This past April I went to the West Coast Pastor’s conference. The teacher for the week was a man named Ken Bailey. He is an expert in the New Testament, but specifically in how Middle East traditions and customs are reflected in the New Testament. He lived in the Middle East, specifically in Beirut, for most of his life, teaching at a seminary there. His parents were missionaries in the Middle East as well, so he’s lived over there for most of his life. He knows the people, he knows the customs, and his insights into Scripture are helpful to me, and I hope, will be to you as well. Do you remember back in the 80’s there was a university professor kidnapped in Beirut? Ken Bailey was there at the same time, and instead of pushing against the society, he went to the local Shiite militias and asked what he could do to stay safe. They told him to stay low and they would protect him because he was a part of the community. So that’s a little about who Dr. Bailey is. Very good teacher, very good at taking something in the Bible and helping others understand the intricacies we miss because we are thousands of years and very different society than when the Bible was written, when Jesus life was committed to writing.
Dr.
Bailey is working on a book on Mark, and gave us at the conference a prototype
of his book. So I am deeply indebted to him, and as soon as the book is in
print I shall buy a copy. I haven’t gotten smarter, I’m just using a really
cool book to better understand what Mark is tying to convey to his readers. I’m
looking forward to this series in Mark very much. We’ll be going through Mark
for a while this year. Having said that, let’s get to the text, Mark 1:1ff.
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.” [1]
Let’s pray.
We’re going to be slowly going through Mark for a while.
As you may or may not have noticed, I like to help people understand the
Bible-I tend not to pull a theme out of a bunch of verses, and then skip to
another theme the following week somewhere else in Scripture. When the writers
of Scripture wrote, they were writing with a purpose, they were writing to
convince people of what they had seen, heard and went through. They were
writing to tell people the greatest news possible; the God had finally sent the
Messiah, and this is what He is like. He was like us, and yet He was so much
more than that. This is His story, the story of Jesus Christ, is what Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John would have said. So I tend to preach through books as
opposed to themes, which has its good and bad points, I guess. More than
anything, I want you to be excited about Scripture, I want you to read
Scripture, I want you to make it your story, and help you find yourself in the
great story of redemption we are offered in Jesus Christ, in His life, death
and resurrection.
I think it is bad to make Scripture confusing, I think
it is terrible to make Scripture boring and incomprehensible. So to that end, I
try to explain what is going on in Scripture, I try to explain what people back
then would have likely heard when Jesus taught, what assumptions they might
make in what Jesus did and said. So Ken Bailey is an important person for me to
study and reflect on what he says about Mark. So that’s where we’re headed for
a while; through Mark, slowly but surely, getting deeply into the story of
Jesus, the God who became man for us, for a little while. I feel the need to
tell you that Mark was an associate of Peter, and it is thought that Mark wrote
his gospel with Peter looking over his shoulder. Mark gets the stories of Jesus
right, but he isn’t concerning with the right timing or order of how things
happened. In Mark, and this is Ken Bailey talking, Mark organizes his gospel
thematically rather than chronologically. Even the early church Fathers
recognized that Mark is more grouped thematically than a straight story of
Jesus life. Jesus life is there, but in a more edited way than I had thought.
For those of you who understand these things, Bailey is convinced that Mark
wrote his gospel with Peter and what Bailey calls a “proto-Luke”, a first
version of Luke. Bailey theorizes Luke after his travels with Paul, and before
he travels with Paul to Rome, has 2 years in Jerusalem in which he could have
collected stories of Jesus, which Luke will turn into the gospel according to
Luke. Bailey theorizes that’s when the proto-Luke was collected, and then later
on edited with more stories of Jesus life to become Luke.
It’s an interesting theory-I’m not sure I’m completely
convinced, but I thought a few of you might want to know. For those of you who
understood nothing of that, it’s something I’d be happy to explain in more
detail later.
SO here we go, the beginning of Mark.The Story of Jesus
Christ, His teachings, life ministry of healing, His resurrection and the hope
found for all of us therein begins with John the Baptist, and the prophesy
about him from Isaiah.
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.
Mark starts off with the theme of beginning, just like
another place in the Bible. That’s right, “In the beginning God created the
Heavens and the earth…” Mark’s readers would have immediately identified the
connection Mark is making here, but they would have also noted that this is a
new beginning. It is not the beginning, but a new beginning, or as Jesus will
say later, it is a new covenant God is making with humanity…
Notice that John is described as a voice. He isn’t
something to look at, or better yet, gawk at. People didn’t go out to the
desert, make the long trip out of Jerusalem to go on vacation or to see the
sights. They went to hear a voice; the voice preparing the way for the coming
Lord. What the voice said to the people then is what we proclaim even now, make
straight the way for the Lord! Later on, Jesus Himself will say that the
kingdom of God is within us; and so it takes a radical repentance in order to
make straight the path in our hearts for the Lord to come in. John didn’t mince
words; he told people to repent, to mend their crooked ways, and demonstrate
that they are a new person by washing off the old in the Jordan River. If you
are well off, share with those in need. If you are a soldier, no looting the
population. If you collect taxes, collect only what is due. And Herod, leave
your brother’s wife alone.
I have the belief, based on Romans chapter 1, that
people know when they are sinning. They may not have a word for it, but when
they do wrong, they know. They know there is something really wrong with what
they do. Before we became Christians, before we made straight the paths in our
hearts, we knew the things we did were wrong. But we didn’t care. Then we met Christ.
And He helps us clean up our hearts. What John was calling the people in the
desert to was harder than what we do when we accept Christ into our hearts. They
didn’t know Christ; He hadn’t appeared yet. But they were still to straighten
out their hearts-get rid of the sin, get rid of the garbage we hold onto, all
the wrongs they were committing. We’re fortunate to know Christ, and have His
help in cleaning up our lives.
This is a man of God, is John, possessed by the Holy
Spirit from his birth to do one thing.
Prepare the way for the Messiah, the Lord Jesus to come into the world and find
people who are ready for a renewed, straightened path to God. The path to God
is going to run straight through Jesus Christ. And the start of that path for
everyone then, and everyone now is repentance. The laying down of the old self,
with the old ways, washing them away forever. So that is part of what is going
on in the text. But it gets deeper, because Mark starts comparing John’s
ministry to Jesus ministry. Let’s take a look at the next section.
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.”
There
is a parallel structure to this passage; the structure is repeated by Mark. The
parallel goes like this; identity, message, and then baptism; and then the
parallel starts over with identity, message and baptism again. Notice verse 4
identifies John the Baptist and tells us what his message was. His message was
preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Then in the
second sentence of verse 5, we learn they were baptized in the Jordan River. Note; this is a baptism
of repentance for sins. So remember, identity, message and baptism.
So
we move to verse 6. John again is identified, but what you don’t see here is
that he is identified as being a prophet like Elijah. Listen the description of
Elijah in 2Kings 1:7-8. The king asked
them, “What kind of man was it who came to meet you and told you this?” They
replied, “He was a man with a garment of hair and a with a leather belt around
his waist.” The king said, “That was Elijah the Tishbite.” So John is
further identified. He is not only John the Baptist, but he is a prophet like
Elijah, one of the most important prophets in the history of the Israelites.
Elijah also was a prophet crying in the wilderness, a prophet who served the
Lord well. So we’ve got the identity parallel down. Verse 7 carries John’s
message, his different message about Christ. One is coming who is more powerful
than me, I am unworthy to do the lowest of deeds before him. The message
repeats, but with more urgency. Repent, because someone is coming who is more
powerful than I. Then the last parallel, about baptism. Remember, John was
baptizing for the repentance of sins, but what John says about the one coming,
Jesus, is that He won’t baptize with water, but rather with the Holy Spirit.
I
used to think that Mark was hastily written, more thrown together to get
everything down about Jesus as quickly as possible. I’m not sure about that
anymore. There seems to be a real method to the text here. The people, all the
people in Israel would have heard about John the Baptist, but Mark is very
careful to point out that John was just a voice, just a signpost in the desert
pointing straight to Jesus. John baptized with water, symbolizing the inner
repentance of someone, but Jesus was going to send the Holy Spirit in the lives
of believers; to empower them, to encourage them, to straighten the path of
their hearts within them so that Jesus might come into their hearts and abide
there.
The
miracle of Mark, the miracle of Jesus Christ is that John wasn’t wrong. There
was someone coming, and in fact He was nearly there, whose sandals John was
unworthy to untie. Jesus Himself was nearly on the scene. He was nearly ready
to begin His ministry; God Himself, but fully human, was coming. We all are
unworthy of God’s attention, of God’s love. But He gives it anyway. The offer
stands for each of us; to accept God’s love through His Son, or to walk away.
And Jesus does still baptize with the Holy Spirit-as opposed to us. We baptize
with water, but most important baptism takes place when we submit our lives to
Christ and receive the baptism of the HS. There is nothing special we have to
do to receive the Spirit; no hoops to jump through, no perfection attained;
there is just us broken as we are, and in need of Christ’s forgiveness and
healing. In our broken lives Christ sends His presence, the Holy Spirit is
available for all who would submit their lives to Christ.
This
is the beginning of Mark’s good news, Mark’s gospel. It begins with
preparation, just like Mark is going to take us on a trip. It is a trip that
started in the OT with God making Himself known to Abraham in the burning bush,
goes through Jesus life and death. The story has yet to end; because we are
still living for Christ. We are a part of the great story of Christ’s
involvement in the healing of humanity. Mark reaches back into the OT to let
his readers know Jesus is the fulfillment of OT prophesy and hopes, and
describes John’s ministry in the desert as the important beginning. Mark
doesn’t tell the complete story like Matthew or Luke. He doesn’t start with
Jesus birth, but rather with prophesy and a voice in the desert calling for
repentance. Get ready for the ride, get ready for a trip. Get ready to meet the
personification of the prophesy of the OT; get ready to meet God.
So
today I want to invite you on a trip through Mark. We’ll be going through Mark
for the next few months; you all by now know that I prefer to preach through
book of the Bible rather than on themes extracted from various passages of the
Bible that are unconnected except by themes that pastors think up. I like
people to know what they are reading; how it all fits together, what the people
at the time of Christ would have heard and known what He taught them. I want
people to be excited about Scripture, and more importantly, I want you all to
understand it. We read Scripture with 21st century eyes; when there
is more depth to the text. To me, that’s exciting. For me, it makes the Word of
God come alive.
And
if there are things in your life that need to get straightened, Jesus is still
straightening lives out. Whatever that issue may be, whoever you may be, or
what you have done, repentance is available. To turn from the bad and turn
toward the right, and pray for Jesus help in doing that each day is what it
means to walk in Christ. It doesn’t mean we are perfect; it means we know Jesus
died for us and made things right between God and us. When we understand our
fortune at Christ’s presence in our lives, we live to please God. IF you need
to repent, and most of us do, we can take some time for that now.
Let’s
pray.