I invite you to open the Bible and turn with me to the Gospel of Mark. And the way I like to do it when I start studying a new book of the Bible is I get one of these journals, and I start taking my notes. And now I've got quite a collection of journals, and I'll compare my old notes, and I want to learn more about the book. And so, in Mark, I've written a subtitle in here, “The Misunderstanding of Jesus.” That's my subtitle for this gospel, because as we go through this here in the sermons, and if you read through it, you're going to see that people miss the point. The Pharisees, they're going to miss the point of Jesus. The crowd, they're going to miss the point of Jesus, but not just them. Even the disciples don't understand Jesus. Not just the group of disciples, but I'm talking about the twelve disciples. I'm talking about Peter and James and John. Even when they kind of know who Jesus is, they don't understand what he came to do, and they don't really get what it means to follow him. And every once in a while, in Mark, somebody will understand, and it's surprising. You'll be like, oh, look at that person of faith, or oh, look at this person who really trusts Jesus. But overall, the theme is misunderstanding, and as Mark shows you how they're not getting it, the Pharisees, the crowd, even the disciples, what Mark does is he then puts you in the place of understanding, where you can see how they're getting it wrong. And, all of a sudden, you are on the inside, and Jesus can really make sense to you. And that's what I'm praying for you. And so, I want you to open up to Mark chapter one, and I want to read the first eight verses that we're going to get started with today as our introduction. And out of respect for God's word, I invite everyone to stand up for the public reading of Scripture, and I encourage you to give this your full and undivided attention, because this is the word of God through this man Mark, so that we could see who Jesus really is. Please follow along as I read. Mark 1:1-8.
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. 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. 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. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
That's the reading of God's word. Please go ahead, grab your seat. And in your bulletin, there is a handout there if you want to get that out and take some notes. And I want you to look with me at verse 1, where it says, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” And I want to suggest to you that that is the real title of this book. We usually break down the four gospels based on who they are written by, but Mark is giving us that this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I don't think that's just an introductory phrase, because I've read the whole book now a few times, and there's no middle of the gospel of Jesus or end of the gospel of Jesus. So, I want to suggest to you that this is Mark's title for what he wrote, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Now, to understand why Mark would say that, you need to know a little bit about who mark is. In this book of Mark, in chapter 14, verses 51 and 52, there is this very interesting description of a young man who was there on the night that Jesus gets arrested, and he gets betrayed by Judas, and they carry him away to the chief priests and the elders and the scribes. Well, it says in Mark 14:51-52, “And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.” You want to talk about a couple of awkward verses in your Bible. Mark 14:51-52, you're like, that's awkward. Why is that in there? Well, it's even more awkward if it's somebody other than Mark. Okay, so we think that's him. Referring to himself, putting himself in a very unflattering light, which is his theme. Like, if you think Peter's some great guy, or James and John, the sons of thunder, are some great guys, well, where do you see how they act in the book of Mark? Because they show that they're missing the point of Jesus. Even Mark is trying to say, yeah, I'm just a wrong young guy running away. They grab onto me. I keep running. They keep my clothes. That's how he describes it there. So that tells us that Mark was there with the group of disciples around Jesus on the night he gets arrested. In fact, Mark happens to be there throughout the story of the gospel.
In the book of Acts, when Peter is preaching the gospel and filling the streets of Jerusalem with the name of Jesus, they arrest Peter, and then, in Acts, chapter 12, Peter is miraculously freed from prison. And guess where he goes right after he gets out of prison? He goes to John Mark's mom's house. He goes to Mark's house, and notice it's his mom's house, referring to the fact, again, that Mark is still young at this time. But that puts mark in Jerusalem while the early church is growing and the gospel is expanding, Mark's there. And in fact, later on, Mark has a pretty famous cousin, this guy named Barnabas. And Barnabas and Paul, in Acts 13, they set out on these missionary journeys. And guess who goes with them on their first missionary journey? Mark does. So, he not only sees the gospel fill the streets of Jerusalem with Peter, but he gets to go with Paul, as Paul's going out to other cities, preaching the gospel, planting the churches. And then Mark decides to go back and not keep going with them. And so, in Acts 15, a sharp disagreement happens between Barnabas and Paul, because Barnabas wants his cousin to come with them on their next missionary journey. And Paul's like, why are we bringing a guy who abandoned us last time? And so, this real strong ministry team, Barnabas and Paul end up going their separate ways over who? Mark.
Now, what's really fascinating to me about that is that when Paul writes his last letter in 2 Timothy, chapter 4, Paul asked that Mark would come to him because “he is useful for me for ministry.” So, apparently, over time, Paul changed his impression about Mark. In fact, in 1 Peter, chapter 5, verse 13, Peter calls Mark “my son.” So, by the end of Peter writing and Paul writing, they both have this very high impression of Mark, which makes me wonder, did somewhere between the sharp disagreement of Barnabas and Paul and the last light writing of Paul. That's maybe when Mark wrote this gospel. And so, Mark has been there when Peter's preached the gospel. Mark's been there when Paul's preached the gospel. And the gospel was heard by people when it was preached the way you came across. The Gospel was a sermon. You heard these guys going out all over the world, preaching the good news that Jesus is the Christ who died and rose again. We were eyewitnesses. We've seen it, just like the prophets of old said. They're spreading this message.
And so, the gospel was something people heard preached. No one could ever go read the gospel. It hadn't been written. And so, Mark says to all the people who've heard it preached, I'd like to take you back to the beginning of the gospel of Jesus, and Mark then writes it down so the people who've heard it in the sermon can now go read the full story.
So, let's get that down. If you are taking notes: Before Mark, “The gospel was preached in sermons not written in books.” It's unfortunate, because today, if you say, the gospel, people think Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but the gospel was already out there being preached long before Matthew,, Mark, Luke and John were ever written. And so, it seems like Mark now, to the people who've heard it preached, he wants to take them to the beginning, give them the whole story of how this gospel began. So that's his title. Then, in verse 1, and then in verses 2 and 3 here in Mark, he quotes a Scripture, and this Scripture that Mark quotes becomes the foundation for what he's going to say in the rest of his book. So, this is a very important quote, and you can see it says, “just as it is written in Isaiah the prophet.” And then, we get this quote from Isaiah chapter 40, verse 3. But here's the thing before we turn to Isaiah 40. This quote is actually more complicated than just the words in Isaiah 40:3, there's actually here at the beginning, this idea that an angel or a messenger would go before you. If you're taking notes, write down Exodus 23:20, when God's in the Law of Moses, when he's speaking to his people that he's going to take them to the Promised Land. God says that his angel will go before them. So, before Isaiah ever writes his prophecy, there's already this idea going all the way back to the Law of Moses.
See, here's what we're trying to do at our church. We're trying not to think in this binary kind of a way, that there's just an Old Testament and a New Testament. It's actually much more developed than that, within what we call the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses writes, and then 400 years later, David writes, and then 400 years later, Isaiah writes, and even other prophets don't write at the same time as Isaiah. So, it's actually a whole bunch of different people writing at different times, and they're all interacting with each other before it even ever gets to Jesus. And so, Moses said something that Isaiah picks up on. And then in Malachi, chapter 3, verse 1, a later Prophet than Isaiah, he even adds more detail to this prophecy, saying that a messenger is going to come, that he's yet to come. And in Malachi 31 and in Malachi 46, he compares this future messenger to the prophet Elijah, who had already come and was famous in Israel. So, Moses says about this messenger going before Isaiah says, hey, the voice in the wilderness. And Malachi says, Look, here comes the messenger before the anointed one. Here he comes. So, all three of those Scriptures are put together here in the beginning of Mark.
So now, grab your Bible and go with me to Isaiah, chapter 40, and let's go back to the original context of what Mark wants to refer to. And this is a very helpful context, because Isaiah 40 is the turning point in this prophecy. If you remember, if you read it with us not too long ago, we saw that there was good news that God had a future for his people in Judah in Jerusalem. And that's what we have here, is that beginning of the announcement of that good news. That's what gospel means is good news. Look at what it says in Isaiah 40, “comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. “A voice cries in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” So, I've got good news, words of comfort for all the people in Jerusalem. And the voice is out there shouting, hey, prepare, the Lord is coming. Make straight his paths. Let's get a highway going out here in the desert. Go down to verse 9. You'll see more of this idea that we have good news to proclaim. “Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news, lift it up. Fear not. Say to the cities of Judah, behold your God, behold the Lord. God comes with might and his arm rules for him.” This announcement that God is going to come into the midst of his people, it's good news, and we want to spread this message.
Go, go over to chapter 52 verse 7, to show you another example of this idea of good news in Isaiah. Isaiah 52:7, it says, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, your God reigns.” Your god. He's in charge. He has the power. He has the authority, and he's coming. Prepare, everybody, make his path straight. Here comes the Lord. That's the message you're getting here from the prophets. And now there's someone shouting that out in the wilderness in the beginning of Mark. So, Mark wants to pick up where the prophets have left off. And he wants to bring it as the beginning of the gospel here in Mark. So, with that kind of background now from Isaiah, Go back with me to the book of Mark, and you can see how his quote there of Isaiah 40, verse 3, which actually has Exodus 23:20 in it, and Malachi 3:1. It's kind of a mash up of multiple Scriptures. This quote is the foundation that is going to set the tone for everything else. Mark writes to us, because when it says here that the voice is crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, I need everybody to circle that word straight. That is the key word of Mark. Now, if you know anything about the gospel of Mark, you might have heard or you might know from your own reading that it moves at a quick pace. A lot of people say, you know, Mark is the action-packed gospel or Mark is the go gospel, because Mark uses this word “immediately”. And it's like, immediately this happened, and immediately this happened. And so, I'll hear people say things like, well, Mark's style is to write with a very fast pace. Well, the word “immediately” is this word “straight” right here.
So, we'll put it up on the screen. The key word of Mark is this Greek word “euthus,” which is often translated “immediately,” but it could also be translated “at once,” and sometimes it's translated “straight” or “straightway” or straight away, like, right now, like, hey, you’ve got to get straight to it. That's the idea of this Greek word euthus. Okay, so sometimes it's confusing when there's one Greek word translated multiple different ways in English. And so, if you were just reading Mark in English, you wouldn't know that in Greek, the word euthus is the end of his quote. Why does Mark use so many “immediately” and “at once”? It’s in his Gospel, because he's starting from this Scripture, because the message from the very beginning is there's a voice out in the desert, and the voice is saying, the Lord is coming. Prepare the way. Make his paths straight away, like, get ready now, at once, immediately. Are you ready for the Lord to come? That's the beginning of the gospel of Mark. Are you ready to meet Jesus right now? Are you ready to meet your maker? If you stand before Jesus today, is that good news? Or are you unsettled by that? Because you need to make the paths right now. You need to get ready at once. That's the call at the beginning of the gospel. And so, then Mark is going to continue that theme. Well, Jesus came, and Jesus immediately, he did this, and immediate, just like John said, just like the voice in the wilderness cried out, John the Baptist is saying, he's coming. Well, when he came, bam, it was like this, and it was like this. And if you weren't ready, there was no time to prepare. You’ve got to prepare now, because when the Lord comes, he comes at once. That's the idea of this gospel. There's a sense of urgency. It's not like immediately all this stuff happened. The question is, are you straight right now? Are you ready right now? Are you ready if he comes at once? That's the question that this book is begging you to answer. And so, from that idea that the paths need to be straight now, that's why Mark continues to use that word “immediately,” and you can see it in Mark 1:9, “In those days, Jesus came, just like the voice in the wilderness says,” boom, here comes Jesus. And when he came, verse 10, “When he came up out of the water, immediately,” at once “he saw the heavens open, and God said” this. Verse 12, “The spirit immediately, at once drove him out into the wilderness.” And so, it's like, yeah, when Jesus came, this happened. If you weren't ready, you missed it. You’ve got to be ready. You’ve got to make sure the way is prepared and the paths are already straight away.
So, if you want to study the baptism of Jesus, we'll be doing that on Thursday. If you want to study the temptation of Jesus out in the wilderness with Satan, we’ll be doing that on Friday. But this key word is what Mark uses, getting it from the Scripture that sets the tone now, going from the prophecy of the voice in the wilderness, let's meet him. It says in verse 4, John appeared, and John is out there baptizing. He's referred to usually as John the Baptist, and he's out there in the wilderness proclaiming a baptism. This is very important. His baptism is repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And then it says that all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem. So, Judea is the southern kingdom of Israel with the capital, main city, the city on a hill, Jerusalem. They were all going out to him and being baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. Now, I don't know what comes to your mind when you read those verses, but before there was this war in Israel, I rot to go to Israel. I went there with a hundred people from our church, and we went to a place, the River Jordan, where John did these baptisms. And the overwhelming impression that I remember, I didn't know we would be talking about Mark one on Palm Sunday at this time, but I remember thinking to myself, this river Jordan is so far away from Jerusalem, I cannot believe that all the people came all the way out here. So, I've got a map here to show you that there's Jerusalem in the middle, if you can see it, and then you’ve got to go all the way over there to the river Jordan. I don't know if you can see, the wilderness of Judea is right along the Dead Sea here, that red line is twenty-one miles on foot. And some of you are sore from the bunny run. You know what I'm saying? That's twenty-one miles. John's not down the street. He's way out in the desert, in this area, the wilderness of Judah. It is, to me, one of the most fascinating places on planet Earth, because out there in just desolate place, and when it says “wilderness” here, later on in Mark, it'll say “desolate place,” same word, like there's nothing going on out there. Literally, the body of water is the Dead Sea. Nothing lives in it. It's just this barren, dry, hot area. And when we go out there, we go out there, and I love spending time out there. We go to the caves where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. We go to this little oasis where David and his mighty men hit out. But there is not much going on out there. And so, when you get to this river flowing all the way from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, when there's a river out there, that's a big deal, because there ain't nothing else going on. And so, see what’s happening. People are going twenty-one miles out of town, and then they're going to the river, and they're getting dunked in the river, and they're having this refreshing spiritual experience where their sins are being forgiven.
This is a mighty movement of God. This is like a revival kind of thing. And it's not spreading through the news or social media or people calling each other. It's literally word of mouth. Have you heard about that guy out in the wilderness? Have you heard about what's happening at the River Jordan? Have you heard about what's happened, how all the people are going out there. Have you heard about the baptizing that's taking place? The word is spreading through the whole city, through the whole country. And it's so compelling. It's so interesting that all these people, it says the whole country, is going out there. The whole city is going twenty-one miles, one way, through this hot, dry desert to go here, whoever this guy is and what he has to say. And in verse 6, it actually gives us a description of John the Baptist. It says, “Now John was clothed with camel's hair and he wore a leather belt around his waist and he ate locusts and wild honey.” Now, I don't know what you think when you read that verse. Like, oh, this guy, he's kind of an edgy dude, I don't know. Like, wow, what a fashion forward guy. John the Baptist, he started the leather belt that really caught on. Good work there, John. Yeah, that's impressive. Like, this is supposed to spark in your mind a biblical memory, okay? Because there's a story in 2 Kings 1:1-8. And in this story, there's an evil king. Israel had a lot of evil kings, and this evil king has an injury, and the king wants to know if he's going to recover or if he's going to die from his injury. So, he sends his messengers out, and they're going to go to a false prophet of a false god to find out if the king is going to live or not. Well God, Yahweh, he decides, no, I'm going to send my prophet. And he talks to the king's messengers, and then the messengers go back to the king, and the king, he's immediately confused when his messengers come back, because they haven't been gone long enough to get to the false prophet of the false god. So, how are the messengers back so soon? And he's like, what are you guys doing here? And they're like, well, we actually met a prophet of God who told us what's going to happen to you. And the king's like, well, what's going to happen to me? Oh, well, he says, you're going to die. And the king's like, well, wait a minute. Who is this? And they're like, well, we don't know who he was. He just came and told us. So, we thought we'd come and tell you, king. And the king's like, no, no. Describe him to me. And they're like, well, he was wearing camel's hair and he had a leather belt around his waist. And then immediately the king's like, oh, no, it's Elijah the Tishbite, right? And at that moment in the story, I feel like Elijah's theme song come’s on right at that moment, and then Elijah's like walking with an explosion behind him as he comes forward to give the king the news that he's going to die. But how did they know it was Elijah? Well, because he wears camel’s hair and he's got a leather belt around his waist. And what is the word now spreading on the streets of Jerusalem? No, no, no. That guy out there, he's got camel’s hear, leather belt. And people are like, it's a prophet. It's Elijah. I’ve got to go and check this out. And it is becoming all the rage to pack up and go twenty-one miles by foot into the middle of nothing, to go hear this guy and what he's saying. And John the Baptist, he's so far out there. He's living off the land. He's catching locusts and chomping down on some locusts, which apparently a lot of people like to do out there in other countries, not maybe so much us, but other people. And then the wild honey. Now, the last time I was there, I heard some of the locals talking about how much they love the wild honey in the wilderness of Judea that comes from these palm trees. And right now, that area is filled with these palm trees. They're farming these palm trees out there. And guess what they get from the palm trees are these dates, and they love the honey that comes from these dates. And so, that's the idea of John the Baptist. He's way out there beyond where people have the normal food. So, he's living off the wild honey from the dates, and he's living off the locusts, and he's out there in the river Jordan, and he's not coming into town. You want to hear what he's saying, you're going out there to him. And so, this is something very exciting that happened, clearly a work of God. And the way I can prove to you that it's a work of God that all these people went out there to see John the Baptist is because they were confessing their sins.
Go back now with all that understanding, look at verse 4, where it summarizes what John's doing. He appeared. He's baptizing people. He's immersing them. He's dunking them in the river Jordan. But it's a baptism that represents repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And when the people are coming out there, not only is he dunking them in the river Jordan, but what are the people doing? They are actively confessing their sins. They're owning up to their own evil. They're admitting that they are wrong before God. They're saying the same thing as God. God calls it sin. They're calling it sin. And so, this is very important. This is the message that John is giving: Repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
You need to understand that repentance and forgiveness go together. They are like peanut butter and jelly. Okay? You cannot separate them. If you want to be forgiven for your sins, there's only one way to get to forgiveness, it's repentance. And if anyone seriously repents of their sin, guess what? They will receive forgiveness. If you don't repent, there won't be forgiveness. That's how this is going to work. And so, the message that John gives is, repent. And repentance is a change of mind. It's a rethinking. Repentance means I'm living one way, and then I turn from the way that I have been thinking and acting, and I turn to a new way, specifically the way of God. That's the way I turn. So, I realize I'm doing this wrong. I'm saying things wrong, I'm acting wrong. And then, because of that change of mind, I turn from that way to another way. And when I come and I agree that this is sin, and I confess it to God, I confess it to other people, then I am forgiven for all of this sin. And so, if you want to be forgiven for your sin, you have to confess. You can't keep your sin hidden and be forgiven. You can't keep in the secret of your sin and hope it will all be okay. No, if you have sin going on in your life that you are hiding, the way is not prepared, and the paths are not straight, and you're not ready for the Lord to come. And that's the message of John the Baptist. You’ve got to get prepared. You’ve got to get the paths ready, because he's coming at once. He's coming immediately. Are you ready for the Lord? If you've got sin going on in your life continuing, and you're okay with it, the answer is, no, you're not ready for the Lord. And so, you have to repent to be forgiven. And so, these people, not only are they going out into a hot and dry and weary land and oh, they're going out with their burdens of guilt over what they've done, the shame of their sin that sticks to their soul, and they're going out there and they're laying down their burdens, and they're opening up, and they're being honest. This movement was known for the confession of sin, and they're getting dunked in this water, and not only are they coming out in that hot and dry desert, I can imagine being dunked in the river Jordan would have felt very nice. Right? But see, that's not even the most refreshing part of it. Knowing your sins are forgiven by God, that's refreshing for your soul. And so, people are experiencing this. That's the real reason. It's not just the voice, it's not just the leather belt. It's you don't understand, my sins have been forgiven. I repented, I confessed.
Now, this issue of repentance is very important. Okay? I don't know how much you've heard about repentance, but if you read Mark, John the Baptist is preaching repentance. If you come back next week, Jesus is proclaiming repentance. And jump ahead with me, a little preview to Mark 6:12, where we're going to send out the twelve disciples, two by two. And guess what? All of them are trained to go out and say when Jesus sends them out. It says in Mark, chapter 6, verse 12, “So they went out and proclaimed that people should” what does it say there, everybody? Repent. That's Mark 6:12, John the Baptist, is proclaiming repentance. Jesus is proclaiming repentance. The twelve go out and say to people, you should repent. So the example given to us in the Scripture is, if you want to help people get right with God, if you have friends or family members or coworkers or neighbors, if there are people you love and you really care about and you want them to be right with God, what is the thing that you should tell them to do? Repent. That's what Mark says. But not a lot of people today say that. That's our problem. Okay? So, we have to see that the way it worked here, the true sign of a movement of God is there is confession and repentance of sin.
Many people are claiming, well, I had a great experience with God. Okay, that's great. You had an experience with God. Let me ask you, was there a turn in your life away from sin? If the answer to that is no, then you didn't have the experience with God. You think you had tracked the sin. That's how you know if God's really working or not. God didn't send Jesus to die for our sins so we could keep living in sin. God sent Jesus to die for our sins so we could turn from our sin and be forgiven for all of it. Can I get an amen from anybody on it? This brings great clarity. So many people are confused in Southern California Christianity. We have confused so many people. Just pray this prayer right now with me. Just ask Jesus into your heart here today, at the end of this service, just walk forward, and then you'll be right with Jesus. And people do all those things, and then they go home, and there's no change in the sin. And now they are perpetually confused. I thought I know God, but I still got the same sins in my life.
If you use the word repentance, if you say what the Scripture says, you cut through all of that confusion, and you help people understand. If you're really going to know God, you're going to turn from the way you're living, to him. That's what it's going to look like. Now, I cannot recommend repentance highly enough. In fact, what I would encourage you to do is I would encourage you to think of the people you know that are actually going to go talk to other people about the gospel or repentance and faith. They're actually going to have conversations with people about how they can get right with God. Make those people your best friends. Those are the people you want to be one of. You want to be someone who is able to talk to other people about how their soul can be saved by Jesus through repentance and faith in the Gospel. And I'm blessed to have some of those friends here at the church. And so, we have conversations about conversations that have happened with other people, or did that person end up repenting and believing or not? And I was talking to one of my friends the other day, and he told me this story of how this friend of his had come to him and said, I became a Christian. And the first thing he thought was, oh, well, how do I really know if that's true or not? What does it really mean to be a Christian? And then the guy said to him, so I broke up with my girlfriend, I moved out of the place, and I'm not going to be with her anymore. And then he's like, now, that sounds like God is working, because there's a turning from sin. I talked to another guy this very week at our church. We were praying because he was going to talk to this man about the gospel, and we were praying that Jesus would save this man's soul. And I asked him, how did the conversation go? Did the man profess repentance and faith? And he said, well, he didn't exactly say it, but… And I'm like, but what? What happened? And he's like, well, he started crying, he started weeping. And started saying that things in his life, that he had justified, that he had excused, that he had acted like it's not that bad, it's okay, it's not a big deal, he started crying like those things were sin before God. He started openly sharing those things with me, and so even though he hadn't said that he believed in Jesus, where there was a work that God was doing, because there was confession of sin, and there was a desire to turn from sin to God.
God is working where there is repentance, that's how you can know he's the one really doing it. Repentance takes all the confusion about what does it mean to be a Christian, and it gives you clear access. When you're talking about issues of the soul, clarity is of the utmost importance. You don't want your loved ones to be confused about their salvation. You want them to be sure of their salvation. So, being clear is critical, and this word repentance is what gives this clear understanding? It's almost like repentance is the password that unlocks the access. Right? I remember life before the internet, before the internet took over all of our lives. Nobody had cell phones. Who else remembers this time in the history of planet Earth? Okay? Who else wishes we were still living in that time? Okay, we are the official fuddy duddy club right here. Right back in my day before the internet, life was beautiful, right? And all the trendy people in the room, they think we're out of touch, right? But I remember when we got a computer that could work with the internet at my house, at my mom and dad's house. And I remember getting the plug to plug into the internet, and then we called the Internet, and we hoped it would answer our call. Does anybody else remember this? This was a big deal. We were going online, the world wide web, www. It was like, whoa, what is it? And then, a few years after, it was like, well, now you don't have to plug in. How can these things be? There's this thing called Wi Fi, and you don't have to have plugs. You just get on the network. If you have the password on your computer you can get on the network. Now these passwords, the original passwords for the internet, they were not messing around. They were like twenty-digit passwords, uppercase and lowercase sensitive, and it's like seven lowercase, F, capital K, capital, H, 89, dash, lower case, s. Does anybody else remember these twenty-digit passwords? No one ever thought about changing a password. No one had ever heard of it. It was not done. You just had this massive password. How could I remember such a password? And so, it was written down, and it was put at this place in the kitchen, and I remember, mom, where's the password? So how can I get online? Mom, how can I get on the Wi Fi? I don't have the password. I can't remember the password. Where did we put the password? It must be one of my brothers’ fault. They have the password right now. Let's just fast forward from the dark ages that I'm describing to today, the living color that we're all experiencing. When I was in Uganda, the guy's like, let me help you get on the Wi Fi. And on his phone, there's a button that says, “Would you like to share the password?” And he says, boop. And all of a sudden, on my device, I've received the password. I don't even know how many digits it was. I received the password, and I'm now online. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Okay, the difference between those two in my life was when I started using the word repentance, it became this, like, well, am I really a Christian? Like, how does it work? I'm trying to do this. I'm trying to do that. Does that make me a Christian? And then, when people started preaching repentance, and repentance became clear to me, Oh, it was like, No, now I totally see it. Now I totally understand how to get access, you turn from your sin. That's the key issue.
Number one, if you want to write this down: “Share the password of repentance.” Share the password of repentance. What I am asking is, in following the example of John the Baptist this week, Jesus next week, and the disciples later in the book, I am asking that everyone here, if you want to talk to your loved ones about being saved by Jesus. Use the word repentance. Explain it to them. Call them to make their paths straight. Call them to prepare the way of the Lord. Call them to the action of changing their mind and turning from their sin to God. Have you ever, in Christian life, explained repentance to somebody else? Because if you haven't, you're missing the point. All the great works of God throughout human history have somebody at the front of them calling people to repent. This is the way it is done. And what I hear so often these days is people think they have a better way to do it than John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Bible. Well, my relative, my loved one, my coworker, they're not ready for repentance, so I'm just going to talk about this with them. I'm just going to kind of softball things and show them love. You hear a lot of people saying this. Well, let me just tell the people who are saying this, people aren't coming twenty-one miles into the middle of the desert to listen to you say that. But they did go twenty-one miles into the middle of the desert to hear him say this. So, the sheer audacity that we have a better way to do it than the best man John the Baptist, I would strongly encourage you to rethink that too, repent of that thinking.
This is the example. Jesus says that this man, John the Baptist, he is the best man who ever lived in human history, besides the God-man himself, Jesus, out of everybody else, the ultimate one, John the Baptist. And he was known for being a preacher who called people to action because they needed to turn before the Lord comes. And if you want to see people get saved, you should do it like John the Baptist did. Please don't think you've got a better way to do it today, when all of Jerusalem was going to hear this guy proclaim repentance. Repentance is the key that unlocks clarity about whether people really know God or not.
Now, that's not all John the Baptist was saying. Look at verses 7 and 8. Look at what he preaches here. So, now we get some quotes from his preaching. 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. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with Holy Spirit.” So, in those two verses that we have quoted from John the Baptist, we learn four things about Jesus. Number one, he is coming. That's the idea, right there. After me, comes he, the one who is coming, or he who is coming. So, John the Baptist, the forerunner, the messenger, he's like, he's coming. We could say that same message today, he's coming. Well, when is he coming? He's coming. He's coming straight away. He's coming immediately. He's coming at once. It's soon. It's imminent. It could happen at any moment. The Lord is coming and he's coming. Well, he's mightier than I, John the Baptist says, he's coming.
Second thing, he's coming with power. He's coming with strength. He's coming with might. You guys think this is impressive, that all these people are coming out here to get baptized in the river Jordan. Why? Do you see what he's going to do, everybody? Where do you see the power that he's coming with? We're promised that when Jesus comes, he will be riding on the clouds. That's how we're going to see Jesus. Or every eye is going to see Jesus when he comes. He's coming with a power, a might, a sheer dominion and authority, unlike anything we could compare it to. And then I love what John says here. This is why you see that John's the best man. John the Baptist is a very humble human being. John the Baptist is fine being the best man and letting Jesus be the groom who gets the bride in the end. He's fine playing the role of best man. He doesn't need it to be about himself. Look how John the Baptist describes it here, “the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.” So, you can picture this. You're wearing sandals. You're going twenty-one miles into the wilderness, then you're getting dunked in water, so now you're all wet. Now you're going back. I mean, you probably don't even do this all in one day. I mean, you're going back now through the wilderness. You're picking up all kinds of dirt and nastiness. You get back home, yeah, you're going to want to take your sandals off. You're going to want to wash your feet well, if you're the master of the house, you don't do that. Who comes and does that for you? A servant, a slave comes. They wait for the master to come. They open the door, they greet them, and they wash their feet. Because the idea is, if you're going twenty-one miles in the desert and sandals, one way, your feet are going to be downright disgusting by the time you're getting back home. But you see what John's saying. John is saying, even in a class system where he's the master, and I'm the servant, I'm not even worthy to be here. I'm way down here. I don't even belong in a class system with him. I don't even belong in a comparable category with him. I'm not even worthy of being one of his servants. I'm not even entitled to know him at all. Now, if you know the history, John the Baptist and Jesus ended up as relatives, and John's even the older relative of Jesus. John's not coming in like, Oh, I already know Jesus, yeah. When do you guys meet Jesus? I've known him my whole life. No, he's like Jesus, who is God, who is coming with sandals on, when he comes, I don't even belong with him. I'm not even worthy of him. Jesus is on an elite level that doesn't have anything to do with me. This is the opposite of the entitlement and the assumption that so many church-going people have today. Of course, I know about Jesus. Of course I'm with Jesus. John the Baptist is like, no. Jesus is on a whole another level. I don't even belong as one of his servants, because, see, I'm out here baptizing you guys for repentance and forgiveness of sins with this water. But see, Jesus, he's going to do something so amazing, so powerful. He's going to give you the Holy Spirit. Jesus is not just going to forgive you for your sins, but he's going to put his Spirit within you, who will teach you the way not to sin and how to live a new, holy life. We're not just talking about being forgiven now, we're talking about being given the energy, power and ability to live a completely new way that you couldn't live before. That's what he's going to give you, his Holy Spirit. He's coming with power. We are not worthy, but he will give us his Spirit to lead us in the way of holiness. That's the message that John preaches about Jesus. John's got four points, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus and yes, more Jesus. That's his whole message. Think about the popularity of John the Baptist. He's like Elijah, the prophet, made new. Everyone in the country, everyone in the capital city, they're all talking about him. They're all coming out to see him. He's powerful and effective in his preaching, John the Baptist doesn't care about any of that. He just wants to point the way to Jesus. See, there's this phrase that I hear a lot of people use these days. It's this phrase, “main character energy.” Have you heard that phrase? That person, they’ve got main character energy, like it could mean maybe they're full of themselves, or it could be like you can root for these people. I've heard people use it in different ways. The reason John the Baptist is held up by Jesus as the best man who walked Earth besides the God man, is because John the Baptist understood that he was not the main character of his own story. And I think most of us make our lives about us. It all revolves around us, around our feelings, around our circumstances. We're the main character in our life. How could we not be? It's our life, and John the Baptist, the guy who's the most popular person in the whole country at this moment, he doesn't think it's about him. He doesn't even think he's worthy to be in the conversation with the one who it's about. See, he understood who the main character really was, and John the Baptist embraced his role as a supporting actor.
That kind of understanding that John the Baptist has, we're going to find to be very rare in the Gospel of Mark, that most people are still, even though they're going with Jesus, they're still making their life about themselves, and John the Baptist, he made his life about the one who is coming. And so, we need to learn that we're not the main character in our own story, or we're going to end up misunderstanding Jesus, like a lot of people. In fact, let me give you another preview. Go to Mark 6:52. Let me show you another glimpse of what is to come about these disciples. Yes, they could go and spread the message to repent, but look what it says in Mark 6:52. In fact, let me just give you the context before I read it. In Mark 6, Jesus feeds five thousand men, not even counting the women and children. He takes five loaves of bread and two fish. And he multiplies five pieces of bread and two fish to somehow feed over five thousand just men. So, thousands and thousands of people, this miraculous multiplying of food. They even have, oh, what do they even have? Twelve baskets left over. So, I mean, how did Jesus do that? Then here in Mark 6, if you look at the headings above verse 45 Jesus walks on the water. Okay, so Jesus goes out by himself to pray, sends the disciples across the Sea of Galilee to the other side. After he's done praying, he decides he'll catch up with the disciples, or maybe even past them. How does he do it? He walks on top of the Sea of Galilee. Oh, he's just cruising across the lake, just taking a stroll on top of the sea. And they see him doing that, and they're overwhelmed by who is this? Well, he's walking on the sea. What is going on? Okay? So, he's just fed thousands of people. Miraculously, he's walking on the lake that they have been fishing in, some of them, as their livelihood. They've never seen anything like that. Look what it says in Mark 6:52, “For they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were” what everybody? See, I'm trying to really get my mind into the mindset of Mark. And Mark had the privilege of seeing some great things. He saw Jesus get arrested. He saw Peter preaching in Jerusalem, coming over to his house, miraculously freed from prison. He went on some of the journey with Paul and Barnabas. And I would imagine people would say to Mark, oh, Mark, wow. It must have been amazing to be there. It must have been awesome to see it happen. Wow. Mark, you must have been there. And everybody must have totally got it when Jesus was doing all those miracles. It must have been easy to believe when Jesus was doing it. And here's Mark saying, well, actually, I'd like to take you back to the beginning, and I'd like to show you that when Jesus was doing these mind blowing amazing things, right in front of the disciples, they did not understand, and their hearts were hard, that John the Baptist had everybody come out and hear him, and yet later on, those same people are the ones who shall crucify him. And so, there are a lot of people who think they understand Jesus, but they really don't.
Where do you fit in? Do you really understand who Jesus is, what he came to do, and what it really means to follow him. Or is the truth that you're still kind of thinking it through, and your heart might be hard because you don't understand point number two, let's get it down like this: We want to “Pray you don't miss the point of Jesus.” Pray you don't miss the point of Jesus. John the Baptist starts us out in the Gospel of Mark is a good example of someone who understood that he is not the main character in his own story. But we're going to see a lot of people missing that point. Let's start with us. Let's ask God to teach us who Jesus is and pray that we don't miss the point. Are there ways right now that you are making your life about yourself rather than about following Jesus? Are there, even right now in your life, sins that you know that are going on, that you have not turned from, you have not confessed? Well, if you can identify right now as you sit here today, if you know there is sin in your life, then you need to hear John the Baptist saying to you, repent. And even if you think, well, I repented of my sins. Okay, what was the point of your repentance? Jesus is the point of your life now to make way, to prepare the way of the Lord, because Jesus is coming. And I want everybody who knows me to know that I have embraced the role of best man. I have embraced the role of supporting actor, that I don't want everybody to know me. I want them to know my Lord Jesus. See, the beautiful thing about Mark, chapter 1 is that the voice is still crying in the wilderness. The voice is still ringing out all the way from Judea to Huntington Beach. Here, today, you can still hear the very words of John the Baptist shouting, prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. Are you ready to meet Jesus? Because he's coming with a power unlike anything you've ever seen. Do you stand before him, forgiven, or do you stand before him in sin? Make your paths straight at once, immediately, straight away, you need to repent and turn to Jesus Christ. Let me pray for us.
Father, we just thank you for the excitement of starting the gospel of Mark together. I pray that you will put it on our hearts to go and read it. I pray for these services we're going to have this week where Jesus gets baptized, where Jesus gets tempted, where Jesus preaches God, please show us who Jesus is. And Father, I just pray right now for everybody who's here in this room that we could be honest about if we have sin in our lives. Now, what's the point of coming here to learn from you about your Son, Jesus? If we're going to learn that the people were out there in the middle of the desert, confessing their sins and repenting and being forgiven, and then we're just going to keep our sins secret and go home, what's the point of that? And so, Father, I pray for those who have sins that they know are continuing in their life right now, that they would confess them to you and they would go and confess them to someone else. Father, I pray for this white tent that we have out there in the courtyard that's going to be out there for all these sermons going through Mark. I pray for people who know that they need to repent today, that they will go into that white tent, that they'll come forward and talk to me, or go in that white tent and talk to somebody after this service. Let people not go home in sin. Let people go home forgiven today. Father, I pray that people will turn from their sin to you. And I pray for all of us who would say, oh yeah, I believe in Jesus. Please don't let us live in misunderstanding. Father, please don't let us say, oh yeah, I believe in Jesus, and then go live today like we're the main character; go live today, like the story is all about us. Father. I pray that we would humble ourselves like John the Baptist did, that we would say that Jesus needs to increase, and I need to decrease. That we could say, my life from this point forward is the story not of I, but of Christ in me, and that Jesus would always be our main character, that he's always the one that we would get our energy from, that we live no longer for ourselves, but for the sake of the one who died for us and was raised again to eternal glory. Let us proclaim the name of Jesus. Let us let people know that the Lord is coming and that we need to all make our paths straight away. And so let the gospel of Jesus ring out again this Easter 2025. Let people see Jesus is alive and he's the only one worth living for and let them see that in us as we live out the Gospel of Jesus. We pray this in his name. Amen.