Sermon Tone Analysis

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

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:

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

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.

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:

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:

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!

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”:

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:

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:

He has come to us in glory, as it is written:

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:

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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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!