Mark 1:1-8

Don't let that word pass you by, "amazed". Some of your versions may use "astonished", but the word has an impactful meaning . It means to be overwhelmed with wonder. It means to be awestruck. And over a dozen times, as Mark recounts what he has heard from the apostle Peter of the teaching and the ministry of Jesus, that's his response. The people were amazed by Jesus. I've got just a few of the ones listed up there on the screen.

Chapter One, Verse 22: when he begins to teach, he's teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum, and the people are amazed at his teaching, by what they're hearing coming from this man. In Verse 27, he does something they've never seen before: he heals. He casts out an unclean spirit from a man, and Mark records they were all so amazed, so struck with wonder. Chapter Two, Verse 12, he heals a paralytic man. Everyone was amazed, Mark records.

Chapter Five, Verse 20, he casts out a demon from a demonized man in Gerasene, and all the people were amazed, Mark records. Chapter Six, Verse Two he is teaching in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, people who are not predisposed to listen to him, a hometown boy, and Mark records, "and many who heard him were amazed." Chapter Six, 51, he walks on the water on the Sea of Galilee, and his disciples, Mark records, were completely amazed.

We could go on and on with all of these references, but time and time again, Mark can think of no better word to describe how people responded to what they were hearing from Jesus and what they were seeing from his ministry than the word "amazed". Let me ask you, when was the last time you were amazed by Jesus? Maybe for some of you, you've never been amazed by Jesus.

Maybe for some of you, you know, Jesus is just this person you hear about when occasionally you come to church or you hear cultural references to him, but nothing that would move you to that place where you'd be struck with wonder. Maybe for some of you the last time you were amazed by Jesus is all the way back at the point where you first encountered him as Savior and Lord, and yes, that turned your world upside down at that point.

But a lot of time has passed, and you haven't been amazed by Jesus in a long time. Maybe for some of you it's here and there, but you've been going through a dry spell, and it's been a long time since you've found any sense of amazement by Jesus. I have chosen this gospel. I wanted to do a gospel. I've chosen it for a couple of reasons. One, it's the shortest gospel. It's condensed . He makes his points very directly.

Secondly, it's written to non-Jewish people like you and me, so you know we can get through some of the cultural references that might slow us down in Matthew. But I think I've chosen this really because this is what I think we need. This is what I need. I need to be amazed by Jesus. And I think maybe many of you need to be amazed by Jesus. Maybe some of you for the first time, maybe some of you afresh. You need to be amazed by Jesus. Who is this man who writes this gospel? Who was Mark?

Well , we were first kind of introduced to him outside of his gospel in this, the 12th chapter of Acts. In verse 12 of Acts 12, we see a reference to Mark . He is the son of a woman named Mary. Mary is a wealthy woman who apparently owned the large home in Jerusalem where the disciples gathered together, at least early in the church's history, and he's referred to there as one who is also known as John, or some of your versions may refer to him as John Mark.

The next time we see him is in that same chapter of Acts 12, in verse 25: Barnabas and Saul, who also becomes Paul , those two apostles, they think so highly of what they see happening in young John Mark's life That they invite him to go on to become a member of their missionary team on their first missionary journey. And they take him along with them to serve with them on that missionary team. They go to Cyprus, and then the plan is to go up to Asia Minor after Cyprus, modern-day Turkey.

And when they arrive at the Turkish coast, at the city of at that time Purdah, Mark deserts them, Mark fails, Mark runs back to his mother's house in Jerusalem. It is a ministry failure on the part of this young man. And that failure, by the way, had a ripple effect in the ministry of Barnabas and Paul. Barnabas wanted to give Mark a second chance, and Paul disagreed. Paul said, "He had his chance. He has failed. He is done."

And so they split, and Barnabas took Mark and went one direction, and Paul took Silas and went another direction, but you can sympathize a little bit with Paul's point of view. I mean, the man failed. Maybe you can relate to Mark and his failure. I know I can. Maybe you've been at a place where God has given you some ministry opening, some ministry responsibility, and in the flesh you have, you have dropped the ball. You've walked away from it. You have blown it.

Maybe you, like Mark, at that point and people like Paul telling you, "You're done. You had your shot. It's over," maybe you doubted yourself. Is there anything further that I can do? I know I've had a Mark experience early in my ministry and Christian life. But here's what I love about the New Testament picture of Mark: you think that Mark was done in his failure, but God loves to restore us. God loves to use us once we've been broken and humbled by our failure.

In fact, there's a way that I believe that God can only really begin to use us when we've been broken, when we've been humbled by our failure, and that's exactly what we see evidence of in Mark's life. The next time we see him show up in the New Testament is a reference by Paul, the one who was done with Mark, who thought his failure was disqualifying. But in 2 Timothy Chapter Four, Paul is writing from a Roman prison, and he is lonely, and he wants encouragement, and he wants support.

And who does he think of to ask Timothy to send to him? Only Luke is with me. "Get Mark. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is a great help to me in ministry." He has come full-circle. God has allowed this young man to become broken and humble, and now he has restored him to ministry. Maybe you're here this morning and you've had a John Mark experience, and maybe you're at that place where you have failed and you wonder, "Is God done with me?

Am I sidelined ?" Let Mark be an example to you that what God wants to do is shape you through that failure. What God wants to do is do that beautiful kind of brokenness in your life, that humbling work in your life, so he can use you in a way that he could never have used you if you hadn't failed in the eyes of the world. Mark also had a close relationship with the apostle Peter.

We see this, by the way, as Peter refers to him in 1 Peter 5:13 as "my son", and I believe that's where we get the gospel of Mark from. I believe it's Mark's recording of Peter's account of his time with Jesus. I draw that from-- there's an early church father, somebody in the First Century involved in the church in a leadership position.

His name was Papias, and he writes that Mark was Peter's recorder, that he wrote down what Peter remembered of the things that he saw Jesus do and heard him teach. So Mark was with Peter for some time. He was writing down all these accounts, and my theory is he compiled those, and that's what we have in the gospel of Mark. We have the life and ministry of Jesus largely through the eyes of the apostle Peter. Those eyewitness eyes as recorded by Mark, his transcriber.

Well, that brings us to our text today. We're going to look at the first eight verses, and again, I encourage you to have your paper Bibles open or your Bible apps on and follow along as we go verse-by-verse through the gospel of Mark. Remember, this is not just a man's words. This is God giving us his divine revelation through the Holy Spirit, through the instrument of this man named Mark.

Mark One, Verse One: "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet: 'Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, "Prepare the way for the Lord! Make his path straight."' John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

And the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were flocking to him, and they were baptized by him in the Jordan river as they confessed their sins. John wore a camel hair garment with a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, 'One more powerful than I is coming after me. 'I am not worthy to bend down and untie the strap of his sandals.

I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.'" So as we get into this text today, again, I want to come back to that theme, that, really, what should be our series title: "amazed by Jesus". I want, I desire, I am seeking a fresh experience of Jesus, and I hope you are, too. I hope in these coming weeks that that you become amazed again by Jesus, overwhelmed by wonder for who he is and what he did and what he has done for you. Can we pray even as we go forward?

Lord, I pray, I pray first of all for myself. You know how much I need a fresh experience of Jesus, and I pray for the brothers and sisters here, Lord, the ones who know Jesus and the ones who do not yet know Jesus.

I pray as you open your word through this gospel account that we would be overwhelmed with wonder once again, that as we hear Jesus teach, as we look through the eyes of Peter and see what he did, it would have a profound, overwhelming, astonishing impact upon us, and that we would not be the same. We pray this, that Jesus would be lifted up and glorified in our lives and our church. Amen. Well, I believe these first eight verses reveal that Mark is amazed by Jesus.

And I see several points where I think that is drawn out. First, I see that Mark is amazed, as he opens this gospel, by who Jesus really is. That's in the first verse. Before I get there, how does Matthew introduce Jesus? Matthew, if you read his gospel, introduces Jesus as the son of David, the son of Abraham. And if you're coming from a Jewish perspective, that's very powerful, and that's very needed for you to hear the link between Jesus and David and Abraham.

John, if you read John's gospel, John introduces Jesus as the word. The word made flesh. The word that was there at creation. And especially if you come out of the Greek culture, and you're coming from the philosophical bent that John writes to, that is very impactful. But if you're like you and me, where we're not from a Jewish background, and we may not necessarily think philosophically, I think this is the powerful title.

I think this is the powerful identification of Jesus, in Verse One: "This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God." This is Mark's favorite title for Jesus. He's going to use it over a dozen times throughout this gospel. Jesus is the son of God. Now, don't be confused by that.

We think "son", and we think a son's relationship to a father, to a parent, and we may attribute some inferiority to that, like the father is superior, the father is the one who has birthed the son with the mother, and so that somehow makes the son lesser or inferior. But that is not the understanding here. We need to look at this through the eyes of the people that Mark originally wrote to, in that time and that culture.

And I think we get a picture of that in John Chapter Five, Verse 18, how people at that time heard that phrase, that claim that Jesus is the son of God. The religious leaders are in this particular passage, John 5:18, and what we see in this brief glimpse-- I'm not giving you the whole account-- is these religious leaders are murderously enraged. And what are they enraged by? By Jesus claiming to be the son of God. Why did that fill them with such rage that they actually wanted to kill Jesus?

Because when they heard that, John tells us, they understood that that was Jesus claiming making himself equal with God. That's the meaning of "Son of God" in the eyes and the ears of the original audience that this was written to. The Son of God is a title that identifies Jesus as the heavenly eternal son who is co-equal with God the father. The writer of Hebrews-- just one more reference on this-- the writer of Hebrews picks this up.

He also gives us this true sense of who Jesus is as the son of God when he writes in Hebrews 1:8. But of the son, God the father says, of the son, "Your throne, Oh God--" he calls the son God-- "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever ,and a righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom." What is God the father saying? God the father is saying of God the son, Jesus the son, that he is co-equal . He is the second person of the Godhead. He is the second person of the Trinity.

He is the one that has been given the scepter to rule. He is the one that has been given authority to grant life, to grant spiritual life. If you are a Christian, you would not be unless the authority had been given to Jesus to make you his child. He is the one to whom the authority has been given to pronounce eternal judgment. He is the one that determines whether you will spend eternity in heaven or eternity in hell.

He is the one who's been given the authority that will be clear all over the earth one day as he rules undisputedly over all. And here's the amazing part of this for us sitting here today: because Jesus is the son of God, because he's not something lesser, he is so great that he can save us, that he can grant us eternal life. If he was something lesser, like many of the cults preach, a created being, an angelic being, we wouldn't need him.

He could not save us, he would not have anything to meet the desperate spiritual condition that we are in. Mark is amazed by who Jesus really is as the son of God, and so should we be. Secondly, Mark is amazed by God's eternal plan to save us. And now, give me a minute to unpack this for you, but let me just sum it up right now by saying that if you know Jesus as savior and Lord, that did not begin at the moment you prayed a prayer or some work was done in your heart; that began in eternity.

That began before the foundation of the world, when he chose you in Christ, and he has been unfolding it all through time. That's what the Old Testament is all about. It's about the unwrapping, the unfolding, of God's eternal plan to save you.

And so we can only understand what Jesus came to earth to do when we see how it's the fulfillment of this eternal plan, this great plan that God has been unrolling since the beginning of time, that God has been making more and more clear through the progress of the Old Testament, and it bubbles up in the prophets. That's what we see in Verse Two. In Verse Two, Mark is actually quoting the prophet Malachi.

He doesn't give Malachi credit here, but Malachi 3:1 is where the phrase comes: "Behold, I will send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me." That is God speaking to Israel, saying, "I am getting ready to save you. I'm going to send one who's going to be the forerunner, Who's going to go ahead and is going to get you ready for me to come and save you." And by the way, it's not just for you, ethnic Israel. It's not just for you, nation of Israel.

It is through you and through the one that I am going to send that I'm going to extend my salvation to all nations and all people. So God was already promising to come to earth and save us through the prophets in the Old Testament. And he promised specifically he was going to send one who would be a preparer , a forerunner. Isaiah has more to tell us about this. Isaiah, who Mark also quotes here, tells us about this forerunner.

In Isaiah 43: "He will be a voice of one crying out, 'Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness. Make straight a highway for our God in our desert.'" That's what Mark quotes in Verse Three. Isaiah goes on, "Every valley will be lifted up. Every mountain and hill will be leveled. The uneven ground will become smooth. The rough places a plane ." Why is God doing all this? So that the glory of the Lord will appear, his salvation, his saving work.

And all of humanity, not just Jews, all of humanity will see this together. And here's the rub: neither Malachi nor Isaiah knew who that forerunner would be. Neither Malachi nor Isaiah nor any other prophet or anyone in the Old Testament knew who the Messiah, would be who would actually be God's saving presence. In fact, Matthew records, Matthew 13:17, that the prophets longed to see what you now see through the lens of the New Testament, but they didn't see it.

But now Mark brings it all together for us. He brings it together as he quotes in Verses Two and Three from Malachi and Isaiah to reveal who this forerunner actually is. "As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, 'Behold, I am sending my messenger ahead of you--" there's Malachi-- "who will prepare your way, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way for the Lord. Make his his paths straight.'" There's Isaiah.

The very next phrase, in Verse Four: "And John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness." Here's the forerunner that Malachi and Isaiah told us was coming, and here's the amazing part of this for you and for me today. Again, all of this Old Testament history, all of this is like the unraveling, the unfolding of the plan for how God planned to save you, for how God planned to reveal Jesus to you. This is God's eternal plan.

Again, Ephesians 1:4: if you are saved, God started that before you were ever born. God started that before the creation of the world. Ephesians 1:4: "He chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world." And Mark, thinking of how this has unrolled through the prophets like Malachi and Isaiah, is amazed that God not only wanted to save him, but he did this from eternity. He planned it from eternity. Third, Mark is amazed by how God draws us into the wilderness to save us.

Do you notice that? In Mark 1:4, John did not appear in downtown Jerusalem. John did not appear in the temple. John did not appear in Cesarea, the wealth of Cesarea, where all the wealthy, the movers and the shakers live. That's not where God called him to begin his ministry. God called John to begin his ministry as a forerunner in the most barren place in Israel, the Jordan Rift Valley.

And if you've been there-- I was there for my first time last summer-- it is like the Badlands of South Dakota. Other than the river running right through the middle of it, it is desert wasteland. It is dry, and it is arid, and if you think about a place to draw a crowd, that would be the last place on your list. But that's where God sent John. That's where God raised up John as the forerunner, and that's not by accident. Why is this significant for this? For us?

Because I think time and time again, in the Old Testament, we see that God uses wilderness experiences. See, over and over in the Old Testament, the wilderness is a place where God brings his people into, to bring about repentance in their lives. The wilderness is a place that God brings his people into to show them his grace. We see that through Moses leading the people of Israel through the wilderness. We see this in the lives of the prophets like Elijah being called into the wilderness.

Why would God use wilderness? I love what he reveals about himself in Deuteronomy 1:31: "It is there in the wilderness that you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as a father carries his child." You may not think of wilderness in your lives. We're like the people living in Jerusalem, the people living in Cesarea. We have modern conveniences all around us. We have everything that we need.

We have all of these distractions, and that comfort, those conveniences, those distractions, what they generally do is keep us from seeing our need for repentance. They leave us feeling pretty self-sufficient. They keep us from seeing our need for God's grace. We think for the most part, we're doing pretty well by ourselves, but God does bring us into the wilderness. Maybe not the physical wilderness of the Jordan Rift Valley, but God brings us into the wilderness of physical affliction.

Maybe some of you this morning, you are in the midst of the wilderness of a disability or an illness or an injury, and it has turned your world upside-down and made it an arid place. Maybe some of you are in the wilderness, this morning, of financial difficulties, and that sense that you had everything that you need or you knew how to get it is gone from you.

Maybe some of you are in the wilderness, this morning, of relational breakdown, of the turmoil , the emotional turmoil of relational upset, which can be very much a wilderness. Maybe for you it's the wilderness of trials and temptation. Whatever it is, you are not there by accident.

God brings us into the wilderness to bring us to a place of repentance, to prepare our hearts, because when we have all the distractions and comforts around us, and life is going well, we really don't see a need for Jesus, but he brings us into those wilderness places so that we see what is really reality, that we do need Jesus, and he brings us into those wilderness places so that we can see how the Lord our God carries us as a father carries his children.

We see his grace, we see his faithfulness, we see his lovingkindness to us. If you're in the wilderness this morning, Mark is speaking to you. If you're in the wilderness this morning, John the Baptist and his message of preparation is a message of what God is doing in your life to bring you to a place where he can save you, where he can minister to you, where you can meet Jesus, maybe in a new and fresh way.

Fourth, I think that Mark is amazed by the work God does in our hearts to prepare us to meet Jesus. Again, most of us when we first encounter Jesus, this is certainly true of me for many years hearing about Jesus in church: I didn't need him . He was, you know, that character that you hear about in church, but I was going on about my life in my own way. My heart was not prepared to meet Jesus.

My heart was not prepared to be saved by Jesus, but Isaiah gives us a very fitting description of the kind of work that God does to prepare our hearts to meet Jesus. Isaiah, again, whom Mark is quoting here. I read this earlier, but Isaiah gives this very visual image in Isaiah 44: "Every valley will be lifted up. Every mountain and hill will be leveled. The uneven ground will become smooth, and the rough places a plane." That's what God does in preparing us and bringing us to repentance.

When God brings repentance in our lives, it knocks us down from the mountaintops of prideful independence that too oftentimes we live at. But God also meets us at the place of repentance where we are down in the valley of shame and guilt and lifts us up. And when we turn away from ourselves and from running life our own way apart from God, which is the real meaning of repentance, that's what he does. He lovingly knocks us down from that false, prideful place of independence.

Those cliffs, those mountaintops, he lovingly lifts us up from the valleys, from the pits of shame and guilt and despair. He smooths out the rough places of the brokenness in our lives. And in doing that, he prepares us for what we really need. And that is Jesus. But that's the preparing work that has to be done. The people of Israel were not ready to meet the son of God until they were brought to a place of repentance, and neither are we.

And so maybe, what it is that God is doing in the midst of the wilderness that he has you in right now is he's bringing you down from that mountaintop, where you think you're doing life just fine on your own. You think you've got things under control. You think that you are a pretty good person and you can handle this spiritual thing on your own, Thank you very much.

Or maybe what God is doing in the midst of the wilderness that he has you right in is he is smoothing out the rough places, and he's lifting you out of that pit of shame that you've been trapped in for so long, and he's turning your eyes off of yourself and off of the things in your past that shame you, and he's turning them to the one who can smooth out the rough places in your life, which is Jesus. Has God brought you to the place of repentance in your lives?

Has God changed your mind from, you know, "I want to do life my own way. I'm pretty good being in control," to, "Lord, I need you. Lord, I can't do life on my own. Lord, in spite of the many things that I have, if you don't show up in some significant way, I'm lost"? Has God brought you to that place of repentance, of changing your mind? Have you stopped defending yourself and blaming others for your failure and your sins?

Have you come to that point where you admit that you have no excuses for the choices that you have made, that no one else is to blame, that your sin and your guilt is what you have brought upon yourself, and that if God doesn't show up to cleanse you from it, that you are lost? If so, God has prepared you for Jesus. That is when we are ready to receive Jesus. Mark is amazed by that preparing work that God does in the wilderness places of our lives.

Fourth, or actually fifth, finally, Mark is amazed by how John points us to Jesus. It may seem obvious, as John the Baptist's ministry, that is certainly what Mark does all through this gospel, but Mark seems to be amazed by how John highlights Jesus. Remember John, by this point, is drawing great crowds. We're told by Mark that all of Jerusalem is coming out to see him , which is probably a bit of a hyperbole, but at the other hand, great masses of people were drawn to this man.

People were coming from all over to hear every word that this man preached. People were coming from all over to be baptized by this man. This man was, you know, a big deal at that time. He could have, if he'd had a heart different than he did, he could have made his ministry go on and on and on. But he sees who he is, and he doesn't point to himself. He points to Jesus. Verse Seven, he proclaimed, "One more powerful than I am is coming after me."

It almost seems to be implied in there, "You know, you come to hear me, you have come because you think I'm a big deal. "I am not a big deal. The one who is the big deal is coming after me. The one who is the big deal, the more powerful one, the most powerful one, is the one that I've come to prepare you to be able to hear and receive. The most powerful one, the only one who has the power to save you, to restore you, to grant you eternal life."

He even goes on to say, "I am not worthy to bend down and untie the strap of his sandals." And culturally, that was a task, taking off the dirty footwear of someone, that even a pupil would not do for his teacher. Even slaves were not generally expected to stoop that low and do that kind of deed. And yet Mark says, "Even that lowly, distasteful deed, when I think of doing that for the most powerful one who comes after me, I am not worthy, because he is the worthy one."

And for you and for me, if Jesus was not the worthy one, if he was not the blameless, righteous one, he could not save us. We are saved in our unworthiness because of his worthiness. And look at how John points us to Jesus in our last verse today, Verse Eight: "I baptize you with water."

John had a great ministry going of baptizing people, representing spiritual cleansing, representing people who wanted to make a moral change, a moral transformation, and turn from their direction away from God and turn to come back to God again. But as powerful and as impactful as that ministry was in people's lives, John says, that's nothing compared to what he's gonna do. "I baptize you with water--" this moral cleansing-- "he baptizes you with the Holy Spirit." And what does he mean by that?

Well , we see various references, but I'll leave you with this one: 1 Corinthians 12:13, Paul describing what is a reality to you, whether you realize it or not, if you know Jesus Christ, "We have all been baptized into one body by one spirit, and we all share the same spirit." If Jesus has become your savior and your Lord, whether you recognized it or not at that moment, that you were saved, he came in to live in you through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

He sent by his authority, the third member of the Godhead, of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit into your life. And that is, by the way, why you responded to him. None of us would respond to him. None of us would repent except for the work of the Holy Spirit. And that is why you have the power to follow him. We could not live the Christian life. We could not grow in Christ and be his disciples without the enabling power of the Holy Spirit in us.

John points to Jesus, the most powerful one, the worthy one, the one who baptizes us with the Holy Spirit. Mark sees that, and he is amazed by that. He is amazed by what John has done, but more importantly, he is amazed by Jesus. So as I close this morning, let me ask you just these questions that, really, I'm repeating what I said earlier. When is the last time you have been amazed by Jesus?

When is the last time you have been overwhelmed with wonder by who Jesus is, by what he's done, by what he's done in your life, by what he's doing in your life? Do you know him, really, as the son of God, as who he really is? Do you see him in the bigger perspective of God's eternal plan to save you, that before the foundation of the world, God chose you in Jesus Christ to save you? Has God drawn you into the wilderness? Are you in the wilderness this morning?

If you are, here's the good encouraging news I can give you: it's not by accident. It's not for punishment. It's to save you. It's to bring you to the place where you see him as a father caring for you, his child. It's to bring you to the place where he prepares your heart, either for the first time or maybe anew, to be able to see Jesus. Is God doing a work of repentance in your life in what you're going through, in the wilderness of your life right now?

If he is, he's preparing you to see Jesus. God wants us. God wants to use Mark and his gospel in our lives, individually and as a church, to point us to Jesus, to be amazed by Jesus. Let's pray. I am awestruck , Lord God, that you would reveal yourself in your written word, and I'm so thankful for your Holy Spirit who makes your word live.

We can't fully give it justice, and so I ask that your Holy Spirit would take these words, Lord, and this gospel, and do the work in each of our lives that you desire to do. I ask most of all, Lord, for myself, first, for those here, for our church, that we would be amazed afresh by Jesus, that we would not be able to come away unchanged from this. Do this work, Lord. Create in us awestruck wonder for who Jesus is, that we might never see him the same again.

We pray this, that he would be lifted up and glorified in our lives. Amen.