Sermon Transcript
Today we have a reading from Mark 1:1-20. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I sent my messenger before your face who will prepare your way. The voice of my— of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make his path straight.
John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaimed a baptism of repentance for forgiveness of sins. 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. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist. And ate locusts and wild honey. And he preached, saying, after me comes he who is higher than I, and strapped with those sandals, I am worthy to stoop down and unite.
I have baptized you with water, and he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he sat, he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased. The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan.
And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to them. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Passing along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little further, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in the boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them and their father Zebedee in the boat with their hired servants and followed him.
Thanks, Dan. We’re beginning a new series today that will take us all the way into the summer looking at what it is like to follow Jesus, and we’re studying most of the book of Mark chapter by chapter, and today we begin at the beginning of the story, Mark chapter 1. And like many other beginnings to many other stories, chapter 1 introduces us to some major players, gives us some background, frames what the story is going to be about. But just to be clear, so nobody misunderstands, when I say story, I do not mean that Mark is fiction. It is not.
Mark is a biography of Jesus. In fact, many believe it was the first biography of Jesus ever written. It was certainly written within the lifetimes of the people who had literally seen Jesus with their own eyes. And think about it, it is hard to— not impossible, but difficult— to fake a story when the people who are still in the story are still around for questioning. They haven’t passed into legend.
You could walk over there and talk with them. So, for that reason and other reasons that we will see throughout this series, we believe Mark is an accurate historical biography of Jesus, not fiction. Now, similar to good biographies written today, Mark, the author, he highlights certain themes in Jesus’ life. He ties events together in a way that makes sense. So he does tell a story.
There is a narrative structure to the book of Mark, and as we read, we feel like we are on this journey with Jesus, hence the name of our series. There’s a beginning, there’s a progression, there’s a conclusion, but that doesn’t mean that it’s fiction. That just means that it’s well written. So, let’s dive into our text for today, the beginning of Mark’s Gospel of Jesus Christ, and as we do, we will see first, rather obviously, whose journey is it? Second, what do we need to bring if we are able to participate in the journey?
And finally, where is Jesus going? So first, whose journey is it, what we need to bring, where Jesus is going. All right, when we read Mark, our first question is, whose journey are we reading about? Whose story is it? Like we said, this is fairly obvious, but then we’ll see why this is important.
Mark states his purpose for writing right in verse 1. He says, this is the beginning of the news of Jesus. Gospel means good news. It’s a new story of Jesus’ life. And news, like a biography, is not about us usually.
We don’t turn on the news, we don’t flip open a biography of someone to hear about ourselves. News takes place apart from us. It could have implications for us, news can affect us, and Mark’s news certainly has implications for us, but we aren’t the point of the story. I know that’s obvious. But the reason it’s important is because as we begin to study Mark, so often when we come to Scripture, we look for tips on how to live a good life.
How can I find peace? How can I improve my relationships? And of course, those little nuggets, those are all over the place in Scripture. They’re very helpful. We talk about them in here all the time.
But it’s not really what the story is about. And if those little life lessons are the only thing that we take away when we read, then we have missed the point, the primary point. The primary point is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and what he did. So Mark is an account of God coming to earth. That’s what Mark says this story is from verse 1.
It means this story is about God’s journey, so to speak, less about our journey, although we can and should participate. We’ll talk about that soon. But primarily, Mark is about God going somewhere, God doing something, Jesus coming to earth, Jesus’ journey on earth. It’s Jesus’ journey. That’s the book of Mark.
It’s about Him. So, as we read and study this biography over the coming months, we should not so much ask, how do I fit some of these little life lessons into my own story? Or, is there room for Jesus in my life? Those are not the questions primarily. The primary question is, how do I fit into Jesus’ story?
How do I participate in His journey? Because it’s His show, not just in Mark’s biography, but always. Jesus is the Almighty God, and Mark forces us to deal with that fact of who Jesus is right from the start. Mark doesn’t waste any time at all describing who Jesus is. Verse 1, Jesus, the Son of God.
And in case we think that might mean that Jesus isn’t God or that Jesus is somehow less God. Maybe we think, ah, it’s the Father who is the real God. Mark clears that up real quick too in verse 3. He quotes Isaiah 40, prepare the way of the Lord. And the Lord, capital L-O-R-D, in Isaiah 40, what Mark quotes in Hebrew is Yahweh.
It’s the divine name. Yahweh is the one who spoke to Moses in the burning bush. Yahweh is the one who spoke creation into existence. Yahweh is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the great I Am. That’s what Yahweh means, I Am.
Yahweh is the one who will judge the earth. He’s God. He’s the God of the Old Testament. And Mark says Jesus coming to earth is Yahweh coming to earth. Yahweh has entered into his creation.
And the claim of Jesus’ divinity will be repeated again and again and again throughout Mark’s biography. For instance, at least twice in Mark alone, Jesus refers to himself as I Am, Yahweh. So it’s not just Mark the narrator who refers to Jesus as Yahweh, it’s Jesus himself. The first time is when Jesus is walking on water, Mark 6:45, and his disciples freak out, as all of us would if we saw someone walking on water, and Jesus says, don’t fear, I Am. In English, that verse is usually translated as, don’t fear, it is I, but there is no it in that verse in Greek.
It’s just, don’t fear, I Am, which doesn’t make any grammatical sense unless you understand I Am is the divine name, Yahweh. The second time is when Jesus is on trial and the religious leaders ask, are you the divine one? And Jesus doesn’t just answer yes. He answers, I am Yahweh. And the religious leaders tear their clothes and accuse him of blasphemy because, of course, he is blasphemous.
He’s claiming to be God and everybody knew it. And in addition to referring to himself with the divine name, Jesus claims he has the authority to forgive sins, Mark 2:5, which all Jewish people understood only God alone could do. On top of that, Jesus displays certain divine abilities. He controls nature. He speaks to storms and they listen.
He heals diseases all over the place. Lame walk, blind see, dead are raised back to life. There’s fingerprints of his, of his divinity all over the place, along with his claims. It’s over and over again. In other words, Jesus didn’t dance around who he was.
He said he was God. Clearly and plainly over and over and over and over again. And it’s why we see everyone having very strong reactions to Jesus in any gospel because you can’t be neutral with someone like him, someone who claims to be God, someone who can reorder nature however he wants, does, someone who raises the dead back to life. No one can remain indifferent to someone like that. Do you see why it makes no sense to ask, how does someone like Jesus fit into my story?
Like, he can’t come into your story without completely taking over your story. He’s too much. Our choices are join his journey or get out of the way. And that’s exactly what people did in the first century. Some people would fall down and worship Jesus, totally surrender to him, which makes sense.
Other people would run away screaming from Jesus. Like, they told him, get out of our town. This is too bizarre. Dead people are being raised back to life. Like, I’m out, right?
I don’t know what this is that you’re doing, Jesus, but like, I can’t, I just can’t. And that reaction makes sense too. And then still other people took up arms and tried to destroy Jesus. They were threatened by him, which of course also makes sense. The one reaction we never see anyone have toward Jesus is indifference.
No one who saw Jesus ever said, Jesus, you seem like a good teacher. I think I can learn a few things from you. You know, maybe this guy could really improve my life. No one in the first century who actually saw Jesus with their own eyes ever said anything like that. It was join him, be part of his journey, or it was run away from him in fear, or it was fight That was it.
Which means if we don’t have one of those reactions, we’ve missed something that they noticed. We have probably believed some tame version of Jesus who could be ignored, but that’s not who he was. And he forced the issue of who he was over and over again on everyone. Imagine today someone who claimed ad nauseam that he was God in just about every way that he could claim it. And not only that, but he kept walking around healing diseases, stopping hurricanes with his voice, raising the dead back to life.
What would we do with that guy None of us would ignore him, none of us. Governments would think, if this guy has control over nature, we better get control over this guy. Militaries would take up arms without a doubt, they’d send the tanks, they’d try to build a cage to trap him, they’d use all their resources to try to get a handle on Jesus. Other people would probably be terrified and run away screaming. Right?
Dead people coming back to life, that’s a big deal. Some of us would say, I sure hope he doesn’t come anywhere near where I live because this is just too crazy. And then there would be some of us who would fall down and worship him.
But it’s basically all or nothing with someone like that, isn’t it? We can’t take a figure like Jesus and try to sprinkle a little bit of him over different areas of our lives to see if those areas improve. He’s too dynamic for that. He’s too controversial. Jesus wouldn’t even let anyone half-heartedly follow him.
Whenever someone said, hey, I do want to join your journey, you know, I’m not terrified of you, I don’t want to fight you, you’re right, it’s your story, it’s not my story, but I’m not 100% in. Anytime anybody said something like that, Jesus wouldn’t have it. He would challenge them with who he was. And he’d say, you can’t be in half in with somebody like me. Give you some examples in a few minutes.
So be honest with yourself. Don’t pretend like you can react to Jesus with a, oh, he’s kind of interesting, I guess. Maybe I can learn a little something from him here or there. Don’t kid yourself. That’s the one way you definitely would not react if you actually saw him?
Now, while you’re sorting out which reaction you think that you’ll have to Jesus, just keep this in mind, okay? Every other religion has some path for you to take so that you can reach God. Every other religion has a founder who tells you how you can find God. What you must do, the journey you must take to get to God. Christianity is the only religion where the founder says, I am God.
I’m not here to tell you about God. I’m here to tell you I am. And I have come to find you. Christianity is the only religion where God bridges the gap to get to us, where God seeks us before we seek him. So while on the one hand, it’s very understandable why some people would run away screaming or take up arms against Jesus, that reaction totally makes sense.
We don’t like the implication that he’s in charge and we aren’t. We can’t control him. We can’t fit him into any box. We resist that. It’s intimidating.
Makes sense. But on the other hand, God himself coming to us is comforting. To know the cost of connecting with us was carried by him, that he traveled the distance to get to us, not the other way around. And that’s what Jesus’ story is about. That’s what this news is, not showing us the way, being the way, God coming to earth.
Now, let’s say you are in the percentage of the crowd that wanted to to participate in Jesus’ journey. You’ve decided, okay, I’m not going to run away from Him. I’m not going to take up arms. I’m going to hop on board with His journey. Let’s say that that’s you.
What would you need to bring with you? What do you need in order to join His journey? Answer, nothing.
We bring nothing. When we come to Jesus. And that is much easier said than done. Most people don’t have nothing.
The passage gets across the idea of bringing nothing in 2 different ways. First, of course, the disciples at the end of the passage drop everything and follow Jesus when He calls. They are fishermen. They leave their nets, their jobs, their livelihoods in the middle of the day and follow Jesus. They leave everything and they bring nothing, which doesn’t mean that we all need to quit our jobs in order to follow Jesus, although some of us might.
What it does mean for all of us is that we can’t hedge our bets if we’re going to follow Jesus. We can’t say something like, I will follow Jesus if I can keep my job. I will follow Jesus if I can continue my inappropriate relationship. I will follow Jesus if I don’t have to change the way I spend my money. If we say any of those things, then we aren’t really following Jesus.
We are following whatever is on the other side of the if. That’s our real lord. That’s the thing that really calls the shots in our lives. And we can’t hang on to that lord and follow the real Lord. At the same time.
Jesus won’t let us. Anytime someone tried that, Jesus called them out on it. Like we said earlier, he would force the issue. Mark 10, Jesus meets a man referred to as a rich young ruler, and the rich young ruler essentially says, Jesus, I’ll follow you if I can keep all my money. And Jesus says, then you aren’t following me.
What you’re really following is your bank account. That’s the real lord of your life. And we know it is because you’re not willing to do anything to jeopardize it, which means that guy didn’t come to Jesus with nothing. He came clinging on to something else and Jesus wouldn’t have it. If Jesus comes into your life, he’s going to completely take over just because of who he is.
Similarly, there is an account of a man who comes up to Jesus and says, I’ll follow you if I can bury my father first. And Jesus responds rather bluntly, let the dead bury their own dead.
Jesus says, if you have an if, you can’t be part of my journey. You can’t have a competing allegiance. Even if it’s your dad. Now, we don’t know the backstory of the man with his dad. It’s like half a sentence.
We’re not given any background. Was there literally a funeral in 5 minutes and Jesus says, you can’t go? Probably not. That’s probably not what was happening. Maybe, more likely, this guy was waiting for his dad to die before he could come out as a Christian.
Maybe his dad wouldn’t approve of Jesus, so this guy thought, you know, I’ll follow Jesus later when it means I don’t have to worry about disappointing my dad. We have no idea of the backstory, but we do know the guy had an if. He wasn’t coming with nothing. He wanted control over how he would participate with Jesus, and just the nature of who Jesus is prevents that. We’ve got to bring nothing or we haven’t really accepted who He is.
So, let me just ask you, what is it you’re unwilling to let go of? What is it if Jesus said, leave it, you would say, no?
Whatever that is, you are following it. It has more control over you than anything else does. You march to its orders. You’ve joined its journey. If we read your biography someday, it would be titled, A Journey of Following, fill in the blank.
That would be your life.
And let me tell you, whatever that it is, it is not going to be kind to you in the way that it controls you. It will take more from you than it gives back to you. You’ll get burned. Which brings us to the second way this passage gets across the idea of bringing nothing. We see the word repent multiple times, verse 4, verse 15.
John instructs people to repent before Jesus shows up and then Jesus repeats it. So, what is repentance?
It certainly includes coming to Jesus with nothing, turning to Him, turning away from whatever journey we were pursuing before without any ifs, without any conditions. In fact, the word repentance can literally mean turn, but it’s more than that. It’s admitting all the time we’ve centered our lives around something other than Jesus, all the other journeys that we’ve been on, those were fruitless and wrong.
For instance, think again about the guy who needed his dad to pass away before he would follow Jesus. Something has gone wrong in that relationship. That guy is too focused on pleasing his father. He is overskewed. Not that pleasing your father is a bad thing.
We support listening to dads around here. So, kids, especially my kids, you can tell them later, listen to your father. But But if you overfocus on that, like this guy, it’ll crush you. It’ll overrun your life. You will always feel inadequate.
Pleasing someone else, even if it’s your father, that should not be your journey. That should not be the title of your biography. Any counselor would tell you that. And if you are overskewed toward people pleasing, for instance, coming to Jesus requires not only abandoning that journey, not only turning toward Jesus, but also admitting, I hitched my wagon to the wrong thing. I was wrong and it burned me.
Joining any journey other than Jesus, it’s not what we were meant for. So, what is that for you? What have you put in the center that should not be in the center? And whatever it is, it’s likely a very good thing if it’s in its proper place. It probably should be in your life, but it shouldn’t be driving your life because it will enslave you.
Whether it’s someone’s approval or your career, investment portfolio, whatever, it is not worthy to be your master. It is not worthy to say, follow me.
And repentance is admitting that you have erred and then turning to Jesus because he’s the only journey we can join that will free us instead of enslave us. He is the only master who gave up all he had for us.
Nearly everything in our world tells us to follow it. Nearly everything in our world says, sacrifice for me. Make me your priority. When I summon, you better come running. Nearly everything says that.
Career, climbing the power ladder, people pleasing, all of it. All of that places demands on us. And Jesus does too. He places big demands. He tells these fishermen, verse 17, follow me.
But the difference between Jesus and everything else is that he sacrifices everything he has for us. He dropped all he had and came running for us, and that makes him a uniquely worthy master to follow, makes him a unique journey to join. It makes him the one who will set us free because whatever we give up for him, he has given up more for us. No other master will do that. Comfort, approval, status, acceptance, power, fame, those have never given up anything for us.
And yet, they place huge demands on us. But Jesus, though His demands are high, His sacrifice is even higher. I’m impressed with these fishermen, of course, who drop everything to follow Jesus, not only because they did it, that is impressive, but more so because at that moment they didn’t know yet what Jesus would do for them. They didn’t know Jesus would give up way more for them. Than they could ever give up for Jesus.
They didn’t know the specifics of where Jesus was going yet, didn’t know what His journey was ultimately about yet. They didn’t fully know. They followed anyway. But we do know. We know Jesus’ reason for coming to earth was to redeem humanity back to God.
And Mark actually foreshadows in chapter 1 end of the story in chapter 15 where Jesus is going, and it’s the cross. Mark gives us a preview of the end of the story here at the beginning of the story. At the beginning when Jesus is baptized, the heavens are torn open, verse 10. God speaks, this is Jesus, my Son, with him I am well pleased. And at that moment, or in that sentence, the word torn has some connotations of violence to it.
It is to rend asunder. It’s not a precise surgical cut. It’s a bursting forth. It’s a breaking open. So, like when you have your bag of groceries that had too many canned goods in it and it gave out, right?
It wasn’t a small little rip that could be easily hemmed back together. It totally ruptured because of the weight of what was behind it. And that’s the picture Mark paints at the beginning of the story, God coming into the world like that. Heaven breaks through to us, ruptures through to us. That’s the beginning, but it’s also the end of the story.
Mark uses this word torn only twice in his entire biography of Jesus, once here at the beginning when the heavens are torn and once at the end when the veil in the temple is torn, is rent asunder. I know many of you know, but in the Jewish temple there was this veil which is not like a wedding veil for a bride. It was like a multi-inch thick massive curtain that blocked the access to the temple area of what they called the Holy of Holies, and that the point of that thick veil was symbolically to show there is this barrier between people and God. Now, the real barrier between us and God was not a curtain. The real barrier was created by us.
It’s our disobedience, our sin, our rebellion. But when Jesus is crucified, that veil in the temple tore open like the heavens tore open at Jesus’ baptism. God burst through to us this wall that we had put up between us and Him. He rent it asunder through Jesus’ crucifixion because on the cross Jesus gave up everything so that we could have all that he has. On the cross, Jesus no longer heard, this is my Son with whom I’m well pleased, like he did at his baptism.
He lost that. And instead, Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Mark 15:34. So Jesus, who had enjoyed the praise of heaven at the beginning of the story, is forsaken at the end of the story so that we who have been forsaken could now be praised. Jesus was rejected by God so we could be accepted by God.
The Son became an outcast so that we who were outcasts could become sons and daughters so that we could hear from God as Jesus did, these are my beloved children with whom I am well pleased. Ultimately, that is what Jesus’ journey is about. That is where he’s going. That’s what the good news is. That’s what the gospel is.
It’s Jesus on the cross in our place, giving up everything that we could have it through his death and resurrection. Chapter 1 is just the beginning of that journey. We’re at the start of it. But ultimately, that is what the gospel is. There are some people, some theologians even, who would look at the word gospel here in chapter 1 and conclude the term gospel must not have anything to do with crucifixion because, well, hey, look, the cross isn’t here in chapter 1, but the term gospel is.
So, gospel just means God coming to earth, or Jesus’ life or Jesus’ teaching. Gospel doesn’t need to include any of that bloody sacrifice stuff because that doesn’t happen until later on. And the real good news is the teaching that Jesus introduced into the world, you know, love your enemy, that kind of stuff. Some people say that. You might be one of them, thinking that we can speak of gospel without speaking of death and resurrection.
And as respectful as I can be, if that’s you, that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how stories work. This is only the beginning of the story. Mark says that, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And after the beginning, the story progresses and then has a conclusion, which is cross and resurrection. And just like any other story, We can’t detach the conclusion and have the same story.
It would change everything. So, the gospel isn’t only God coming to earth as we see here in chapter 1, it’s also what he came here to do and why he came here to do it, which is ultimately to die in our place, to redeem us from our sin so that we could be sons and daughters of heaven. It’s what the story is always about. Even at the beginning, it’s what the story is about. It’s why we put the gospel, which we mean Jesus’ substitution, it’s why we put that in every message every Sunday because it is where every plotline of Scripture concludes.
And without it, we only have a set of moral standards which we can’t achieve. Without it, we can’t be reunited with God. Without it, we can’t be His children. We can’t be accepted. Without it, we wouldn’t have any hope.
So, we remind ourselves what Jesus did for us as often as we meet, even if we’re only at the beginning of that story. And we will always remind ourselves of it every time we meet because we need it. Let’s pray together. Father, thank you for the gospel. Thank you that Jesus would come here.
Thank You that Jesus would come here to do what He did, to redeem us back to You by being our substitute, by dying in our place and raising back to life again, that we could stand in His place, Lord, as children of Yours. Pray, Lord, that we could come to Him, that we would want to join His journey, that we wouldn’t come with ifs or contingencies, but that we would come freely. Openly, vulnerably to him. We pray those things in his name. Amen.
