Sermon Tone Analysis

1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, 3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ” 4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

5 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.

6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.

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.

8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

10 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.

11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

If you could think with me for a moment, what's the most important question you have ever asked?

It's been said that insightful people are not first people with the right answers; they’re people who ask the right questions because you don't get to the right answers without asking the right questions.

Perhaps there could be no more important questions than the three questions that are asked and answered by Mark.

First one: “Who in the world is Jesus?”

What an important question.

Second question: “Why in the world did He come?

What is this life about?”

And third question: “What does it mean to follow Him?” Who is Jesus?

Why did He come?

What does it mean to follow Him?

Background

Mark is probably the earliest of the Gospels, and Mark answers these questions, not so much in an abstract, theological, or philosophical way, but in putting before us in hard hitting, quick-paced style, the life and ministry of Jesus.

There are many narrative passages in Scripture; this is probably the most purely narrative portion of the Word of God.

Mark doesn't make as many editorial comments as Luke would make.

He doesn't record the lengthy teachings of Christ as Matthew does.

He puts in front of you, again and again, the person Jesus, the person Jesus, the person Jesus, until it's impossible to be neutral.

You have to respond to this Jesus.

You have to respond to who He is.

You have to respond to what He's done.

You have to respond to what He says about you.

You have to decide whether you will follow Him.

You have to face the reality of His cross.

You can’t be neutral and read the gospel of Mark.

There is a beautiful way he tells the story of Christ and how it confronts what we think about ourselves.

It confronts your

deepest needs.

It confronts your deepest dreams.

It confronts everything you would think about your world.

How?

By putting in front of you the person, the Lord Jesus.

Everything we hold in our theology, everything we believe as Christians, is rooted in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, is rooted in His historical work on earth.

And so it’s right for us to go back to that again and again, to march back to the Gospels and work our way through a gospel again and again.

Because without Jesus, without His work, all that we believe would be empty and worthless.

Mark tells us two simple things.

The gospel is about Jesus Christ.

It is not good advice about how to live.

It is good news about a person.

Secondly, Mark sets the scene for Jesus by telling us about the John the Baptist and the significance of his life and ministry.

Good News

Mark 1:1–3 (ESV)

1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, 3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ ”

This is Mark’s ‘gospel’ (1:1)—good news as told by Mark.

But who decides whether the news is good or not?

In Rome, where Mark is writing, this word evangel, good news, is a proclamation throughout the empire: for instance, that a new emperor has taken power.

Good news!

Or is it?

That would all depend on where you stand.

If you don’t like this emperor, if you are his enemy, you may not think it is good news at all.

Mark thinks what he is about to tell is good news—but it can only be good news if you are going to be a friend of the new emperor, this new King.[1]

Many commentators say the way this Gospel begins alludes back to the way the Bible begins, “In the beginning.”

There's a way in which Mark is saying, “What I'm about to tell you, the story I’m about to tell you, the person I'm going to introduce you to, has as fundamental and as seismic implications as the creation of the world did.”

As God, in that moment, creates the world out of nothing, that physical creation, this, in the same way, is a spiritual creation that happens, re-created by Christ Jesus.

This is God remaking His world through Christ.

The coming of John signaled both the beginning of the joyful tidings of salvation and the intrusion of the rule of God.

The Prophecies

Mark has quoted the prophecies of Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1.

Those prophets, hundreds of years earlier, look forward to a day when God is going to do something new; this is all in God’s plan.

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,’ he says.

God is doing something new.

This time it is not just another prophet who will come; it is the Lord God himself who is coming into the world.

God is coming in human form in the person of Jesus Christ, God’s final word to humanity.

John the Baptizer

Mark 1:4–5 (ESV)

4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

5 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.

Here are crowds of people, thousands of them, streaming out from all the places where they live, from town and country, going out into the desert.

Notice the word ‘out’.

They go out into the desert, called there to meet with God.

Time and again in the Bible, the desert is where God takes people to meet with him.

He takes them away from the places where they are comfortable, the busy situations they are embroiled in, out where there are no distractions and they can hear him speaking.

It’s a biblical pattern, and here it happens again.

As these thousands of people swarm out to meet with John, and they do want to repent and confess their sins to God (1:5), he gives them a message of hope.

Running through the dry, brown desert there is a river, with a narrow green strip of living vegetation on either side, an avenue of hope in the wasteland.

And there, near the point where the River Jordan runs into the Dead Sea,1 he baptizes them and tells them their sins can be forgiven.[2]

Even today, the Lord so often takes us to a place where we have no resources of our own, a place that feels dead and dry, so that we can hear his voice without distraction.

Have you been there?

John the Baptist, a crucial figure in the history of revelation and redemption.

Mark 1:6 (ESV)

6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.

John definitely was not making a fashion statement.

His camel’s-hair robe was the kind worn by the very poor, and his belt, unlike the fancy belts so popular in those days, was simply a leather thong.

His food was not very exciting either.

His idea of eating out was to catch a few grasshoppers and visit the local beehive for dessert.

Actually John was in perfect control of his lifestyle.

He knew exactly what he was doing, for he had assumed the dress and style of the ancient prophet Elijah the Tishbite (described in 2 Kings 1:8) who called his people to national repentance.

John’s dress and lifestyle were a protest against the godlessness and self-serving materialism of his day.

It amounted to a call to separate oneself from the sinful culture, repent, and live a life focused on God.

Even his context, the desert wilderness, was meant to emphasize this, for it was originally to the wilderness that Israel came out of Egypt.

The people’s coming out to John in the wilderness was a subtle acknowledgment of Israel’s history of disobedience and rebellion, and a desire to begin again.3

What was beautiful was that John’s life and actions bore out what he was.

He lived a life of continual repentance and uncompromising devotion to God.[3]

The very fact of John’s appearance was an eschatological event of the first magnitude and signified that the decisive turning point in the history of salvation was at hand.

It was John, the preacher of radical repentance, who initiated the messianic crisis.