John the Baptist was not an ordinary preacher. He was a wild-looking man who lived in the desert, surviving on locusts and honey. Yet he was the Lord’s answer to the prayers of his people—prayers lifted for thousands of years: “Please send our Messiah!” John was not the kind of preacher the people had envisioned, but God’s answers to prayer are often far different from what we expect.
John was sent by God to proclaim the imminent arrival of the world’s Savior—Jesus, the true Messiah. His message was a clarion call for the people to prepare to welcome their long-awaited Redeemer and Deliverer: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight!”
Like the ancient Jews, we also need to clear the paths of our hearts so that Jesus may fill them with his Holy Spirit.
Are you preparing the way of the Lord?
Read the full sermon transcript below!
Last Lord’s Day, we completed our series of sermons on the topic of the Seven Deadly Sins. I hope you enjoyed that series and found it helpful in your spiritual walk with the Lord Jesus as we all conduct our daily lives before the face of Almighty God. This morning, we begin a series of sermons from the Gospel of Mark, which we hope will also be very profitable to your spiritual relationship with the Lord God and your daily life in his world.
There are four gospel records in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the four evangelists. Each accomplishes the same goal: announcing the good news of God’s Kingdom and inviting the world to enter through Jesus Christ his Son. To that end, the evangelists tell and record the mighty acts of Jesus the Messiah, sent by his and our Father to save his people from their sin and to redeem the world.
Although all four of the gospel evangelists tell the same story, each one approaches it in his own unique way. Matthew was a Jew who wrote to convince his fellow Jews that Jesus was in fact their long-awaited Messiah. Luke was a highly skilled writer who wrote a very orderly account with lots of details in a polished Greek language. John was the philosophical type who used a lot of metaphors with highly spiritual meanings, like when Jesus’ declared, “I am the bread of life” or “I am the door” or “I am the living water.” That kind of language would mesh with the philosophical Greeks and other deep thinkers of the day.
Mark’s gospel also has its unique characteristics. Mark’s name was Latin or Roman, as in Marcus. There was a Roman emperor with that name—Marcus Aurelius. Gentiles, especially Romans, were Mark’s targeted audience. The Romans were a strong and robust people of action. So, Mark’s gospel record is written in that style. He does not dwell on lengthy discourses like Matthew, or philosophical abstractions like John, or physical matters like Luke the physician. Mark’s gospel flows and moves! His writing style advances from scene to scene, event to event. He tends to make the point and move on.
That was good, of course, for reaching his ancient target audience, but Mark’s style is also very effective in speaking to the minds of today’s Americans who have become accustomed to gathering information in short bits from electronic media. The Gospel of Mark can be a good first introduction to the life of Jesus for learning Christians, young and old alike. In fact, the Gospel of Mark is a jewel, splendid and beneficial for everyone. I think you will see what we mean as we progress. So, let’s progress now!
Let us begin by reading the first three verses of Mark’s gospel (vv. 1-3): 1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 2 As it is written in the Prophets: “Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare Your way before You.” 3 “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make His paths straight.’”
Mark appropriately begins by explaining his purpose in writing. The Greek word for gospel transliterates into English as evangelion. It means “good news.” The gospel is the evangel, the announcement of the good news of God’s Kingdom in the world and the invitation to enter it through the salvation won for the world of believers through Jesus Christ.
Mark informs his readers (v. 1) that this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Not that the gospel itself was only beginning, for Mark’s gospel was written probably around twenty to thirty years (or more) after the crucifixion of our Lord and fifty to sixty years (or more) after his birth. Mark is saying that this is the beginning of his account of the life and ministry of Jesus, who is the essence of the good news.
The narrative opens with an explanation of the ministry of John the Baptist, first quoting from the Old Testament prophet Micah (v. 2): “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.” Then comes the word of the ancient prophet Isaiah (v. 3): “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’”
In John’s day, it had been four hundred years since the Lord God had sent a prophet to his people Israel, the last one being Malachi. In the old covenant age, God had ordained three offices for leading his people: prophets, priests, and kings. In the lifetimes of John and our Lord, Israel was in an age of spiritual, moral, and religious apostasy.
As for kings, Israel was ruled by the wicked Roman emperors—Gentiles ruling over the Hebrew people of the Lord. The Romans had set up puppet kings over the Jews under Roman control, namely, the wicked Herodian dynasty—Edomites, longtime enemies of the Hebrew people.
As for priests, you don’t have to read far in the New Testament to learn about them. There were still some good ones, but many, maybe most, were corrupt, empty shells of their honorable ancestor, Aaron.
As for prophets, there were none. Prophets were the source of God’s revelation to his people, the Holy Spirit speaking through them. For four hundred years, there had been only haunting, bone-chilling silence from God, no word from him to his people, Israel. John the Baptist was the first prophet in hundreds of years.
Religiously minded Jews were consigned to living in a very distressing age. Imagine not being able to find a preacher sent from God anywhere around you and having to make do the best you could in worshiping the Lord. The true worshipers of the Lord were famished, starving, and thirsting for true religion, but it was hardly found.
Pious believers in Jehovah prayed, pined, and mournfully longed for the arrival of their promised Messiah, who would someday come and set things right. You can almost imagine them holding their weary heads in their hands and asking the same question that had been on the lips of those poor souls for years: “Where is he? Our God, Jehovah, promised to send our Savior, but where is he? When will God ever send him to set us free and save us from this wretched condition?”
The opening words of Mark’s gospel burst onto the scene with the answer they were all waiting for: “He’s here! He has come! The Lord God has sent me to announce his coming to you, most highly blessed people! Your long-awaited Messiah is now in the world! And I have been commissioned by God to announce the good news!”
That is what v. 3 is about, in so many words: “He is coming! Get ready! Prepare the way of the Lord! Remove any hindrance and make a highway for him! Because he is coming to you!”
That describes the ministry of John the Baptist, the last Old Testament prophet, sent by the Lord to announce the end of the old covenant and the arrival of the glorious new. But most importantly, the great prophet John announced the arrival of the new covenant’s Messiah, the Son of God, anointed by the Holy Spirit as the long-awaited Savior of God’s people.
Malachi the prophet, four hundred years earlier, had informed the people that the promised one, the highly anticipated Messiah, would come by the announcement of another prophet sent before him to herald his arrival, and that prophet was John. Four hundred years earlier, Malachi had written of him (v. 2): Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.”
A good question at this point is—for believers and non-believers alike—”Are you seeking the Messiah? For the unbeliever, are you seeking him as your Savior? Are you ready to repent and receive the free pardon of God for forgiveness of all your sin and the gift of everlasting life?”
And for the believer, “Are you seeking the Messiah? Are you turning to him daily in your Christian life? Are you seeking to know him better, to walk with him more closely and intimately? Are you praying for God’s grace to help you surrender to him more completely? Are you praying for him to grant you more grace, more love for him and your neighbor? Are you seeking his will then, upon discovering his will, are you obeying and complying? Are you staying in touch with him throughout your day?” If so, be encouraged, for Jesus declared (Luke 11:13): “How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!
Moving forward, yes, Christians do seek the Lord and his will. Christians pray for reformation and revival. We pray for messengers from God, and rightly so. But the answers to your prayers, when they come, might be anything but what you expected. A lot of people must have felt that way when they saw the answer to their prayers in the person of John the Baptist.
The people of Israel were accustomed to religious leaders who were scholarly and sophisticated. Leaders who looked impressive and dignified in their long flowing robes. Men with a cultured, pious air about them. Wow! What a surprise it must have been when they saw the man God actually sent them (v. 6): Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and honey.
John appears to have been a Nazirite. Nazirites were people whose presence among the people of Israel was meant to communicate separation from the world and its ways in favor of the devotion to God that he desires from his redeemed people. Nazirites were consecrated to God by a vow, usually for a specified amount of time. In John’s case, he was set apart unto God for life. As long as a Nazirite was consecrated to God by the terms of his vow, he was not to cut his hair or shave his beard, he was to abstain from any produce of the grape vine, and he was to have no contact with dead bodies.
Imagine for a moment what John must have looked like. He was a wild-looking man who, for around thirty years, had never cut his hair or shaved his beard. He wore clothing made from coarse, scratchy camel’s hair with a leather belt. And he ate bugs!
If we were beseeching God to send revival and reformation, and a man like that arrived and told you God had sent him, you might have some second thoughts, mightn’t you? But God’s answers to your prayers do not have to be, and frequently are not, anything like you were expecting and probably hoping. Always be on the lookout for answered prayers that are completely different than you had imagined. Do not be too quick to judge people whom God sends your way. Do not think that things have to be done as you would like or think they should be. As the sage advice says it, “Be careful what you pray for. You might get it.”
Moving forward, what was the nature of John’s message and ministry? We learn of it in vv. 4-5: John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Then all Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.
Those who believed, people from all around the Judean countryside and villages, and from the major city of Jerusalem, came out to hear John preach. Many of them expressed their willingness to repent and were baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. That is some interesting language—baptized for the forgiveness of sins. Does that mean that baptism itself works to produce forgiveness of sin? Are we saved by virtue of baptism?
Many have said so, but not so! We get ourselves in deep trouble when we encounter words and presume their meaning. We must be careful not to force our preconceived opinions upon language, any language, especially the language of Scripture.
First, we need to know that the Greek preposition for “of” is not used here in the Greek New Testament. The translators of the King James Bible and many other versions use the preposition “of.” I do not know why, but I am sure they believed they had good reason. Perhaps they wanted to smooth out the translation of the language into English, and that is fine.
The preposition that is actually used means “a point that has been reached or entered.” An accurate English translation is that John was preaching a baptism “into” or “because of” or “as the result of” the remission of sins. Read in the original language, v. 4 can say, “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance because of the remission of sins.” The people were baptized not to acquire forgiveness of sin, but because they already had.
The word “repentance” or “repent” means “to dismiss” or “to depart from” or “to stop.” Literally, in Scripture, it means “a change of mind leading to a new direction.”
Putting these words together, we learn that John called on people to repent and be baptized because of the forgiveness of their sins. Not that their sins were taken away from them because they were baptized, but to be baptized because their sins had been taken away.
John was calling on people to confess their sins, to depart from them, and to stop sinning. People who sincerely desired to turn away from their sin and leave it all behind them professed that desire, and were baptized as a sign of their having been cleansed from sin and forgiven with a commitment to a newly repentant life.
Norval Geldenhuys comments that “John called the people to repentance and then baptized those who confessed their sins and gave indication that they desired to lead a different and better life, in the assurance that God grants pardon to those who sincerely repent. So baptism is the outward sign and seal that God has forgiven sins.”
Ryken supplements, “There is no forgiveness without repentance. The act of repentance does not have the power to take away our sin. Forgiveness comes only through Christ and his cross. But unless we [do] repent, we will never be forgiven, because only people who are sorry for their sins will ever admit they need a Savior.”
What else was characteristic of John’s message? (vv. 7-8): 7 And he preached, saying, “There comes One after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and loose. 8 I indeed baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Notice the heart of John; it is the heart of any sincere preacher of God’s Word. He knew that he was merely the messenger. John was sent to herald the arrival of his Lord and Master—the very Son of God from heaven. John portrays the actions of a slave. When the master of a slave came home, that servant was to stoop in front of him, loosen his master’s sandals, and wash his tired feet with a soothing foot bath.
Regarding the Messiah—the Christ—whom he was sent to announce, John declared in so many words, “He is so superior to me, I am not even worthy to stoop before him and wash his feet like a slave would do.” Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior, is infinitely superior to any human being who lives or has lived. We are all fallen sinners. He is sinless, morally upright in integrity, perfect in every way.
John was at the zenith of his career; crowds followed him wherever he went. People clung to his words as if he were their savior. But John would allow no such thing to be thought of him. He did not relish the approval of men. His heart’s desire was to point people to Christ. Is that your desire, to turn the attention of people to Jesus? Let’s make it so.
J. C. Ryle writes that “a faithful preacher will never allow anything to be credited to him, or his office, which belongs to his divine Master…. To commend Christ’s dying and rising again for the ungodly—to make known Christ’s love and power to save sinners—this will be the main object of his ministry… He will be content that his own name be forgotten, so long as Christ crucified is exalted.”
That is true indeed of any sincere preacher of Christ and his gospel. But, you know, it is not just ordained ministers who should have such a desire. It ought to be true of any Christian—everyone who truly knows Jesus as Savior and Lord. As Phillip Ryken explains, “The whole direction of a truly Christian life is to make more of Jesus, and less of ourselves.”
There is the nature of a true servant of Jesus. Our life is not to be about us; it is to be all about Jesus. Do others see Jesus in your life? Does your life testify of the one who is mightier than you? Do we conduct ourselves in such a manner that others, from being around us, find themselves attracted to Jesus? That was John’s purpose, and it is to be the goal of us all, our life’s purpose, our reason for living.
John continues explaining the greatness of Jesus by comparing the limitations of the baptism he can administer with water to the incomparably greater baptism that Jesus can and does perform (v. 8): 8 I indeed baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
Jesus is more than a morally superior person. He can do what neither John nor any other human being can even begin—things of which only God is capable. John’s baptism was with water as an external sign of the inward cleansing from the moral pollution of sin, and baptism represents that today. Christians are baptized with water as an outward and visible sign of the invisible work of the Holy Spirit in the heart.
That inner work in the heart is the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and God alone can administer that baptism. By it, the Holy Spirit works in the sinner’s heart, convincing him of his sin and guilt, and giving him faith to believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sin.
The Holy Spirit gives us new spiritual life. He unites us to Christ as the adopted children of the Father. He sets us apart to God as holy and continues working throughout our life, progressively setting us apart from sin unto righteousness. He endues us with spiritual gifts to be used in God’s service. He seals us forever as God’s own redeemed and treasured possession with a divinely administered seal which cannot be broken or violated. The Holy Spirit seals us, keeps us, and preserves us forever in God’s family.
No man can accomplish any of those most marvelous things, including by the application of water—never and by no means! Jesus accomplishes all of them by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which he administers to every true child of his Father. Only God can do the inner work of salvation.
All this and more is what John points to when he declares that whereas he baptizes with water, Jesus baptizes you, Christian, with the Holy Spirit. Every true, spiritually reborn Christian has been baptized with the Holy Spirit. “Have you experienced this baptism? Every believer does, because it is the Holy Spirit who makes a Christian a Christian. Our baptism comes from Jesus Christ, who has the power and authority to send us the Spirit.”
Conclusion
In closing, let’s revisit for a moment how distressing and morally dark Israel was when the Lord God sent John to announce salvation. We sometimes become concerned about the prevalence of wickedness in our society and apathy in the church, and rightly so. Consider, however, that distressing conditions historically have preceded a reawakening of true religion. “This is the way the Word always comes. In dark and dangerous times, when people seem powerless against the forces of evil, God’s word comes to bring salvation.”
God has a purpose for dark times; we sometimes forget that fact. God uses darkness in the world as a contrasting backdrop to make the dawning of his glorious and radiant light of truth, when it comes, to stand out more clearly and to shine more brilliantly and to contrast with greater distinction the gloom and despair that have fallen upon a people who have turned away from the delightful countenance of God’s favor which once they had known and enjoyed.
God’s business is redemption and reformation, and he never changes careers. God’s reformers always come in his time, usually when hope has waned to a flicker and despair has set in like a plague. Then people finally see their hopelessness without God and that their only hope is God.
During dark times, God always has his people—like the ancient Israelites—who never cease calling on his name and praying for him to arise and come to their aid. He sympathizes with their distress, he hears their prayers, and he raises up salvation.
Are you working and praying for reformation and revival in this present day, Christian? And, we might add, it sometimes works in individual lives in the same way as in societies. During the hours of life at their darkest is so often the time when God sends his glorious spiritual light to work the magnificent renewal in us that only he can do.
There are many things in life we will never possess, and that God does not intend us to have. But there is at least one thing that is so sure and certain that the Christian has no excuse for ever being without it—hope. As Christians, we have no right ever to be hopeless. Why? Because of the integrity of God and his promises for his people. Scripture speaks of God swearing an oath never to forsake his redeemed children and therefore giving them no grounds to be without hope.
Consider Hebrews 6:16-19: Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. 17 Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. 18 God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. 19 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. Amen.
Benediction:
The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.