Prepare The Way | Fr. Aaron Damiani - Mark 1:1-8

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark,

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, we are going out to him, and we are being

baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Now John was clothed with camel hair and wore a belt, 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 straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and

anti. I have baptized you with water,

but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, the Gospel of the

Lord. Let's pray together, Lord, just

as John the Baptist prepared your way to only to see you come

as the king sent from God to do miracles, to heal the sick, and

ultimately to go to the cross to be the Lamb of God who takes

away the sin of the world. There was so much that you did

after John the Baptist prepared the way.

So we pray now, Lord, that Your Spirit would prepare the way

just in our midst so that we can, as we hear this gospel,

hear this good news. See you work in every single one

of our lives. See you work in our city, our

world, our circumstances. Lord, we pray that you would

lead, that you would be king. And we thank you, Lord, that

you're here in our midst. We pray this all in the name of

the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Please be seated and turn to Mark chapter 1.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

This is the beginning of a new series called simply Jesus, and

we're going to be just walking sequentially through the gospel

of Mark and hearing this good news afresh.

There's a character from Greek mythology that a lot of modern

people can relate with. His name was Atlas.

Anybody familiar here with Greek mythology the the the God Atlas.

He was capable, he was strong, he was a leader among his fellow

gods, he was beloved by his family and had even daughters.

Along the way, Atlas found himself in a struggle for what

he felt was the right thing. He was fighting for the good in

the drama cycle of Greek gods and his side lost and it's

punishment. Atlas was given the unending

task of holding up the western sky.

That was his job. Atlas had to bear up under the

sky, the pressure of the sky to keep it from falling, and if he

were to shrug his responsibilities, the sky would

come crashing down and would cause chaos and pain and death

for his daughters and for the inhabitants of the world.

The myth of Atlas is, I would say, the default story for so

many of us. And the reason is that we love

our people. We love our city, we love our

church, we love people in our lives.

We've got strengths to offer and we care enough to get involved,

but the more involved we get in the events of this time, the

more we find ourselves holding up under the pressure, keeping

things together, holding back the chaos of what could go

wrong. Aware that if we let go of the

chaos, that pain would ensue, would rain down on people that

we care about and love. The hurting, the vulnerable, the

refugees, the children. And all we can do is hope.

Just hope that one day that pressure is going to ease, to

release and that the chaos will abate and we will be relieved of

the burden. The myth of Atlas.

Have you ever felt like Atlas? Just under pressure?

Under pressure to do what's right, Under pressure to

provide, under pressure to hold back what could hurt others?

That's the myth of Atlas, the myth that so many of us live by.

But what's the truth? What if there was a better

story? A story that wouldn't crush us,

but actually deliver us instead? A story that would relieve the

burden And that's the story that we're going to be looking at in

the Gospel of Mark, which begins with this epic packed heading in

verse 1 of chapter 1, which says this the beginning of the gospel

of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Friends, the the story of Atlas

is a dystopian myth that brings us down.

However you tell the myth, it's unsustainable to be in this

position forever. But the story of Jesus is a

gospel, which in the ancient world meant news that would

bring encouragement to people who heard it.

And that news concerned the arrival of of Jesus Christ.

That's how it's translated in our Bibles.

But really it means if you unpack what what Yeshua Messiah

meant, that meant deliverer king, deliverer king who would

take every burden, who would take, who would take everything

bad and make it come untrue. He's the Son of God, Mark says.

He's own son and he's come to relieve our burden, to heal our

world and to do all of the heavy lifting.

We have a role to play though. And verse two and three talk

about it says as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, See, I am

sending my messenger ahead of you.

He will prepare your way. This is about John the Baptist.

We'll talk about John the Baptist in a moment.

What does John the Baptist do? Verse 3, a voice of one crying

out in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord.

Make his paths straight. So John verse 2 is about John

the Baptist. Verse 3 is what he will say to

people. John the Baptist will be that

voice talking to people in the wilderness, talking to you and

me throughout the ages through the Holy Spirit.

Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.

Years ago we had a pest problem in our house and we called the

exterminator who said don't try to solve this problem yourself.

Don't do a DIY solution that's going to make it worse.

Let me take care of it with my more powerful tools.

All you have to do, He told us, is get your house ready, prepare

the way from top to bottom, do all of the adjustments necessary

so that I, the exterminator, can come and bring the heat and

solve the problem that you cannot do on your own in the

gospel of Jesus Christ. He does all the heavy lifting.

He brings the heat. We simply prepare the way.

But we have to ask, what does that mean exactly for us?

As we look at Mark chapter 1, we'll see that preparation means

Mark 1 · chapter mention

three things. Three simple things, simple

obedience, simple repentance, and simple trust.

Simple obedience, simple repentance, and simple trust.

These are the top to bottom adjustments that we make so that

the deliverer King can bring the heat.

Let's look at simple obedience. John the Baptist didn't save the

world, he just obeyed God's word and that meant giving

instructions to prepare the way. Verse 4 John came baptizing in

the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the

forgiveness of sins. John the Baptist had a very

simple job. Be the voice that calls people

to repent of their sins and then as a sign of their repentance,

immerse them in water as a new beginning.

Most people in that time, especially coming from Judea and

Jerusalem, would cleanse themselves and they would do it

frequently. It was part of the Jewish

purification rights. So what John is introducing here

is an entirely new rite, RITE, which is to baptize you, immerse

you in water, and then as you are immersed in water, it

becomes a signpost that you are becoming a different person and

that you are preparing yourselves for a deliverer king

who would do everything else. Here's what John wasn't doing.

He's pretty and baptizing, but he was not healing people.

He was preparing them to be healed by Jesus.

He was not overthrowing Rome, but he was calling soldiers to

stop extorting people. He wasn't playing God.

John the Baptist wasn't playing God, but he was pointing to King

Jesus. He simply did what God asked him

to do. It was a simple act of

obedience. He lived a weird disruptive

life, right? He wore like animal skins.

He fed on locusts and honey, like he lived kind of a rough

existence to carry out this act of obedience.

But that was what God asked him to do.

God asked him to be a prophet like the old prophets, like the

last of the old prophets, ushering in the new era and just

preach and just baptize and, and make the sacrifices necessary to

fulfill that call. And he did it.

And he pointed to Jesus. What has God asked you to do,

friends? What, what, what burden has he

asked you to carry? What light yoke has he said this

is for you? I'm asking you to walk this out.

There's probably some sacrifice, there's probably some faith

involved. There's probably some unknowns,

but there's something all of us can do to prepare the way for

Jesus. I love the way that the prophet

Micah answered the question of like, what are we supposed to

do? What does obedience look like?

The prophet Micah, years before John the Baptist says this.

He has told each of you what is good and what is the Lord

requires of you, What it is the Lord requires of you to act

justly, to love faithfulness, otherwise translated mercy, and

to walk humbly with your God. Act justly, love faithfulness,

and walk humbly with your God. At the end of the day, that's

all the Lord is asking of each one of us to prepare His way.

We give God what we have. We give him our simple

obedience, the right next step. We don't know the outcomes and

we can't control them, but we can walk humbly with our God in

the specific calling He's given to each one of us.

Some of you might look at John the Baptist and you're like, you

know what John the Baptist had at least he had clarity about

what he was supposed to do. I mean, there the prophet Isaiah

wrote about him directly. You, if you have like scriptural

prophecies written about you, you know, you have some clarity

about what God wants you to do. Not only that, John the Baptist

wasn't just, he didn't just have clarity, he had gifting.

What about us? What about our clarity?

What about Our Calling? What about our gifting?

All of those are Atlas questions with Atlas pressure behind them.

I've got to know what's clear. What's my calling?

What am I supposed to do? It's OK to ask some of those

questions, but if we we only have the clarity God is ready to

give us, we only have the next step that God is ready to give

us. And most of the time it's only

the next step that becomes clear.

As we take the step, God makes it clear.

We practice discernment and He follows us the rest of the way

through every single act of obedience.

One person asked this question. Look, if if the Lord led the

people of Israel through the desert into the promised land,

why would he not leave me? It was a great, you know, if the

Lord, if God sent his Son Jesus to lead a new exodus, why would

he not leave each one of us as we are seeking to do his will?

Lord, show me the next step of obedience.

That's a prayer he would love to answer.

And that is a way for us to prepare his way.

But he's got to prepare us in the process.

And that's why preparing the way doesn't just end with simple

obedience. It gives way to simple

repentance. Simple repentance.

Verse 5, the whole Judean countryside says the whole

Judean countryside, and all the people of Jerusalem were going

out to him, and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan

River, confessing their sins. Now, this is a curious and

interesting surprise because most of the time people were

making pilgrimages to Judea, to Jerusalem.

That's where the flow of God's people faithfully went year

after year into Jerusalem to find God and to meet him.

But now we see a reverse flow. It's like the Chicago River

getting reversed back in the day.

Now they're going, they're going out, they're leaving.

And why are they leaving? It's because all of the systems

of power politically and religious power was corrupt and

pressurizing. And these were the people

holding it up. And they were saying no more,

this is killing me. I'm making huge compromises to

do this. And so they're leaving behind.

They're shrugging the weight of the temple and shrugging the

weight of enforcing Rome's wishes.

And they're coming out to John and they're leaving all kinds of

things behind. They're leaving power behind.

They're leaving pride behind. They're leaving control behind.

And they're coming out to be relieved of their burden.

And they find John the Baptist standing in the Jordan River.

Come to the waters. We can hear him calling out.

Come and unload your burdens here, friends.

Come confess that guilt. Come, come, repent.

I know you feel unclean. Come get clean.

Starting today, you can be at peace if you come to the waters.

Starting today, you can be free of shame.

Starting today, you can be free of secrecy and condemnation and

dread. Starting today, you can be ready

for the coming of God's Son who's come to take away your sin

before he judges the world in righteousness and truth.

Come to the waters, we can hear him say.

And here comes that soldier taking off his armor, taking off

his sword that he's used to extort money from people coming

to the water. Just a man, no longer a symbol,

being let down into the waters and coming out a cleansed new

birth son of God, ready, ready to follow a new king, a new

Lord. Here comes a tax collector who

works hand in hand with that soldier, and he takes off his

expensive outer garments and he takes off all of the shame as

well for betraying his people. And he goes into the waters too.

And as he is immersed, all of his greed is washed away.

And he comes out and the weight of all of that greed comes off

of his soul and he's free and he's ready to to lay up

treasures in heaven. Simple, simple.

Repentance can be so hard. Here comes a Pharisee who takes

off his religious garments, his religious garments that that

caused people to cower, make him into a symbol.

And he takes the, the symbolism, all of all that power.

And he says, I'm ready to no longer be a, you know, be

someone who like breaks the law over people's heads.

I'm ready to just cast off all of this judgement.

I'm ready to to be scorned by my colleagues.

And, and he is low down into the waters.

And now he comes, a true spiritual leader, truly ready to

love people, truly ready to do justice and love mercy and walk

humbly with his God, ready to be taught by the greatest teacher

of the Torah, the rabbi whom John the Baptist was preparing

the way for. Who else walked into the waters?

Friends, from then until now, there's such a relief that comes

when we confess. There's the wait of the world

that just seems to lift from our shoulders.

And really what this does is this, this prepares the way for

the Lord and and in one of the most significant ways possible.

In his classic allegory, the pilgrims progress, John Bunyan

tells the story of Christian. Christian is a is a man who he

carried a great burden on his back his whole life, and the

straps of that burden just wore his shoulders raw.

And so, like the pilgrims in verse 5, Christian set out on on

on a journey. He, he left his familiar home

behind to have his burden removed.

And, and actually, the more spiritually aware he became, the

heavier the burden got. It almost weighed him down.

In fact, he, he kind of like stumbled under the weight of it

and almost got stuck in his guilt, in the slew of despond.

It's like a murky swamp. But along the way, he caught

sight of the cross. It was at the top of the hill.

He could see it. And so he pressed on and he

passed through the wicket gate of repentance.

He passed through this gate of repentance.

And as he got closer and closer to the cross, all he could do

was stumble. Not like he did.

In the slew of despond despair, but to stumble with hope.

And as he did, the straps came loose on their own.

And the burden tumbled and tumbled, tumbled down until it

entered into a a tomb. Bunyan calls it a sepulchre, a

tomb representing death as well as resurrection.

And Christian was free. The burden was gone, the Guild

had been erased, and Bunyan captures the relief that he felt

when he says this. Then Christian was glad and

lights him, and said with a merry heart, He hath given me

rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.

We can't carry the weight of the world forever.

We can't carry the weight of sin and condemnation forever, but we

can prepare the way of the Lord, simply releasing it as we face

our darkness and experience the inside out healing that John the

Baptist is calling every single person to see John the Baptist,

he didn't try saving the world. He simply prepared the way of

the one who would. And it didn't end there.

And this is so crucial. John prepared the way of the

Lord There's simple, simple obedience and calling people the

simple repentance. He prepared the way of the Lord,

but then he got out of the way of the Lord and this leads us to

simple trust. Let's read about this in verse

7. He proclaimed John, one who is

more powerful than I am is coming after me.

I am not worthy to soup down and untie the strap of his sandals.

I baptize you with water, but he, Jesus will baptize you with

the Holy Spirit. We should know that John the

Baptist was the celebrity preacher of his day.

And we see it right here in the gospel record as throngs of

people flock to hear John the Baptist.

And these are these are the religious elite, and they're

coming to him. He's not going to them.

This is cooperated by non biblical sources.

In writing in 92AD, the historian Joseph noted that

John's quote, eloquence had so great an effect on the people

that they were quote, ready to do anything he should advise.

That's how much power he had, not just to draw people, but to

influence those people. And they did what he said.

So this doesn't happen unless you have extraordinary spiritual

gifting. And this is spiritual gifting

alarmed even Herod, Herod Antipus usually not paying

attention, you know, to to desert preachers.

But Herod was so afraid of his power that he had him imprisoned

and killed. So but here's what John the

Baptist does with his significant spiritual

influences. He prepares the way and then he

gets out of the way. He lets Jesus take over the

project, the baby that he's worked on, that he's given his

life to, that he's invested in. He says now Jesus, you take it

from here. I trust you, Jesus to take it

from here. He didn't worry about the

direction that Jesus would take it.

He didn't worry about the outcomes that Jesus would lead.

He had no idea how all of this would unfold.

But he doesn't cling to it. He simply says Jesus is more

powerful, Jesus is more worthy. Jesus baptizes with the Holy

Spirit. Therefore, I won't stand in his

way. It's worth asking, why do we get

a savior complex? Why do we get an Atlas complex?

Why do we prepare the way for the Lord, but we don't get out

of the way of the Lord? Why don't we trust Jesus with

what we have built for him and with Him?

To be honest, I think for some of us it feels good to be in

control and it feels scary to release control.

So after Jesus uses us to prepare the way, we get so

personally involved in the project that getting out of the

way can feel like death itself. So we hang on long after we

should when the invitation is from Jesus.

Just trust me, I can do more with what you're giving me than

you can ask or imagine. Parents, fellow parents, have

you ever felt this tension for years?

You. You prepare the way for your

children. You invest your love into them

and life in them. There's like so much hope and

faith and love that you invest in your kids and, and we prepare

the way so that Jesus can lead them.

But before we know it, before we're ready, really, we find

ourselves standing in the way and trying to do what only Jesus

can do in the hearts and lives of our kids.

And sometimes the best thing that we can do is to stop

overdoing it and to give the Lord just some space to work in

their lives. Well, let's broaden this out

beyond kids and parenting. Let's think about people we care

about, people we invest in. I heard one person put it like

this. When I disciple someone, that's

Christianese for when I invest myself into someone in such a

way that shapes them to look like Jesus.

When I really care about someone and invest in them, they don't

become mine. I don't use the personal

possessive pronoun to describe them.

They're not my disciple, they're Jesus's disciple.

I was reminded this last week of my youth pastor back in the day,

Pastor Joel. You know, he really didn't do

flashy things for us as teenagers.

It was fun, it was engaging, it was interesting.

But what he did is he invested in US and he taught us how to

follow Jesus and how to be leaders.

We pray that one day Emanuel can have a youth pastor of her own.

This is so important. But then, one by one, Pastor

Joel let us go. He released us into the world.

He prayed for us and he was there for us.

But he didn't stand in Jesus's way.

He let Jesus take it from there. As we go through the Gospel of

Mark, we're going to see Jesus take the baton from John the

Baptist and solve the world's biggest problems, lifting

burdens, healing diseases, forgiving sins, confronting the

bullies that everyone else is afraid to face, carrying the

cross, Atlas style, stumbling on his way up the hill.

We'll see him arms outstretched in this gospel, holding back the

chaos, holding back death, holding up his sons and

daughters who come to him, holding up even the thief next

to him that says, Remember Me when you come into your Kingdom.

He's holding back all of this evil and chaos.

So it doesn't crush us, friends. And we'll hear him calling us to

learn his way and to follow in the way that John the Baptist

had prepared. So friends, this morning let's

come to Him with our burden. Like Christian, we can find

ourselves under the outstretched arms of Jesus, the burden of our

sins released, the weight of the world heaved from our shoulders,

The Holy Spirit baptizing us in his love and power and calling

just enough strength for us to take the right next step.

Friends, just enough humility to repent.

Just enough vision to follow Jesus into his Kingdom.

Now I preached this message that I preached this passage Mark

Mark 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1 starting in verse 1. You know, I preached at 12 years

ago on October 6th, 2013 on Emanuel's first ever launched

Sunday. And I found an old e-mail that I

wrote the day previous, which was asking people to pray.

And here's what I said in my e-mail.

Tomorrow at 10 AM, Emmanuel celebrates its launch Sunday.

It's an intense time, a challenge, a battle, a

celebration. Our first Sunday inviting the

community, our first Sunday in our new space, our first morning

service. I am excited and also feeling

the weight of tomorrow. Feeling the weight.

Part of the reason I was feeling the way is because my sermon

wasn't yet done. But I think I was also feeling

the pressure from just all of the demands and the hopes that

comes with a new church. And I wanted the first Sunday to

be awesome. And it was awesome.

Not because it was perfect, and not because all of our dreams

and hopes came true. Most of them didn't.

It was awesome because Jesus was there and I remember like

walking out into the parking lot, which we had at the time,

and feeling the sense of lightness and hope and peace,

like God's light was shining on our church.

And every step along the way from that morning to this

morning, He's guided us through a lot.

I don't know what the next 12 years old friends, maybe you

feel like I did when I wrote that e-mail where you're just

feeling the weight and holding the hopes then is now the Son of

God, Jesus the deliverer King. He's holding us friends.

He's holding our city, He's holding our nation, He's holding

Emmanuel. And our call is to join John the

Baptist to be that spiritual beacon that points people to

Jesus Christ, calling attention to him.

Simply Jesus, simply Jesus, friends, and simply his Kingdom,

which will have no end. It's the best news in the world.

So, friends, I want to invite you to shrug off the myth of

Atlas and take up the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,

and with the humble resources that we have, prepare the way of

the Lord in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Amen.