Mark 1:4-11 EHV
John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him. They were baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins. 6 John was clothed in camel’s hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey. 7 He preached, “One more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals! 8 I 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 Just as Jesus came up out of the water, 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 Son, whom I love. I am well pleased with you.”
” ‘If only there were fewer hours in a day,’ said no one, ever.” That’s the way the New York Post journalist began her article last Tuesday that explained that last Sunday lasted only 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59.9998927 seconds. She goes on to explain how “since the development of the atomic clock in the ’60s, “leap seconds” have been added 27 times to make up for the earth’s slowing rotation. However, the last time that adjustment was called for was in 2016. Since then, Earth has begun rotating faster than usual, and now scientists suggest a possible “negative leap second” in order to bring time into equilibrium with our position in space.“
The writer admits that one thousand and 73 millionths of a second “difference may not be felt on an individual scale, but the implications are critical for science and technology as satellite communication and navigation systems rely on timing consistent with the cosmos.” It went on to predict that 2021 is slated to be 19 milliseconds less than a typical year.
Because of that “fractional difference,” I doubt anyone is standing around waiting to hear an atomic-clock, time-concerned scientist as a voice calling in the wilderness, warning us about a negative leap second adjustment to be made to our normal year’s thirty million, five-hundred thirty-six thousand seconds. It’s a little too little to interrupt your day about.
The gospel writer Mark certainly doesn’t waste time as he began his gospel rather abruptly: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” It’s almost staggering how much information is packed into those few words but Mark doesn’t waste any seconds explaining them. He jumps into how the early words of Isaiah 40 talk about John the Baptist, that voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the LORD.’ He buzzes through to Jesus baptism, skipping any information about Jesus when He was young and after our text starts describing the events in Jesus’ ministry. But we’re going to take a little time to reflect on what Mark writes about Jesus’ baptism, that is:
Jesus of Nazareth Inaugurated as the Christ.
I. To be served by a moving forerunner.
He began a cleansing movement in a dry desert.
:4a John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness. Mark’s linking of John the Baptist to his Isaiah 40 quote is almost ho-hum. But everything about John looks big, bombastic, meant to draw attention and it worked. :5a The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him. His message was apocalyptic sounding. It sounded like big changes were imminent. :7a He preached, “One more powerful than I is coming after me. The kingdom of God is about to commence! The crazy, camel-haired-clothed-and-leather-belted, locust-and-wild-honey eater got their attention.
Yes, everything about John looked big, meant to draw attention and it worked, but not for those reasons. People responded to John’s preaching, not his look. His preaching was a message opposite of what one would think should make a person popular.
Yes, his message included the ideas like big changes were imminent, the one more powerful than I is coming after. From John’s further words in Matthew and Luke, you can tell that even he himself, John, thought the last era of the world was beginning. But like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures had seen things, John was just as in the dark about when details about the Savior would take place exactly. So he preaches in Matthew (3:10) and Luke 3:9) “The axe is laid at the root of the tree. So every tree that does not bear fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” As he spoke such things, you can imagine that, as the heat of the sun in the desert made them sweat as they listened to John, that that toastiness would have echoed as the heat of the law warmed and warned them on the inside. Similar to those other words of Isaiah 40 that give us the context of the promise of John’s voice calling in the wilderness (:6-8a): A voice was saying, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry out?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like a wildflower in the countryside. 7 Grass withers, flowers fade, when the breath of the Lord blows on them. Yes, the people are grass. 8 Grass withers, flowers fade, …” It’s those kinds of words that John preached. (Matthew 3:9) Do not think of saying to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones, as if to say, “Don’t think you can lay claim to being in the kingdom by who you’re born to or how you were raised.”
In short, as Paul says, “the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.” which in part means, when it comes to repentance, God’s looking for it to be genuine. Sin needs to be turned away from and quite often for us as sinners, especially regarding our own weaknesses, sin needs to be turned away from again, and again, and again. The very existence of that circumstance as true is proof that none of us can come into that kingdom laying claim to, “Well, at least I’m keeping the third commandment by coming to church to hear the Word or reading it every day for that matter, (like a pastor).” Or, “At least I’m taking care of my aged parents.” Or, “I’m not hurting or harming anyone.” Or “I’m not committing adultery with anyone or anything.” Or, “I’m not gossiping about anyone.” But in all of those denials of our guilt, what if there’s one of those commands to us about which it is true that we’re doing what we’re forbidden to do? We’re not saved by what else we do as if it makes up for what we’re failing to do.
And so, we as “grass withers, flowers fade.” It sort of leaves you hanging doesn’t it? Dried out with the breath of God’s law on the inside like the desert sun starts sucking the moisture out of you on the outside. And the sweat and the dust that leaves the unclean feeling of grit on the outside as we contemplate God’s law, then the naked dirt on the inside gets uncovered.
You can picture yourself there can’t you, standing, panting with the crowd? And there before them the Jordan river. Oh, for a cleansing wash! Or in other words, since the kingdom of God consists in power, not just words, then here comes the more comforting power.
Whose repentance-baptism preaching clarifies our position.
:4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
They had other baptisms, washings, ceremonial law washings that they did that were meant to be pictures for them. But John’s was different in that it was not ceremonial, merely symbolic. No, instead it was substantive. This baptism of John’s was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In the original language the meanings of those words are emphasized: Baptism. Repentance. Sins. Forgiveness.
In short, it was a baptism like ours. It had power. It changed behaviors. Luke writes of this when there’s an episode later on in which Jesus clarifies John’s great, though lesser ministry. (Luke 7:29) “When all the people (including the tax collectors) heard this, they declared that God was just, since they were baptized with the baptism of John. 30 But the Pharisees and the legal experts rejected God’s purpose for themselves by not being baptized by him.” This repentance-baptism of John’s, though as innocuous looking as ours, water and a few words, does accomplish great things.
But John is not disparaging it when he says, :8 I baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. The gospel-writer Mark is simply in his abbreviated format addressing when in the other gospels people asked John, “Who are you? Christ? the Prophet? Elijah?” Mark’s emphasizing what John was communicating when he said, :7b “I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals!” John understood that in his own ministry as forerunner, the kingdom was not about him. Forgiveness of sins was to be Jesus’ area of expertise. John knew that his baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sin wouldn’t be possible unless Jesus’ did His work after him. John’s humble statement showed how he didn’t lose sight that he was just as much in need of that forgiveness as the people’s whose sinful behaviors he condemned, as if John’s saying “I’m not even in the same ballpark as this guy that’s coming after me,” is his own confessing his sins just as they who came to him confessed theirs after hearing his repentance preaching.
This says something about how we begin our liturgies, doesn’t it? It can be so easy, in the comfort of the walls of a church that keeps out the cold. Huddled warm, to let the words of our liturgy roll out of our mouths but not out of our hearts and minds. “Merciful Father in heaven, I am altogether sinful from birth. In countless ways I have sinned against You and do not deserve to be called Your child.” That’s a weekly opportunity for us to own up, to admit the reality: the grass withers, the flowers fade, surely us people are grass. But as the Lord provided for Isaiah to add: (Isaiah 40:8b ) “But the Word of our Lord endures forever!” He doesn’t leave us hanging. Hope is offered. His Jesus came to be inaugurated.
II. To serve as our Substitute
He identified with us.
:9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
Jesus certainly began His ministry only after He was baptized. For thirty years he’d lived perfectly, in obscurity, but perfectly none the less. Righteous in his thoughts and deeds day in and day out: As His half-siblings were born and He had to get along with them despite how they probably resented Him as their perfect big brother; Working through His teenage years as hormones changed Him physically into an adult; Learning the trade of His earthly father, maybe even having to provide for the family Himself as the firstborn since there’s no reference to any actions of Joseph after Jesus’ 12 year old visit to the temple in His childhood. That could have involved training his brothers and handling business decisions with them, or in conflict with them. Dealing with vendors as a carpenter. Dealing with customers. All the challenges of life and not one sin.
In Matthew’s gospel, we get a little more information of the interchange between John and Jesus when He came to be baptized and start His ministry. “But John tried to stop him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, because it is proper for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John let him.” (Matthew 3:14-15)
The significance of Jesus’ baptism is that it covered a number of points. Yes, it marked the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry but the essence of that ministry was coming to do His Father’s will. Yes, part of that Father’s will for Him as a human is what is His Father’s will is for all of us—obey the commandments of God. As we just said, for 30 years Jesus did that. But the other part of His Father’s will for Him is just what He was about to commence doing. His public ministry included doing good and healing as you’d expect God to do on a visit to earth. But it was finally also how every gospel account, Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, ends. To obey His Father’s will to come and be the perfect Substitute to take the punishment of our sins in our place. That would take serious obedience because it meant holding on in perfect trust to His Father in the face of humiliating injustice and mistreatment and unfair execution. To be, as Paul says, (2 Cor. 5:21) “the One who had no sin who was made to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” I said before how the preaching of God’s law leaves us longing, leaves us hanging—until we hear the sweet message of a Savior come to forgive us. In Jesus’ case, the Father just left Him hanging–until He was dead. In place of you. In place of me. This baptism was Jesus’ way of stating from the outset, “I’m with you, I identify with you, sinful humanity though you are, even though I am not.”
This divine identity is divinely attested.
:10-11 Just as Jesus came up out of the water, 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 Son, whom I love. I am well pleased with you.”
As that ministry begins in the next verse, the human Son of man Jesus was going to need this divine attesting. The Spirit immediately leads Him to be tempted. It was a real temptation because as we hear in Matthew and Luke the Devil tried to get Jesus to bypass the suffering and get the world by worshiping him instead of worshiping the Father alone. For us who live with the fear of perhaps one day having to suffer physical persecution for our faith, who know Jesus’ warning words about those who don’t want to carry that kind of cross, (Matthew 16:25) “whoever saves his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for my sake, will find it,” Jesus lived with that threatening temptation every day because He knew for sure losing His earthly life on an undeserved cross was coming.
I can imagine that Jesus would have wanted the earth’s rotation to speed up as He was going through the day-darkened punishment of God-forsaken hell on the cross. The comfort, comfort for us is that He took every millisecond of it. But then He rose with that human body out of the grave. He ascended with that human body to the invisible position of all power in heaven and on earth at God’s right hand. And He’s with us always, the Son of God, the Son of man, our brother-Savior. In this way He not only identified Himself with us with His baptism but He makes clear the divine identity by which God wants to be known. He is the Savior God. The Father sent Him. The Spirit empowered Him at this inauguration of His ministry. No wonder they showed up by voice and vision.
But what is made most clear to us personally is that by providing a completed righteousness, one that was challenged to hold in faith to the Father despite the fact that the Father turned His back on His Son … —Why? So in the exchange of our sin for that Son’s God-produced and human-exercised righteousness in our place, God’s identity would be both attested and revealed to us when, because of Him, God says to us in our baptism, “You are my son. You are my daughter. With you through Him, I am well-pleased, too!” And that won’t just be for a millisecond. Amen.