Jesus – Preparing the Way!

Introduction

Thanks, Divia, and good morning again. I want to think a little bit about the topic of truth. It feels like we’ve said this a couple of times recently, that idea of truth and what that means. It feels like throughout history, we can see generations where the word, the concept of truth, changes. It feels like in recent times, it’s taken a pretty radical shift again.

People had that idea, “I have to see it to believe it.” We got through a stage where it was like, you need to see it, you need to experience it yourself. The world of mobile phone cameras means you can now see more than ever. Events are likely to be recorded, and you might be able to see them. Of course, in very recent times, the introduction of AI-generated video means people are able to create stuff or change stuff in a way that previously convincing editing needed a lot of time and a lot of resources. We’re in a new world where it’s almost like you can’t say, “I need to see it to believe it.” You see it, you might not believe it.

We have a world where we think about the fear of big media and that language of the corruption of big media. Almost like there was this idea that, okay, now that we’ve got the social media thing, we can put communication and news in the hands of the individual. Enough individuals in the world putting information in, we will now find truth. Of course, that’s proving to be less than reliable. There’s this trend I see on social media of people writing things in the comments that aren’t true and then just jumping on each other, jumping on a bandwagon of something and trying to pretend like it’s true.

The classic is, I saw this one just this week, a snake swimming in water with feathers attached to it. The question is, what is it? People are just kind of riding what it is. You get immediately someone will say, “Oh, that’s a very rare sighting in the wild of my mother-in-law.” Someone will say, “Oh, I’m a zoologist, and I can tell you that that’s a katsu kadle.” Someone else will go, “Yes, I’m a biologist, and I can confirm that that’s a katsu kadle.” That trend just starts going, and people just jump on top of that. Eventually, someone will say, “I can tell you I’m very skilled at reading comments, and I can tell you that that’s a katsu kadle.” It kind of goes on. Of course, if you look up a katsu kadle, it’s a mythical creature that doesn’t exist. That was a snake with feathers on it. In reality, the video is either someone has stuck feathers to a snake, or it’s got caught in something that had feathers.

Even at a point where you go, we can’t even trust people’s comments of what they say. In fact, they just feel like it’s humorous to perpetuate something that isn’t true. This has been really clear in the political journey that has happened in the United States recently. This last 12 months, I’ve enjoyed politics like I’ve never enjoyed it before. Best soap opera I’ve ever watched. Script writing brilliant. You couldn’t come up with better content. You get moments where Trump is tried, and he’s convicted of 34 felonies. You say, “How do we know that he did this?” The judicial system tried and tested him. What does Biden say to that? He says, “We trust our judicial system. He’s guilty.” Of course, Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is tried and convicted of three felonies, and Biden uses his presidential powers to pardon him. They say, “Why did you pardon him?” Politics got in the way of justice, and we can’t trust the justice system when politics are involved.

You’re left saying, how do we trust anything if we can’t even trust the court system to be the ones who can find truth if both sides of politics are declaring that there’s corruption, bringing apart the justice system, then what do we know is true anymore? We find the same thing when we come to religion. It’s the same thing when we come to the Bible. What do we discover as truth? We’re going to work our way through the first four chapters of Mark over these next couple of months. We’ll pick it up again next year, and we’ll work our way to the end eventually. Mark is one of my favorite books of the Bible. It’s one of my favorite gospel stories of Jesus. I think some of that is because Mark is very straight, matter of fact about trying to put the facts of truth in front of you.

Mark Puts the Facts in Front of Us

The message of Mark really feels like he’s going to put the facts in front of us and let us decide. In fact, the end of Mark, there’s disagreement over the last little bit of Mark. Some manuscripts that we have don’t have it. If you take the most reliable ending of Mark, you’ll see a footnote in your Bible at the end of Mark that says, “This is where the reliable manuscripts end, and this is an extra bit that we’re not sure was originally part of the book.” If you take the most reliable ending, it ends with the women see the empty tomb, they run away, and they tell no one. It’s a very depressing ending, but in some ways, it really feels like if that’s the ending Mark wanted, it feels like Mark is saying to us, “Here’s the facts, now you make up your mind.”

Who Do People Say I Am?

The pinnacle of the Book of Mark is chapter 8, and the pinnacle of chapter 8 is the question that Jesus asks his disciples. The question is, “Who do people say I am?” They say, “John the Baptist.” They say, “Other prophets.” Then he says, “But who do you say I am?” Peter says, “You are the Christ.” That is the pinpoint of Mark’s point. Here’s the facts, now the question for you as you journey through Mark is, who is this man? Who is Jesus? Mark doesn’t do what some of the other gospel writers do and explains things along the way. Mark just puts the facts in front of us and gives us the chance to work that out for ourselves.

He was alive in Jesus’ day. He saw these things, many of them himself. Some of them he would have not been there for, and he heard about them. As far as we can tell, he’s the first. The scholars think that he’s the oldest, the first gospel that we have. Even though we align our Bible Matthew, Mark, Luke, he most likely wrote before Matthew. He was probably pretty young in Jesus’ day, maybe even a teenager. There’s a few clues we have to that we can’t be sure. One of them is in the book of Acts. Mark’s mother is mentioned. We’re told that the church meets in her house in Jerusalem. The fact that she had a house big enough for a church to meet in probably suggests pretty wealthy. The fact that it’s in Jerusalem probably means he grew up in Jerusalem, which means some of the Jerusalem events he may have been actually in town. It might have been his hometown where those happened.

Mark’s Youth

Later on, Paul and Barnabas, as they go out on missionary journeys, we’re told they have a debate over Mark. The debate is so fierce that they decide to go on separate journeys. The way that is written seems to assume he was like a young apprentice to them rather than a peer. The assumption is he’s young. The other glimmer we have that he might be young is my favorite part of Mark is that he may be the guy that did the nudie run in the Garden of Gethsemane. We’re told it’s just a weird verse in Mark 14 that says when Jesus rested, one young man following beside the disciples was clothed only in a long linen shirt. When the mob tried to grab him, he slipped out of his shirt and ran away naked. None of the other gospel writers decided to put that in.

One of two things happened in mind there. Either Mark was a teenager when that happened, and a teenager never forgets these things. “Oh, remember that guy that did the nudie run at the Garden of Gethsemane? The soldiers are there arresting Jesus, swords, everything, he’s naked running away.” Or it is Mark himself, in which case this is a little nod to the author just going, “Remember the time I did the nudie run in the Garden of Gethsemane?” Maybe that’s not him, but it does seem like it leans towards him being a young man when Jesus was alive. He saw many things, it would seem, and heard many things firsthand. If he wasn’t around, certainly things that had spread about Jesus, he definitely would have been in contact with direct firsthand witnesses that saw and heard and experienced Jesus.

Mark is a real live person experiencing the real life Jesus. The oldest manuscript we have of the Gospel of Mark is dated to the first century, around 150 BC, which is probably only 70 years after he wrote it. We don’t assume it’s his own handwriting, but a copy of his. Already his manuscript had distributed around, and there’s a number of copies that scholars agree are dated back then. This is not something that has been picked up and created a thousand years after Jesus. This is something that literary evidence suggests was written in that time. Hard manuscript evidence suggests was written in that time, and the text itself suggests it was written by Mark himself. He’s a real person writing about what he really saw and heard about Jesus, and he wants to make it crystal clear who Jesus is.

Jesus is the Christ

It comes in that pinpoint moment where Peter says, “You are the Christ.” The word we read in Mark 1, and the word that the New Living Translation translates in Mark 8 is translated to Messiah, but the actual word, the ancient Greek word is the one that’s on the screen. It is the word Christos, which of course is the word we translate to be Christ. That is what the Greek word looks like. It’s the word Christos, and it means Messiah. The reason the New Living Translation translates Messiah is we misunderstand often the word Christ, but we understand the word Messiah. We know what a Messiah is, but what is a Christ? That word is only used in reference to Jesus. Often I think people just assume it’s his last name. He is Jesus Christ, but it’s actually Jesus the Christ. It’s like saying your doctor’s name, first name is Doctor. That’s not what it is. It’s a title. This is Jesus the Christ. It means Messiah. More specifically, it means the one who is anointed to a special role. In this case, the Christ, the Messiah, the special one who is anointed to a special role.

Take a Fresh Look at Jesus

As we go through this series, something I want us to do is just take a fresh look at Jesus because it’s easy for us to have words like Christ that we use and maybe even understand behind them, but don’t always think about them. It’s helpful for us to just strip some of that back. The reality is Christianity, the good news of Jesus, has permeated around the world so much for 2,000 years. With it comes a lot of the extra cultural baggage of the area that people are communicating in. Sometimes it feels like Christianity is a religion of Europe, something that’s European or Western. I’ve heard multiple times the comment about the names of the people in the Bible are European names. Why do they use European names? We’ve anglicized many of those words. They are definitely Middle Eastern names, Hebrew names, many of them. For example, we translate John as the word John, but the word is actually johannas is his name. We’ve anglicized it to John.

There’s these kinds of conversations that happen, and it’s important for us to come back to remembering that this is not something that necessarily comes from our own cultural heritage. This is something that is the message of a God who created the universe, who chose a particular people to communicate his good news. That particular people happened to be the Jewish people in the Middle East. From that space, that message has gone out to the whole world. I want us to come with that kind of freshness as we think about some of this. This is the Christ, and Mark really wants to lay those facts in front of us. The thing to look out for as you look at the Book of Mark is it’s a very fast-moving story. Mark classically likes to say one thing and then say something else and let you bridge the gap to figure it out.

Mark’s Fast Moving Story

Let me give you two examples from our own passage that we read. Mark tells us that a prophet, the prophet Isaiah, made this decree. He says, “Just as the prophet had written in verse two, look, I am sending my messenger, a voice shouting in the wilderness.” That’s the message from Isaiah. Mark doesn’t explain that to us. All he does is jump straight into the next verse, which is, “Along came John in the wilderness claiming a message.” You see what’s happening there? There’s going to be one proclaiming a message. Along came John proclaiming that message. He doesn’t actually draw that link. He just puts those two next to each other and lets us draw the link. To be fair, the New Living Translation actually does do a little bit of theological work for us, and it translates it, “This messenger was John,” but the strict Greek original ancient Greek is, “Along came John.” That’s it. He does it again. Verse 7, John says, “One more powerful than I is coming.” Very next verse, “Along came Jesus.” You see what’s happening? Mark sets up the phrase, and then he gives the next part of the story. His approach is to give us fact after fact after fact and let us stitch them together as we process that. That’s something to look out as we process this and see who Jesus is.

Jesus is the Son of God

Make no mistake, Mark isn’t doing this because he doesn’t have an answer to that question. He is crystal clear on what he believes, and he opens with that verse one, “This is the good news about Jesus, who is the Christ, who is the Son of God.” That’s Mark. The pinnacle of the book might be chapter 8, “Who do you say I am?” But Mark opens with the answer to the question. He is the Christ, the Son of God. It’s important for Mark that Jesus is not just a special person. He is divinely anointed. He’s not just an anointed person. He’s divinely anointed. We get that picture of his baptism where the Holy Spirit comes down. He’s not just anointed by anyone. The picture here Mark gives us is that Jesus is anointed by God. He’s not just another prophet. He tells us he’s greater than all the prophets. He’s greater than, for example, the great prophet Isaiah, who he tells us said that the one who is coming is going to be my Lord. Isaiah said in verse three, “Prepare the way for the Lord.” This is Isaiah’s Lord. He’s greater than Isaiah. He’s greater than John the Baptist, who was a significant person in his day.

Greater Than All the Prophets

We’re told by Mark that people came from all Judea. That’s the surrounding area and Jerusalem. People traveled from a long way to come and hear this guy who was coming out of the wilderness, asking people to turn from their sinful ways and be baptized in the river, be washed in the river to show we’re told that they had repented of their sins. John was like an incredibly bright light in his day, but he himself says Jesus is brighter. The picture we get from John is Jesus is like the sun rising. No matter how bright John’s light was, once the sun is there, the light is insignificant, barely distinguishable. He gives us those words. He says he’s so much greater that I’m not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. Jesus is not just another anointed one. He’s the divinely anointed one, and he is God’s own son. We’re told he’s not just the divine anointed one. He’s the divine son. This is John’s testimony. He says, “I baptize with water. He will do the work of God. He will baptize with God’s spirit.”

He tells us there’s no biblical character that we see through the whole of the Bible that brings the work of God in a saturating way like the language that John uses there. This is the divine one who brings God’s divine work at hand. God himself gives us a supernatural testimony to Jesus. There’s a voice from heaven. We’re told, “You are my dearly son, and you bring me great joy.” God himself testifies to who Jesus is. It’s a critical thing as we process the idea of who Jesus is that Mark is a historical guy talking about Jesus who is a historical guy, and scholars will agree with that. There’s a major step to take, and that is the divine step that if we can’t grapple with the idea that there is a creator of this world, and we can’t grapple with the idea that Jesus is divinely connected to him, then Jesus means nothing. The reality is we’re in a time and place in the scientific world where the spiritual has been diminished or even ignored or even totally rejected. If we can’t come to terms with that, then we will find no meaning in who Jesus is at all. For Mark, he’s not just the Christ, he’s the Son of God. As we read on, we find out even more that he is God himself. He is the divine one. That is the picture we get.

Jesus Dies So That We Might Live

It’s critical in understanding what Jesus has done because Jesus can only do what he said he was going to do and did if he is the divine one. Jesus dies so that we might live. That can only work if he’s the divine one because the very problem we face, the problem we call sin, is rebellion against God himself. If the problem is rebellion against God himself, then God himself needs to be the one to bring the solution. If Jesus is just a good guy, just a good teacher, just a miracle worker, then his death is just a good example. If he is the divine one, then his death can serve the purpose he said it serves, which is to pay the price of human rebellion and make a way that we might be redeemed from the consequences of that rebellion. He is the promised son. He’s the divine promised Christ. He’s the divine son.

Jesus is the Suffering Servant

The last thing I want to say is that Mark points us to him being the suffering servant. This is one of the key themes that Mark draws through his book. We see Jesus as a servant in the sense that he’s obedient. He’s obedient in his baptism. It’s quite strange that Jesus is baptized. We read why Mark is inviting people to be baptized. He’s invited to be baptized as a sign that they repented of their rebellion against God, repented of their sin. Here’s Jesus, the Son of God, Mark tells us, who goes forward and is baptized like all the others. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense except if we think of the bigger picture of what that means in that moment because there the whole language of repenting and turning from sin is not just about turning away from sin. It’s also about turning to God and aligning yourself with him. Jesus’ baptism is a symbol of his alignment with God. It is a symbol of his obedience.

Obedient and Aligned With God

It was a significant thing for me in my baptism journey. I was a youth minister. I was looking to be ordained into ministry. When I signed the paperwork, they had the box that said, “Write down the date that you’ve been baptized.” I said, “I haven’t.” They said, “If you want to be ordained in the Anglican Church, you have to be baptized.” I might have oppositional defiance disorder. There was a moment where I was like, “I am not doing something so significant, so spiritual, so that I can tick a box on a form. That’s ridiculous. This act of baptism is not going to equate to a box on a form for me.” I also felt super weird about it. I’ve been inviting people to follow Jesus. I’d even been inviting people to be baptized, and I’d never been baptized. I wasn’t proclaiming that from the rooftop, but to then announce, “Hey everyone, we’re going to have a celebration, and I’m going to proclaim to you all that I’m a follower of Jesus,” I would like to think people would go, “We knew that already.”

The very thing that changed my mind was this. Jesus didn’t need to proclaim to the world that he’s a follower of Jesus. Jesus wasn’t proclaiming to the world that he’s a Christian, but Jesus was aligning himself with God and proclaiming the obedience and alignment with God. That was the very thing that for me, I said, “I will be baptized, not so I can tick a box on a form, although I was able to tick that, but because it’s obedience and alignment with God.” Jesus is the obedient servant, but we’re also told he’s the suffering servant. We’re told that he’s obedient even to the Holy Spirit, verse 12, that compels him to go into the wilderness. We’re told he’s tempted by Satan. This is the story of the divine son who came into our world as a human to face the struggles that humans face, to live alongside us as he points us to God and then makes a way to God as the Christ, as the divine son.

It’s a key theme for Mark. All the authors of the gospels have things that they focus on. We see their human side come out in the way they write. Matthew is very focused on kingship. We’d say his theme is one of his big themes is the sovereign king. John, the Gospel of John, one of his key themes is the divine son, so focused on Jesus as the divine. Mark obviously has that as well. Luke really focused on the compassionate savior, so Jesus’ mercy ministries, his healing, very big part of the Gospel of Luke. For Mark, a key component to what he wants to tell us about is this one who is the Christ, he is the divine son is also the suffering servant, obedient, faithful to God, and facing the suffering in this world, which will eventually lead him to suffering in our place for our salvation.

Who Do You Say Jesus Is?

The question for us is the question Mark puts, “Who do we say Jesus is?” The answer is not that we are invited to believe about Jesus. Mark invites us to believe in Jesus, to put our trust in Jesus. This truth, as we wrestle with what is truth, this truth can’t be just a personal preference. It’s of eternal significance. It can’t just be about what we prefer to believe. It’s not just a question about what we want, who we are, our identity. It is a question about identity. It’s about our identity as who we are before our very makers. It’s not just a question of what we choose to live for. It’s something that would transform our identity and our purpose in how we live, what our priorities are, and what we might seek in this world. This is the implications of this kind of truth.

The question Mark leaves us with at the very end is going to be, “Who do you say he is?” The women run away, and they say nothing to no one, and maybe that is your decision. Nonetheless, what Mark wants to tell us is if you choose that, then you are turning away from these very truths that he presents to us, and the implications of that would be eternal. Our hope as we unpack this is to find a fresh view on Jesus, to come to some of these stories that Mark tells us in his fast-moving page, and wrestle with some of that ourselves. Whether you’ve been a Christian for a long time or whether this is something you’re still journeying through, we want to be reminded of who Jesus is and that his identity is transforming for everything we do, and it’s transforming with our relationship with our maker now and into eternity.