A Little Good News
Notes
Transcript
Have you ever had someone ask you "I have good news and bad news, which do you want first?"
I normally want the good news first. When there is bad news coming we like to put if off for as long as possible. Even when we have to deliver some bad news our tendency is to put it off for as long as possible.
I don't know about you but I hate to deliver bad news. It is no fun and can be emotionally draining. There are some people that get some enjoyment or satisfaction out of baring bad news but a lot of the time it borders on or is down right gossip.
In my family I'm usually the first one to find out that someone is critically ill or has died. That always puts me in a situation of calling my siblings to give them the news. I'm not particularly close to my older brothers because of the large age difference and by the time I was old enough to know they were out of high school, off to the military and I only saw them once or twice a year. Generally when I call my one brother it's usually with some bad news. The last time I called him the first words out of his mouth were "who's sick or who died". It's pretty sad that that is the extent of our conversations.
We don't like to get bad news, no matter what it is about we don't want to hear it. Being a pastor I get more than my share of bad news. People tell me stuff that they'd never tell anyone else. There are times I just have to take a mental health break because always being on the receiving end of bad news can get discouraging and draining and downright exhausting.
Even going to the mail box can be a time of bad news because there is always something in the mailbox for some guy named "bill".
In a "Peanuts" cartoon strip, Charlie Brown says to Linus, "Life is just too much for me. I've been confused from the day I was born. I think the whole trouble is that we're thrown into life too fast. We're not really prepared." And Linus asks, "What did you want . . . a chance to warm up first?"
The Advent season is supposed to be our chance to warm up. It's that time to prepare our hearts and homes for the birth of the Christ child. It's that time when we put all the decorations in their place, the presents are bought and wrapped, the cards sent out and received, and we get ready for Christmas Day.
But if we aren't careful the time of preparation will be over and the big day will be here and it will be just another day. We'll finish opening all the gifts; the room will be strewn with scraps of wrapping paper and ribbon; the turkey or ham will have put up a valiant fight but be nothing but leftovers; and we'll be parked in front of the TV watching one of the games. Then all of a sudden that empty feeling will hit us. That feeling of "What's the use?" That Charlie Brown feeling of something missing, as if we were thrown into Christmas too fast. That's when we'll realize we needed time to warm up.
Good News. When we read the Gospels about Jesus we are reading the Good News about Jesus. Marks opening words in his Gospel says this:
1 The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, God’s Son,
The beginning of the good news or the beginning of the gospel about Jesus. What a great way for Mark to start his writing by stating that this was good news.
Anne Murray wrote a country song back in the early 1980's titled "Little Good News" and in the song she talks about all the bad stuff going on in the world at the time and how she wished that the newspaper and local news only had positive stuff to print and talk about. She ends the song with these haunting words "We sure could use a little good news today".
The events are different today than when she wrote that song but we sure could use a little good news today. Our world is in a crazy horrible mess.
One of the things that I have to do when I see a patient is to write a progress note. The note has to have the who, what, when, where, and why. Those things are needed to document what happened during my session with the patient.
That is what Mark is doing for us here.
We need some good news
We’ve entered into the season of Advent. It is the season of preparation and waiting. It is also a time to anticipate the Good News of Jesus.
It is easy to be distracted this time of year by the preparations for what is coming. We clean the house to prepare for guests. We purchase gifts for upcoming celebrations. We take photos for the perfect greeting cards, which must be mailed at just the right time in order to find themselves in places of honor on friends’ mantels in time for Christmas.
Though we spend a lot of time preparing for Christmas celebrations, we often neglect what it looks like to prepare our hearts and lives for Christ. It seems maybe an odd thing to us—this idea of preparing for Jesus—but that is exactly the call that John was declaring in the wilderness to the children of Israel. He was pointing the people away from himself and toward the coming of a Messiah. He urged them to be ready, to make straight paths for him, because the Messiah would be coming soon.
In the time that Mark wrote his Gospel people were looking for good news. Their nation was being controlled by a foreign government, they didn't have all the freedoms they desired. They were being heavily taxed. They were looking for the Messiah to come and save them and set up the throne of David again, kick out the foreign government and all would be well in Israel.
1. The people had been waiting a long time for the promised Messiah.
They needed to remember who they were and who the Messiah was promised to be:
The One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.
The One the sandals of whom John the Baptist said he was unworthy to untie.
They needed to hear that they were not forgotten:
After years of apparent silence from God, now John the Baptist has shown up and is sharing messages from God for the people.
The Messiah is, in fact, coming!
The people were listening to a message in the wilderness:
Mark doesn’t seem to be using the language of wilderness arbitrarily but, rather, as a metaphor for life before the Messiah.
This wilderness hardship may have left them cynical, weary, and worn—just like it would probably leave us.
Mark begins by saying that what he's going to write is good news, it's good news about Jesus the Messiah. He has come, he was there.
Folks Jesus, the Messiah has come, he is here today as he said "where two or three are gathered in my name there I am in their midst". He is here! And, He is coming back again!
We have that good news today.
If you are today a born again believer in Jesus then the good news lives within you. You and I then have a responsibility to live out that good news each day and demonstrate it by how we live our lives. The good news has come, Jesus has come and he has changed us.
It's interesting that Mark doesn't deal at all in his gospel about the birth of Jesus, of how the angels announced his birth or his years growing up with Mary and Joseph. Mark begins the Good News at the beginning of Jesus public ministry.
Marks starts by quoting from Isaiah 40 that was read to us earlier. It's all about preparing for the coming of the Messiah and the one doing that preparation work, John the Baptist. There in those verses quoted he writes:
Common English Bible Chapter 1
Look, I am sending my messenger before you.
He will prepare your way,
3 a voice shouting in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight.”
Even John's birth was something to be celebrated. His parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth were old or as Luke wrote "they were both well along in years" and they had no children. Zechariah was a priest and was on duty at the temple and he was responsible to go into the Temple to burn the incense. While he was in there the Angel Gabriel appears before him and tells him that he and his wife are going to have a son and they are to name him John and that even from birth he will be full of the Holy Spirit. Gabriel tells him:
17 He will go forth before the Lord, equipped with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will turn the hearts of fathers back to their children, and he will turn the disobedient to righteous patterns of thinking. He will make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Zechariah can't believe this news from Gabriel and questions how this can happen since he and his wife are old. I just love the response that Gabriel gives him, he says:
19 The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in God’s presence. I was sent to speak to you and to bring this good news to you. 20 Know this: What I have spoken will come true at the proper time. But because you didn’t believe, you will remain silent, unable to speak until the day when these things happen.”
Gabriel says, fine, don't believe me so you won't be able to talk until the baby is born. Jumping ahead in time Elizabeth his wife gives birth to a son just as promised and it wasn't until it was time for Zechariah and Elizabeth to name their baby that Zechariah was able to speak and he spoke and said that his name is to be John.
2. A reordering of lives and perspectives needed to take place in order for them to fully embrace who Jesus was.
Many people thought John the Baptist was the Messiah. They needed to be made aware that John was just the messenger.
Their preconceived notions about how God was going to show up were being challenged. They hoped for someone who would free them from political oppression, but then John started talking about baptism by the Holy Spirit.
Mark says in verse 4 that John appears baptizing in the wilderness. He's fulfilling the prophecy that had been given about him back is Isaiah chapter 40 and the words spoken by the angel Gabriel. He's calling people to repent and to come back to God and he was baptizing them.
Look at the message that John was preaching. He was preaching a message of baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people came, Mark says that all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized confessing their sins.
What an awesome preacher he was. He didn't have a stadium and with a great sound system and a tremendous worship band. He didn't fly in to the wilderness in his private jet and arrive chauffeur driven car. Look at how John lived. Mark described him this way:
6 John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey.
What a sight he must have been! He must have appeared as some wild man from the mountains with his camel's hair garment with a leather belt to hold it in place. I'm sure some people came just to see him. Even his diet was strange, locusts and wild honey. I just can't imagine purposefully eating a grasshopper even if it were dipped in chocolate or in this case honey. That was John and people came by the thousands to hear him and to repent, to confess their sins and to be baptized.
By every account John was extremely successful as a preacher. There is no indication in any of the gospel accounts that it ever went to his head.
How unlike many of the successful preachers of our day. I don't begrudge any minister from earning a living, I just have a serious problem with the excesses that many go into.
What's the difference between John and some of these modern day preachers? I believe it was radical obedience to the call of God on his life. John could have capitalized on his success but he didn't, he remained obedient to the call that God had placed on him even from his birth. He never wavered from that, he had periods of doubt but he remained obedient to God. Even at the height of his success he reminded the people that were following him that he was not the messiah.
Not only was John obedient, but he was also submissive to the will of God. We don't like submission, we want to promote ourselves. Our culture teaches that we deserve to be happy all the time, that it's all about the here and now. We're entitled to happiness, we're entitled to someone providing for us. I'm sorry but I think that's a load of garbage.
There is so much more to life than just the here and now. The world doesn't revolve around me. My life revolves around Jesus, he has come into my life and radically reoriented it. I find my joy in serving him. There is a huge difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is about the here and now. I'm not happy all the time. Things happen that makes me unhappy. Joy is different, it's all about submitting to the greatness and the glory of God.[1]
John had a really good grasp on that because Mark records in verse 7 that John said:
7 He announced, “One stronger than I am is coming after me. I’m not even worthy to bend over and loosen the strap of his sandals.
I want you to catch this and grasp what John is saying. In a household that had servants or slaves, one of them would be assigned the task of washing the feet of the master and his family when they came in from the outside. That job was one of the most menial jobs in the household and was reserved for the servant or slave who lowest on the totem pole. If you lived in that household and you came in from shopping that servant would take your sandals off you and wash your feet. That's the picture that is seen at the Last Supper when Jesus washes the feet of the disciples. He took the role of that servant.
John in saying that the world doesn't revolve around him. With that picture of the servant in mind, John says that there is one coming that he is not even worthy to bend down and untie the straps of his sandals.
Of course he's talking about Jesus but he's saying to things. He's telling how unworthy he is compared to Jesus and he's also saying how great Jesus is. In Luke's gospel he records John saying this when Jesus comes to be baptized:
29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one about whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is really greater than me because he existed before me.’ 31 Even I didn’t recognize him, but I came baptizing with water so that he might be made known to Israel.”
3.We also can forget to prepare for the Lord.
In our areas of wilderness, we can be cynical or doubtful that God is still faithful.
We can begin to follow the messenger instead of listening to the message.
We often can be consumed by our preconceived notions about how God is going to work, instead of allowing God to show up in unexpected ways.
CONCLUSION
Mark finishes his introduction of John the Baptist by recording these words:
8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
He's saying that something radical is going to happen with Jesus. It is Jesus that sends the Holy Spirit to baptize us, sanctify us, to empower us, to transform us, to radically remake us.
Luke records John saying "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Fire is pretty radical, in our lives he's saying he's going to through the Holy Spirit burn away all the unnecessary stuff that is hindering our walk with Jesus.
I ask you the question that Paul asked the believers when he visited Ephesus. He asked them: “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”
Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed? If not I'd love to talk with you about that. It's all about surrendering to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
This Good News that Mark writes about has come. Jesus has come, He is here and He will come again. We have a part to play in that. We have a part to play in preparing the way. Just prior to Jesus returning to Heaven he instructed the disciples to Go and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them.
Jesus wants to be not just the one who was promised but the actual Lord of our lives, which means a preparation must take place on our end. We must be willing to leave the wildernesses of our lives and the places where cynicism and doubt have taken root. We must expect that, just like God showed up in unexpected ways in the form of Jesus, God still shows up in unexpected ways in our lives.
We must humbly say, like John, that we are unworthy to even untie Christ’s sandals and yet still remain confident that we are asked to come.
This preparation of our hearts and minds can help us this season and throughout the year to remember that, while Christ already came, Christ continues to come each day into our lives as we invite him. Christ continues to want to speak truth to the world, and we, like John, can declare the Word of the Lord and continue to make straight paths for him.
That commission didn't end when the disciples died. That commission is ours today. As we prepare, part of that preparation is for ourselves, repenting of any sin in our life. Being obedient to the Holy Spirit who is at work within us.
We need to live out the Good News daily in our lives. We need to at every opportunity to tell the Good News.
[1]McKenna, D. L., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1982). Vol. 25: The Preacher's Commentary Series, Volume 25 : Mark. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Inc.