

From the beginning when man fell in the garden with Adam and Eve, there was this promise that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.

And there was this hope that continued throughout the Old Testament of people looking for who will be the hope?

Who will be the seed?

Who will be the one?

Well, was it Cain and Abel?

That didn't work out so well, did it?

So the story continues.

And shortly after that, you know, there is a flood upon the earth.

And so perhaps Noah was the salvation of mankind.

And it's true that he did save us in the physical sense, but not in the spiritual sense.

Because soon after that in Genesis 9, we read about man rebelling again and trying to build a tower.

Interesting part about the Tower of Babel is that the bricks that they made were covered with tar.

They were waterproofing the bricks so that another flood could not destroy the building which they were building.

That was them raising their fist to God saying, No, I've got this thing, we got this, we don't need you.

And they were trying to pursue this greater life, which was centered around them.

But there was this continuing desire.

So it wasn't them.

Well, was it Abraham, Isaac, Jacob?

We look at the stories of the patriarchs.

We look at the prophets, and there's always this longing hope of this one who would come, the Messiah, the promised one.

And so here, as we begin, Mark, he says, It is written.

And he says in Isaiah, the prophet.

Now, it's not unusual as writers in this era would write, they kind of do what's called what we might call a mashup.

Now, I'm an old guy, I'm 40 some years old, and so I'm not all hip on the team scene and real aware of what mashup is.

But I did a little lookup on the interweb, you know, that thing that Bill or uh what's his name made?

Um and what a mashup is is when you take like songs and you put them together, you take actors and actresses and you take videos and you mash them up with the song so that it looks like they're singing it and they're not really singing it, but but it's all together.

So what what Mark has kind of done here says, it is written in this by the prophet Isaiah.

It's not actually written just by the prophet Isaiah, it's actually written by Malachi, it's a promise in Exodus, it's a promise in Isaiah, and it's combined all together to say, you know what, all the Old Testament really comes to this moment.

It is written.

It's not uncommon for them to take these references to put them together and then accredit it to the largest quotation.

But the big picture here is this: it is written.

Credential number one, it's fulfilled prophecy.

What makes Mark's good news stand out from all the rest?

It is written.

It's not just thought, it's just not just created, it's just not some whim.

It's something that was there in the foundations of the earliest days of the creation.

The promise that God made back in the garden, it is written.

It's this has come, and then the next credential is this realized expectations.

It is written, but here it is unfolding itself.

In verses 4 through 9, it says, So John came baptizing in the desert region, excuse me, and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The whole Judean countryside, all the people of Jerusalem went out to him, confessing their sins.

They were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

John wore clothing made of camel's hair.

I don't know, when I read this song, again, dating myself a little bit, but we were just listening to Life 97.9.

I'll say that because my friend's here who works for the station, so I'll say it was life 97.

It might have been air one, but for today it was life 97.9.

And uh, you know, 20, over 20 years ago, DC Talk sang the song, Jesus Freak.

That's a long time that that song is still being played regularly on the air.

But you you remember the verse, there was a man in the desert with gnats in his head, the sand that he walked was also his bed.

The words that he spoke made the people assume there wasn't anything left in the upper room.

You know that?

Okay.

Good.

I'm not crazy.

So when I read that, that's what I think of.

Here's John in the wilderness.

The sand that he walked was also his bed.

And this is all coming to a focal point.

This was his message.

After me will come one more powerful than I.

The thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.

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

There is one who is coming.

There is one who is promised, there is one who is coming.

Here we see in verse 9, at that time Jesus.

He was promised, he is coming, he is here.

At that time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

He does this, it says in another gospel, to fulfill, to fulfill the law.

There was the one who would come and crush the head of the serpent.

He is coming, John says, his sandals of whom I'm unworthy to untie.

But then he comes and he gets baptized to fulfill the law.

And then what do we see in verses 10 and 11?

As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open.

I love that picture, just ripping the heavens open.

He saw heaven being torn open, the spirit descending on him like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven.

Now, if you were there that day, I think that might cause you to remember.

Or something that certainly is going to be embedded in your memory for the rest of your life, isn't it?

The heavens torn open.

A voice from heaven.

This is my son.

The third credential that makes Mark's good news far different than any other is that it is verified, confirmed by God.

God ripped the heavens open.

He entered into our world.

He does that through the person of Jesus.

But then he speaks in that moment and says, This is my son.

And the world's just got to go, woo.

Unfortunately, the world doesn't always do that.

A lot of times we just keep on going, and God may still be ripping the heavens open, and he may still be speaking, but we're saying, Did you hear something?

Sorry, I was on my phone.

I was distracted.

Too many things going on.

A lot of times we we kind of act like deists.

What a deist is, is a person who believes that God created the heavens and the earth, but then pulled away to let it unwind like a clock.

And we say, yeah, God created the heavens and earth, but he's not actually involved in our lives today.

He doesn't actually do things.

He's just set things in motion and let them unwind.

I believe that God is still active in our world today.

That God still speaks to the hearts of men.

It may not be this loud, mo, you know, powerful voice ripping through the heavens.

But it might be that still quiet voice in your life.

But in this moment, what makes the good news unique is that it's confirmed by the divine.

Now, the fourth confirmation, the fourth credential that makes this good news truly good news is in verses 12 through 13.

It says, at once the spirits sent him out into the desert.

And he was in the desert for 40 days, being tempted by Satan.

He was with the wild animals, and the angels attended him.

You know, this wilderness motive is important.

It's a theme that's carried throughout the Old Testament.

It's an experience that is common to all of mankind, that we find ourselves in these wilderness experiences.

It was a place of deliverance for the Israelites out of Egypt.

It was a place of deliverance out of Babylon.

And out of this situation, the audience that Peter is speaking to finds itself in a situation where things are in dire straits.

It's troubling times, and they're saying, where is the hope?

And he says, the hope is here.

It's a common human condition in which we find ourselves, to be found in a place of wandering, in a place of wandering.

But enter Jesus.

In him we find the one who overcomes the wilderness, the one who delivers, the one in whom we find good news.

And we know it's true because it's confirmed through the presence of God.

It's confirmed by the fulfillment of Scripture.

We all experience our own wilderness wanderings.

We all find ourselves often at the end of our ropes, don't we?

In our world, our outlook has been marred by cynicism.

We expect dystopia rather than utopia.

We don't have hope, we have cynicism.

Chuck Colson once said in a sermon, Where is the hope?

And I'll be honest, the only reason I know that he said this in a sermon was because it was in a Stephen Curtis-Chapman song.

Maybe you've heard it.

Where is the hope?

Hope is not in what governs us.

Hope is in the power of God, working in the hearts of people.

That's where our hope is for our country.

That's where our hope is in this life, says Colson.

Where is your hope?

Where is the good news that you turn to?

What is the good life that you're hoping for?

In Hebrews 11, it says, faith is the assurance of things hoped for.

We all have this hope of something better, something we long for, something different, something greater than what we experience in this world.

And the hope is not found in this world.

Our hope is not found in our education.

Our hope is not found in the financial status in which we find ourselves.

Our hope is not found in our success.

Our hope is found in Christ.

The beginning of the good news, it says here in Mark.

This is just the beginning that begins to unfold the story of Jesus who comes into this world to offer us hope.

It's the power of God at work in the hearts of people and seeing lives changed in which we find hope.

It's the message of Jesus Christ.

It's the one promised long before his birth.

It's the one anticipated for centuries from the foundations of the earth.

The one who was sent by God the Father and confirmed by God the Father is the one.

The one who was attended to by angels in the wilderness who overcame the temptations of the devil, that just as we are tempted, he was too, that we might overcome sin.

Through him, through Jesus, we find good news, even in the midst of trying times.

What are your trying times?

Where is your hope?

Is it in willpower to overcome the trying times?

The little engine that could?

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.

It's a lie.

You can't.

I know I just crushed everyone's childhood dreams.

The hope is not in our will to overcome.

The hope is found in Jesus Christ who entered our world to overcome sin and to have victory over the enemy and to offer us good news.

Turn to him and find the good news.

Can you pray with me?

Lord, our hope is found in Christ.

Our hope is not in the school system.

Our hope is not in the government.

Our hope is not in even the organization called church.

Our hope is found in Christ.

I pray, Lord, that our eyes, our hearts, our minds would be tuned towards Him, that He would be the center of our attention.

And I don't know where everyone in this room is at this very moment, those who are finding themselves in despair at the loss of a loved one, in the midst of depression or anxiety, trying to will their way through it.

But Lord, what I do know is that hope is found in Christ.

The good news that we have is not in what we can overcome, but what Christ has already overcome.

When he died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, to purchase for us a place in heaven.

And there is a place, a greater place, the hope of heaven before us that we turn our eyes to.

A place where there will be no more death, no more dying, no more tears.

Because of the victory that Jesus Christ had and the hope that he offers.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.