This message was preached Aug. 19th, 2015 at the Heritage Baptist Church in Greenwood, Il.
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; 2 As it
is written in the prophets, Behold, I
send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. 3 The voice of
one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths
straight. 4 John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the
baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. 5 And there went out unto him all the land of Judaea, and
they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan,
confessing their sins. 6 And John was
clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he
did eat locusts and wild honey; 7 And
preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of
whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. 8 I indeed have baptized you with water: but he shall
baptize you with the Holy Ghost. (Mark 1:1-8)
As an introduction to the book of Mark, I would like first of
all point out that this is a Gospel account.
The gospels are the narrative
record of the words & works of Jesus Christ while He was here with
us. It is the historical accounting of all those activities and teachings which
God knew necessary to explain himself to us.
It is not the record of all the deeds and words of Christ. We know this from the statement of John in chapter
21 verse 25 of his gospel, – there are many things we have not been privy to
know.
This is not to say that we see Christ only in the
Gospels. For we see Christ in the pages
of Genesis chapter 1 in the act of creation. And we see Him in Revelation, 22:20,
wherein He testifies to us “Surely I come quickly”. We should be seeing Christ
in every corner of the Book.
This Gospel account is written down by Mark, and by
the unanimous testimony of many theologians the theme of it is to Disclose
or Unveil the Suffering Servant. The early Church’s testimony was that
Mark was close to Peter and that the content is of Peter. Papias asserts in 140 AD that Mark was recording
the messages of Peter. Justin Martyr
calls it the “Memoirs of Peter”
As to the date of writing, we can be sure it was
before the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, due to Christ’s prediction on
the Temple in chapter 13 verse 2, but beyond that there is considerable debate
even in the early church.
The key verse for the book is Mark
10:45, “For
even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
give his life a ransom for many.”
This key verse not only summarizes the book nicely, it very nearly
splits the book into its 2 greatest divisions, His ministry of healing and
teaching, and the giving of his life a ransom for many.
Immediately in the book, Mark quotes the prophets.
In Mal. 3:1a, “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare
the way before me. In Isa. 40:3, “The voice of him that crieth in the
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for
our God.”
Mark points us to the prophets Malachi and Isaiah,
who in turn point us to John the Baptist, who himself points us to Christ. In
our passage we see that the message conveyed is that we need to get ready! John
the Baptists message is just that! Prepare
the way of the LORD! We know what
that looks like…
What happens when the President or some dignitary is
to arrive in Chicago? The whole city is
in a whirl. Streets are blocked
off. Secret Service arrive ahead of
them. And no one gets access apart from
a screening. Indeed – sometimes by
invitation only could you be in the throng!
But what would you do? The queen of England is coming to Chicago,
and you have the invite. Get ready! One doesn’t arrive in shabby or dirty
clothes, does he? It would be completely
out of place.
When we know the boss is going to be in the office,
we work differently, right? Yet if we
change our habits and appearance for such as these, how much more the LORD of
the whole universe! The question we must
ask ourselves is How are we to prepare?
This is the heart of the matter. To do that we must examine three doctrinal
phrases and topics.
1.
What is the ‘baptism of repentance’ (v. 4)? Considering the whole of the phrase, “preach the baptism
of repentance” we must at once see that it is a message which is preached, so the ‘baptism of repentance’ must be
in the context of a message. We do tend
to immediately seize upon some words, and especially those which carry rich
theology and the word baptism is one of them. The student of the Bible, while immersed in
the Scripture must always first bring to bear the immediate context – and after
a careful study and understanding, begin to look at those greater contexts of
the book, the testament, and the whole Bible.
Always the various spheres will
agree. When we see an apparent
discrepancy our conclusion should be that there is a lack in our understanding
of the texts and contexts at hand. We
need to sharpen our understanding if possible at that time. We never sit in judgment of the Scripture –
always it judges us, as we see from Hebrews 4:12.
The preached message of the ‘baptism of repentance’
which John did proclaim is a message and therefore not concerned with water. In
order to grasp that immediate context, we must look at the words defined. The Greek word Baptizo is means at root ‘to overwhelm, to immerse, to
submerge’. Now here is the sense of
verse 4, we might render the verse more plainly, John
did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the immersion of repentance for the
remission of sins. Two other
translations are interesting, YLT, “John came baptizing
in the wilderness, and proclaiming a baptism of reformation -- to remission of
sins” and the Geneva, “John did baptize in the
wilderness, and preach the baptism of amendment of life, for remission of sins.” In other words the message of John was to
cause the hearers to be overwhelmed of their need to repent! The actual
practice of such daily repentance – looking to the seed which is to come, and
which we know as Christ – is the remission of sins! But we are getting ahead of
ourselves. We need to know what that
means.
2
Secondly, the Scripture tells us to look to the messenger. John, we read in verse 4, preached a message
of repentance for the remission of sins. How should we understand this?
Was this a new message? Didn’t the blood of bulls
and goats suffice at that time? It
couldn’t be, for Hebrews 10:4 tells us, “For it is not possible that
the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” The phrase ‘take away’ referring to
sins in Hebrews 10:4 is the same root word as is translated remission
in our passage in Mark. Hebrews 10:4 is
our proof text.
Yet it is quite helpful to go beyond the proof text
– not that it is invalid on its own. But
there are some doctrinal matters so deep that we can go to many places Scripturally
to see why Hebrews 10:4 is true, and in doing so, we will be enriched.
John Gill’s note on Mark 1:4 is quite useful at this
point. He says,
“not for the obtaining
the remission of sins, as if either repentance, or baptism, were the causes of
pardon of sin; but the sense is, that John preached that men should repent of their sins, and believe in Christ, who was to come; and upon their
repentance and faith, be baptized; in which ordinance, they might be led to a
fresh view of the free and full forgiveness of their sins, through Christ;
whose blood was to be shed for many, to obtain it”
Gill references the message of Peter in Acts 2:38, “Then Peter said
unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ
for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
Loraine Boettner also informs us on this in his
discourse on The Atonement,
“He died not merely a
corporal death, but a particular kind of death in which he experienced in
detail the severity of the divine vengeance against sin. By paralleling even
the Old Testament ritual for the sin-offering it was made plain that He was our
sin-bearer.”
We need only read Isaiah 53 to see this in vivid
detail. No animal could suffer as a
man. Animal sacrifice, at this point
barely even pictures the propitiatory and sacrificial death of Christ.
There is an interesting discussion among theologians
about the kind of debt mankind owed
to God. I really don’t want to delve all
that deeply into the discussion, but I think it would be helpful if we consider
that debt. I am myself deeply indebted
to Ray Comfort and the Living Waters ministry, as to evangelistic method and
apologetics. One of the frequent
arguments used is that of owing a large fine, and having someone step in to pay
that fine. As long as we do not take it
too far it is a good argument. However
it does fall into the trap the theologians are dealing with.
The debt we owe to God is not a fine, which one
pictures like paying a speeding ticket.
The debt we owe is not pecuniary in nature. It is penal.
The penalty for sin is death. One
cannot pay with some other medium of exchange, like money to get free. Death
must be rendered. To be fair to Ray, he regularly also speaks of the suffering
death of the Savior to pay for our sins.
Someone must suffer. This is
another reason the blood of bulls and goats can never remit sin.
The Old Testament book of Micah expresses the
futility of the sacrificial system in 6:6-7, “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow
myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with
calves of a year old? 7 Will the Lord be pleased
with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my
firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” The fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul?! Sin is so deeply imbedded we have
no offering which we could bring – no matter the source, yet here, even in the
old dispensation, it was known that the blood of bulls and goats will not
satisfy.
3
And here we reach our third doctrinal matter. The blood of bulls and goats will
not satisfy. But it does cover –
consider the fact that the first blood ever shed for sin was that of animals,
and by the very hand of God, to provide skins for Adam and Eve. So perhaps when we think of such sacrifices –
it
is to the horror of the cost of sin – not the satisfying nature of
it. For it has none except that which
poorly pointed to the satisfying blood sacrifice of our Savior.
One of the things blood speaks of is found in Leviticus
17:11 which states, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given
it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the
blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” So now we have this
word atonement presented to us.
In the Old Testament the Hebrew word for atonement
expresses the idea of covering sin or the sinner. C. I. Scofield has a very helpful note on Exodus
29:33 which says,
“The English word
"atonement" (at-one-ment)
is not a translation of the Hebrew kaphar,
but a translator's interpretation. According
to Scripture, the legal sacrifice "covered" the offerer's sin and
secured the divine forgiveness; according to the translators it made God and
the sinner at-one. But the O.T.
sacrifices did not at-one the sinner
and God.
Here Scofield quotes our verse in Hebrews, "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should
take away sins." Continuing on,
The Israelite's
offering implied confession of sin and of its due desert, death; and God
"covered" (passed over) his sin, in anticipation of Christ's
sacrifice, which did, finally, "put away" the sins "done aforetime in the forbearance of God.” Romans 3:25
And this is exactly what we might expect from the
very beginning. As we learn in Genesis
where we see that even in the very order of those events, the Proto-evangelium
comes first in Genesis 3:15, and only afterward does God shed the blood for
skins for a covering in anticipation
of Christ in verse 21!
So when John Gill comments on verse 4, “that John preached that
men should repent of their sins, and believe in Christ, who was to come”
his comments have a certainty, and John’s baptism is then a pointing to Christ.
Mark now quotes directly John in verses 7-8, “And preached,
saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I
am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.
8 I indeed have baptized you with water:
but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost.”
People tend to get caught up in the moment and
confuse the messenger with the Savior.
John’s statement serves to redirect men to look to Christ. We have this banner here behind me, “Behold
the Lamb of God” for that very reason.
Even John the apostle himself became confused in Rev. 19:10 when he
attempted to worship an angel.
But
how do John the Baptists comments augment our understanding? We are dealing with preparing the way and
making paths straight and while Malachi tells us that the messenger will
prepare the way, Isaiah tells us John’s message is that we prepare the way. I could say it differently – How John
prepares the way, is to point us to Christ by telling us to ‘get
prepared’! We are to prepare the way of
the LORD.
And this is done by baptism and confession of
sins. These things do not do anything in
and of themselves – no work a man could do would be sufficient. But, as they are in faith – in the blood of
the Savior to pay for our sins, they are effective. The ancients were to look forward to the
Christ. Our look is backward to the Cross
and Christ. As we see the cross we see
that everything anticipated is achieved.
He said, “It is Finished!” Now in saying that we must realize that this
is a theological achievement. There remains a completion in history, as we are
reminded in Revelation, “Surely I come quickly.”
Part of the preparation for the Lord is that act of coming
to Christ the 1st time for salvation. And while atonement is a one-time
accomplished fact in Christ – now, having been redeemed we live his life before
men. Galatians 2:20 is an appropriate
verse at this time. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I
live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for
me.”
Did you ever consider how much your life should
point to Christ? Our lives – in both
word and deed ought to point to people to the Savior. I do not believe the idea that the church, in
a political sense is bringing in the Kingdom.
But it cannot be denied that as we fulfill the command to “Be holy as I am
holy” Men will be moved to consider Christ. It cannot be denied that as a Church, we are
the bride of Christ.
What
does a bride do on her wedding day? On that day, and for weeks, even months before,
she is getting ready for the Day! Matthew
25:1-11 is the parable of the ten virgins.
Five were wise, preparing by getting oil for their lamps, 5 were
foolish. Lazy and unprepared they had no
oil and only after the Bridegroom arrived, did they see the folly of their
laziness.
We
are the Bride of Christ! Our anticipation is that he is coming again!
What are you doing to prepare for the supper?! Matthew 22:1-14 is another parable of a
marriage feast. In verse 11 we read of
one who was not dressed properly. He was
cast out.
The
Kingdom of heaven is AT HAND! Are you preparing?! Get ready – Christ Returneth, Hallelujah
Amen! The parable of the marriage feast
ends with a profundity – Many are called, but few are chosen. Yet while we might ponder the profundity, let’s
not stumble over the obvious. We need
not wonder who the chosen are – they are the ones who are preparing and making
themselves ready for the feast. Repent!
The Kingdom of heaven is at HAND!
Do
you see yourself as unprepared? Get prepared.
Get ready! Now I hope that I have not left you hopeless, and I hope this
final word will encourage you as you seek to do all for the kingdom. John stated in verse 8 that, “he shall baptize
you with the Holy Ghost.”
This is that Comforter. That Helper
promised to us. We are not left alone to
do our preparation. Christ has given us
His Spirit. John 14:16 states, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another
Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.”
And he has called us friends. John 15:13-15 says, “Greater love hath no man than this –that a
man lay down his life for his friends. 14 Ye
are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. 15 Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant
knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things
that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.”
In John 13 we read of Christs washing the disciple’s
feet. This is a fitting passage to close
with. "Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet
only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He that is washed
needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean,
but not all. For he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, Ye are not
all clean." (John 13:9-11)
As we go to prayer in a few minutes can I encourage
us to do a little self-examination? John’s message to repent was given to a
people who had a long tradition of belief.
Judaism is rich with Scripture and a history and these people could be
said to be like ourselves. We have a
2000 year history in the Church. Just
like the Jews, we have our peculiar denominations. So when we hear the call to repent, we do
need to see that it applies to our case just as it did to the Jews.
Some here need to know the Savior. You may not even have had your head &
hands washed, to use the metaphor of Peter.
You are trusting in your own goodness before a perfectly Holy God. Isaiah 64:6 tells us, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our
righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our
iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” You need to repent!
Do you think that you can stand? You cannot! You have not come to trust the Savior in
faith. You need to respond to the
Spirits call upon your life!
Some need their feet washed. That would probably
include the majority here this evening.
The dirt of the world has once again dirtied our hearts, minds, and
feet. We’ve again turned to idols from the
living God. Repent! Turn again and do those things which you did
when you first believed! Let us all ‘Prepare the Way of the Lord!’
Amen
