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Teaching podcast from the Eagle Community Church of Christ in Mont Belvieu, TX.
Hi, friends. Welcome back to the Eagle Community Church of Christ podcast. My name is John Gunter. I'm excited to start a new series this week. This is, the gospel of Mark.
John Gunter:We are in the first nine verses or so and, really looking forward to this. So, I hope what you'll do is join along with us, read each week and we will cover this week by week and see what Mark has to say to us today. So, thanks again for listening. We'll see you soon. This morning, we began a study on the gospel of Mark.
John Gunter:We're following in the footsteps of our small groups. And so, if you're in a small group right now, hopefully, some of this will be review. And, if not, we'll get on your group and chastise them and make, make you stand up in public or something. I don't know. But the gospel of Mark is, is a lot of fun.
John Gunter:It's an interesting book. We think that Mark may have been writing to churches who he wasn't breaking necessarily news to them, that they'd already heard the gospel, they had heard the good news about who Jesus is, and so he is kind of calling them back to, as we do often in ministry, calling them back to remember who you are. You need that reminder sometimes? Yeah. We kind of stray off the path one way or the other, and so we need that constant call.
John Gunter:And so I see this as one of those things. An interesting part of Mark is you get to the resurrection and then it just ends. So, that's one of the reasons we think, okay, Mark is talking to people who already know all of this, right? And so, he's doing this. Mark is, an interesting writer in that as you read it, you'll start to notice now that I say this, but it's always, Jesus did this and immediately Jesus did that.
John Gunter:And it's like Jesus is on this kind of you ever been on a path like that? I like this thing and I'm going to this thing and I'm doing all of this. I do that on YouTube sometimes. I can be into aviation, I could be into, you know, any kind of gardening, I can go here and here, it's almost breakneck. Oh, I like this, and I like this, and I, Oh, it's October, I better get into the scary movies again, and let's do all of that.
John Gunter:And so that's kind of how Mark talks, is he doesn't spend as much time on actually what Jesus said. He spends a lot of time or the time he spends on what Jesus did. And so I hope you will notice some of these things as we go. One other feature of Mark that, as you read, I want you to notice is something that scholars call the Markan sandwich. What does that mean?
John Gunter:That sounds weird. Well, what Mark will do is he will tell a story about what Jesus did and the next thing will be kind of unrelated, but the thing after that goes back with the previous thing. It's like, okay, I'm trying to get something in your mind here. Well, the best ways as you study things, as we've learned, is that you should study something and go do something else and then come back to it if you want to learn it. And that's kind of what Mark is doing.
John Gunter:And so hopefully, as we go, you'll notice those things. Okay, we begin with this and hopefully, can everyone see this? I don't know what just happened. Can everybody see that fine? Are you doing that, Donald?
John Gunter:Trying to trying to mess me up. That's that's just who Donald is, though. He just wants to mess me. No, I'm just I'm just kidding. I just wanna make sure that it was it was legible.
John Gunter:I always have my text really big. We begin with the the first four verses here. In the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, 'Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.' John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. So what I wanna point out to you in these verses is first, when Mark begins, it's always important when you open the Bible to see those first few verses. Okay?
John Gunter:So, what we're gonna do is when you open something up, it kind of tells you about what the story is gonna be about, what the focus is. Do you have a favorite movie or a favorite song? Like as soon as it starts playing, I'm into it. You ever read a book that's really slow to get into? You're like, I'm not sure where this is going.
John Gunter:I don't really like those. But when I realized, I've said for a lot of years I didn't like to read. I didn't like to read crappy books is what it was, I think. Because a buddy of mine said, Hey, you ought to read this series, and as soon as I opened it, I was in the action. I knew what was going on.
John Gunter:Okay, we are dropped into this, and here we go. And so Mark begins with the beginning of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. What I want you to know is this is good news, Jesus is the Son of God. Amen, church? That is what Mark is trying to reiterate why you should, again, remember who you are because Jesus came, he is the Son of God.
John Gunter:Now, one other thing he's doing here is the way he's begun in verse 1 would have been something they were very familiar with because there was this cult of the emperor. And so, remember, there was emperor worship. You worship the emperor a lot of times as deity, as God. And so, on the emperor's birthday, on a date that he ascended to power, you might worship, hey, this is good news, the gospel of the, you know, this is the good news about the emperor. And so, Mark is using that same language to say, the good news is Jesus, the Son of God.
John Gunter:In verse 2, he says, As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way. Now, one thing I want you to notice and and understand, the word for messenger, if you go look that up, in different verses, it might say angel. Don't let that throw you. Angel means messenger. Messenger means angel.
John Gunter:So you might go back and say, hey. What are you talking about there? And you may see angel. But what his main point is, is that ever since the old testament ever since they wouldn't have said old testament. Ever since the the writings of the prophets.
John Gunter:Right? Ever since the prophets, we understood or or or we have come to understand now that that is saying, okay. There is someone coming to prepare the way for who you've been looking for because remember, they have been over 300 years without a new prophet. And so at this point in the history of these people, they have decided that, okay, God has chosen to do something different. God has decided there's gonna be no more prophets, you know, we're not hearing from him directly like we used to, and so something has changed until here.
John Gunter:And all of a sudden, there is one crying in the wilderness. There is one preparing the path for Jesus, for the coming one. And remember, they their prayer was, as they looked around under Roman occupation, God, would you handle this? Because I look around and it doesn't look good, but God, would you take care of this? And so all of a sudden, there is one crying in the wilderness and the good news is, Jesus, the Son of God, was here.
John Gunter:Amen? Well, you all are not on it this morning. We talked in class about having an amen thing up here, maybe I had a button to push it, just say. But thank you very much, Pam. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
John Gunter:And it said, John appeared baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Now, something you should notice here, something they would have seen, if we can look through their eyes for a minute, there's a couple of things as John appears. It says, baptizing in the wilderness. Then we go to the the next part here in verse 6. It says, John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt and all of these things.
John Gunter:When they heard this, when they saw this, what they saw and heard and understood was the prophet Elijah. We we know what this is. This is a new prophet. Here he is. Okay?
John Gunter:And back to verse 4 here, wilderness. Baptism. When in their history had they been in the wilderness and had to come through the water? Do you see what this is pointing back to? This is pointing back to the story of the Exodus, something that they knew very, very well.
John Gunter:All of a sudden, you have this man who shows up looking just like Elijah. I know he's a prophet. He's out in the wilderness. We're going wouldn't it have been more efficient, folks, if he had been downtown Jerusalem, right? Set up office hours, right?
John Gunter:Come visit. Got a baptismal tank, we'll just handle it there. Be at the population center, there's a reason that this was happening. This is a big flashing sign like that amen sign I'd like to have. It's a big flashing sign saying God is doing something.
John Gunter:Here's a new prophet. He is preparing the way, calling people through the wilderness, through the water again, to make a covenant with him. K? In verse 5, it said, 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. Amen.
John Gunter:You see this path being clear. It says, in verse 6, Now John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. 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.' This is a familiar, repeating theme that John the Baptist has, and that theme is, do not focus on me. I am simply here to help prepare the way for 1 mightier than me, one greater than me. Because remember, even Jesus asked his disciples, who do people say that I am?
John Gunter:They're like, well, maybe Elijah, right? I'm always trying to see, alright, well, who is he? Who is the greatest? Who should we kind of cling to? And John keeps saying, not me, not me, not me.
John Gunter:Though you see me as a prophet, right? That is what I'm doing, I'm preparing the way. Do not focus on me. After me comes He who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. Can you get any more humble than that?
John Gunter:In a culture that said, okay, you need to ascend and you need to be this is called an honor and shame culture, you need to do every everything you can to be an honorable person, to be seen as honorable, for your family, to have that same honor. And if you didn't have that, you were down here. And John said, you know what? I'm down here. I am down.
John Gunter:I am not worthy to even untie, to unstrap His sandals. Anybody wanna go walking around the the, deserts of Israel and start thinking about whose sandals you need to untie? Let me go ahead and stoop down near your feet. Right? That is what John said.
John Gunter:He said, I am not even worthy to do that. And so what they saw again was, here we go. He says, I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Now, again, we believe that the people that were hearing this had already heard it. There was no need to necessarily explain it.
John Gunter:Now, we know the rest of the gospel story where people had questions about this. What do you mean by water and by spirit? Right? Well, what, again, what John is pointing out that Jesus is going to do something that he can't even do. That you are going to again we're going from a time where I'm not hearing from God, I don't think there are prophets anymore, all of a sudden God is doing something.
John Gunter:And remember, after the Exodus, you begin this new covenant. God is gonna work in a different way. We have the Garden of Eden where God said, I wanna walk among you. And we said, you know what? That tree you told us not to eat out of, I really like that.
John Gunter:And so God had to to change up his preferred method of dealing with us. And you remember, as we studied here just probably a couple years ago now, but God starts, okay, well, I'll be there in the tabernacle and eventually, I'll be there in the temple. Right? And to this point, at this point in history, God says, I'm not going to do the whole tabernacle and temple thing anymore, but I'm going to come with my Spirit to live within, to indwell you, and that's going to be our new relationship. You don't have to visit a place, you don't have to come before a priest, I am going to live within you because what I'm going to do?
John Gunter:I'm going to take care of all the sin, you don't have to rely on anyone else, and I'm going to live within you. And so that's what Jesus has done for us, and that is what John is previewing right here. In verse 9 it says, In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw catch that. Immediately.
John Gunter: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. We have spent a lot of time in churches trying to figure out why in the world would Jesus be baptized. He didn't have sins.
John Gunter:I think we spent way too much time on that because Jesus' entire life was an example to us, wasn't it? Everything Jesus did was, okay, you need to follow me, understand what I am doing, okay? If you call me teacher and Lord, that's great, but you need to do it, right? It does nothing for us to gather and hear the word and go, Oh, that sounds good or it sounds bad, and nothing affects our lives, right? That we go away unchanged, that we just agree, maybe, intellectually, but our lives, they look the same.
John Gunter:No. Jesus came and he was an example, a perfect example. Kind of glad he was the only one because I more relate to a lot of the other people. I stick my foot in my mouth, I say things I shouldn't say, I think things I shouldn't think. But I hope I'm like David who did a lot of bad things and he said, he's a man after my own heart not because of the things he did but the way he said, oh, yeah, that was wrong.
John Gunter:I'm coming back to you, God. And if we had a church full of people that said that, God can do some great things right here. If we had hearts that said, I want to turn back to you, God can work. God can use us, and man, I can't even imagine what God would have planned for a people like that. But he says again, a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son.
John Gunter:With you, I am well pleased. Can you imagine what that was like? This is the inauguration of Jesus' ministry. Jesus up to this point has lived his life. We don't have much between birth and this point.
John Gunter:All of a sudden, Jesus shows up on the scene, John doing what he what John is doing and saying, okay, this one's gonna come, and all of a sudden, Jesus is there. And from this point on, and John will say that, I'm I'm he must become greater, I must become less, and that's exactly what you see within Scripture. Is that John starts to fade into the background. John has done what John needed to do, and now it's the time of Jesus. And the question is, for all of us, what are we gonna do with this?
John Gunter:Sorry. What are we gonna do with this message? Is this a new message for you? Is it like the the new book you've just cracked open and, oh, I don't know what's gonna happen? We know, for the most part, we are in a room full of people that understand exactly what happened and what we are called to.
John Gunter:The question is, what is our response going to be? Is it, I've read this story before, and I don't really care? Or is it a renewed passion for, Yeah, I want to be a big part of that? You ever had a book or a movie that you really loved and you wanted somebody else to see? And sometimes, I think it's less than I'd like, sometimes those people sit down and watch it, they like it and really enjoy it, and we can enjoy that together.
John Gunter:Sometimes, like some of my favorite movies, Lord of the Rings is one of mine. Katie has absolutely no interest in that movie. The majority of the time is spent explaining who that person is and what's going on. Sometimes people get it and sometimes people don't. Right?
John Gunter:We want to enjoy this, but we are sitting in here. We were sitting in a, a room full of people who understand the story. It doesn't take that much explanation, but what it does take is exactly what Mark is doing to remind ourselves who we are, what we're about, and are you going to get back to it? That's what Jesus calls us to do. That's what John prepared the way for Jesus to do, is to open up our eyes, the church people, right?
John Gunter:The people who should know. Can we open up our eyes and get back to
John Gunter:where we need to be? And so
John Gunter:that's our question for you this morning. We've got an invitation song picked out. We'd love to pray with you, if you'd like to. If you don't want to come forward during this time, that's okay. Pick a friend, someone who will hold you accountable, and share with them what's on your heart.
John Gunter:But make sure it's someone that will hold you to that, that will help you, that that loves you enough to help you, grow closer to god
John Gunter:and grow closer to us.
John Gunter:Would you come this night?