Prepared in Your Wilderness for Jesus
Notes
Transcript
Dear Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Is this pandemic ever going to end? What about a last Tornado? Warfare? How about on a personal level - will my sadness ever lift, Will I ever have victory over my sin, feelings of guilt and worthiness. What I am really asking you - is the brokenness of this world all there ever is and will be? In this season of advent we’ve been asking how are we to be prepared and expectant for the Coming of Jesus Christ, both celebrating his first coming, but especially in being ready for His second coming. And we have seen that Mary and Joseph remarkable models of faith and obedience in how we are to believe this Christ announced to them - even more not just believe Son of God, Son of Man of Daniel 7 King with a kingdom never end, Joshua saving us from sin bringing us into new kingdom of rest, Immanuel God with Us, I hope you have been challenged in new way to put faith in this Jesus and then offer your life to serve like Modern day Mary and Josephs. I hope comforted and amazed with joy like they were.
But on this last Sunday of Advent, I want you to be prepared and expectant like one other Character was for the Coming of Christ - Jesus cousin - John. Of course, John could have just said: Why look to my cousin, I had a miraculous birth, I after over 300 years of silence from God no prophet, no rescue squad sent - I am the last of long line of OT preheats , I am real religious dude too, I am close to God and I serve God just like Jesus. I don’t need to be ready and expectant of Jesus to do something so radically new. I am like Jesus and Jesus just like me. And this Christmas, it is possible that you may think the same Jesus just religious spiritual guy and its good to be like that. And you are like that to some degree too. But as Mark begins his gospel, we see that isn’t the expectation and preparation that John models. No , he is looking to Jesus as One in a completely different league, doing a completely new thing! Mark begins his gospel wit this prologue, a prelude, that gives the identity & mission of Jesus that John aligned himself to. It is what the whole gospel is about. And unlike Matthew and Luke giving the angel’s annunciation as key to understanding Jesus, Mark goes further back to another key for unlocking God’s plan for Jesus in your life and mine. A key of the Old Testament prophesy for receiving Christ
Key Truth: We must turn John the Baptist key of prophesy to find Jesus with fullness of forgiveness, the Holy Spirit baptism, and victory over Satan.
Like Matthew, Mark begins his writing saying this is the new beginning, the new genesis - like Priene calendar Inscription of Caesar Augustus - the word gospels, glad tidings - term used for when king born and ushers in a new era, when he ascends his throne - like those that went to Trump’s Inauguration - something is going to be really different. Right before a royal visit was made, messenger would be sent ahead of the King with a special message of glad tidings. And Mark is saying, in the first ever written gospel of Jesus, the sum and substance of all of this: Gospel of Jesus, 1.the Christ, 2. the Son of God. Christ, messiah Anointed special King, Rescuer. And Jesus is the Son of God. This is the sum of the whole gospel. Mark 8 Peter will come to understanding, You are the Christ … and then in Matthew 15 at the very end of the gospel a surprise a Gentile soldier at the Foot of Cross -bring the gopsel to remakbel close as He confesses - Surely this man was the Son of God. We’ve grown so used to those claims kind of lost the wonder and sginficance and Mark begins by a prelude in which uses rare words to his gospel Wilderness and Spirit each three times.Mark is saying, You want to receive Christ, it is the OT prophets that tell you how. If you want to know how to receive this Jesus look to how John the Baptist did from the OT did. Let’s look at the first OT prophesies that show
A. Expect Jesus to be God purifying you in your spiritual wilderness!
A. Expect Jesus to be God purifying you in your spiritual wilderness!
Mark following the custom of the day gives us only one reference, even though he puts together 3 important prophesies that Jesus is fulfilling. The main and central one is Isaiah 40 - after all the doom and judgment and suffering and exile, God announces in Isaiah 40 - Comfort, Comfort, my people, judgment is over, sacrifice satisfied my justice, now year of favour and grace coming and the words applied to John the baptist are these: Isaiah 40:3
A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Now pay attention here, Mark changes a few ways this fulfillment actually comes. Yes, in Isaiah the messenger John, prepares the way for our God. But now Mark is saying John prepared the way for you, for your way, speaking of Jesus. And this is coming true because Jesus is God, now come to the wilderness and is opening up a new highway.
What is this OT program that the prophets said God would make in the wilderness? You need to know God took Israel out of the civilized cities, and garden lands, and he formed His people Israel in the wilderness. Hosea 2, Ezekiel 20 says God found her in her youth in the wilderness, there God tested and provided as they learned to trust. The wilderness was the honeymoon! Well when God’s people lost their way, crushed with suffering, no real sense of mission not identity. The OT prophets said God is going to visit you again and you can hoipe to find your new destiny, when God meets you in the wilderness!.
Well before Jesus day, there were 300 years of silence from God. And both Essences, Qmran - said got to get away from corrupt society go in to the wilderness - strictly follow Torah, make straight path, a new community - and our keeping paths straight will bring the kingdom of God as we follow the Teacher of the Law.
And here is the startling thing about being prepared to receive Jesus both first and in your life and second Coming - It’s not by our keeping the law in the wilderness that does this. Out in that wilderness, Jesus was baptized by John with a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It was a sign that he was identifying with us sinners, he had no personal sin to repent of , but he will fulfill all righteousness, he will live the perfect life we never could.
The wilderness not so much a geographic place, but a spiritual geographic map - and as much as we need to be out there, confessing our sin and need - it is Jesus we must find meeting us there. Jesus is the true Israel and people of God and he doesn’t remain in isolation like Qumran, he doesn’t separate himself from sinners. He gets baptized for our repentance and then goes to the heart of godless Galilee - so that people would be purified not by observing the Law but by coming to Trust in Him - by learning of this new highway in the spiritual desert that leads to the heart of God! 300, 000 people came out to John - thy sense God doing a new thing and want to be part of it.
The other OT prophesy Mark combines with ISa40 with Malachi 3:1-3
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.
God’s people were wearied in worship, not heart in it, God says, I am coming in judgment, and I will purify you! But then He says with those words that end the OT: Suddenly the messenger of the Covenant will come to you - Angel of the LORD of the OT - pre-incarnate Christ, after that little messenger John Baptist, one in a different league show up - his way was prepared by John, but He is God Himself, he will come to his temple, and Malachi 3 says, His job, Jesus job will be to purify… our worship, purify us! Not just our religious worship, but our every day way of serving God in spirit and truth from the heart.
“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.
And so Mark also combines one other OT prophesy, a foundational one, when Israel was formed in the desert in Exodus 23:20 God says, to them, I will send the Angel of the Lord, he says, My name is In Him, to go before you - And in the NT that is Jesus met with us, now lead us forward!!!
“Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.
And so as you prepare to celebrate his first coming, and as you live by faith receiving him by faith in your life, and as you live preparing for His Great Second Coming - be in that place of spiritual wilderness where God builds his new kingdom, but understand - it won’t be by you keeping the law, but Christ keeping it for you, and turning your life in new way. What is that way? That’s the second way you must be expecting Jesus to work in your life! It is described in the words of John the Baptist in vv.7-8
B. Expect Jesus to Come as the Mightier One who Baptizes You with Spirit-fulness!
B. Expect Jesus to Come as the Mightier One who Baptizes You with Spirit-fulness!
So picture it in your minds eye, you got 300,000 people coming out to John being baptized day after day - and John says My water baptism just preparatory, just a sign pointing to something else that way better that has to come. Don’t think you are saved rescued, that God has done his new thing, started his new kingdom - unless you get what this baptism of repentance points. Repentance is to stop old ways of doing life in sin, and turn to new ways of life with God. And John says, look even though I am that voice , the greatest OT prophet pointing to the Messia in the wilderness to show its just about to come. Listen, the Messiah isn’t just one more step to being religious, than you and I hvave reached. All 300,000 with John at there head, that ‘s one group of religious people. And John says, all of us, including me, - tiny ants, compared to the surpassing greatness of the Coming Messiah. He is a completely different league. Sometimes we think that - 300,000 of us, trying to be religious, then there are really holy prophets like John, and then at the top of the evolutionary pyramid there is Jesus just a bit better than us. But listen to John, if you want to be prepared with his kind of faith Mark 1:7
And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.
A slave in those days had to touch people sandals remove the dust. John says I can’t even do that for this Great ONe. All my morality, all my religious exercise - just a baptisms by water. Mark 1:8
I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Oh what a contrast. All the religion and morality in the world whole 300,000 of us from upstanding Judea and Jerusalem, not even worthy to be slave to God, come in Jesu Christ to walk around us. Our water baptism is but a sign of reality only He can give!
And now you need to hear this as a first century. Jew. They all had there many day to day ritual cleansing, even those essence had ritual cleanliness Mikveh - but repeated cleansings again and again. But they never thought that they had to get a one time big time baptism, like Gentile becoming a Jew, after: i. circumcision, and ii. purification w sacrifice, iii. once for all big time baptism. So all these religious people - big shocking news of John we all, are like unclean Gentiles before GOd, and we all need a one time big time Baptism. Not just a water one, that’s a picture of the washing that only the Messiah must give you!
Do you acknowledge that too. That your water baptism was an outward sign, of an even more than inward reality of Holy Spirit Baptism. Listen in the OT, the Holy Spirit was promised to come in fuller way. But it was God alone who would be the dispenser of the Holy Spirit. And that is the wonder of what John is saying, this Messiah, this Mightier One - he is the God promised in the OT to come to His people to pour out His Holy Spirit.
And then it happens. There are 300,000 “righteous ones” and now one single Galiean, from the backwoods, northern provnince of sinners, steps forward. And though He is truly God he is truly human and he gets baptized on our behalf - to fulfill righteousness for us.. And now the action with Jesus begins: The key word in the gospel of Mark is immediately - and Mark is saying for this first time - Listen Up, Watch This - some big teaching here. Mark 1:10-11
And when he came up out of the water, immediately 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.”
There are three big things that happen then. This Jesus baptized for us for repentance to fulfill righteousness on our behalf, - he does this and i. the heavens are torn open. Isaiah 31 Oh that you would rend heavens and come down. And now look God has come down. And listen carefully what he is done fulfilling all righteousness on your behalf, all the obedience and He will provide the sacrifice to pay for our sin and earn eternal reward of righteousness… Do you remember what happens at the end of this gospel, same Word, the Temple Veil TORN OPEN- Curtain as thick as man’s hand representing the boundary separating God and humanity - torn open in half from top to bottom. Baptism points to that being accomplished by Jesus for us. That’s why Jesus came to tear that veil between God and you down,
But there is more. The second thing that happens as Jesus was baptized in that repentance for you and me. ii. The Spirit descends on him like a dove. The descent of the Spirit promised for all God’s people in the new covenant, not just as individuals in themselves, but as the community of believers! Jesus receives the Spirit to empower - hadn’t stopped being God, but as begins His public ministry - equipped in his humanity with the Holy Spirit. A consuming fire that would destroy us in drawing close to us like Mount Sinai. our wickedness, but now the Spirit comes as a Dove in Christ - like days of Noah and the baptism pictured in the flood - judgment absorbed -and out of the waters this community of the dove with the Spirit working among us. That word descend - remind us of Gen 1 - Spirit of God as it were descended from centre of God’s glory to the matter the earth God was creating - and now because our creation got all messed up, Christ has come - and He’s bringing a new creation that the Spirit work s in His humanity - and if you are united to Him will begin to work in your humanity. You sharing in His bpatism and anointing by the Spirit!
But look at the greatest and most incredible wonder that happens at Christ’s baptism for us into repentance. III. This voice from heaven comes - God himself directly speaking wit no mediator and he says two things: two prophesies are being fulfilled. “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
In Psalm 2:7 God says to a human king - You are my Son , today I have begotten you.
I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.
The Messiah in becoming a human king who would establish God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. And God announces I am doing that now in Jesus. And as that perfect human ruler for my people, I adopt Him! But the second half of what God says is from Isaiah 42:1
Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
This Great and awesome Messiah King is God’s suffering servant - who so identifies with us suffering and sinful people that He will die for them. And now at the beginning of the gospel, God the Father sees Jesus step forward in this baptism and say - I will step forward for all the sinners and sufferes , those in Galilee truly poor in Spirit -and God the Father says, I delight in You - What we all ache for - In approval and love for parent to say - Yup this is what you were made to live for and you are doing it so well, so pleased - From all cration - plan to bring this salvation and new kingdom, and new world through Jesus. And as we get united to this Chirst, God says that to us as we are in Him too!
But Mark concludes this prelude to the gospel, picturing how the purifying, Spirit-filling fulness of Jesus has to get down into the nitty-gritty details of the battles of every day life.
C. Expect Jesus to Come as the Satan-Slayer who will see you through attacks of wickedness
In v.12 we get another immediately, change of scene form the spiritual wilderness. Now the Spirit drives Jesus to encounter another kingdom, the one in your life and mine that is in direct opposition to God’s. And for 40 days, like for the 40 years Israel was tested and tried and tempted - Jesus faces down Satan. Much more could be send about how in Christ we know can face down our trial and temptations with the living Christ. How experiences His baptism by the Spirit dying to sin, and rising to righteousness in the Spirit. But I want you to feel this advent as you are prepared to receive Christ for all this purifying and spirit filing reality, I want you to feel the comfort that Mark’s firs t readers for whom he wrote this very first gospel were to feel. and that is why we read in Mark 1:13b
And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.
Mark nephew to Barnabas, companion of Peter, dearest friend of Paul at the end - was in Rome in the early 60’s. When he left the church, his friends were alright and Nero was sane! It had gone quite well, under first years of Emperor Nero’s reign, but then catastrophe happened that turned those Christian's lives upside down. Fire of Rome 2/3rds… blamed it on the Christians. Don’t want to describe all the suffering they went through. Had to start meeting in the catacombs, but one of the persecution was to throw Christians they caught to the wild beasts. And Mark writes this first gospel to encourage those Christians that in this world were Satan rages, to keep us in sin and suffering in this wrold, wre the wild animals howl - Christ was surrounded by raging hounds of hell too in this world, and he conquered that Satan even through his suffering, Christ’s angel continue to minister even as he began his ministry, even when went to he Cross, and as His followers, we can trust this Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God too.
CONCLUSION: Advent 2021 have you looked back to celebrate Christ’s first coming, are you embracing this One who has forgiveness and baptism of the Spirit and who will face down the trials and sufferings of this present age. Are you expecting Jesus to bring His Kingdom in in the fulness of His Second Coming?
Sometimes the end, is in the beginning. The Lord of the Rings - There and back again. If like May and Joseph, and John the Baptist you can look to Christ with faith-filled anticipation . If like Mary, and Joseph and JOhn you, offer your life and service to him, know that as you begin with Jesus as Your Christ, the Son of God - He will see you through wilderness, all the way to the end, in the fulness of His Kingdom. Amen.