God Came Down

Intro

After I became a pastor several years ago, one of the first people I began to meet with regularly for counseling was a young woman who was really struggling to believe that God could love someone like her.

This woman had grown up in a church all her life, butshe was finally coming to terms with a lifelong struggle with depression, with physical abuse she’d experienced, with the way her father had betrayed her family, and with the spiritual abuse she had endured in her church.

Her father had made her feel worthless. The physical abuse she’d experienced made her feel unlovable. The spiritual abuse she’d experienced had twisted God into a judgmental, power hungry deity. And her depression just amplified everything, filling her heart and mind with fear and shame.

Week after week we met as I tried to help her see from Scripture that she wasn’t worthless, but that her life had the highest value to God. She wasn’t unlovable, she was God’s treasure. God wasn’t power hungry, he was a servant, who was committed to wiping her tears and patiently sitting with her on long, hard nights. Jesus doesn’t speak words of fear and shame, but of peace and love.

I learned a lot in those meetings with this young woman as well. I discovered that Scripture is really God’s way of proving to us in every possible way that he can who he is. He is the God who draws near to his people. He is the God who joins in the suffering of his people. He is the God who is tender, caring, and patient with us in our sin. He is the God who takes sides with the oppressed and the abused. He is the God who has accomplished our salvation and is committed to making us new through the presence of his Holy Spirit.

Since those meetings, I have also learned that every person, in one way or another, struggles to know that God is really for them. For some of us, we doubt that God cares about us when we’re suffering. Others, whether because of abuse, betrayal, mental illness, or all of the above, we doubt God would love someone like us. Some of you, because of trials in your life, you start to doubt that what God has said is true.

Every one of us is looking for proof that God is good, that he cares, that he won’t run away, that he’d really commit himself to someone like me. And this proof is exactly what God gives to us in our passage tonight.

As we continue our new series in Mark’s gospel, in tonight’s passage we see that Jesus made it as clear as possible to show us who he is, who he loves, and what he has done for us. Our passage is saturated with the proof we need that Jesus is the God who loves us and will never abandon us.

Let’s pray.

Three headings for our time together. The identity of Jesus, the identification of Jesus, and the inauguration of Jesus.

The identity of Jesus

We’re going to pick up our study of Mark where we left off last week in verse 8. Mark is setting up a huge twist for us, because as soon as John says he’s unworthy to even tie Jesus’ sandals, we see Jesus coming to get baptized by John. I want you to understand the significance of this.

John said he was unworthy to serve Jesus because he understood Jesus’ identity. He knew who Jesus really was. Jesus wasn’t a mere man. He wasn’t just another prophet. He wasn’t even a new King coming to retake his throne.

Jesus is God himself.

“I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” That is an extraordinary declaration. In his Old Testament, John knew the authority to give the Spirit belongs exclusively to God.

I have two additional Scriptures in your worship guide to show you this. The first is from Ezekiel 36.

Ezekiel 36:26–28 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.”

These words from the Prophet Ezekiel help us understand the significance of God promising his Holy Spirit to us. When God says he will give us his Spirit, he’s really promising two things.

First, he’s promising to transform us. Ezekiel says God will give us a new heart and a new desire to obey God’s word. No one can have the desire or the ability to obey God unless God first gives us his Spirit. One of the words we use to describe this work of God is sanctification. God sanctifies us, meaning he renews us and transforms us, by giving us his Spirit.

Second, he’s promising his presence. He’s declaring that he will go with us. He won’t turn his back on us. He won’t abandon us. He is promising to unite himself to us and be intimately involved in our lives.

God doesn’t say one of his prophets will do this. He doesn’t say one of his kings will do this. God said he will do this himself.

God repeated this promise through the prophet Joel, you have this verse in your worship guide.

Joel 2:29 “Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.”

Again, you see that this work of giving the Spirit comes from God himself.

So when John said that Jesus is the one with authority to baptize us with the Holy Spirit, what was he saying? Jesus is God. He’s no mere man. He’s no mere prophet. He’s no mere king.

He is the Lord.

Now, remember the context for Mark’s gospel that I gave you last week. Mark was writing to a people who were being torn between an oppressive empire, and revolutionary Jewish leaders who were trying to make themselves kings of Jerusalem.

Part of Mark’s intent for writing this gospel was to help his audience see that Jesus is not like Rome or any other empire, and he’s not like the would-be Kings of Jerusalem. He is entirely unlike either of these forces. Jesus’ kingdom cannot be fit into either agenda.

And this is absolutely something we still need to hear today. Every single day you can find politicians, movement leaders, religious leaders, who claim Jesus’ support for what they want to do.

Jesus would march with us for: fill in the blank.

Jesus would join our movement because…

Jesus would want us to have a Christian nation because…

Jesus has given special favor to our church because…

Jesus would vote this way because….

Jesus would agree with me because…

Friends listen to me. I cannot tell you how foolish most of this kind of talk is. Utter nonsense.

Number one, you don’t know what Jesus would do. You’re not God. He is not a mere human like us. You cannot possibly fathom how Jesus would respond to the complicated world events, politics, and movements of our day.

I promise you that if Jesus came back for a sort of redo of his first earthly ministry, he would completely smash all of our expectations. He would smash all our agendas for him, just as he smashed the agendas people had for him 2000 years ago. He doesn’t fit. He won’t fit. He would challenge our plans, our politics, our movements, in order to show us that he is God and we are not. He sets the terms, he sets the agenda, we do not.

Please hear me on this. I’m not saying that your faith doesn’t inform your politics. You should. I’m not saying that our faith doesn’t give us wisdom in how to engage ideas or movements and so on. It does.

I am saying that you should be extremely hesitant to fit Jesus neatly into your political, religious, or ideological agenda. Instead of claiming Jesus for our little movements and political groups, we ought to be humbly asking him to show us where he is pouring out his Spirit today so that we can follow him.

We don’t tell Jesus how to fit into our agendas; we ask Jesus to transform us for his agenda!

Does your Jesus every challenge you…?

Jesus, you are God, we are not. You have all authority, we do not. You do not conform to us, we conform to you. Jesus, show us where your Spirit is moving so that we can follow you. Don’t let us think we can tell you where you ought to move. Forgive us of our pride. Give us eyes to see.

Is that your prayer? Is that the posture of your heart? Or do you go about your days saying, “Jesus, thank you for agreeing with what I already think.” Some of you need to wrestle with that.

The identification of Jesus

Before I get into this second point, I want to make a note of something important about this text that I’m not going to address today. Verses 9-13 are one of the best passages in Scripture that show is that God exists in Trinity. He is one God, but he exists in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There are many who would say that God is one person who changes forms. That doesn’t line up with this text. Here you see all three persons at one time. The Son is baptized, the Spirit comes down, the Father speaks.

This can be a confusing idea for us to wrap our head around. I’m actually not going to say anything more about this subject tonight, and that’s because I taught on the Trinity a couple of months ago in a previous sermon. If you have questions about the Trinity, I encourage you to go back and find that sermon. The details are listed under additional texts in your worship guide.

So, the identification of Jesus. This is probably a poorly titled point. What I’m getting at here is, who does Jesus identify with? Who are his people? Who is his entourage? They say you know the character of someone by the company they keep, right? What kind of company does Jesus keep?

Us. That’s who. He identifies with us. We’re his entourage. You see that here in two ways, in both his baptism, and in his temptation.

Remember what John said about his baptism. It’s a baptism of repentance. This was not uncommon among Jewish people at the time, who believed that people needed to be cleansed, to be made clean, in order to come to God. In fact, there were other kinds of baptism ceremonies that many Jewish believers practiced as they believed that baptism was an outward expression of our desire to be cleansed from our sin.

Ok, great. So, why does Jesus receive a baptism of repentance? He’s God. He’s sinless. He had never sinned and will never sin. What does Jesus need to repent of?

Nothing. He doesn’t need to repent. He didn’t need to be baptized. But he still did. Why? Because Jesus never asks us to do something that he isn’t first willing to do himself.

So when Jesus tells us that the way to come to God is in repentance and humility, he is willing to do the same thing. He’ll put himself under the same requirements he gives to us.

Through his baptism, Jesus is showing that he will join himself to us in every way. When you approach God in weakness and repentance, you can know that Jesus has walked the very same path. He doesn’t announce his rules and demands from on high. Jesus comes down into the mess of life with us, walks with us, and eventually dies for us.

Why? Because he is the God who will completely identify with his people. He unites himself completely with us. We are one. Attached at the hip. It is the unbreakable three legged race. You get it? His fate is our fate. His life is our life.

If you come to the waters to be forgiven, to receive grace, to give God your broken heart, Jesus is going to be right there standing next to you. He’ll go into those waters with you.

You might hear all that and say, “Ok, that’s nice. Jesus came down and got baptized like I’m supposed to. But Jesus doesn’t really know me. He doesn’t know what I’m facing. He doesn’t know the sin in my life. He doesn’t know what I’m tempted by. He hasn’t suffered like me. He doesn’t get it.”

I say this gently to you but you couldn’t be more wrong.

One of the universal experiences of suffering, I don’t care who you are, or where you’re from, but when you’re suffering, you start to think you’re the only one. You think you’re the only one who has gone through what you’re experiencing. You think that no one else will get it. You think you’re all alone.

And that’s just not true.

First, everyone suffers. Not the same way, but everyone suffers. There are people all around this neighborhood, all around this city, all around the world, who know suffering like yours. There are people in this church who know suffering like yours.

And even if you think, I can’t believe that. I don’t think anyone else really knows what I’m going through. Ok, don’t believe me.

But you’ve got to know that Jesus does. He absolutely does. Look at what Mark says Jesus faced after his baptism. It says the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness where he was tempted forty days by Satan, and he had to live among the wild beasts.

Jesus went without food and water for these forty days. So first, Jesus experiences tremendous bodily suffering. He’s hungry. He’s weak. He’s on the verge of death.

And what does he have to face in this state of weakness? A direct confrontation with Satan who is tempting him day and night. The word Satan literally means “adversary” or “accuser.” Satan is the epitome of evil. Day and night, Jesus is going to war against Satan, having to refuse every temptation, every enticement, that Satan tries to offer him.

What’s the significance of the forty days? Throughout the Old Testament, God’s people experienced several forms of wandering and suffering in periods of 40. After they were set free from Egypt, the Israelites suffered in the wilderness for forty years. Moses was on Mt. Sinai for forty days and nights without food or water. Elijah wandered for 40 days and nights to get to his mountain.

Jesus was once again demonstrating that every kind of experience his people have had to go through, he’ll go through too. Jesus will take on 40 days of weakness and wandering and suffering, just as his people have had to time after time.

And then it says he’s with the wild beasts this whole time. Who else was in danger of the wild beasts, do you remember? The Christians in Rome that Mark was writing to. Emperor Nero had been dressing Christian’s up in animal carcasses and feeding them to wild beasts as a form of entertainment and torture.

Mark was saying, yeah, Jesus faced the wild beasts too.

See, Scripture makes it as plain as possible for us to see that Jesus knows every kind of suffering and temptation we face. So when you think you’re alone, when you think no one else gets it, when you think no one else could possible understand what you’re going through,

Jesus says to you, “I do.” Jesus gets it. He absolutely does.

Maybe you think you can’t trust anyone else with the sin or temptation in your heart. Maybe you think you can’t trust anyone else with the pain you’re experiencing. You can trust Jesus. You can try to keep running away from Jesus. Some of you are going to keep trying to hide parts of your life from Jesus. But he’s going to keep running toward you to prove himself to you. He’s coming after you so you’ll give your life to him and so he can bring you home to God.

The inauguration of Jesus

And that’s really what I want you to see in this last point, the inauguration of Jesus. “Inauguration” simply means to bring about the beginning of something. Typically when we speak of an inauguration, its a new beginning marked by some kind of official action and ceremony.

So you think about the inauguration of the President. We honor that occasion with speeches, celebrities, vows, and music. We do that as a country to celebrate that democracy is continuing through the leadership of a new president. Right?

Jesus’ baptism is the inauguration, or the beginning, of his kingdom ministry. Unlike presidents, who might have a celebrity at their ceremony, Jesus’ inauguration is attended by God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Unlike a CEO, whose new leadership might be celebrated by someone of high status, Jesus is celebrated by his Father in heaven, who said, “You are my Son, whom I love.”

In fact, Mark says that at Jesus’ inauguration, heaven itself was torn open so that God could come down. I want you to think about that for a moment. What does that even mean? What would that even look like? You’re out walking one day on the sidewalk and all of a sudden you look up and the heavens are torn open in the sky. Like something from an Avengers movie. Can you even imagine? I can’t. What a sight that must have been.

The heavens were opened so that God himself could come down. So that God the Father could speak. So that the Holy Spirit could descend. So that Jesus, God the Son, could be baptized and affirmed by the Father and the Son.

When Matthew and Luke, the other gospel writers, recorded this scene, they merely said that the heavens were opened. Mark used much more visceral language. The heavens weren’t just opened, they were torn. Why did Mark use this language?

There is one other place in Mark’s gospel where he used the language of being “torn open.” That’s at Jesus’ crucifixion in Mark 15.

So, in the Jerusalem temple, which was the center of worship for the Jewish people, there was a holy room in the center of the temple where only the priests could go to offer sacrifices for the sins of the people. They believed that the curtain would protect sinful people from being in God’s holy presence where they might die. In other words, the curtain represented a barrier between us and God; we’re too sinful to be in God’s presence.

When Jesus died, it says in Mark 15:38 that the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom.

When Jesus died, that curtain was torn to shreds. Why? Because Jesus died for our sins, and through faith in him, he cleans us, he forgives us, he makes us new. Through Jesus, there is no barrier of any kind between us and God.

There is nothing about you that would cause God to reject you. Do you see that? God tore the heavens open to come down to get you. He went first in repentance and facing temptation so you could know he gets you. He tore the barrier of sin through his death and resurrection.

Do you think you need to clean yourself up before God will accept you? That’s a lie. Do you think your sin is too great and he wants nothing to do with you? That’s a lie. Do you think God could never possibly understand what you’re going through? That’s a lie. Do you think your life is too insignificant for God to care. That’s a lie.

Jesus is the Spirit-giving God who has torn the heavens open to get to you. Jesus has come down from heaven to remove every barrier to bring you home to him. He’s endured hunger and temptation. He’s stared Satan down. He’s faced the beasts. He’s done everything so you can be safe with him.

The Spirit-giving heaven-tearing God has moved heaven and earth to get to you. What’s holding you back from trusting what he’s done for you?