Mark's Gospel Part 1 - Our Shepherd and Our King

It would be great if you would take a Bible, please, and in it turn to uh Mark's Gospel, Mark chapter one.

Just a brief introduction before I pray uh and read uh from God's Word.

What would make 2025 a good year?

What would make 2025 a good year?

Not just a fun year.

A fun year, I dare say, might be things like Liverpool win the Premier League, or you have a memorable holiday.

Not a fun year, but a good year.

At the top of uh the new year, some of us may want to just ignore that question.

I was speaking last week to a lady somewhere else, and as she looked down the new year, her predominant feeling was one of despair.

Some of us will perhaps just want to put our head down, we'll survive, we'll try and drown out uh things that might happen.

Maybe we will literally anaesthetise ourselves with shopping or alcohol or doom scrolling on our phones.

But what would make for a genuinely good year?

I think all human hopes or human longings simply boil down to this.

There are wrongs that need to be righted.

So we see uh wickedness in the world and it needs to be expunged, it needs to be destroyed, it needs to be punished.

We read of grooming gangs or of dictators, and we see and we experience brokenness, sickness, hospital appointments, bereavement and death, separation and loneliness, all of these things they should not be, we know they should not be, and we long for such wrongs to be righted.

And the Christian faith would say the Bible says those longings that we have, they are true longings, and they are fulfilled, they are answered, they are satisfied only through knowing Jesus Christ.

So we cannot have those things that we long for, the end of wickedness or the end of brokenness.

We cannot have those things without Jesus.

Now, many of us we we know that, don't we?

We're Christian people, our lives are built on that basis, that we live with Jesus in a world full of wickedness and brokenness, and we trust him with it, trusting that he will put it right.

Now, today we're starting a new preaching series in Mark's gospel, and my hope and prayer as we preach through Mark is that we will see, feel, remember something of the wonder of Jesus and life with him, even in a world full of wickedness and brokenness.

Others of us, we live with the same sorts of longings and hopes and fears in a world of wickedness and brokenness, but we know we're on the outside of the Christian faith.

And it's my hope and prayer that maybe even today, over these coming weeks and months, you will desire to come in and to come to this Jesus who does all things well.

So I'm going to pray and then I'm going to read from God's Word.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you that you want to be known.

We thank you that in the pages of the Bible you open up your lips and you speak to us.

And it is our prayer this morning that we would hear your voice.

You would show to us your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as he really is.

Show us ourselves as we really are.

We know your purpose toward us is kindness and grace.

Give each of us, we pray, an experience of that today.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

So our reading today, that's Mark chapter 1, verses 1 to 20.

Mark 1:1–20

So, all of us, let's get ready to listen to God's word.

Children, hopefully you've got your learning sheets by now.

But pop them down for a moment.

Bibles open.

Let's listen to the words of God.

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 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 he 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.

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

And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open, 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, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel.

Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.

And Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.

And immediately they left their nets and followed him.

And going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets.

And immediately he called them.

And they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

Well, thanks be to God for his word to us today.

Mark 1, verse 1.

Mark 1:1

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

So what is the gospel?

Jesus did not have a surname.

Christ was not his surname.

You could not look him up in the Nazareth phone book under C.

He was Jesus the Christ.

The gospel presents to us a king.

Jesus the Christ.

Christ means king, and a king who is crowned by God.

Literally, the word means anointed one.

It's the same as the Hebrew Messiah.

For the Old Testament kings, they were anointed with oil rather than crowned.

And here is the Christ, a king crowned, anointed, sent by God.

And in the same breath, we are told of Jesus, he is not just the Christ, he is also the Son of God.

It's another way of speaking of God's King.

He is called the Son of God.

Now here we just have to think a little carefully, uh, Christian people.

We're not talking here about Jesus as the eternal second person of the Trinity, God the Son.

Forever he has been Son, uh God the Son, but the Son of God, the King.

Jesus, the man who came into this world and who was crowned as King in his death and his resurrection, the Son of God.

And we are told this is gospel.

And gospel means good news, but it does not just mean any old good news.

It does not mean good news as we might define good news.

It has to do with the reign of God.

God coming to reign with might to bring justice and with tenderness, like a shepherd to his sheep, through his king.

And that is the good news.

That is the gospel.

Here is the Christian gospel.

It's about authority, the authority of God, wielded by God's king, in order to bring about justice and judgment and to show kindness.

I hope we'll all enjoy uh reading through Mark's gospel this term.

One of the best things he could do would be to set aside an hour or an hour and a half and just read it cover to cover, 16 chapters.

Halfway through Mark's Gospel in chapter 8, there is a turning point moment.

The Lord Jesus turns to his disciple Peter and he says, Who do you say that I am?

And Peter confesses Jesus.

He says, You are the Christ.

Then, right at the very end of the Gospel, chapter 15, at the very foot of the cross, as Jesus died, there stands a pagan centurion who has just overseen the crucifixion.

And Mark records that as that man saw how Jesus died, he made a confession.

He said, Surely this was the Son of God.

So the Christ, the Son of God.

And Mark builds his gospel, the Holy Spirit, through Mark, builds his gospel around those two confessions.

Peter the centurion.

And he takes us on a journey in which he shows us Jesus and he shows us ourselves.

And he wants us to understand these questions.

Who is Jesus?

Why did he come?

And what does it mean to follow him?

And if we have those three questions in our mind as we go through Mark's gospel, we will take from it what the Lord wants to give us.

And where he wants to leave us is like Peter and like that centurion, confessing and following Jesus as Jesus really is, given the mission that he came to fulfill, and following him in the way that Jesus wants us to.

And as we work through the Gospel of Mark together, we will see the Lord Jesus in a world that is full of wickedness and full of brokenness.

And we will see what Jesus does with wickedness and brokenness and what he does with our longings for a different kind of world and our longings to be different kinds of people.

So these first 20 verses of Mark chapter 1, they begin to show us Jesus the King.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

And God gives us here, the Holy Spirit through Mark gives us here three voices, if you like, three voices that speak about Jesus.

The voice of the prophets, the voice of God the Father, and then the voice of Jesus Himself.

So let's listen to the prophets.

That's verses 2 to 8.

See in verse 2 these words, these really important words.

As it is written, as it stands written, as it has been declared by God to you in the prophets.

And he's talking about the prophets of the Old Testament, and we learn straight away, Jesus did not come from nowhere.

Jesus was promised in the Old Testament, and we cannot actually know Jesus properly unless we know the Old Testament, the first part of the Bible.

We're not to be New Testament only Christians.

And Mark gives us uh sound bites, significant sound bites from two prophets.

Verse 2, it's actually from Malachi, and then building on that, verse 3 from Isaiah.

I've just put those scriptures up on the screen.

I wonder if you can see.

I'm just going to read from Malachi chapter 3.

Malachi 3 · chapter mention

So this is this is 400 years before Jesus.

Uh God says, Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.

And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.

But who can endure the day of his coming?

And who can stand when he appears?

For he is like a refiner's fire.

Then I will draw near to you for judgment.

And the big message of the first part of the Bible, the big message of the Old Testament, this is God's world, and we belong to him, our creator, but it's a world of rebels.

And God is going to come in a holy judgment on those who have turned their backs upon him.

Then, Mark in verse 3, he gives us this quote from the prophet Isaiah, and this is where it's all driving.

Again, up on the screen, 700 years now before Jesus, Isaiah 40, a voice cries, In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Behold, your God comes with might, he will tend his flock like a shepherd.

He will gather the lambs in his arms.

So the Old Testament also said, Be ready for God when he comes.

And he comes with power and in judgment, but he also comes in loving power, like a shepherd, to weak and to foolish sheep.

And there we can see in a nutshell the character of the God of the Bible, the only God who there is.

He's both fearsome in holy judgment, he's like fire, but he is also full of kindness and love to his people, to his sheep.

And so, with the voice of the prophets in mind, we find ourselves, verse 4, on the banks of the River Jordan.

And there is this man, John the Baptist.

He is the promised messenger.

Remember, the Old Testament says a messenger will come, then God will come.

He's wearing the unmistakable uniform of an Old Testament prophet.

He was the last of the Old Testament prophets, really.

He's baptizing, well, certainly hundreds, maybe even thousands of people.

They're coming down to the Jordan, being baptized in water.

And it's a sign of sin being washed away.

You need to be washed clean because God is coming, God's King is coming.

And he's proclaiming with his words the same message that the sign signifies.

You need your sins forgiven.

Now I wonder if you notice the people he was baptizing.

We're told in verse 5 who they were.

They're people from Judea and all Jerusalem.

Now that means these were religious people.

These were the Old Testament church.

They were God's people.

And John the Baptist said to them, You need to be washed clean.

God's king is coming.

You are before him spiritually, morally dirty.

You have a kind of spiritual pedigree, but that is not going to save you.

Now, some folks, by the way, they get that terribly wrong.

I'm from a Christian family or a church-going background.

Surely that is enough to see me right with God.

And John the Baptist and the Bible says, no, it is not.

Jesus, only Jesus can save you.

And John says, when Jesus comes, he's going to do something like what I'm doing, but he's going to do something infinitely more wonderful.

He's going to baptize you, verse 8, with the Holy Spirit.

So this Jesus, when he comes, he is going to wield the Holy Spirit of God.

He's not just going to pour water, I don't know, maybe using a jug or a big uh a bowl.

He's not just going to pour water, he's going to pour the Holy Spirit, the God's uh God's Holy Spirit, in order to clean people of their sin.

And obviously, that is the deepest problem that any of us faces.

We live in God's world, but we break the law of God.

He calls us to love him and he tells us what that looks like.

He calls us to love our neighbor and he tells us what that looks like, and we fall short.

And even greater than the problem of sin is well, it's the judgment on sin that he must bring.

Like Malachi puts it, who can abide?

Who can endure the day of his coming?

So the message of Jesus, the Christian message, it is good news, it is gospel, but it only makes the slightest sense when we see the reality of our sin and God's judgment on sin.

Now we could think of that as the bad news, which shows us the good news, but actually the coming judgment of God is a wonderful thing.

Whatever we may say, whatever a person may say, deep down, we all long for sin and evil to be punished.

God has put that deep into our bones.

We long for justice to be done, for evil to be exposed and right it.

But judgment will begin with the household of God.

These people, they were the covenant people of God in the Old Testament, and they came out to John and He said, No, you need your sins dealt with.

So those people who went out to John, they teach us that the only safe way to God, it's when you go, end of verse 5, when you go confessing your sins, not holding out your credentials, not holding out your life or your achievements, not holding out excuses.

It was my family background that made me like that, or whatever that excuse might be, but confessing your sins.

And for such ones, the Lord Jesus came.

God's Christ came.

Let's listen next to God the Father.

So along comes this Jesus, and he comes to the crowd which is gathered around John the Baptist by the Jordan River, and he steps down into the water.

Now, I want you just to consider that for a moment.

Just pause and think.

Would you ever get into bath water that's just been used by someone who was filthy?

I don't know, scum and filth floating around.

Would you get into bath water that's just been used by someone you know has a skin disease?

Now, as Jordan, as the river Jordan flows, and you imagine these hundreds, if not thousands, of people coming down, it's as if the water of the Jordan would have been just filled with, polluted with sin.

Not actually, it doesn't work like that.

But the water of the Jordan polluted with sin.

And Jesus, he came to wash sin away.

He's the sin washer.

But the way he washes sin is by bearing sin.

That sin-bearing ministry, that ministry of taking others' sins away, it was actually begun in the waters of his baptism.

He stepped down into the water, into that filthy, sin-mired water.

And then as he comes out of it, well, heaven opens, the Spirit of God descends.

So here is the one, here is a king who possesses the Holy Spirit.

You can then pour him out.

And the voice of God the Father speaks to interpret this, to explain Jesus to us.

And he says, verse 11, You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.

And here, here is the first time since the Garden of Eden.

Here is the first man since man fell, of whom it can be said, God is totally and perfectly pleased with you.

It's a wondrous thing.

We sin, we offend against God's holy law.

We sin against each other.

We've got an almost infinite capacity, don't we, to let one another down, to do evil.

God the Father looks at Jesus and says, There is no sin in you.

With you I am well pleased.

I have perfect joy and delight in you.

You have my total approval for every fibre of your being.

And then, if you like, it's it's proven for us, those next couple of verses, as Jesus is driven into the wilderness.

Verse 12.

In the Bible, the wilderness is a place of sin and temptation, and Satan tempts him.

Jesus, will you not be like Adam, or like the nation of Israel, or like every other person who's ever lived?

Serve yourself, reject your God and Father.

And gloriously Jesus stands.

He's the perfect son, he's the perfect king.

So, all of us, we are to make sure that we are joined to this Jesus.

And he tells us in a few moments, in a few words, how that happens.

That so that when he comes again in final judgment and and puts all things right and deals with brokenness and judges wickedness, well, we will be safe in him.

He came early, if you like, in order to save.

He didn't come to pour out that final judgment, he came early to wash sins away, to take on himself the sins of his people.

So we are to make sure that we are joined to this Jesus so that his perfect life clothes us.

We come to Jesus with really filthy rags, and he takes those rags away and he gives to us his beautiful righteousness to cover us.

So we've listened to the prophets, we've listened to God the Father.

Let's listen now to Jesus.

Verse 15.

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel.

So hopefully we know, don't we, that the gospel, the good news, it is the rule of God through his King.

And Jesus comes, the Christ, the Son of God, the King.

He comes with might and holy judgment, but he also comes with kindness and grace like a shepherd's.

He comes to bring righteousness.

Now he comes with a sword, if you like, but he also comes to fix brokenness where there is sadness and pain.

And he tells us what we should do with this, Jesus.

It's to abandon self-rule.

Jesus would have all people everywhere abandon self-rule and repent and believe.

So repent it means to turn, to turn from living for self, turn to living for Jesus.

Jesus would say, Look, everything that you are and you have, I want you to put it at my disposal.

Your family, your job, your relationships, your money, your future, your dreams.

It's all at my disposal.

And he says, not just repent, but believe.

Take me at my words.

As he speaks to us and shows us what he is like, what we are like, what it means to follow him, we'll line up our lives behind that.

Take him at his word, believe in his word and its goodness.

And we're given this wonderful illustration in verse 16 and following.

We're to be like those first disciples.

They heard his voice and they followed.

And really, being a Christian is that simple.

They heard and they followed.

Because they realized, well, because God's Holy Spirit enabled them to realize that there was no one else like Jesus.

The one whose voice commanded them.

Well, he spoke with all of God's authority.

He spoke with all of God's holiness.

They knew here is the only person in the world who is clean.

Here was God's king, but who stood before them with tenderness and kindness.

The one who went down into the filthy waters of baptism and would go to the cross for such ones.

And they wanted to be with him.

He called them and they followed him.

Verse 18, it's an amazing line, isn't it?

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

They wanted to be with him, they knew they must be with him.

This Jesus who stepped into a world of wrong, a Jesus who, as you read on in the Gospels, he touched lepers, he was the friend of sinners, who hated evil, who brought life and light and restoration.

Wherever he went, it's like he brought a little bit of heaven on earth.

And he is still the same God and King.

We have many longings.

We all long for a happy ending.

For all of those longings, they are truly answered in and through and by the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is worth following all of our days.

Let's bow our heads.

I'm gonna pray.

Father in heaven, we do want to be like those first disciples who heard the voice of your son and followed him.

And we pray for each one of us that for the first time or the umpteenth time you would show us uh Christ in his authority and holiness and his judgment and in his kindness and his tenderness.

Would you move us to turn our backs on self and the world and turn toward him and to walk with him?

And we do pray for Jesus' name's sake.

Amen.