A Voice Crying Out
Gospel of Mark • Sermon • Submitted
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· 13 viewsMark begins his good news about Jesus the Messiah with the voice of his herald, John, declaring that the Messiah would come in power to change the world!
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Welcome
Welcome
Good morning,
How awesome is it that we can assemble together like this to praise our God and fellowship together as those redeemed by the blood of his Son? We get to hear the living word through which God has spoken to his people over the span of two millennia to cleanse their hearts, renew their minds, and guide their lives.
You and I as God’s people have a mission, and that’s why we assemble here. To stand in his presence. To see the vision of his word. And to be equipped together for the mission given to us by our Lord. We worship him as one body redeemed by the blood of the Lord! Amen?
We have a great privilege to “Go Deeper” in our study of God’s word each week so that we can build our life upon the rock of his word. And if life teaches us one thing, it’s that when the storm comes, you better already be prepared: our morning Bible class is meant to help prepare us with God’s word so that we can stand when the storm beats down on our life. So I want to invite you to come get equipped with God’s word to handle life as citizens of God’s Kingdom!
Assignment
Assignment
Each week I tell you what we’re covering next week so you can “read”, “meditate on”, and “pray through” the text. And there's a good reason for this.
Jesus taught his disciples how to grow spiritually:
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
So my reason for telling you in advance what we’re covering so that you can “read”, “meditate on”, and “pray through” the text is so that you can seek the Lord, grow in him, and be part of shaping the vision and carrying out the mission of this church. We become spiritually stagnate when we stop “asking”, “seeking”, and “knocking”; when our prayer life dwindles to mere requests, when we stop seeking to know God intimately, and when we stop diligently pursuing his Kingdom.
So I’m taking this brief time to encourage you to be part of seeking the Lord as he speaks to us through Mark’s gospel. Set aside some time throughout the week. Perhaps one day you read the text. Another day, you might spend some time free from distractions just meditating on the word. And then take a day to spend some time praying from the word that you have now read and meditated upon. Okay?
So, for next week, please read: Mark 1:9-20
Prepare the Way
Prepare the Way
I want you to imagine that you’re sound asleep:
Suddenly the door bursts open and a bright light shines in your face, and with it you hear a loud voice, breaking in on your dream-world, shouting, ‘Wake up! Get up! You’re late!’ You’re one of the keynote speakers introducing Elon Musk at the ground-breaking ceremony for a new Tesla plant being built in your city. This plant means thousands of new jobs, a flood of new investment for your community, and an opportunity to be part of the future! You were up late into the early-morning hours preparing for this and must have fallen asleep; you’re supposed to meet Elon Musk, and now you’re late! Time to stop dreaming and face the most important day of your life.
That’s what the opening of Mark’s gospel is like: it’s how Mark tells us what John the Baptist was like for the Jewish people of his day. John’s ministry burst in upon the surprised Jewish world. Many had been looking for a sign from God, but they hadn’t expected it to look like this rough camel-hair-wearing prophet. Of course, everyone wanted their Messiah to save them from Rome’s oppression, but they weren’t anticipating a prophet who would tell them to repent; they wanted their Messiah to lead them against Rome in military and political victory!
John was a voice - shouting across the dreams of Herod’s and Caiaphas’ Judaism - which had given the people, again and again, the story of their freedom, but which had no idea what that freedom would look like when it came. And his message was the bright light shinning in their face to wake them up from their slumber so that they could see clearly what God was doing in their midst.
So let’s look closer at this voice crying out into the wilderness: Mark 1:1-8.
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Mark’s opening verse tells us what his message is all about: this is the beginning of the good news of Jesus the Messiah, God’s son.
Now we might miss the intense colors with which Mark paints this scene, but what Mark is getting us to do with this abrupt beginning is to sense the shock of the new thing God was doing in their midst.
It’s like how when you’re sick or unable to sleep much the night feels like it’s dragging on forever. Israel felt that way: they’ve been waiting expectantly for their Messiah, they’re ready for him to come, but they’re also weary from the wait. And just like when you’re sick and the night is dragging on, right as you finally start to doze a little bit, what happens but the alarm goes off. That’s the mood here: Israel has been waiting for the morning star to dawn, but has grown weary from the long and restless night, and then suddenly, loudly, and almost without warning, John the baptist bursts onto the scene to shake them awake!
This raises an important question for us: where are we asleep today, in our churches, our communities, and in our personal lives? We would do well to privately ask ourselves if we have, perhaps, begun to doze a little as the night draws on. What might it take to wake us up? Sometimes when I’m meditating on passages like this, these are the things that lead me into deep prayer in seeking God to reinvigorate my soul and enliven my spirit again!
Mark actually records Jesus speaking to this very question later on in his gospel:
33 “Watch! Be alert! For you don’t know when the time is coming. 34 “It is like a man on a journey, who left his house, gave authority to his servants, gave each one his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to be alert. 35 Therefore be alert, since you don’t know when the master of the house is coming—whether in the evening or at midnight or at the crowing of the rooster or early in the morning. 36 Otherwise, when he comes suddenly he might find you sleeping. 37 And what I say to you, I say to everyone: Be alert!”
So, beginning the good news of Jesus the Messiah this way teaches us that “spiritual alertness” is central to the nature of the gospel itself!
So Peter teaches:
7 The end of all things is near; therefore, be alert and sober-minded for prayer.
8 Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour.
How many in Jesus’ day, perhaps because of their spiritual weariness, were not ready to receive the good news of their Messiah because they were not alert to what God was doing among them? Even so, let us be alert to what God is doing among us right now as we prayerfully await his return!
2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you; he will prepare your way. 3 A voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight!
The fulfilment of God’s word is where the good news finds its beginning: John’s voice sreaming out from the wilderness is the beginning of the good news because he was the sign that God was being faithful to his word to come and save humanity! He was announcing that their hopes were being fulfilled and God had come in power to make for them a new beginning!
Malachi’s and Isaiah’s prophecies combined here in a striking way: Mark is drawing on Jewish imagery of freedom from the Old Testament, and using these images to point his story in the same direction: we have “the messenger” imagery that Malachi used to draw on the story of the angel that God set before Israel during the time of their journey into the promised land, and we have “the wilderness”, which, in Jewish thinking, recalled the days when God’s presence was always with them and the hope for new beginnings.
One of the chief promises Israel cherished for centuries was that YHWH was going to reenact the Exodus story all over again, this time finally setting his people free once and for all, and coming to live personally with them. He would be with them; he would be their God, and they would be his people.
How would God do this? Answering this question is where things got complicated for Israel: in the original Exodus story, God’s presence was in the pillar of cloud and fire. But it’s clear from the teachings of Israel’s Rabbi’s that they well understood that things were going to look different.
One of the stories that every Jewish child, boys and girls, were taught to memorize was the story of Elijah’s journey to Mt. Horeb.
God’s presence came to Elijah:
First there was a great and mighty wind, but the LORD was not in the wind
Then there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake
Next there was a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire
Finally, there was a soft whisper; the presence of the LORD was with him
So Israel was expecting that this time God’s Spirit himself would live with people, in people, becoming the air they breathe and the fire in their hearts, so to speak. These were indeed the promises they had lived on for centuries, yearning for God to finally fulfill his promises. But, of course, expectations matter don’t they? How they were expecting the Lord to pour out his Spirit upon them looked nothing like what God had in mind to do. And it was in the disconnect between their expectations and what God did that the trouble would come.
So John bursts onto the scene and says these promises are now coming true! But are they ready for it? Can they trust God to fulfill the things their hearts had yearned for even if he doesn’t do it how they were expecting?
But the simple high point of these prophecies is in “whose way” John’s wilderness character prepares: “prepare the way of the LORD”:
3 A voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight!
1 “See, I am going to send my messenger, and he will clear the way before me. Then the Lord you seek will suddenly come to his temple, the Messenger of the covenant you delight in—see, he is coming,” says the Lord of Armies.
We are not the first to notice that this messenger comes to prepare the way of YHWH himself, although it certainly was incomprehensible to their thinking that the divine could be veiled in human flesh the way God took on flesh in the incarnate Son.
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But this is the very heartbeat of our good news:
18 No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.
You see? The messenger of the covenant you delight in is the Lord himself, whose temple you are, and in whom he has promised to dwell. Jesus has come to reveal the Father, whom no one has seen, to all humanity!
Jesus has reestablished the connection between the glory of God’s throne and humanity:
3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
He has come to us in glory, as it is written:
5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Yet by his powerful word he sustains all things and has purified us from sins to sit down at the right hand of the Majesty on high and reconcile God to humanity again!
So it’s for this reason that the apostles cared so much that we understand Jesus:
8 Be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ. 9 For the entire fullness of God’s nature dwells bodily in Christ, 10 and you have been filled by him, who is the head over every ruler and authority.
You see? This is good news. God himself has finally come to humanity to fulfill his promises. And John was the herald announcing to them that these things were finally happening in their midst!
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4 John came baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins. 6 John wore a camel-hair garment with a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.
John challenged Israel. And his challenge had a sharp edge to it because he was not only telling them that someone was coming - coming very soon - but also that they weren’t fit to receive him, so they needed to get ready!
This is like the story of our opening illustration: someone important - maybe someone like Elon Musk - is coming to your town, but you’re not ready. It’s time to kick things into high gear and quickly rush around smartening things up. John was like the messenger going ahead of royalty, getting everyone everywhere ready for the one coming after him.
Since the days of Malachi the prophet, Israel had believed that all prophecy had ceased. So when John shows up speaking with authority like a prophet, he roused the whole Judean countryside. They were excited! And he was powerfully effective in opening people’s eyes to what God was doing. He woke them up, so to speak, to what God was doing in their midst and in their time!
But John’s ministry wasn’t an ends to itself, but pointed to another.
7 He proclaimed, “One who is more powerful than I am is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
And just who did John think this “someone” was? Well, it’s not entirely clear to us who he thought this someone was, and perhaps it wasn’t clear even to him. Some of the other gospel writers seem to reveal some of John’s own struggles on this matter. He may well have thought it would be YHWH himself, or he may have thought it would be the person of the Messiah, or he may have understood the unimaginable that this “someone” would somehow even be both. But what we know is clear is that John believed what he was doing with water to baptize people in repentance, the Coming One would do with the Holy Spirit to truly turn God’s people away from their sin.
Just as Peter preached:
19 Therefore repent and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped out, 20 that seasons of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus, who has been appointed for you as the Messiah.
26 God raised up his servant and sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your evil ways.”
So John’s rugged wilderness character is like the voice screaming out from the wilderness that the hope Israel had longed for was soon arriving to set the world right again. He was, as it were, shinning a bright light in their face to wake them up. And once they woke up, they found that they weren’t fit for the One who was soon coming after John! So John was telling them to “get ready”!
A Voice Crying Out
A Voice Crying Out
John’s wilderness character drives home some lessons that we must take to heart:
First, like Israel in his day, the world needs a voice screaming out from the wilderness that there is hope because Jesus is coming to set the world right again; we will have a new beginning! The darkness we see today is not the end of the story. One is coming who will wipe away every tear and make all things new.
Jesus called us to be this witness in the world:
14 “You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Second, John shakes us awake by forcing us to hear his clarion call for repentance, that we get ourselves ready for the One who is coming! We have to ask ourselves, where are we asleep today, in our churches, our communities, and in our personal lives?
We have received the living Spirit of God with grace so we might become heirs of eternal life:
6 He poured out his Spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life.
Let us awake to this reality more and more every day, and let us now live lives aware of our what the one John proclaimed has done for us:
1 Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, 2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, 3 making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
34 Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.
If you feel God’s conviction in your life right now and need someone to talk to or pray with, or if you want to respond to the gospel today and begin your journey as a follower of Christ, I invite you to come forward as we stand to worship God!