Prelude to the King’s Arrival
Text: Mark 1:1-8
Core Idea: The gospel is not good advice; it’s the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. This good news begins with a messenger calling us to repent and pointing us to the Savior King, the only One who can cleanse, forgive, and transform us.
INTRODUCTION
Good afternoon, Lighthouse. It’s always good to worship the God we love with the people we love. I’m so glad that you joined us here in-person or online. I pray that all of us will be refreshed through His Word and through His Spirit. Today, we’re starting a new sermon series called “the Gospel of Mark.” As the name suggests, we’ll faithfully go through this book in its entirety – I don’t know how long it’ll take; but we’ll persevere through it. Now, why are we doing this? Why are we preaching through a whole book instead of coming up with topics that might be more “relevant”? Three reasons.
First, because it will greatly magnify the glory of Jesus Christ. The children’s story Bible that I read to Eli repeats this phrase: “Every page whispers His name” – and that’s exactly what the whole Bible is about. Jesus Himself said to the disciples on the road to Emmaus that all the Scriptures spoke of Him (Lk. 24:27). This means that not preaching through as many biblical texts as I can is to withhold certain aspects of His glory from you. Or to put it differently, to preach through as many books of the Bible as I can, to labor faithfully through the passages, is to reveal more of His glory to you.
Second, because it will foster patience, endurance, and commitment to the Word in the church. “All scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16). If we firmly believe this truth, then we shouldn’t hop around different topics or jump around texts simply to be more “relevant.” I know that some texts will be difficult to address; some texts may not feel so relevant; some texts, I would be tempted to skip. But as we wrestle with the Word together, I believe that we’ll learn to love every part of the Scripture. And this will remind us that what we think we need to hear may not be what we really need to hear. In other words, God will sovereignly work through each passage to speak into our lives – all we need to do is to be committed to the Word.
Lastly, because it will teach us how to interact with the Word. Let’s be honest; we often give up reading the Bible because we don’t understand or because we have difficulty applying the truth to our lives. As we wrestle through each passage, then, my prayer is that these sermons will show you, teach you how you can read, understand, and apply the truth on your own.
Then why the Gospel of Mark – why not other books in the Bible? I’ve been thinking a lot about what Pastor Tim Keller said, “The gospel is not just the ABC of the Christian life but the A to Z of the Christian life.” In other words, the gospel isn’t just the starting point for the believers; it’s the foundation, motivation, and power to all that we do. It’s literally the water we swim in. Do you recall our church’s vision? Lighthouse Toronto seeks to be a GOSPEL-shaped community sent out by God to glorify and enjoy Him forever. If we want to be this, we must first be shaped by the gospel. Then I want us to take time to thoroughly, intentionally, patiently go through this book so that we may know the gospel, be moved by the gospel, be convicted by the gospel, work out its implications so that we will be shaped by it individually but also collectively as a church.
Then before we dive into this book, I want to share something that Pastor Tim Keller said as a way to prepare our hearts. He recounts the moment when the Bible came alive in his life. He said, “Before the change, I pored over the Bible, questioning and analyzing it. But after the change it was as if the Bible, or maybe Someone through the Bible, began poring over me, questioning and analyzing me.” My prayer is that this is something that all of you will experience – may the Word of God come alive in you today. Then if you have your Bibles, please turn to Mark 1:1-8.
1 The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, 2 as 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 wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.’” 4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, 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 comes the one more powerful than I, the straps 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.”
Amen. This is the Word of God for you today.
I want to share three things from this passage:
THE GOOD NEWS OF THE KING
THE PREPARATION FOR THE KING
THE MINISTRY OF THE KING
1) THE GOOD NEWS OF THE KING
Let’s look at verse 1. “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God.” Without wasting any words, Mark gives us the summary statement for the entire book in a sentence: this is going to be about the good news of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. The Greek word for “good news” is evangelion, which is also often translated as the “gospel.” Then let me ask you: what is the gospel of Jesus Christ? You would think that this is an easy question to answer, especially for Christians. After all, the gospel stands at the very centre of our faith, and we Christians claim to be about the gospel in all that we do. Then let me ask the Christians again: how firm is your grasp on what the gospel really is? How would you answer if someone asked you: “What’s this news that the Christians go on and on about? What’s so good about it?” If you’re not sure, we’re glad that you’re here because that’s exactly what Mark wants to answer for us. As we go through this book, Mark is going to clarify for us what the gospel is not while deepening our understanding of the beauty and fullness of what the gospel is. He is inviting us to come and hear the good news.
We can still learn something about the gospel even from this summary statement – that the gospel is good news, not good advice. The gospel is not primarily a way of life though the gospel certainly impacts and transforms your life. It’s not something we do, but something that has been done for us. Advice urges us to make something happen, but news urges us to recognize something that has already happened – the recipients of the news cannot impact the outcome of the event; they can only respond to it. For example, let’s say that there’s an enemy army coming toward our city. What we need is military advisers; we need advice. Someone needs to come up with ways to defend, ways to position our soldiers, ways to bring resources in, ways to attack, and so on. But what if a great king intervened and defeated this invading army? Then we don’t need military advisers; we need messengers – messengers who will announce to the city, “Stop fleeing; stop trying to save yourselves; you don’t need to be in fear – the King has saved us.” And that changes everything. Mark tells us that the gospel is good news. The tragedy lies in the fact that in many churches, advice is often disguised as the gospel – messages filled with advice to help people improve their lives or feel good about themselves will not only confuse them, but it will lead them to greater despair and hopelessness. We don’t live to prove ourselves; Jesus makes us acceptable, presentable, desirable – and that news changes our lives.
Now, the gospel isn’t just any good news – it’s the good news about Jesus. Then who is Jesus? First, according to Mark, Jesus is the Messiah. The word “Messiah” is a Hebrew word (which is equivalent to the Greek word, “Christ”), and it means “the anointed royal figure” – the King who would come to rescue Israel from all its oppressors and bring this great victory over all nations. Second, Jesus is also the Son of God. It’s astonishing because Mark was claiming that Jesus who was a man, a human King, was also divine – the very Son of God. But Mark doesn’t end there; he goes on to quote Isaiah 40:3. “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.’” Mark identifies the voice in the wilderness with John the Baptist and the Lord mentioned here with Jesus. What’s the big deal about that? More than you think. If you actually go back and read Isaiah 40:3, you’ll see that the word “LORD” is all capitalized. This wasn’t done just to emphasize the word; it was to indicate that this was the Hebrew word for “Yahweh,” the personal name of God given to Moses. It’s the name that the Jews considered so holy that they didn’t even speak it. And here, Mark was saying Yahweh, the Creator God of the universe, the rightful Ruler and Judge of all the earth has come in the person of Jesus Christ.
This is incredibly mind-boggling because it means that this God who has no beginning and end, this God who created everything from nothing, this God who sustains and governs the universe, this God who has the authority to judge the world, this God who is the absolute standard of truth, goodness, and beauty, this God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, this God who is worthy of praises from all creation has come to dwell among us. It means that this unapproachable, transcendent God is now approachable, knowable – He has come so close to us that we can have an intimate relationship with Him. And that’s exactly what we see in the life of Jesus – as you read through the Gospel of Mark, it’ll become clear to us that He desires to be in a relationship with people. His goal wasn’t just to perform great miracles, accomplish His mission, and go back to heaven. He valued relationships which is why one of the first things He did was to create an intimate community of Twelve to do life together. They travelled together, ate together, laughed together, cried together, faced the storms and trials together, and celebrated the joys of life together. Brothers and sisters, one of the greatest implications of this good news is that Jesus, God Himself, desires to do life with you. He desires to be near you. He wants to know you and He’s inviting you to get to know Him. And this is just the beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ; how amazing, powerful, earth-shattering, life-transforming would the actual gospel be? This really is good news.
2) THE PREPARATION FOR THE KING
Let’s go back to verse 2: “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way’ – ‘a voice of one calling in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.”’” In the ancient world, when a king travelled to visit his people, they would prepare the way for the king. They would clear any obstacles on the path, sometimes creating a brand-new highway just for the king, so that the people could receive their king. Using Isaiah’s passage, then, Mark was reminding the readers that God Himself was coming to His people – when? Isaiah tells us that He would come when there’s a voice of one calling in the wilderness. Verse 4, “And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” John was the messenger, calling people to clear the road. In other words, Mark wanted people to know that the King was on His way.
Now, what strikes us right away is that John was not the kind of messenger you would expect for the Messiah King. Verse 6, “John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.” He had nothing about him that was attractive. He had no army with him, no music, no celebration of the King’s arrival. He came alone in the humblest way possible, and his message could be summarized into one word: repent. He came to call people to deal with the sin and evil in their hearts as a preparation for the King. It’s one thing to say, “The king is coming; clean up the roads, prepare a feast, get the musicians, prepare a gift for the King, get ready to celebrate!” At least these are the things that we could do if we try. But how do you deal with the sin in your hearts? Unlikely appearance, unlikely diet, unlikely message for someone who represented the King of kings – but maybe this was simply foreshadowing how unlikely the coming King will be as well – that He wasn’t going to be the kind of King that people expected, wanted, but more on this in our next point. Let’s look further into John’s ministry.
John the Baptist, as his title suggests, baptized people. Now, this isn’t so strange to us, because baptism has become an integral part of the church today. But this scene would’ve been shocking for the people coming out to see John. Let me explain. One of the major features of the first century Jewish worship was the washings, cleansings, and ceremonies which happened all the time. If you touched something that was unclean, you would have to be made clean by washing yourself. If you had certain types of disease, you would have to go through some kind of rituals to be cleansed. If you’re going to the temple, you had to wash your whole body in order to be presentable. What the washings represented was that you had to be made clean, pure in order to be able to stand in the presence of this holy God. It was a ritual of confession and for the purification of sin – but they were not baptisms. In fact, the word “baptism” is a uniquely Christian word – according to R.T. France, Christians basically invented this word. Two things to note here. First, even though the idea of washing to make yourself clean has been done for centuries, it was always self-administered – you always did it to yourself. But for the first time in history, John the Baptist says, “No, I have to baptize you. You’re going to have to receive this from the hand of another.” It was as if he was foreshadowing the fact that you cannot save yourself – true cleansing must come from someone else. Second, the only time when someone was fully immersed into water in the Jewish tradition was when a gentile wanted to become a Jew. This was necessary in order to symbolize this clean break with the impurities of the gentile world and embracing of the OT covenant. Then do you see why this was so shocking, controversial, offensive? Because John was baptizing not only the gentiles but also the Jews. There was no different process for the Jews. Both Jews and gentiles, young and old, male and female, the rich and the poor, those who were educated and those who weren’t – it didn’t matter who you were; everyone needed to be cleansed for this new King.
All of us are trying desperately to make ourselves clean, acceptable. We want to be liked by others; we want to be recognized, acknowledged, noticed. We want to be loved. And that’s what really drives us to succeed, gather power, or try to associate with a certain group of people. And we would even give up many things to get that – we will sacrifice relationships, physical health, wealth, sense of dignity just for the acknowledgement or for the approval. Yet we know that those things will never bring that sense of peace because those things can always be taken away anytime – nothing is forever – which means that your effort to be acceptable, loved will never cease. It’s an endless work that will only lead to despair and crushing of your hearts. Pastor Paul Carter said, “Part of evangelism is getting people to doubt their damning certainties.” Friends, if you are trusting in anything other than Jesus to make yourself presentable, acceptable, desirable, lovable, then let me ask you, “Are you sure? Are you sure they’re enough? Are you sure they’ll complete you, make you acceptable, save you?” If you have even the slightest doubt, I invite you to hear what John is saying: repent.
What is repentance? The Greek word for “repentance” is metanoia, which literally means “change of mind,” but biblically, the word always spoke of a change of purpose, and specifically turning from sin. This is really important to understand because repentance is not merely shame or sorrow for sin (although genuine repentance always involves an element of remorse); it’s a redirection, reorientation in your mind, your heart, and your life through faith. Tim Chester helps us to understand this better – he says, “How do we repent? We repent through faith… turning to God in faith and from sin in repentance are the same movement. Try it now. Stand facing the window. Then turn to face the opposite wall. The act of turning from the window and turning towards the wall is one movement. You can’t turn towards the wall without turning away from the window. And you can’t turn to God in faith without turning away from sin in repentance.” In other words, repentance and faith are two sides of the same gospel coin; it’s one movement made possible by grace. Then when John calls people to repent, he’s not only calling them to confess their sins, acknowledge that their ways are wrong, but ultimately calling people to turn to the King, submit to the King, follow the King, love the King, and glorify the King. I really want to emphasize this point because many of us have a distorted understanding of repentance. We think to ourselves, “If I feel sorry enough, get angry enough at my sin, then God will forgive me” – all at the same time, questioning if we were truly forgiven. No, this is not repentance. It’s just feeling sorry for yourself. True repentance doesn’t leave you in guilt and shame; it leads you to freedom, joy because there’s forgiveness of sins readily available for us through Christ. You see, repentance is a gift from God, because it compels us to turn away from the fleeting promises of sin and turn to the enduring promises of the gospel – Christ Himself. Brothers and sisters, the way we prepare for the King is to repent of our sins. Have you repented? Are you repenting? I invite you to prepare the way for the Lord.
3) THE MINISTRY OF THE KING
Let’s read verse 8, “I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’” John shares that he will baptize with water, but the One coming after him will baptize with the Holy Spirit. What’s the difference? Baptism with water is an outward washing that symbolizes the cleansing of your sins. It will bring awareness to your sin, but it will not actually cleanse you. But baptism with the Holy Spirit is an inward washing that will actually cleanse you and transform you inside out. Water can touch your skin, but the Spirit can touch your heart. Baptism with water symbolizes God’s promise in your life but baptism with the Holy Spirit results in God’s presence in your life. In other words, He doesn’t come to fulfill your dreams or to eradicate all your suffering and pain; He doesn’t come to bring you victory and safety from all your enemies; He doesn’t come to make you rich and give you a comfortable life – Jesus comes to cleanse you, forgive you, transform you inside out, and to bring you the very presence of God in you. An unlikely messenger but also an unlikely King – but this is what He comes to accomplish.
Let me help you process this by sharing that the Gospel of Mark is the first written account of the life of Jesus – it was written around 50-60 A.D., which meant that until then, there were no written accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Not that there were no accounts of Jesus, there were – but they were being passed down orally. Then let me ask you: why do you think Mark decided to write the life of Jesus down? Why didn’t he just leave it to be passed down orally? Because the stories were being distorted, because the stories no longer presented the real Jesus. One of the reasons why it was difficult for any distortions to be made on the accounts of Jesus in the first 30-40 years after His ascension was because of the presence of the eyewitnesses. It was very difficult for someone to just make up things about Jesus because so many people were around who were actually there, who knew Him, and they would deny any false claims. But when the Apostles and the eyewitnesses were dying off, problems arose – people were able to fabricate, distort the stories, and it was hard to refute them, which meant that it would’ve been really difficult to know the real Jesus. Anyone would’ve been able to make up a Jesus of their own. So, Mark pulled together these records of Jesus from Peter’s memories so that we could have the real Jesus – not a Jesus we make up – but the real Jesus as He really was, what He really said, and what He really did.
Why is this important to know? Because some of us may be tempted to create our own versions of Jesus by picking and choosing the stories of Jesus. You may want to focus on His love, but not His judgment. You may want Him to be your friend but not your Lord. Friends, Jesus may not have been the King you expected; but He’s the King you need. And even more, when you really get to know Him, the real Jesus, you’ll see that He’s the most beautiful, desirable, glorious King you’ll ever meet. He will satisfy you; He will complete you; He will save you.
Now, how does Jesus accomplish this – how does He cleanse us? Mark will tell us more in the rest of the book, but we see a glimpse of it in verse 3, “Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.” Jesus is on His way to something. It’s true that He was making His way to His people as their King, but there was still this huge obstacle that divided Jesus from His people. This obstacle was so significant that no one was able to remove it – I’m talking about sin. Then how does anyone remove sin from their hearts? One commentator writes, “In Mark, the way of God is ultimately the way of Jesus to the cross.” Then here’s a King who’s not on His way to the throne; He’s on His way to the cross – willingly and joyfully, facing His own death. It was a way to this humiliating death, agonizing death, lonely death. Yet, He went to the cross so that He could free us from the penalty and power of sin in our lives, so that this obstacle could be removed for us to receive this King. Friends, do you know this Jesus? He died for you so that you could receive Him, so that you could be forgiven, cleansed, and have life and life to the full – you can stop fleeing; you can stop trying to save yourself; you don’t need to be in fear – the Savior King is coming. All you need to do is repent.
This is only the prelude to His arrival. Next week, we’ll get to meet Him.
CONCLUSION
Let me finish by sharing this. Early Christians used one symbol to mark the tombs of believers or to designate secret meeting places because of Roman persecution. It was sometimes signed in sand to distinguish a friend from an enemy. Even more, it captured beautifully the identity and mission of Jesus. No, I’m not talking about the cross; I’m talking about the fish. The Greek word for fish is ICHTHUS. And the early Christians formed an acrostic from these letters. I = Iesous (Jesus); CH = Christos (Christ); TH = Theous (God); U = UIOS (Son); S = SOTER (Savior) – which comes out to be “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.” The symbol of the fish immediately brought to the believer’s mind the good news of Jesus Christ.
Lighthouse family, the gospel is not good advice; it’s the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. This good news begins with the King’s messenger calling us to repent; but he has also pointed us to the Savior, the only One who is able to cleanse us, forgive us, and transform us. Then let us prepare the way for the King so that we may receive Him.