Prepare the Way for the Lord

All right, thanks to Adam and the crew.

If you have your Bibles, let's open up to Mark chapter one.

Mark one, and while you're turning there, uh a couple of brief announcements.

Uh one, uh, we do communion every week here.

And last week was my first time to serve it here.

And Benton, one of our elders who likes to sit close to the front row, was one of the first guys through, and he tried to whisper to me very discreetly, and I couldn't really understand what he was saying, and it sounded like tell them to twist.

And uh I didn't know what that meant.

Chubby checkers and the twist or something.

And uh then a good friend of mine who was visiting was right behind him, and as he went to pull out the cup of juice, it stuck a little bit and he pulled harder and it exploded all over him.

So uh I owe him a shirt.

But for later, if you come through, if it's stuck, twist a little bit so you can preserve your shirt.

Um and uh Mark, we're starting this morning.

Uh I will be here the next two Sundays, but next Sunday uh we won't be preaching because installation service, and then after that we have the mission service with Richard Pratt.

If you never heard him, he's incredible.

Hope you'll come.

Uh so we'll be picking back up in Mark uh March the first.

Here's what I would recommend if you wanted to.

Mark's the shortest gospel.

You could read a chapter a day between now and then.

You could read the whole gospel, just kind of get an overview.

And really, if you say, well, I want to read, I'll run out of chapters in the next 20, 21 days.

Read the first four or five chapters of John as well as you read 16 chapters of Mark, and I'll explain why when we come back, March the first.

But the Gospel of Mark, we don't know for sure, but was probably the first gospel that was written down.

And remember, if you were here a couple weeks ago, Mark had spent time with the Apostle Peter in the city of Rome when Peter was preaching and teaching, his eyewitness account of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so either right before Peter died or maybe right after Peter's death, people started to say to Mark, Would you write this down?

Would you write down Peter's accounts so that we don't lose them?

And Mark did, and he was writing the gospel specifically to Roman citizens.

62, 63 A.D., something like that.

Now, a little bit of context before we dive in.

In the Old Testament, the main way that God would speak to his people was through prophets.

And there was a guy named Elijah, you're probably familiar with him.

He was one of the first and greatest and most famous prophets.

He lived in the wilderness.

He was famous for wearing a leather belt.

He preached repentance.

And there was a revival in Israel when he was there.

And then there were other prophets like him, but then the last prophet was Malachi, who wrote a very short verb.

It's at the end of our Old Testament.

You can go read that too.

It's a very short, easy read.

Some of the Old Testament's hard.

It's an easy one.

But here's the thing: then there had been 400 years roughly of prophetic silence to the nation of Israel.

It's like God just quit talking to his people.

400 years.

Generations came, lived, and died.

Never heard the voice of the Lord to a prophet.

But we're going to pick up where God sends another prophet.

Now, in the intervening years, the nation of Israel had been conquered by the Romans, and they were oppressed by the Roman government when we pick up.

And devout Jews, they were looking for the coming of Messiah.

And it's important to understand what they were looking for.

They were looking for David number two.

Of course, he would be a godly man, just like David was in the Old Testament, but he would also be a political genius and a military leader of great might.

And just like David had come forward and thrown off the Philistines that were oppressing the Israelites, this William Wallace number two that was going to come forth was going to throw off the Roman oppressors.

That's what the Jews were looking for.

And that's where we're going to pick up.

So if you've got your Bibles, Mark chapter 1, and let's start in verse 1.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

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

Now John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locust 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.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John of the Jordan.

And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven, You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.

The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God.

Now, the word gospel, Roman Empire at that time, it was not a technical kind of religious term like it is today.

It literally just meant good news, good announcement.

And oftentimes the way it was used, if there had been a military victory, good news, we won the war.

Even more so, it was used maybe when a new Caesar was born or crowned as the new emperor of the Roman Empire.

Good news.

Tiberius Caesar is the new emperor of the land, and he's gonna bring peace.

So Mark very wisely is taking that, saying, okay, I got a good news for you.

I got good news about a king who's coming, and he's not just the king of the Roman Empire, he's the king of all things.

Now, Caesar Augustus, who had ruled from 27 A.D.

up to probably about uh, excuse me, 27 BC up to 14 A.D., he was the first Caesar that started saying, not just I'm the ruler of the Roman Empire, he also started to call himself, I'm the Son of God.

I have a divine right to this throne.

Again, Mark says, I'll one up you.

I'll tell you about the real Son of God who is coming, this king.

Okay, now God says, I gotta send a messenger ahead of time.

Prepare the way of the Lord.

What's that about?

Imagine if the president wanted to make a visit to Birmingham.

There would be some sort of advanced team, probably Secret Service for security, but also people preparing the venues because he's so important.

And his coming would be such a big deal.

Think about when some city decides they're gonna host the Olympics, the winter games, or the World Cup or something.

A lot has to be done to prepare the way for such a massive event.

And so, in the same sense, like the king is coming, and so John the Baptist has been sent forth to prepare the way.

Now he doesn't show up in Rome, he doesn't show up in Jerusalem, he shows up in the wilderness.

And what is he doing?

He's preaching about baptism.

And it seems like all the Jews from all over the wilderness country, Galilee, even down in Jerusalem, more the urban Jews, they're all flocking to this new Elijah out in the desert, preaching a baptism of repentance.

And what's the baptism mean?

One commentator said this: it's a sign of their repentance, and it's a pledge that when the judgment came, their sins would not stand against them.

Now we don't know for sure, but sometime probably again in the intertestamental period, there was a type of baptism that Gentiles started to do when they wanted to become a Jew.

So if you grew up and you weren't a Jew, but you heard about this Jewish nation, these Jewish people, and it's like, hey, they don't just worship false gods.

It really seems like they know the one true God, Yahweh.

He's real.

And I want to become a Jew, and you converted.

Part of what you did is there was a type of baptism ceremony in a sense saying, I'm washing off all my dirty sin so I can become one of the doubt people.

And oftentimes it was self-administered.

But here comes John the Baptist, and he's talking to the church, the religious folks, and he's like, You don't have all your stuff together.

You need to be baptized, you need to be cleansed.

And some of the Pharisees were offended by him, but most of the people were not.

They were flocking him, they were going into the water, they were baptizing, being baptized by John.

And think about this: it's very symbolic of salvation.

It's like you're going into the river and water is washing over you, cleansing you, and it's metaphorically, it's like you're leaving your sins and you're leaving your old life in the river, and you're coming out to live a new life of holiness and godliness.

Now, John is this austere guy living in the wilderness, eating locusts, eating hunky, uh honey.

Okay?

And one commentator said this: just John's whole appearance, his whole lifestyle.

It was a living protest against all selfishness and self-indulgence, hence also against that frivolousness, carelessness, and false security with which many people were rushing toward their doom.

I wonder how many people in Birmingham, Alabama, the belt buckle of the Bible Belt, we have Bible truth coming out of our ears, can become careless, can become frivolous, a sense of false security.

Now, he says, you know what?

I'm doing my job.

I'm the messenger, I'm the voice, I'm baptizing people with water.

But somebody's coming after me, the Messiah, the king, and I'll listen, back then the lowest of low slaves would be the one to untie the rich man's sandals when he came home.

Walking all day in the dirt and the dust and the mire was a nasty job.

And John the Baptist says, I'm not even worthy to be the lowest slave to this man when he comes.

I'm doing this outward sign, baptizing people, an external sign of cleansing.

He does the real inner work.

He baptizes with the Holy Spirit, the refiner's fire.

There's real power, there's real grace to cleanse, to change people.

Now, Jesus comes forward, says, I want to be baptized.

And notice, though, when he was baptized, he didn't confess any sin.

He didn't have any sin to confess.

And when he comes up out of the water, the sky is torn open, God the Father speaks, he's affirming him.

You're my one true son.

You don't have any sin.

You've never done anything that displeases me.

Everything you do makes me happy.

Look, guys, this is a side note, but it's an important one.

And I heard this from a Baptist preacher when I was in high school and it stuck with me.

Think about this for a second.

What do we know that this is Jesus Christ is 30 years old?

He hasn't started his public ministry yet.

This is when the public ministry starts.

What do we know that Christ had done up to this point?

He'd done no miracles, he cast out no demons, he preached no sermons, he'd mentored and discipled no men.

He hadn't rebuked the religious establishment.

All that we know is he was a good little boy who obeyed mom and dad.

When his dad died, almost certainly he became the man of the house.

He became a carpenter.

It may have been more of a construction worker, a stonemason type.

He loved and honored his parents.

He was a good member of the society.

Here's the point.

He just lived a normal life.

And what does God the Father say about that?

It's like, that makes me so happy.

A human being who just lives normal life before the face of God with holiness, that makes me happy.

You don't have to be in full-time ministry.

You don't have to do miracles, you don't have to cast out demons, don't have to preach sermons.

Just live normal life, and it thrills the heart of God when you do it in a holy manner.

That's part of what God the Father is saying.

Now, the Holy Spirit comes down as a dove.

Why is that?

There was a translation of the Old Testament in that day that a lot of Jewish people would read.

And in Genesis chapter 1, verse 2, where it talks about the Holy Spirit hovering over the waters, it more used language of he was fluttering over the waters like a dove.

Genesis 1:2

And then when you think about a dove in the Bible, where does your mind run?

Maybe to Noah in the Ark?

Which in a sense was a recreation.

God's like, I'm gonna wipe everybody out, start again.

So, in a sense, what is happening here?

God's like, I'm about to do a new work of recreation in people's lives.

And then the very first thing, it's like he's he's publicly crowned as king, publicly filled with the Holy Spirit to be God's man on earth.

And the first thing the Spirit compels him to do is to go out deeper into the wilderness and do battle with Satan, our great foe.

You know, when uh Hitler and the Nazis were preparing to invade other countries in Europe, part of what they did is they started improving the railways and the Autobahn, the superhighway, so we can move troops faster into other countries and dominate them.

Now, some of y'all are like, man, how are you gonna use a Hitler reference here?

Uh Hitler, obviously, evil, selfish, hated people, disregarded them, wanted to destroy them, wanted to use and abuse them for himself and his own insane ideology.

He was an evil dictator that wanted to come in and impose his will on other people.

But the Lord Jesus Christ is a benevolent dictator.

He does want to invade, but not to hurt, to help, not to harm, not to burden, but to bless.

But at times we resist him.

I mean, God, listen, God didn't need a literal superhighway built in the wilderness for the Messiah to come.

I mean, when the king finally rode into the city, he just came in on a lowly donkey, right?

So then what is all this about?

God needs a superhighway to get into our hearts.

Listen to this quote, this again by William Hendrickson.

It's a little long, but it's great.

Make straight his paths, meaning that they must provide the Lord with ready access into their hearts and lives.

They must straight whatever was crooked, not in line with God's holy will.

They must clear away all the obstacles which they had thrown into his path, such obstructions as self-righteousness and smug complacency, greed, cruelty, slander, etc.

The wilderness through which a path must be made ready for the Lord is in the final analysis the people's hearts inclined to all evil.

A fundamental transformation of mind, heart, and life was required.

So I ask you just to think with me for a second.

Where in our lives are there obstacles to God having total access to our hearts?

And you may, the fault may go through, well, I'm already a Christian.

God's already in my life.

Me too.

But why do we have a confession of sin as part of our worship service every week?

Because none of us are perfect.

You may be the most mature Christian on planet earth right now.

And yet none of us are sinlessly perfect.

All of us have sins in our life.

Usually we have one or two kind of pet sins.

Do we not?

Lord, I'll be happy to surrender all of these things, whatever you want.

Just these one or two areas, leave me alone.

Those of you that are married, oftentimes it happens in marriage as we try to adapt to one another, love one another, adjust our lives so that we can be more one.

Oftentimes, like, hey, I'm willing to adapt so much to you, baby, but I do have one or two areas of my life that I just like you to keep your mouth shut.

And sometimes that works for a while, you know what?

Because she's got one or two areas too.

She's like, Yeah, you leave me alone in my area, I'll leave you alone in your area.

And I'm just telling you, Jesus doesn't play that game.

It's all mine.

Now listen, is he loving?

Is he gracious?

Is he patient?

Is he tender?

He absolutely is.

But he's also like the cancer doctor that's gonna do surgery on our heart.

And he's like, I'm coming after all of it.

Eventually.

I'm not gonna leave any place in your life untouched.

Imagine if, and I'll tell this from the male perspective, but it works the other way as well.

You're married, and you had done some terrible, wicked sin against your spouse to the point that she moved out, she separated.

Rightly so.

But she decided to give you a second chance.

She decided to say, you know what, I'll come back.

I'll come back, I'll move back in.

If you're really excited about winning her heart back, would you not be doing everything you could to adapt?

If she tends to really like the house clean and you're a little bit more of a slob, I bet you'd clean up.

If she's a really sharp dresser and she values that in you, you might tuck your shirt in.

Whatever it is, right?

If you don't mind a little tobacco and she hates it, you're like, I'm getting rid of the dip.

Well, whatever it takes to get her back, I'm willing to do it.

Now listen, in the same sense, the Lord Jesus Christ, the lover of our soul, says, I want full spiritual unity with you.

And yes, if you're in Christ, we already have that legally, but I'm talking about having it practically and experientially, right?

When a man and a woman get married, I got a son getting married in less than three weeks.

I get to do part of the ceremony, right?

And when you say, now is the authority committed to me as a minister of Jesus Christ, I now present you, you know, one in Christ, what God has joined together, let no man separate.

Are they are they one?

Yes.

Legally, they are one, 100%.

Practically are they one?

Absolutely not, right?

I've seen people almost get in a fight at the reception about how they're gonna feed the cake to each other.

I've been married over 27 years, and and and I'm madly in love with my wife, more so than I was the day I met her in the whole whole nine yards, right?

And things are going great.

But but do we ever still kind of step on each other's toes and bother each?

Yes, we do.

How are you inviting the Holy Spirit, inviting the Lord Jesus deeper into your life?

Have thine own way, have thine own way.

I am the clay, you're the potter.

Do whatever you want to with me.

I trust you.

Listen, if you really trust the doctor, you lay down on the surgery table and you say, Do whatever you want.

Heal me.

Now listen, can this turn into a type of legalism where I'm trying to obey to earn something from God, to put him to my debt?

Absolutely it can.

And that's wrong.

Don't do it, don't fall off into that ditch.

But what I'm trying to say is there's also a ditch on the other side of the road where you're like, hey, I'm safe in Christ, I'm free, I'm forgiven.

What's a little sin?

Compared to the other people that I work with, you should know some of these bozos.

I'm a saint compared to them.

Maybe you are, but that shouldn't be who you're comparing yourself to.

Right, the great hymn by Isaac Watts, joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receiver king, let every heart prepare hemorrhom.

That's what we're talking about.

I mean, the goal is again, go back to my illustration of the two spouses that are separated.

Not a begrudging duty.

I guess I'll wash the dishes because the ball and chain's coming home.

That's not what we're looking for.

We're like, I'm madly in love with this person and I like to make them happy.

There's a big difference in obedience from duty.

Listen, let me, which is not always wrong.

Sometimes that's the best we got, and that's better than nothing.

But C.S.

Lewis said, duty is like a crutch, and when you don't need the crutch anymore because you're healed, you throw it away.

And you obey out of delight.

Not that I have to, I want to, I get to, I like to.

I like making this person happy.

I've used this illustration before somewhere else, and you'll probably hear me use it again.

My wife has the love language of gifts.

I do not.

The second year of our marriage, we had our first newborn, and I just, you know, here's how it works in my marriage, okay?

February is Valentine's, March is anniversary, April is her birthday, and I'm not very creative and good with gifts.

So, all like all my creative juices were done after about a year and a half of Marriage.

And then May, Mother's Day.

And so literally the first time we had a brand new infant, and I said to my wife, This is not made up.

I wish it was, but I said, Hey, you're not my mom.

I'm not getting you a gift.

There's the example of what not to do, guys.

Now listen, left in myself now when I'm having an off day, if somebody's like, hey, how would you like to spend your off day?

I'll tell you what's at the bottom of the list, shopping.

Amen.

That deserves an amen.

But I tell you, because I'm so in love with my wife, I like to buy her gifts.

I've adapted.

I don't buy gifts for anybody else, right?

I like to buy her gifts.

Now here's the hard thing, though.

I think for a lot of us sitting here, I'm not necessarily teaching you any new truth.

You're like, yes, I know I'm supposed to obey.

Yes, I know I'm supposed to be serious about hating sin, fighting sin, putting sin to death, but not do it in a legalistic way, but do it in a joyful way.

But that's a lot easier said than done.

Because a lot of times I don't feel like obeying.

I feel like sinning.

Sin is still so attractive.

So what do we do?

I mean, what do you do when you just completely fail?

What do you do when you when you want the proper motivation to motivate your obedience?

Here's what we got to always remember, guys.

Christ came forth from heaven.

He did come forth as a sanctifier, to sanctify us, to make us holy practically.

But that wasn't his first goal.

He first came as a Savior to forgive us, to free us before he began sanctifying.

Why did Jesus Christ go into the baptismal waters when he had no sin?

William Hendrickson, who's a great theologian and commentator, said this Jesus did have sin.

Ours.

Isaiah 53, 6.

All we like sheep have gone astray.

We've turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Guys, think about it metaphorically.

It's like thousands of people have been going down into this river at the same spot, washing the sins off their body.

That water was filthy with sin.

And Jesus, the pristine Son of God, said, I'll go in and I'll bathe in their sins.

From day one of his anointing as king to do his mission, he identified with what was coming.

The cross looms large from the first second.

And chapter one, verse 10, there where it says the sky was split open.

Mark only uses that word one other time.

Chapter 15, when Jesus dies, and it says the veil and the temple were split open.

That's where all this is headed.

Is Jesus the second David?

He is.

More importantly, he's the second Adam.

Why did he go immediately into the wilderness to do battle with Satan?

Because Adam, the first head and representative of all humanity, probably day one of creation, had his best friend.

He's got community.

He has no indwelling sin, no sin of the culture, but Satan comes, gives him about three temptations, and he's done.

And he was in paradise.

The second Adam comes, humanly speaking, he's all alone in the wilderness, suffering 40 days, fasting, no food.

And Satan was tempting him the whole time, 40 straight days.

And he put down every temptation.

Tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.

He lived the perfect life we're supposed to live.

Sometimes we want to live, but we can't really live it.

Not perfectly.

He died the death under God's wrath.

We all deserve to die, but none of us want to.

And he rose again to conquer.

On the cross, he was laden with our sin.

So that now in Christ, when we put our faith in him, legally in the cosmic courtroom of the universe, we can hear God the Father say to us, You're my adopted son.

And in Christ, I am well pleased with you.

There's your motivation.

It's already been given as a free gift to say, now I want to go live a life that actually progressively, slowly but surely, not perfectly, but gradually, is starting to actually make him happy on a day-to-day basis.

William Cowper is a great poet and uh musician.

He said this to see the law by Christ fulfilled and hear his pardoning voice changes a slave into a child and duty into choice.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, what a God you are, what a king you are, what a Lord you are, what a savior you are, what a Messiah.

Those Jews were probably expecting some military leader to come in and demand their loyalty.

But you came in and you pledged your loyalty to love in us by being baptized in our sins.

Thank you for your grace.

Thank you for your mercy.

Thank you for your covering and the forgiveness that we have in you.

I pray for anyone hearing this that has not put their faith in you.

Holy Spirit, draw them to Christ now.

And for all of us that by your grace are in Christ, would you stir the affections and desires of our heart to be more passionate, more serious about putting sin to death in our life?

Because we're so in love with you.

And we want to please and honor you in all that we do, think, say, feel, and even desire.

We pray all this in Christ's name.

Amen.