The Herald

If you have your Bibles with you, turn with me if you would to the Gospel of Mark chapter 1. We're looking today at verses 1 through 8. And all the country of Judea and Jerusalem were going out to him. They 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 locust 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. Bow with me as we go to our Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, what a privilege we have today as we start in the first verse of the first Gospel that was ever written. May this study humble us, convict us, and aid in our sanctification as believers. We pray for those who are not yet believers, that they will be broken by your Word and would run to Christ for salvation. Thank you, Lord, for loving us enough to give us a precious Gospel like Mark. A Gospel that teaches us the life of Christ, the ministry of Christ, and the heart of Christ. May Mark's Gospel have a profound effect on our daily lives. May God use it to make us like Jesus.

May we keep Mark 10 45 fresh on our minds as we work our way through these 16 chapters. Jesus said, The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Jesus is our servant Savior. May we be privileged to be his servant people, for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. If you remember from our last week's sermon, we were looking at the four targeted audiences of the four Gospel writers. We saw that Matthew wrote primarily to the Jews and portrayed Jesus as the King of Kings. Mark wrote primarily to the Romans and portrayed Jesus as the perfect servant. Luke wrote primarily to the Greeks and he portrayed Jesus as the perfect man. John wrote specifically to everybody and he portrayed Jesus as the Son of God. I shared with you also last week that I believe that the Gospel of Mark was written probably in the mid 60s. And in 64 AD, there was a terrible fire that broke out in the city of Rome and destroyed 80% of the city.

I mean, absolutely wiped it out. Now, we don't have proof of this, but most of the city fathers at that time believed that it was Nero that started that fire. Nero needed to get some of the blame put off him. So he shifted the blame and he told the Roman citizenry that it was the Christians who started the fire that they did it purposely. And after then, the persecution in Rome became extremely heavy.

Most of the Christians had to leave and they went underground into the catacombs to live, for they were trying everything they could to get away from the heavy persecution. Nero arrested many of these Christians. He took some of them into his garden and at night, he would take some of these Christians, he would tie them to a post. He would take hot tar and cover their bodies and then he would set it on fire.

And they would be like lanterns that would burn all night long so they could party and have their good time. Other Christians would be handcuffed and Nero would take animal skins and cover over their bodies. And then he would release these wild feral dogs who had not been fed in days.

And the dogs would see these animals and they would run over to them, jump on these Christians with animal skins on their backs and absolutely shred them to pieces, take their lives and just devour their flesh. It was during this time that Peter was thrown in prison and Mark would go to the prison cell of Peter almost on a daily basis. And he would talk to Peter and Peter would teach him about the life of Jesus and the ministry of Christ. He would teach him about the miracles that Jesus did.

He would teach him about the teaching of Jesus. And I believe that it was during this time that Mark actually wrote the gospel. So the very first ones that heard the gospel of Mark were these suffering Roman Christians.

R.C. Sproul described it this way. He said this gospel reminded them of their salvation in Christ, taught them about the suffering that Jesus himself experienced and even revealed that Jesus was driven into the wilderness and was under the threat of wild beasts. So imagine yourselves in the catacombs worshiping with a little band of believers. On this Lord's Day, however, the pastor of your congregation comes with a new document. It is the newly written gospel of Mark. You're about to hear the word of God in the first reading of the gospel. How does the gospel start with these words? The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Wow. Let's go back to the other gospels for just a minute. As I said, Matthew wrote primarily to the Jewish people. He's proclaiming Jesus to be the king.

How does Matthew start his gospel? He starts it off with a genealogy of Jesus. That genealogy of Jesus goes all the way back to David. And why does he do that? Because he wants to show that Jesus Christ is a legal heir to the throne of David.

But it doesn't stop there with David. It goes all the way back to Abraham, showing that Jesus had Jewish heritage. Then Luke wrote his gospel primarily to the Greeks, showing that Jesus was the perfect man. He starts off with the birth of Jesus, and then he goes on to share that a genealogy and his genealogy doesn't go back to just Abraham. It goes all the way back to Adam himself, proving Jesus to be the perfect man. John is portraying Jesus as the Son of God.

John does not give us genealogies. He doesn't go back to Abraham. He doesn't go back to just Adam. He goes all the way back to creation. He is proving that Jesus Christ is the Creator, that he is God himself.

He is showing us that Jesus has an eternal nature, that he has been here forever. How does the gospel of John start? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him, and without him was not made anything that was made. But Mark starts out where? With the herald of Jesus, the forerunner, John the Baptist.

So we skip eternity past, and we skip the genealogies, going back to Adam and going back to Abraham, and what do we do? We go right to the public ministry of Jesus. In other words, as Mark starts his gospel, he makes a beeline to the gospel. That's what he does.

Look how he starts it. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. What does the word gospel mean?

It's the Greek word euangelion, and it means good news. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 1 through 4, Peter breaks that down for us, and he says this, Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, listen, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scripture, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scripture.

Just don't ever belittle the gospel. Yes, Jesus was a great teacher. Yes, Jesus was a great leader.

Yes, Jesus was a great example. But over and above all of that, Jesus is Almighty God, who left his throne in glory, who came to this earth, who came to this earth and lived a perfect, sinless life for 33 years, and then went to the cross in order that he might die, for what purpose? To be the propitiation for our sins and to be our substitutionary atonement.

And then what happened? On the third day, he was resurrected from the dead to break the power of death. Brothers and sisters, that is the gospel. That's the gospel that the early Roman suffering Christians needed to hear, and that is the gospel that you and I need to hear today. The gospel is not what I do for God. The gospel is what God did for me through his Son, Jesus Christ. I did not merit or earn or deserve my salvation. It was a free gift of God. For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourself. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. So Mark takes us first to the man who pointed us to the glorious Savior.

We call him John the Baptist. Three points I want to share with you this morning. Point one, the promised Messiah. Look at verses one through two with me. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold I send my messengers 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. And verse 2a in the ESV it says this, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet. The King James says it this way, as it is written in the prophets. So verse 2 and 3 are what? They're quotes. They're Old Testament quotes, one from Isaiah and one from Malachi. So I think the King James Version is a little clearer here.

ESV's not wrong, but I think the King James Version lets us know that it's coming from more than one source. So John was the herald, the voice announcing the coming of the king. Now Luke tells us that John the Baptist was a miracle baby. He was born to Zechariah the priest and his elderly wife Elizabeth.

She was way beyond childbearing years. And we are told that how the angel Gabriel came to Zechariah and prophesied to him that Zechariah and his wife were going to have a baby, and that baby would be a miracle baby, and that he would be the forerunner of the Messiah. John was a cousin of Jesus. John was born six months before Jesus was born. When Mary found out that she was expecting Jesus, she went to visit her aunt Elizabeth. And when she got there, and they were meeting together, Elizabeth's still expecting as well, they started coming together probably to hug each other, and the Scripture tells us that John the Baptist, in the womb of Elizabeth, sensed the very presence of Jesus in the womb of Mary, and John the Baptist leaped in his womb, in her womb for joy. I don't know about you, but that makes me wonder about abortion. Folks, if somebody tells you that they think abortion's all right, and that that blob in the womb of a mother is nothing but just human cells that don't really matter, then point them to this passage right here. Point them to Luke chapter 1, and let me tell you something. When God anointed and empowered and filled John the Baptist in the womb with the Spirit of God, and John the Baptist leaped for joy over Jesus, you can rest assured that was a baby, and that was not just a blob of human tissue.

Thirty years have passed by. John's out in the wilderness preaching, and what was the purpose of his preaching? To get the world ready for their promised Messiah.

That was the purpose. Book of Malachi ended the Old Testament. When Malachi chapter 4, verses 5 and 6 were written, that closed the canon of the Scripture in the Old Testament.

And after that, there was a 400-year period of prophetic silence. The last two verses of Malachi, verses 5 and 6, say this, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. So when John came on the scene, 400 years after Malachi's prophecy, John preached with such power that people came to him and said, wow, are you the one that Malachi was telling us about? Are you the Elijah to come? In John chapter 1, we are told that John the Baptist said, no, I am not Elijah. It's very interesting, in Matthew chapter 17, they came to Jesus with the same question. Is John the Baptist Elijah? And Jesus said yes. Jesus said yes, he is. He came in the Spirit and the power of Elijah. Is there a contradiction in Scripture?

The answer to that is no. There's a difference between being Elijah the person and coming in the Spirit and power of Elijah. And that's important to see.

R.C. Sproul said it this way, if we look at the whole picture, that conundrum is explained. We are told that John came in the Spirit and power of Elijah, and Jesus affirmed that the ministry of Elijah was fulfilled in the work of John the Baptist. It was not that Elijah himself came back, so John was speaking the truth by saying no, I am not Elijah, however Jesus explained that John ministered in the Spirit and the power of Elijah. All right, point two is the prophet of the Messiah, verses four through six. John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness, 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 hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locust and wild honey. January of 2000, Cindy and I went to Minneapolis, Minnesota for the John Piper Pastors Conference. The keynote speaker that week was James Montgomery Boyce. He was preaching to us preachers on the subject of preaching. James Boyce did not know it at that point in time, but his whole body was riddled with cancer.

Six months after that, they laid his body to rest in a cemetery in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. He is now with the Lord and has been there for about 21 years. That conference was the last conference that James Montgomery Boyce ever preached. And he preached that conference as a dying man to dying men. He preached on preaching.

I will never forget it. He told us as preachers to study hard, to learn the biblical languages of Greek and Hebrew, to learn how to preach expositorily verse by verse, to learn how to use illustrations to the glory of God. I remember him saying, don't ever use yourself as a hero of your own story. And then he came to his last day. The last sermon that he preached, he said, if you didn't hear anything else I said this week, he said, hear this, preachers, preach Jesus! Preach Jesus! Preach Jesus and the cross. June 15, 2000, six months later, I was riding in my car, I was listening to Christian radio.

The DJ came in and broke into the regular programming and he said, I need to bring you some news that we have just received. Dr. James Montgomery Boyce, the pastor at 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has lost his battle with lung cancer and he is with the Lord. I remember a tear welling up in my eye, I remember just praying a very quick prayer for his family, and then my mind went back to that conference that Cindy and I were in, that pastor's conference. And I remember how he looked at each one of us, 900 preachers, and he pled with us and he said, preach Jesus and the cross. Preach Jesus and the cross.

First Corinthians chapter 2 verse 2, Apostle Paul said, for I determined not to know anything among you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. John the Baptist was a preacher who did exactly what James Montgomery Boyce was calling us to do. He preached Jesus.

That's what he did. Now, he didn't have the full revelation of Jesus like we do today. He didn't know about the three years of public ministry that Jesus did.

He died before that. He didn't know about the crucifixion, the resurrection of the ascension, so what did he preach? He preached the coming Messiah. Now Mark gives us a little insight into the heart and life of John the Baptist and he tells us that he was the forerunner. He tells us that he was there in the wilderness.

John the Baptist lived in the wilderness. He lived in a place called, very close to what we call En-Gedi today. It is a place where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls back in the 1940s. It was also a place where there is a mountain. It's a very tall mountain that goes, it's very, very steep. It goes almost straight up. On the top of that mountain, it is cropped off flat as a pancake on the top. In 70 AD, Titus of Rome came into Jerusalem and he came into Jerusalem and he leveled the city.

Absolutely leveled it. Knocked down the walls, knocked down the temple. He killed 1.2 million Jews. There were 967 men, women, and boys and girls, all Jews, who fled the city of Jerusalem at that point in time and they went to Masada. They climbed up on the top of Masada.

They said, this is where we will live. Women soldiers found out about it. They went to arrest them. And the thing is, the mountain is so steep that when they tried to climb up the mountain, the Jews just took rocks and rolled down on them, killed some of the soldiers.

So they said, we can't do this. They said, we're going to build a sand ramp all the way up the side of the mountain. And they built that sand ramp using Jewish labor because they knew they wouldn't throw rocks down on their own people and it took them several years to do it.

Finally, they got that sand ramp built. They went up on the top of that mountain. When they stepped on to the top of that mountain, they found 967 Jewish men, women, boys, and girls, all of them dead.

Every one of them committed suicide rather than be taken captive by the Romans. 1976, I had the privilege of going and visiting in Israel. And they took us up to Mount Masada. We went up to the top of it and they re-told the story to us. And they told us when they are inducting soldiers, Israeli soldiers, into the Israeli army. They re-tell that story of Masada.

And then all those new soldiers shout out in unison, there will never be another Masada. That is the area in which John the Baptist lived. The area of Masada around En Gedi is close to the Dead Sea, it's where the River Jordan runs into it, and that's where he was raised. So John lived in somewhat of a commune situation, much like the Amish. John's dad, Zechariah, was a priest. And so while he was a priest, he worked at the temple, he had to live in Jerusalem.

But when he was 50 years old, they force you out of the priesthood. And so it was a forced retirement, and he decided, not going to live in Jerusalem anymore. And he moved out into this area around En Gedi and Masada. John the Baptist was reared there.

That's where he grew up. He grew up away from the busyness and the sin of the city of Jerusalem. He grew up in a place that was way out, away from everybody else, where he could study the Word of God, where he could pray, where he could prepare for preaching the ministry that God gave him. When he reached age 30, John the Baptist started his prophetic ministry.

There had not been a prophet in Israel for 400 years. And Jesus himself said that John was the greatest prophet of all. And when John preached, everybody listened. Who listened? The peasants listened. The soldiers listened. The businessmen listened. And the religious leaders even listened. Now why did they listen? Was it a feel-good message? Not hardly. Was it a message where he was just kind of tickling their ears and giving everybody the warm fuzzies?

Oh no. It was a God-saturated message. He preached the truth, and when he preached, everybody knew that God was speaking through him.

Think about it. These multitudes of people came to hear John preach. Now where did they come from? They just kind of walked down the road?

Now this is the wilderness. They came from Jerusalem. That's over 40 miles away. They came from northern Israel.

That could be 90 miles away. They came from long distances. And what did he preach? Verse 4 tells us that he preached repentance.

Listen to this. In ancient times, the envoy of the arriving king would go before that king, removing all the obstacles in his path to make sure the people were ready to receive the king. That's what John the Baptist was doing. He was plowing up the fertile ground. He was sowing seed in the soil of people's hearts to get them ready for the Messiah.

John was at the River Jordan. He was baptizing them, and he was baptizing them because they would get under a great conviction of sin, and they would come to John under this deep conviction, and they would say, we are repenting. We're turning from this sin in our life, and we want you to baptize us. Now, the word repentance is the Greek word metanoia, and that word means a U-turn. It's the idea you're going in the wrong direction. All of a sudden, you slam on brakes, you make a 180-degree turn, and you head back in the right direction.

It is a change in your mind, in your heart, in your attitude that leads to a change in your behavior and a change in your actions. Verse 5 tells us that as John preached, that the people came forward to confess their sins to him. Now, think about the diversity of different types of groups of people that were there, and they came. They all were just deeply burdened over their sin, and they cried out to John, John, what do we do?

How do we handle this? Now, we're not told here in Mark, but over in Luke's Gospel, chapter 3, we're given some insight. I want to read that to you, verses 7 through 14 in Luke 3. He said, therefore, to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, you brood of vipers.

You imagine a preacher doing that today, standing up in his pulpit over his congregation or his audience, maybe at a crusade. He looks at everybody, he said, you bunch of snakes, you brood of vipers. Man, he'd get canceled out, wouldn't he? He said, get him off the internet. Man, don't let him talk. We're not going to hear him anymore. Well, didn't stop John. He went right on.

Listen to what he said. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to save yourself. We have Abraham as our father, for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children from Abraham. Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees.

Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. And the crowds asked him, what then shall we do? And he answered them, whoever has two tunics, it's a share with him who has none.

Whoever has food, do likewise. Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, teacher, what shall we do? And he said to them, collect no more than you are authorized to do. Soldiers also asked him, and we, what shall we do?

He said to them, do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages. What do we have here? We have a holy man who's anointed with a Holy Spirit who is calling Israel to a holy life who is preparing Israel for a holy Messiah. And notice the simplicity of John the Baptist.

Kind of interesting to compare him with the other religious leaders. Religious leaders in Israel wore these long flowing robes. They had these long elaborate tassels that went all the way to the ground. They'd hold scripture up under their arm. They'd walk around with this pious look on their face, and they were so proud.

They had their nose stuck up so high in the air, if it would rain, they'd drown. John, on the other hand, is clothed with camel hair and leather clothing. He's a simple man, but he radiates godliness. He loves God. He hates sin, and he knows what his calling is. He's been called to preach the Word. He has been called to be faithful with the truth. He has been called to not soft pedal the truth, and to not let up, even if it meant his life.

And it did finally mean his life. John did not just preach repentance from sin, though. He also preached the Messiah. He preached Christ. That takes us to the third point, and that is the preeminence of the Messiah, verse 7-8. 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.'" We look up to John, don't we? My goodness, what a man of God he was, filled with the Holy Spirit from the mother of His womb. His preaching was so powerful that people came from all over Israel to hear what he had to say. He lived out in the wilderness so as not to have any distractions, all away from the sin and the busyness and all the junk. He wanted to be out there alone with God so that He could grow, so that He could be what God called Him to be. And he preached hard against sin.

No one ever accused John the Baptist of hypocrisy. They may have hated him, but if they hated him, they hated him because he loved God. If they hated him, they hated him because he preached against sin. So we look up to John, and it's very interesting when John begins to talk about the Messiah, John gets extremely humble. So humble that I think it was almost like the publican in Luke chapter 18, the tax collector, who was there in the corner of the temple and he wouldn't even look up to God. He looked down at his feet and he took his fist and he beat his chest and he said, Oh God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Look at the comparison that John makes with himself and the Messiah. Verse 7, he says, After me one is coming, who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. He's describing what a slave does.

A slave goes to his master, he gets down on his hands and feet before him, he takes his master's sandals off, master's feet are covered with dust, and so he takes water and he pours the water over his master's feet and he cleanses the dirt and the grime from between his toes. He said, I'm not even worthy to do that with Jesus. He said, It would be a privilege for me to be able to wash the dirty feet of my Lord Jesus. Folks, those are the words of a true prophet. Those are the words coming from a man who had an understanding and had a right perspective of who Jesus Christ really is. I'll tell you, I look at television sometime at some of these name it, claim it, prosperity gospel teachers and they come on TV with such arrogance and they come on TV, give you the idea, they're telling Jesus what to do. There's no humility, there's no brokenness, there's no sense of sinfulness in their own lives.

There's nothing but pride. And the people started showering John the Baptist with compliments and kind words, what do you do? He held his hands up and said, No, no, no, I must decrease that you, Jesus, might increase. Would the God that every single person in this congregation today would walk out that door saying that same thing, I must decrease that Christ might increase. Folks, it's not about Doug Agnew.

Doug Agnew is here today and gone tomorrow. If Doug Agnew does anything right, which is seldom, then you can rest assured of this, Jesus did it, not me. And John says to this huge crowd, I baptized you with water that He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. John was saying, All I can do is wash you with water, and water just symbolizes that which the Holy Spirit did in your heart. When you repented, it was a work of the Holy Spirit of God, and I'm just giving you the symbol here as I'm washing you with water, the baptism of repentance, that Jesus is coming. And He will baptize you, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit. When He baptizes you with the Holy Spirit, what happens? You are regenerated. You are transformed. You are being made a new creature in Christ.

You'll never be the same again. He's taken you who were dead in trespasses and sin, and He's given you life. Not physical life, but spiritual life.

John MacArthur said it well, and I'll close with this. He said, John's statement regarding the Holy Spirit must have thrilled the hearts of the faithful Jews who heard him preach in keeping with the promises of the Old Testament. They hoped for the day when God would pour out His Spirit on all mankind, when He would sprinkle clean water on them and give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them. In that day, their hearts would at last be baptized in very power and person of God Himself. His supernatural power distinguishes the ministry of the new king from any other.

John was not able to give the Holy Spirit. Only God can do that, and the coming king is God in human flesh, and he will baptize sinners with the saving power of the Spirit's regenerative work. Amen? Amen.

Let's pray. Lord, today we got the opportunity to gaze at the ministry of your forerunner. He was physically your cousin. His coming was prophesied by Isaiah and Malachi. You told us that He would have the spirit of Elijah, that He would prepare the world for your coming. John the Baptist was a godly man, but an extremely humble man. When people tried to elevate him, he just pointed them to Jesus. Lord, that's hard to do. We love to be praised and flattered.

We love the pats on the backs and the attaboys. Help us to be appreciative and thankful for the encouragement that our brothers and sisters give us, but may we always remember, if we do anything right, it's just Jesus. Help us to live by John's words, that we must decrease so that Jesus might increase. For it's in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray, amen.