November 20, 2022

MARK 1:1-8
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way,
3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”
4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
5 And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
6 Now John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.
7 And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.
8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

So beginning here for verse one, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now, last week, we took a look briefly at just a couple of those names there: Jesus, Christ, the Son of God. And we just took note of the fact that that's kind of the theme of the gospel of Mark―is to show Jesus as not only the human, that he is Jesus, but also the office that he holds: the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah. But not only that, also show Him as the Son of God.

So to show this man Jesus as fully completely human, we said last week, that Mark will show in his Gospel a portrait of Jesus that is more human than any of the other gospels. And not only to show him as this human that he is, but also show him as the Anointed One, the Christ. And that will come to us in the great declaration of Peter, as Peter declares―you are the Christ. But also to show him as the Divine One, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And that's really the theme that Mark's gonna carry through, is this human Jesus is the Son of God. We'll see that declared numerous times throughout the gospel, particularly as these demons that are possessing people, they will see Jesus, or hear Jesus, they and they will say―we recognize you, you are the Son of the Most High, you are the Son of God. And then all this culminates, of course, at the end of chapter 15. When the Roman of Romans―the centurion―because remember, Paul (or I’m sorry), Mark is writing this to the Roman Christians. So the culmination the capstone, so to speak of this gospel is at the very end of Chapter 15, when the Roman of Romans says―upon seeing the human Jesus die―he declares, surely this man was the Son of God.

So that's what we're leading up to. So that's what we talked about last week. But this week, let's go back to verse one here, and let's pick up on this phrase that reads―the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

So the beginning of the gospel, we could take that two different ways. We could take that to understand that this is just an introductory sentence to begin the book with―This is the beginning of the gospel according to Mark. But a better way to understand that would be not as an introductory phrase to the book, but as an introductory sentence to the ministry of Christ. This is the beginning of the gospel. This is the beginning of the good news―not the book of Mark―but the beginning of the good news.

So Mark sees the beginning of this Good News of Jesus, not where Matthew or Luke begin at, or even John, with these birth narratives, or the miraculous conception of John the Baptizer. Or, or the shepherds or the wise men, or even the stories of Jesus in the temple as a 12-year-old boy, or where John begins at, way back in eternity past. Instead, Mark places the beginning of this good news with the ministry, the arrival on the scene of John the Baptizer, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Verse two―as it's written, and then he goes into this prophecy from the prophet Isaiah. So the beginning of this gospel is the beginning of the good news is the arrival of John the Baptizer. So John, the baptizer must come first, as we know, and he comes before the anointed one before the Christ. And anyone who lived in this day would, of course, recognize the significance of difficulty of this. Because the King is coming. And the King requires a Heralder. In fact, if you look at verse four, that word that's translated in the English Standard is translated proclaiming, that's literally the word Herald, is the word that we get our word Herald from. And that's what John is, he's the Heralder of the King.

So living in this day, we really don't have a connection to royalty, or kings and queens, so to speak. We live in a culture, we have a government that that, eschews royalty. We don't understand royalty in our country today. Even in our world today, we've largely lost the concept of royalty, but in the world in which John lived, it was a world in which they had certainly not lost the concept or the understanding of royalty of kingship. And in Mark's world, it would have been a world in which everyone knew that wherever the king went, a herald went before him. The king went nowhere without a herald announcing―the King is here, the king is coming. And this is what John's role is, is to announce that the king is coming.

And also as we read here: to prepare for the king's arrival. So again, verse one, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, verse two, as it is written in Isaiah, the prophet. So here, we come up against the first―and I'm gonna use air quotes―to a problem of Mark's gospel. So when we read our Scriptures, we have this thing called, well, you could call a number different things, critical scholarship, you might call it that, of our New Testament Scriptures, or of all the Scriptures. In fact, what that basically means is there are a lot of people who are anti-theists, anti-supernaturalists, non-believers―who like to point out―and again, the air quotes―”problems” with the Scriptures. They may be textual problems, they may be manuscript problems, a number…they may be, supposed contradictions in the Scripture. So as we come to the Gospel of Mark, we are coming to probably the book of the New Testament that has the most of the supposed “problems.” And here we come across, just in the second sentence, we come across the first supposed “problem” of―by the way, none of these problems have I ever, not found an answer for so there's nothing to concern us nothing to worry us―but nevertheless, there are a lot of people who don't believe in the divine authorship of Scripture, who like to point out things in the text to say―see here, this just shows us that this is not written by God, this was written by people.

And the first one that we come into in the Gospel of Mark is this one where the text says that as prophesied by the prophet Isaiah, and then we're going to read the prophecy after this from verse two. The prophecy is Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, et cetera. So the problem is, Isaiah didn't say that. The problem is Malachi said that. Isaiah said, What begins after that―who will prepare your way the voice of (I'm sorry), beginning with the voice, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way the Lord make His path straight.

So the supposed “problem” is―Mark can't even get his quotation straight. Mark is so confused that he doesn't even know who he's quoting here. He says he's quoting Isaiah. But in reality, the first part of that quotation comes from the Prophet Malachi. Malachi chapter three, verse one. The second part of the prophecy comes from Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 40. verses three through five is the full prophecy there. So this man Mark can even so much as get his citations straight. So certainly, we can't listen to anything that he has to say to us about some divine being named Jesus, if you can't even get straight, which Prophet he's quoting.

So you see the logic there. The problem―as most often is, the problem is―that we are in that sense, applying 21st century standards to first century writers. Today, living in the 21st century, when we are writing something and we cite a quotation, then we are expected to cite the quotation fully and properly. Not so in Mark's world. In fact, in the world in which Mark lived, it was customary―this is this is a well-established custom of Mark’s day―in which the Scriptures would be quoted in such a way that melded together Scriptures from different parts of the Scripture, but the citation of the Scripture was only given to the largest portion. That was common in Mark's day. Matthew does it in Matthew 27. Jesus does it. The Old Testament does it. It was a common practice of the day.

It went something like this: The believers in Marks day, most often were so well-acquainted with the Scriptures that they would oftentimes cite the Scriptures in such a way―they would take a part from here, and a part from over here and a part from over here, and put them together to make one cohesive thought. And the custom of the day was just to simply say, well, where the bulk of that came from, that's…that's easily demonstrable, through the writings that we have from antiquity and from the biblical writings and from extra biblical writings.

So what Mark is essentially doing here is he's giving this quote from two prophets put together, the smaller quote comes from Malachi, the larger one comes from Isaiah, and he only cites Isaiah. So just kind of give an example of what this would sound like today, if I were to do something like this, it would kind of go something like this. If I were to say to us―follow the train of thought here―if I were to say to us, the Bible teaches us in Philippians, two, verse three and four, that we are to love our neighbor, we are to love our brothers, by not considering ourselves more important than them, but instead to consider them more important than us.



So you see what I did? I quoted Philippians two verse three, and four, but I began the quote, with another quote from Scripture that I didn't cite, but I put them together into one thought. That was common to do in Mark's day that was common to do in Jesus's day. This is all Mark is doing.

The writers of our Scriptures, the people who live in Jesus did that those who are followers of Yahweh in Jesus' day in Mark's day, were so well acquainted with the Scriptures, that they could grasp a cohesive thought from different parts and put that together, and just sort of put it out there. Paul does this all the time. Paul is constantly quoting the Old Testament. And he's constantly taking sort of this thought from over here. And this thought from over here, it puts them together into one cohesive thought that was how the writers of our Scripture handled the Scriptures. And so it presents no problem whatsoever that Mark doesn't say―the prophets Malachi and Isaiah. He just simply says the prophet Isaiah.

So here's the thought, from Malachi, and Isaiah, he says, Behold, my I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord make his paths straight. And, the final line from out from Isaiah chapter 40, that's not included here is―and the uneven ground shall become level and the rough places plain.

So let's spend a few moments just looking at this prophecy, why this prophecy is connected to John the Baptizer. And what this means for John's preparatory work for the Messiah, because this is what this passage is all about, is John's preparatory work, John's preparing for the Messiah to come.

So we see here that this prophecy, and Mark's not the only one that connects this with John the Baptizer. In fact, all the gospel writers connect this with the baptizer. This prophecy from Isaiah―the voice of one crying in the wilderness, let's just look take a look at it from a new notes from Isaiah itself. From Isaiah chapter 40, verses three through five, a voice cries―and here's what the voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the desert highway, a desert, a highway for our God, every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain and hill shall be made low and uneven ground shall become level and the rough places plain.

Alright, so the imagery that Isaiah is using here is the imagery of road building. Picture in your mind, like this bulldozer that's making a road through the desert, a road for the Messiah to come on. So the prophecy here comes from the Prophet, mainly from the prophet Isaiah, the introductory thought was―I send my messenger before your face to prepare the way. So notice who the way is being prepared for. The way is not prepared for us. The way is being prepared for ultimately, Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God, the way the that John is preparing, is not our way, it's his way.

So the preparation is being made for Messiah. And the preparation is given to us in terms of roadbuilding. So the original prophecy taken back to Isaiah chapter 40, comes from the context of the exiled people of God who had been in their disobedience, they've been exiled into Babylon. And Isaiah who's prophesying before the exile took place, he's prophesying of the day in which God will bring home the exiles. And this prophecy is saying to them, there's coming this day when the Lord will bring his people home. And so therefore, we need to make the way for this to happen. We need to make a way like this road-building way. We need to level the mountains, we need to raise up the valleys we need to make the uneven places nice and flat. We need to make a way for Yaweh to come to bring his people home.

So notice, first of all how a prophecy that's about God the Father, that's about Yaweh, is without any tension at all applied to Jesus himself. So the prophecy as spoken from Isaiah was about God, but here Mark gives the prophecy in connection to Jesus with a perfect connection between the two. Another criticism that's often leveled against the gospel of Mark, is that Mark did not believe Jesus to be divine, which is absolute hogwash. I just showed you right here. In Mark's mind, a prophecy about God applied to Jesus makes perfect sense to him.

So Mark, of course, believed Jesus to be completely divine, the Son of God, as he just said in verse one. So now the prophecy ultimately is fulfilled, no―well, initially, with God's people coming home from exile from Babylon―but ultimately, it's being fulfilled here in the coming of Messiah. And the work that John is sent to do is to make this way for the Anointed One. And by making the way what needs to happen are the mountains need to be brought low, the valleys need to be brought up, the uneven places need to be leveled out, and it's this imagery of building a road, of making the road.

And so if you thought, maybe they didn't know how to make roads like this, in Isaiah’s day, you know, once again, we just as modern people, we tend to think of ancient people as being more inept than they really were. Of course, they understood how to make roads in Isaiah’s day. Here it is Isaiah is using this road making analog, this road making picture this word picture of making mountains shorter of making valleys―bringing the valleys up―and making a flatter, more passable type of road.

You may remember, I'm sure you probably remember, a few years ago, well, it's probably a couple of decades ago now, where they straightened and widened 421 from Boone to Lenoir, you guys remember that? And I mean, they just they moved mountains to do that. They literally took mountains out. And they literally flattened up valleys.

So we kind of have that imagery of these mountains that you don't want a row to go over too many mountains, you want to bring those down, and you wanna bring the valleys up, you want to make it nice and smooth and flat, and wide. That's the work that John is here to do. So what does this mean for us?

Of course, we know that Jesus doesn't need this flat road to walk upon to walk into Jerusalem, He's not asking for literally a flat, a flat road, we know that this has a spiritual meaning for it. And the spiritual meaning for us has to do with our hearts. John's preparatory work was to prepare the hearts of the people to whom Jesus was coming. And so to prepare the hearts, there are the spiritual mountains that need to be brought low, and these spiritual valleys that need to be built up.

So what's John talking about? Or what what's Isaiah talking about here and in connection to John, what is John doing? What he's doing is battling against the pride within the hearts of the people so that those hearts will be prepared by and large for the receiving for the coming of Messiah.

So the two images that were given here of battling against the pride of people―the pride of the people that Jesus comes to, needs to be flattened out, in order for them to be ready to receive Messiah and ready to receive Messiah’s message.

So the first image is the image of the mountain being brought low. Now it's pretty easy to see, because it's easy for us to connect together mountains and pride. Because for us, the sort of the go-to way of thinking about pride is to think about pride as self-exaltation. That's an easy connection for us to make. All of us can readily make the connection between self-exaltation and a prideful heart. And so the high, self-exalting heart needs to be brought low, so that it can then receive the message that Messiah is coming to bring.

That one’s pretty easy to see. And we remember of course, Jesus encountering many people who had a mountain in their heart, a mountain of pride in their heart. And this why Jesus would say such things as you know, I didn't come for the righteous, I came for the sick.

So that one's easy to see. But the other one is a little more difficult to see. It's the valley being brought up. Now the valley, the heart, that's the valley that needs to be brought up in order for Messiah to come and to be received, is the heart that thinks themselves beneath the attention of the Savior. The heart that thinks himself to lowly, the thought, the heart that thinks too little of themselves―”oh, Jesus would never care for me.” “Jesus would never desire me.” “Jesus would never forgive me.” “Jesus would never love me.”

So that's the heart that needs to be brought up. But here's the thing to see. Both of those are the same sin. The heart that's the mountain. That's the self-exalting heart is the prideful heart. But in the same way, the heart that's the valley, that's the lonely heart, that thinks that they're beneath the love of Jesus, is also the prideful heart.

So this is not intuitive. This is counter-intuitive to see this, and I'll show you in just a minute why. But it is important to see, it is important, I think to, to begin showing your own soul how it is that both of those are the sin of pride.

Pride is putting yourself above God. Pride is putting yourself before God. Now that again is intuitive, with the self-exalting heart, you put yourself above God, you're more important than God, you're bigger than God, what you desire are more important than what God desires for you. That's clearly the prideful heart.

However, the heart that feels themselves to be beyond the care of God, beyond the love of God or beyond the forgiveness of God, is still putting themselves before God. In this sense―they're putting their sin before God. They're making their sin, bigger than God.

“My sin is just too much. My depravity is too dark, Jesus would never spend any time with me, Jesus would never desire me.” You see how that's making your sin bigger than God? That's making a scandal of the cross. That is scandalizing not only Jesus' work upon the cross, but it's scandalizing what He himself said he was here to do. Even what Paul said that he was here to do―is that God demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

So the heart that thinks themselves to lowly, for the love, the care, the forgiveness, the attention of God is still putting themselves before God, in the sense that they're putting their sin before God and they're making their sin bigger than the forgiveness of God.

That's the heart that needs to be brought up. The other heart needs to be brought down. Both of them are a barrier to the message of the Messiah, which is what John is here to counteract. He's here to countermand the hearts that have this built-in resistance to the coming Messiah―that resistance is pride.