Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

I love going to the Shepherd’s Conference.

For me, in my own personal ministry and for my growth it is one of the singular spiritual highlights of my year.

But it never fails that almost as soon as I get back from that wonderful, uplifting event that something will happen and that mountain top experience will come crashing down into a valley.

And sometimes that valley is exponentially longer and seemingly harder than that mountaintop experience was.

Maybe you can relate to that thought in something that you’ve experienced in your spiritual life.

This morning we’re going to get a glimpse at two moments in Christ’s life that, on the surface, seem to provide for us a demonstration for how He went through the same type of experiences that we do and how we should handle them.

In fact, some of you have probably heard these passages preached exactly that way.

But I think that as we progress through this passage what we’re going to find in the picture that Mark provides us of Christ is that He is again proven to be wholly other than us and that even in these seemingly corresponding experiences He is proven to be so much higher that His experiences are really not

Turn with me to Mark 1 and we’ll be looking at verses 9-13.

I titled this message Peaks and Valleys Part 1 and that might be a little misleading because we aren’t actually going to get to peaks and valleys part 2 until Mark 8 when we look at Peter’s confession of faith and then his immediate rebuke of Christ.

But lets dig in to these verses this morning and look to see what God has to show us in the picture that Mark gives us of His illustrious Son.

The Peak

Mark is seeking to keep his rendition of the Gospel that he promised in Mark 1:1 as cohesive and streamlined as possible so everything he chooses to say and chooses not to include support this desire.

This phrase “In those days” is a bridge from the episode that he has just related to the verses that we’re going to study this morning.

Even as non-specific as it is, this clues us in that it was most likely within the first six months of John’s ministry.

If you remember the birth stories related in Luke you will recall that John was only about six months older than Jesus and so he most likely wouldn’t have been preaching for years before these events took place.

But now the long awaited moment has come - the moment that Mark has been building to throughout this entire introduction.

Everything he has written has been to bring us to this moment.

He introduces Jesus in Mark 1:1 but now is the moment of His arrival.

Jesus - the Messiah proclaimed by Mark, promised by the prophets Isaiah and Malachi, prepared for by John’s ministry of baptism and pointed to by John’s preaching is now present with the people to be baptized.

The King has arrived but He is as yet unknown.

Mark chooses to share only one detail from the backstory of Jesus and it is this piece of information regarding where He is from.

As he introduces Him he includes that He is from Nazareth in Galilee.

Nazareth was such a small town that it is not even mentioned in the Old Testament or by the later Jewish historian Josephus.

It was a hamlet of probably about 3-500 people.

Just like John’s appearance, as the forerunner of the Messiah, in the wilderness was not what was expected, Jesus, the Messiah, coming from Nazareth was not what was expected.

He was born far away from the corrupt religious system that had developed in Jerusalem.

Nazareth had such a bad reputation that Nathaniel would question Phillip “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

(John 1:46)

And in Galilee - a region that had been a part of the apostate Northern Kingdom, conquered by the Assyrians and repopulated by Gentiles - look down upon by the more pure and elite Jews from Jerusalem.

In John 7 the crowds even question whether the Messiah could come out of Galilee.

But this is the fulfillment of what Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 9

Jesus is the only mention of anyone coming to John from Galilee in Mark’s accounts in contrast to his comments that all of Jerusalem and Judea were going out to be baptized by John.

This is also in contrast to the later account that we’ll be studying in Mark 4 that a large crowd came from Galilee as well as large crowds from Jerusalem, Judea and other regions that were following Christ.

And so Jesus has come to be baptized by John presenting Himself among the people along the Jordan River.

This leads to the question that has plagued theologians for centuries and that is “why”?

Why did Christ have to be baptized?

Mark has made a significant point to highlight that John’s baptism was for repentance and the forgiveness of sins so why would the only sinless man ever need to submit to a baptism that he didn’t need.

And there is no doubt for the historicity of this event.

It is covered in varying detail in all four Gospels.

And it is even this difficulty - as to why He would have had to submit to this seeming unnecessary act - that guarantees the historicity of it happening.

If the early church were looking to establish that Christ was the sinless Son of God they wouldn’t have attempted to establish His credibility through the lens of John’s baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

Even John questioned why Jesus had to submit to be baptized.

In Matthew’s rendition of this event John tries to prevent Jesus saying that it was he that needed to be baptized by Christ not the other way around.

And yet Christ insists saying that it was necessary to fulfill all righteousness.

Notice what is not in this text first - Christ does not seek to put John off with regards to His sinless perfection.

Instead He tells John to allow or to permit this at this moment.

It is a recognition on Christ’s part that the significance of this particular baptism is far more than for the forgiveness of sins.

It is the first identification of Christ with those who He had to identify with in order to be their Messiah.

In everything that Christ did He obeyed the Father perfectly - even in the submission to the humiliation of setting aside His divine attributes for a time to come and assume the nature of a man and to submit to everything that mankind had to experience.

In this case God had set in place, in accordance with His will, the requirements that men should be baptized and so Christ in perfect submission to the Father in every respect would submit to baptism.

As one commentator has written “Baptism for the Lord was a symbolic action picturing His eventual baptism into death at Calvary and His rising from the dead.

Thus at the outset of His public ministry, there was this vivid foreshadow of a cross and an empty tomb.”

All of that is important and gives us an understanding of why Christ had to be baptized in total.

One answer it doesn’t get us too however is why Mark chooses to relate the baptism in the manner that he does.

He really only gives the baptism the briefest of head nods in acknowledgement of it taking place as he moves on to his main purpose.

Remember that Mark starts his Gospel account with a royal proclamation that there is a new King, the King of Kings, who this letter is telling about.

And so for Mark the baptism really seems to be that moment when the Son comes before the Father and kneels to receive the crown.

It is that moment that we’ve seen represented in film of the moment that the king is being crowned and so he must make one act of submission in kneeling before he is proclaimed the supreme ruler.

The illustration falls apart a bit when it comes to Christ because even in his human form and in submitting to baptism we know that He was the Word who was with God from the beginning of eternity and that all things had come to being through His power.

And yet here He is submitting to the Father’s will in this coronation event.

It is what transpires after the baptism, after Christ comes out of the water that points us most to what Mark desires to get across.

Our translations say “As soon as” but the Greek word here is ευθυς and is more accurately translated as immediately.

Mark uses it more than all the other three Gospel writers combined and eleven times in this first chapter alone.

Including twice in the events that we’re looking at today.

In fact this word really sets apart the two events that are taking place.

Immediately as Christ rises from the water Mark tells us that He saw the Heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove.

Whether this was an event for Christ alone to witness or whether others saw it also is a point that many are divided on.

I think it is safe to say that it is most probable that only Christ and John witnessed this event.

A few reasons for this observation - this is exactly the kind of event that Satan attempted to tempt Christ to recreate by telling Him to throw Himself off the Temple and to validate His Messiahship when the angels caught Him and prevented Him from falling to His death.

There would have been thousands of people nearby and some of these, as we know from other Gospel accounts, were Pharisees and Sadducees.

For that many people to witness this supernatural event, this validation of Christ as the Messiah and not believe when they consistently asked Him for just such a sign is improbable.

The other is that Mark’s description of the event makes it seem as if it really was only Christ who saw and heard the events that took place.

The event is significant - and it has eschatalogical or end of times significance.

The verb for splitting used here is only used one other time in the Gospel of Mark and the majority of the times this verb is used in the New Testament accounts it is used either in conjunction with this event or the supernatural tearing of the curtain in the Holy of Holies or of the earth at Christ’s crucifixion.

Here, the separation between God and man the very curtain of Heaven has been torn allowing free access to the throne of God.

As we’re going to study next week Christ’s message would be that the time had been fulfilled and that the Kingdom of God was at hand.

The division between God and man that had been forged in the Garden through sin is being torn open now through Christ’s coronation at the start of His ministry.

This is made even more apparent by the Trinitarian nature of this moment.

The Son is presenting Himself in submission to the Father.

The Spirit is present descending upon the newly baptized Christ.

The Father is present in the proclamation that comes forth from Heaven.

The significance of this cannot be overstated both in a theological sense of establishing the doctrine of the Trinity and in the soteriological sense of the significance of Christ being proclaimed as the Son of God.

The first thing that takes place is the descent of the Spirit.

There is an important note of caution that we must take right from the outset.

The text says that the Spirit descends on Christ “like a dove” not “as a dove” - even in the translations that say “as a dove” in Matthew 3:21 it is best to translate that as “as a dove would” not in the form of a dove.

We have taken to depicting the Spirit as a dove in modern day Christianity and this puts us in danger of making Him something He is not.

He no more exists eternally in the form of a bird than He does in the form of a flame.

The Spirit descends and alights on Christ to provide a picture of divine approval, blessing, empowerment and validation at the beginning of His ministry.

This fulfills what God spoke through the prophet Isaiah regarding the Messiah

Christ of course was truly God and truly man.

As God He did not give up any of His attributes and needed nothing.

But as a man He required the help of the Spirit to accomplish the mission that God the Father had sent Him forth to accomplish.

Dr. MacArthur comments on this verse “in His humanity, He was being anointed for service and empowered for ministry by the Spirit in a manner reminiscent of the words of Isaiah 61:1,

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

Because the Lord has anointed me

To bring good news to the afflicted;

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,