The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Mark,
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, we are going out to him, and we are being
baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
Now John was clothed with camel hair and wore a belt, 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 straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and
anti. I have baptized you with water,
but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit, the Gospel of the
Lord. Let's pray together, Lord, just
as John the Baptist prepared your way to only to see you come
as the king sent from God to do miracles, to heal the sick, and
ultimately to go to the cross to be the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world. There was so much that you did
after John the Baptist prepared the way.
So we pray now, Lord, that Your Spirit would prepare the way
just in our midst so that we can, as we hear this gospel,
hear this good news. See you work in every single one
of our lives. See you work in our city, our
world, our circumstances. Lord, we pray that you would
lead, that you would be king. And we thank you, Lord, that
you're here in our midst. We pray this all in the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Please be seated and turn to Mark chapter 1.
This is the beginning of a new series called simply Jesus, and
we're going to be just walking sequentially through the gospel
of Mark and hearing this good news afresh.
There's a character from Greek mythology that a lot of modern
people can relate with. His name was Atlas.
Anybody familiar here with Greek mythology the the the God Atlas.
He was capable, he was strong, he was a leader among his fellow
gods, he was beloved by his family and had even daughters.
Along the way, Atlas found himself in a struggle for what
he felt was the right thing. He was fighting for the good in
the drama cycle of Greek gods and his side lost and it's
punishment. Atlas was given the unending
task of holding up the western sky.
That was his job. Atlas had to bear up under the
sky, the pressure of the sky to keep it from falling, and if he
were to shrug his responsibilities, the sky would
come crashing down and would cause chaos and pain and death
for his daughters and for the inhabitants of the world.
The myth of Atlas is, I would say, the default story for so
many of us. And the reason is that we love
our people. We love our city, we love our
church, we love people in our lives.
We've got strengths to offer and we care enough to get involved,
but the more involved we get in the events of this time, the
more we find ourselves holding up under the pressure, keeping
things together, holding back the chaos of what could go
wrong. Aware that if we let go of the
chaos, that pain would ensue, would rain down on people that
we care about and love. The hurting, the vulnerable, the
refugees, the children. And all we can do is hope.
Just hope that one day that pressure is going to ease, to
release and that the chaos will abate and we will be relieved of
the burden. The myth of Atlas.
Have you ever felt like Atlas? Just under pressure?
Under pressure to do what's right, Under pressure to
provide, under pressure to hold back what could hurt others?
That's the myth of Atlas, the myth that so many of us live by.
But what's the truth? What if there was a better
story? A story that wouldn't crush us,
but actually deliver us instead? A story that would relieve the
burden And that's the story that we're going to be looking at in
the Gospel of Mark, which begins with this epic packed heading in
verse 1 of chapter 1, which says this the beginning of the gospel
of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Friends, the the story of Atlas
is a dystopian myth that brings us down.
However you tell the myth, it's unsustainable to be in this
position forever. But the story of Jesus is a
gospel, which in the ancient world meant news that would
bring encouragement to people who heard it.
And that news concerned the arrival of of Jesus Christ.
That's how it's translated in our Bibles.
But really it means if you unpack what what Yeshua Messiah
meant, that meant deliverer king, deliverer king who would
take every burden, who would take, who would take everything
bad and make it come untrue. He's the Son of God, Mark says.
He's own son and he's come to relieve our burden, to heal our
world and to do all of the heavy lifting.
We have a role to play though. And verse two and three talk
about it says as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, See, I am
sending my messenger ahead of you.
He will prepare your way. This is about John the Baptist.
We'll talk about John the Baptist in a moment.
What does John the Baptist do? Verse 3, a voice of one crying
out in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord.
Make his paths straight. So John verse 2 is about John
the Baptist. Verse 3 is what he will say to
people. John the Baptist will be that
voice talking to people in the wilderness, talking to you and
me throughout the ages through the Holy Spirit.
Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.
Years ago we had a pest problem in our house and we called the
exterminator who said don't try to solve this problem yourself.
Don't do a DIY solution that's going to make it worse.
Let me take care of it with my more powerful tools.
All you have to do, He told us, is get your house ready, prepare
the way from top to bottom, do all of the adjustments necessary
so that I, the exterminator, can come and bring the heat and
solve the problem that you cannot do on your own in the
gospel of Jesus Christ. He does all the heavy lifting.
He brings the heat. We simply prepare the way.
But we have to ask, what does that mean exactly for us?
As we look at Mark chapter 1, we'll see that preparation means
three things. Three simple things, simple
obedience, simple repentance, and simple trust.
Simple obedience, simple repentance, and simple trust.
These are the top to bottom adjustments that we make so that
the deliverer King can bring the heat.
Let's look at simple obedience. John the Baptist didn't save the
world, he just obeyed God's word and that meant giving
instructions to prepare the way. Verse 4 John came baptizing in
the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the
forgiveness of sins. John the Baptist had a very
simple job. Be the voice that calls people
to repent of their sins and then as a sign of their repentance,
immerse them in water as a new beginning.
Most people in that time, especially coming from Judea and
Jerusalem, would cleanse themselves and they would do it
frequently. It was part of the Jewish
purification rights. So what John is introducing here
is an entirely new rite, RITE, which is to baptize you, immerse
you in water, and then as you are immersed in water, it
becomes a signpost that you are becoming a different person and
that you are preparing yourselves for a deliverer king
who would do everything else. Here's what John wasn't doing.
He's pretty and baptizing, but he was not healing people.
He was preparing them to be healed by Jesus.
He was not overthrowing Rome, but he was calling soldiers to
stop extorting people. He wasn't playing God.
John the Baptist wasn't playing God, but he was pointing to King
Jesus. He simply did what God asked him
to do. It was a simple act of
obedience. He lived a weird disruptive
life, right? He wore like animal skins.
He fed on locusts and honey, like he lived kind of a rough
existence to carry out this act of obedience.
But that was what God asked him to do.
God asked him to be a prophet like the old prophets, like the
last of the old prophets, ushering in the new era and just
preach and just baptize and, and make the sacrifices necessary to
fulfill that call. And he did it.
And he pointed to Jesus. What has God asked you to do,
friends? What, what, what burden has he
asked you to carry? What light yoke has he said this
is for you? I'm asking you to walk this out.
There's probably some sacrifice, there's probably some faith
involved. There's probably some unknowns,
but there's something all of us can do to prepare the way for
Jesus. I love the way that the prophet
Micah answered the question of like, what are we supposed to
do? What does obedience look like?
The prophet Micah, years before John the Baptist says this.
He has told each of you what is good and what is the Lord
requires of you, What it is the Lord requires of you to act
justly, to love faithfulness, otherwise translated mercy, and
to walk humbly with your God. Act justly, love faithfulness,
and walk humbly with your God. At the end of the day, that's
all the Lord is asking of each one of us to prepare His way.
We give God what we have. We give him our simple
obedience, the right next step. We don't know the outcomes and
we can't control them, but we can walk humbly with our God in
the specific calling He's given to each one of us.
Some of you might look at John the Baptist and you're like, you
know what John the Baptist had at least he had clarity about
what he was supposed to do. I mean, there the prophet Isaiah
wrote about him directly. You, if you have like scriptural
prophecies written about you, you know, you have some clarity
about what God wants you to do. Not only that, John the Baptist
wasn't just, he didn't just have clarity, he had gifting.
What about us? What about our clarity?
What about Our Calling? What about our gifting?
All of those are Atlas questions with Atlas pressure behind them.
I've got to know what's clear. What's my calling?
What am I supposed to do? It's OK to ask some of those
questions, but if we we only have the clarity God is ready to
give us, we only have the next step that God is ready to give
us. And most of the time it's only
the next step that becomes clear.
As we take the step, God makes it clear.
We practice discernment and He follows us the rest of the way
through every single act of obedience.
One person asked this question. Look, if if the Lord led the
people of Israel through the desert into the promised land,
why would he not leave me? It was a great, you know, if the
Lord, if God sent his Son Jesus to lead a new exodus, why would
he not leave each one of us as we are seeking to do his will?
Lord, show me the next step of obedience.
That's a prayer he would love to answer.
And that is a way for us to prepare his way.
But he's got to prepare us in the process.
And that's why preparing the way doesn't just end with simple
obedience. It gives way to simple
repentance. Simple repentance.
Verse 5, the whole Judean countryside says the whole
Judean countryside, and all the people of Jerusalem were going
out to him, and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan
River, confessing their sins. Now, this is a curious and
interesting surprise because most of the time people were
making pilgrimages to Judea, to Jerusalem.
That's where the flow of God's people faithfully went year
after year into Jerusalem to find God and to meet him.
But now we see a reverse flow. It's like the Chicago River
getting reversed back in the day.
Now they're going, they're going out, they're leaving.
And why are they leaving? It's because all of the systems
of power politically and religious power was corrupt and
pressurizing. And these were the people
holding it up. And they were saying no more,
this is killing me. I'm making huge compromises to
do this. And so they're leaving behind.
They're shrugging the weight of the temple and shrugging the
weight of enforcing Rome's wishes.
And they're coming out to John and they're leaving all kinds of
things behind. They're leaving power behind.
They're leaving pride behind. They're leaving control behind.
And they're coming out to be relieved of their burden.
And they find John the Baptist standing in the Jordan River.
Come to the waters. We can hear him calling out.
Come and unload your burdens here, friends.
Come confess that guilt. Come, come, repent.
I know you feel unclean. Come get clean.
Starting today, you can be at peace if you come to the waters.
Starting today, you can be free of shame.
Starting today, you can be free of secrecy and condemnation and
dread. Starting today, you can be ready
for the coming of God's Son who's come to take away your sin
before he judges the world in righteousness and truth.
Come to the waters, we can hear him say.
And here comes that soldier taking off his armor, taking off
his sword that he's used to extort money from people coming
to the water. Just a man, no longer a symbol,
being let down into the waters and coming out a cleansed new
birth son of God, ready, ready to follow a new king, a new
Lord. Here comes a tax collector who
works hand in hand with that soldier, and he takes off his
expensive outer garments and he takes off all of the shame as
well for betraying his people. And he goes into the waters too.
And as he is immersed, all of his greed is washed away.
And he comes out and the weight of all of that greed comes off
of his soul and he's free and he's ready to to lay up
treasures in heaven. Simple, simple.
Repentance can be so hard. Here comes a Pharisee who takes
off his religious garments, his religious garments that that
caused people to cower, make him into a symbol.
And he takes the, the symbolism, all of all that power.
And he says, I'm ready to no longer be a, you know, be
someone who like breaks the law over people's heads.
I'm ready to just cast off all of this judgement.
I'm ready to to be scorned by my colleagues.
And, and he is low down into the waters.
And now he comes, a true spiritual leader, truly ready to
love people, truly ready to do justice and love mercy and walk
humbly with his God, ready to be taught by the greatest teacher
of the Torah, the rabbi whom John the Baptist was preparing
the way for. Who else walked into the waters?
Friends, from then until now, there's such a relief that comes
when we confess. There's the wait of the world
that just seems to lift from our shoulders.
And really what this does is this, this prepares the way for
the Lord and and in one of the most significant ways possible.
In his classic allegory, the pilgrims progress, John Bunyan
tells the story of Christian. Christian is a is a man who he
carried a great burden on his back his whole life, and the
straps of that burden just wore his shoulders raw.
And so, like the pilgrims in verse 5, Christian set out on on
on a journey. He, he left his familiar home
behind to have his burden removed.
And, and actually, the more spiritually aware he became, the
heavier the burden got. It almost weighed him down.
In fact, he, he kind of like stumbled under the weight of it
and almost got stuck in his guilt, in the slew of despond.
It's like a murky swamp. But along the way, he caught
sight of the cross. It was at the top of the hill.
He could see it. And so he pressed on and he
passed through the wicket gate of repentance.
He passed through this gate of repentance.
And as he got closer and closer to the cross, all he could do
was stumble. Not like he did.
In the slew of despond despair, but to stumble with hope.
And as he did, the straps came loose on their own.
And the burden tumbled and tumbled, tumbled down until it
entered into a a tomb. Bunyan calls it a sepulchre, a
tomb representing death as well as resurrection.
And Christian was free. The burden was gone, the Guild
had been erased, and Bunyan captures the relief that he felt
when he says this. Then Christian was glad and
lights him, and said with a merry heart, He hath given me
rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.
We can't carry the weight of the world forever.
We can't carry the weight of sin and condemnation forever, but we
can prepare the way of the Lord, simply releasing it as we face
our darkness and experience the inside out healing that John the
Baptist is calling every single person to see John the Baptist,
he didn't try saving the world. He simply prepared the way of
the one who would. And it didn't end there.
And this is so crucial. John prepared the way of the
Lord There's simple, simple obedience and calling people the
simple repentance. He prepared the way of the Lord,
but then he got out of the way of the Lord and this leads us to
simple trust. Let's read about this in verse
7. He proclaimed John, one who is
more powerful than I am is coming after me.
I am not worthy to soup down and untie the strap of his sandals.
I baptize you with water, but he, Jesus will baptize you with
the Holy Spirit. We should know that John the
Baptist was the celebrity preacher of his day.
And we see it right here in the gospel record as throngs of
people flock to hear John the Baptist.
And these are these are the religious elite, and they're
coming to him. He's not going to them.
This is cooperated by non biblical sources.
In writing in 92AD, the historian Joseph noted that
John's quote, eloquence had so great an effect on the people
that they were quote, ready to do anything he should advise.
That's how much power he had, not just to draw people, but to
influence those people. And they did what he said.
So this doesn't happen unless you have extraordinary spiritual
gifting. And this is spiritual gifting
alarmed even Herod, Herod Antipus usually not paying
attention, you know, to to desert preachers.
But Herod was so afraid of his power that he had him imprisoned
and killed. So but here's what John the
Baptist does with his significant spiritual
influences. He prepares the way and then he
gets out of the way. He lets Jesus take over the
project, the baby that he's worked on, that he's given his
life to, that he's invested in. He says now Jesus, you take it
from here. I trust you, Jesus to take it
from here. He didn't worry about the
direction that Jesus would take it.
He didn't worry about the outcomes that Jesus would lead.
He had no idea how all of this would unfold.
But he doesn't cling to it. He simply says Jesus is more
powerful, Jesus is more worthy. Jesus baptizes with the Holy
Spirit. Therefore, I won't stand in his
way. It's worth asking, why do we get
a savior complex? Why do we get an Atlas complex?
Why do we prepare the way for the Lord, but we don't get out
of the way of the Lord? Why don't we trust Jesus with
what we have built for him and with Him?
To be honest, I think for some of us it feels good to be in
control and it feels scary to release control.
So after Jesus uses us to prepare the way, we get so
personally involved in the project that getting out of the
way can feel like death itself. So we hang on long after we
should when the invitation is from Jesus.
Just trust me, I can do more with what you're giving me than
you can ask or imagine. Parents, fellow parents, have
you ever felt this tension for years?
You. You prepare the way for your
children. You invest your love into them
and life in them. There's like so much hope and
faith and love that you invest in your kids and, and we prepare
the way so that Jesus can lead them.
But before we know it, before we're ready, really, we find
ourselves standing in the way and trying to do what only Jesus
can do in the hearts and lives of our kids.
And sometimes the best thing that we can do is to stop
overdoing it and to give the Lord just some space to work in
their lives. Well, let's broaden this out
beyond kids and parenting. Let's think about people we care
about, people we invest in. I heard one person put it like
this. When I disciple someone, that's
Christianese for when I invest myself into someone in such a
way that shapes them to look like Jesus.
When I really care about someone and invest in them, they don't
become mine. I don't use the personal
possessive pronoun to describe them.
They're not my disciple, they're Jesus's disciple.
I was reminded this last week of my youth pastor back in the day,
Pastor Joel. You know, he really didn't do
flashy things for us as teenagers.
It was fun, it was engaging, it was interesting.
But what he did is he invested in US and he taught us how to
follow Jesus and how to be leaders.
We pray that one day Emanuel can have a youth pastor of her own.
This is so important. But then, one by one, Pastor
Joel let us go. He released us into the world.
He prayed for us and he was there for us.
But he didn't stand in Jesus's way.
He let Jesus take it from there. As we go through the Gospel of
Mark, we're going to see Jesus take the baton from John the
Baptist and solve the world's biggest problems, lifting
burdens, healing diseases, forgiving sins, confronting the
bullies that everyone else is afraid to face, carrying the
cross, Atlas style, stumbling on his way up the hill.
We'll see him arms outstretched in this gospel, holding back the
chaos, holding back death, holding up his sons and
daughters who come to him, holding up even the thief next
to him that says, Remember Me when you come into your Kingdom.
He's holding back all of this evil and chaos.
So it doesn't crush us, friends. And we'll hear him calling us to
learn his way and to follow in the way that John the Baptist
had prepared. So friends, this morning let's
come to Him with our burden. Like Christian, we can find
ourselves under the outstretched arms of Jesus, the burden of our
sins released, the weight of the world heaved from our shoulders,
The Holy Spirit baptizing us in his love and power and calling
just enough strength for us to take the right next step.
Friends, just enough humility to repent.
Just enough vision to follow Jesus into his Kingdom.
Now I preached this message that I preached this passage Mark
chapter 1 starting in verse 1. You know, I preached at 12 years
ago on October 6th, 2013 on Emanuel's first ever launched
Sunday. And I found an old e-mail that I
wrote the day previous, which was asking people to pray.
And here's what I said in my e-mail.
Tomorrow at 10 AM, Emmanuel celebrates its launch Sunday.
It's an intense time, a challenge, a battle, a
celebration. Our first Sunday inviting the
community, our first Sunday in our new space, our first morning
service. I am excited and also feeling
the weight of tomorrow. Feeling the weight.
Part of the reason I was feeling the way is because my sermon
wasn't yet done. But I think I was also feeling
the pressure from just all of the demands and the hopes that
comes with a new church. And I wanted the first Sunday to
be awesome. And it was awesome.
Not because it was perfect, and not because all of our dreams
and hopes came true. Most of them didn't.
It was awesome because Jesus was there and I remember like
walking out into the parking lot, which we had at the time,
and feeling the sense of lightness and hope and peace,
like God's light was shining on our church.
And every step along the way from that morning to this
morning, He's guided us through a lot.
I don't know what the next 12 years old friends, maybe you
feel like I did when I wrote that e-mail where you're just
feeling the weight and holding the hopes then is now the Son of
God, Jesus the deliverer King. He's holding us friends.
He's holding our city, He's holding our nation, He's holding
Emmanuel. And our call is to join John the
Baptist to be that spiritual beacon that points people to
Jesus Christ, calling attention to him.
Simply Jesus, simply Jesus, friends, and simply his Kingdom,
which will have no end. It's the best news in the world.
So, friends, I want to invite you to shrug off the myth of
Atlas and take up the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
and with the humble resources that we have, prepare the way of
the Lord in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.