SERMON:
In some Native American tribes there is something called a “vision quest”. This is when a young person goes out into the desert without food and stays there for days until they have some kind of a spiritual awakening that is supposed to helps them know what to do with their life.
Our reading for today is centered around a spiritual awakening also, one that happened in the desert around 2,000 years ago. But this spiritual awakening wasn’t caused by peyote or sleep depravation or fasting. The spiritual awakening we’re going to read about today was caused by the Triune God.
Through His prophet John, God reminded the people of Judea that they had a big problem – sin. Through His Son Jesus, God showed the people that there was a solution for sin – the God-Man. He would offer His own PERFECT life to rescue sinners from eternal hell.
Mark 1:4-11 (ESV)
4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 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. 6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. 7 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. 8 I have 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 And when he came up out of the water, immediately 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 beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
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They say to never judge a book by it’s cover. But when the people came out to see John in the desert, they found a pretty strange cover. This guy was a hermit who lived off of big grasshoppers and wild honey. He wore clothes woven from camel’s hair and spent his time telling people that they had better get their act straight because they were sinners, and God’s day of judgment was coming soon.
John looked odd, but his message rang true. And so the people came in droves.
John’s bare-bones lifestyle highlighted the fact that outward “stuff” isn’t the key to happiness. His whole message screamed, “Let’s stop all this pretending and get back to what really matters. Let’s tend to spiritual matters. Let’s take care of our souls. Let’s focus on our relationship with God, and all the other things of life will fall in place.”
Verse 14 says,
“John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:14 ESV).John’s preaching was a call for change in the hearts of people and for a change in the direction of their lives. He wanted them to stop embracing sin and to trust in God to send the Savior He promised. In fact, John said that this promised Savior was almost there.
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The people’s response to John’s message was good. Lots of people recognized that they were sinners and needed a Savior. And they came great distances to hear John preach and to be baptized by him.
Think about what those people were saying when they got baptized. There were making a statement, a public confession that they had a problem, and that problem was inside them. They were sinners who needed the cleansing of God.
That’s powerful thing. We human beings sometimes have a hard time admitting that we’ve screwed up. That something is our fault. That we were wrong. And yet, that’s exactly what the people who came to John were doing. They were saying, “I’m a sinner, God, save me”.
We still do this today when we confess our sins together here in church. Aren’t we just “I’m a sinner, God, save me. I trust in Jesus’ promise?”
May God help us to always admit our wrongs, and look to HIM for the peace of forgiveness.
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Now, John was the first real prophet from God who had appeared in Judea in a long time. Hundreds of years had passed since the people had heard from God through a prophet. But John didn’t let it go to his head. He knew what his role was –he was the pre-game show, the warm-up band, the forerunner to the superstar.
John said,
“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” (Mark 1:7-8 ESV).▬
In the Old Testament it said that there would be a voice of one calling in the desert, make way for the Lord. John was the fulfillment of that prophesy. He was the voice in the wilderness. But here we find John not only fulfilling prophecy, but also making new ones about the Savior. John said that the Savior would baptize with the Holy Spirit. That happened on Pentecost Sunday years later. After Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, after Jesus had ascended back into heaven, He poured out the Holy Spirit onto his apostles so that they could speak languages that they had never learned. And they used this miracle speaking to communicate the Message of sins forgiven through Jesus to thousands who were in Jerusalem for a special festival.
We can take a little lesson from John’s humility. Yes, people were coming from all over to hear him preach and to be baptized by him, but he recognized that he was just the doorman to the Savior, and that the Savior would do much greater things that he. That’s what we need to remember when it comes to our own repentance. It’s important to recognize our sins as evil. It’s necessary that we drop our sins and turn away from them when we realize we’re sinning. Repentance is good, but without Jesus, it wouldn’t make any difference. We can be sorry about sinning all we want, but without Jesus who stood in our place when the hammer of God fell, well, without Jesus we’d just be sorry and damned sinners.
To simplify, being sorry about our sins is great, but it’s Jesus’ suffering and death in our place that saves us, not our own personal sorrow.
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And that leads us to the second half of our sermon text. Let’s read verse 9-11 again.
Mark 1:9-11 (ESV)
9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately 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 beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
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John made it clear that the problem we all share is sin. And that this sin is a problem deeply rooted within us. But here we see that God’s solution to this problem comes from outside of us, from above.
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If you didn’t know Jesus and had seen Him approaching John to be baptized, you’d assume that He was just another repentant sinner, seeking God’s forgiveness.
But Jesus wasn’t there because He had sins to wash away, he was there because that’s where God’s people were. The “repenters”. The ones who sinned, but didn’t embrace sin as their way of life. The ones who continually relied on God to forgive them.
Jesus was there because John was God’s prophet, and He wasn’t about to be grouped with the people who rejected John’s.
The Pharisees didn’t accept John as God’s prophet and therefore, weren’t baptized by him. Jesus basically had two groups he could be associated with, the followers of God who got baptized, or the self-righteous rejecters of God. The choice wasn’t hard.
Like I said, if you didn’t know better, you’d assume that Jesus was just another repentant sinner as He approached John to be baptized. But God the Father wasn’t going to let anyone misunderstand what was going on here. So God tore open the sky and sent the Holy Spirit to rest on Jesus in the form of a dove. Fitting, it was through this Man that sinners like you and I would finally receive peace with God through the forgiveness of our sins. Fitting that a Dove rests on his shoulder. And God the Father also spoke from above declaring Jesus to be His beloved Son, with whom He was WELL PLEASED.
No, Jesus wasn’t a sinner seeking cleansing, He was the one who would make our cleansing possible by his voluntary and sinless sacrifice on the cross of Calvary.
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I wonder what it actually looked like when God “tore open the sky”, and when the Holy Spirit Dove fluttered down to rest on Jesus. What a strange scene. And how perfect.
Martin Luther once said that ours is an “alien righteousness”, that is, our righteousness doesn’t come from inside of us, but a righteousness that comes from far away, from heaven itself. It is from a whole other country, an “alien righteousness”.
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During the season of Epiphany we learn about Jesus’ ministry, and we see how His words and miracles revealed that He was the Son of God, and the Savior of the World. In our reading for today, God the Father testified to His purity. On the last day God will call us righteous too, not because of the things we have actually done, but because we are in Christ by faith.
As it says in 2 Corinthians 5:21…
“21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV).Amen.
The peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
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