Sermon Tone Analysis

* *

*Wilderness*

*Mark 1:1-8*

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*1*The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

*2*It is written in Isaiah the prophet: 
   "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way” 
 *3*"a voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'

"*4*And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

*5*The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him.

Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

*6*John wore clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

*7*And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.

*8*I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

Introduction

 

The Gospel of Mark was the first written account we got of life of Jesus.

Why did Mark write the life of Jesus?

Why did other gospel writer write the life of Jesus down?

For about 30 years or so there were no written account.

The gospel was spread orally verbally.

One of the reasons why there were no written account for 30 years is because it was very difficult of any distortions of who Jesus really was because of the presences of eye witnesses.

For example in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul writs to the church of Corinth about 15 years after the death of Jesus.

He is writing to the church about resurrections and the meaning of resurrection and then he actually names the people who saw the resurrections of Jesus Christ.

And even at one point Paul states that there were 500 people whom Jesus actually appeared at one time.

And he says most of them are still alive and if you want talk to them go ahead and talk to them.

What Paul was saying within first 20 years it would be very difficult to just makeup about who Jesus was and things about Jesus because people actually saw him.

FOR example, you could not say “oh yeah I saw Jesus fly from one ministry to another because he was divine.”

And others would say no I lived and saw him and he never flied anywhere.

But when the eye witness died there arosed a problem of distortion.

*Illustration*: Me as a legion in Philadelphia Children’s retreat.

When a little girl said to Joe, “that’s pastor james…”

 

About one generation after apostles have died where most of the eyewitness were dieing then arose the problem and the *danger* of people who could decide who they wanted Jesus to be.

They could make up Jesus on their own.

They could lose touch with real Jesus.

Therefore the Gospel writers got together to pull life and stories to tell about *real Jesus* was.

NOW we need that desperately today.

Here is one of the reasons why, Jesus is most misunderstood person in history.

Everyone is interested in Jesus but on their own terms.

You see the Jesus you shape, Jesus you make up that fits in with your desire ironically cannot really change it cannot really transform you because its just you.

You made him up.

The Jesus you make up who does not have its own reality cannot change you.

If you want Jesus that can transform you.

You have to know the real Jesus

 

Mark is one of the best place to go to get striegn up Jesus

 

Mark is short to the point to get the actions and character of Jesus

Other Gospel talks more about Jesus.

No only you don’t have much teaching and commentary of Jesus you don’t have much teaching of Jesus.

We are going to look at mark for about a year.

*Who is Jesus*

Verse one he is Christ.

Now for many western world Jesus and Christ is one.

Not originally, Christ meant the anointed King.

The real Jesus is the king, what does that mean?

He was a king the son of God.

Even that is not precise because Bible can talk about man as sons of god and angels was also refer to sons of God.

Mark here in these 8 verse goes in-depth about who this king is.

1.

How he comes

2.     Where you meet him

3.

Where he is going

 

Verese 2-3

 *2*It is written in Isaiah the prophet: 
   "I will send my messenger ahead of you, 
      who will prepare your way” 
 *3*"a voice of one calling in the desert, 
   'Prepare the way for the Lord, 
      make straight paths for him.'

This is a bomb shell, in history in literature.

Is.

40 quotation, that someday the Lord will come to Jerusalem to show his Glory and a messenger to show the way for the Lord.

What Mark does is he identifies the messenger as John the Baptist that means Mark identifies the Lord as Jesus.

“Now what’s the big deal about this?” Well let me tell you what the big deal is,

 

There are two words for Lord, elohim and Yahweh (NIV identifies the difference for all capital for Yahweh).

Elohim is a general word for Lord

 

But if you go back to Is. 40 in its original Hebrew text.

Lord is Yahweh, it’s the personal covenant name God gave to Moses at the burning bush.

The personal name Jews consider so holy they did not speak it or write it.

And Mark is saying Yahweh of Israel the creator of universe; the ruler of the world has come to earth in form of Jesus Christ.

This is big real big.

This is answer to many years of philosophy

 

Let me you give you nutshell of history of philosophy.

Battle between back and forth which is more important

 

The ideal vs. the real

Particular vs. universal

Rationalism vs. imperialism

Aristotle vs. Plato

 

In Jesus Christ that is all over the IDEAL has become REAL.

The immortal become mortal

Totally invulnerable has become vulnerable.

The impossible has become possible

 

God becoming human in Jesus is the history altering, worldview shattering life transferring event set Christianity apart from any other religions and any other view and any philosophy in the world.

WOW… you say ok but I don’t believe it

 

So many people have said this and maybe you feel this way.

“Ok I understand primitive people where different they can believe this idea and I can understand the idea Jesus being great teacher and having divine conscience but I am modern contemporary sophisticated person and there are too many intellectual cultural barriers for me to believe that.”

Here is what the book of Mark is saying

 

Would you keep in mind that original believer were Jews including Mark and they have far more cultural barrier than you do than a God can be human than you do.

I said they were not allowed to speak the name or write the name of God and this is true even today with orthodox Jews.

This was against all of that… YET they did, something shattered those barriers.

And you ask what was that?

Mark says lets me show it to you.

Its what he said how he acted and what he did.

If you believe God became human in Jesus Christ and if you really take this truth it will change you.

Three ways: (quick)

1.

It can change the motivation of your heart.

We all have basic motivation that drives your heart that gets you out of bed in the morning that moves us to do what we do.

I use to think it was pursue of happiness but more and more I realize that its FEAR.

Fear of rejections fear of unknown.

a.

For most religion just enhances that fear.

Most religion God is out there.