Flagmen and Cat Skinners

Text: Mark 1: 1-8

Proposition: The gospel gains entry into a person’s heart because someone has started to clear the way for its view of the truth of Jesus.

Introduction: The Gospel of Mark, it’s the shortest of all the gospels, it has no account of the details of Christ’s birth and it was written by a person who was not even one of the apostles yet it has become the most translated book not just of the Bible but of any book ever written. The Little Prince has been translated into 253 languages, Pinocchio has been translated into 240 languages and way down the list is Anne of Green Gables with 36 translations. The Gospel of Mark…1294 translations and the number is growing every year. It’s been said that the Gospel of Mark is often called the Gospel of Peter since the vivid descriptions of Jesus and the things He did were something Mark likely heard from someone close to Jesus who was actually there. Peter is thought to have been that source. Mark is also known for his failure on Paul’s first missionary journey when he quit Barnabas and Paul just as they got to the shores of Turkey. Mark’s Gospel is one that uses more Aramaic, more Latin and more action scenes than any of the others. It is thought that the audience he had in mind were the Romans and common people who had little background of historical Israel. His goal was to reveal Jesus Christ as the servant Messiah, the Son of God who came to serve. After the deaths of Paul and Peter, Mark ended up in Alexandria Egypt where he became the pastor of the church there and was eventually martyred for his faith. But despite John Marks second hand accounts, his understanding of the truth of Who Jesus Christ is as the Son of God is always at the center of what he writes and in fact it’s where he begins. Have a look at Mark 1:1-8.                                                                                                                        

I. It’s Not Just Where the Road Starts, It’s Where the Road Ends.                              

Verse 1 in this Gospel is like a thesis statement, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” A thesis statement is like a statement of what the ultimate purpose is, what it seeks to not only reveal but in some sense prove to be true. So what does Mark want to reveal and then prove? Don’t forget the Gospel of Mark was likely the first Gospel written at around 40 AD. Mark had been a teenager when he first saw Jesus, he’s not mentioned in any of the Gospels because he was so young and yet he heard and saw things that Jesus said and did that were extraordinary. It’s when he was in his early twenties that he began to become a helper to Peter (1 Peter 5:13), it’s where Mark learned about the details of Christs ministry and identity. So the thesis statement of Mark is that this is the gospel, the good news, of Jesus the man. A human being who was right here, who ate and slept and cried and laughed. It’s the good news about Christ, it’s not Jesus last name it’s His title. Christ means Messiah and the good news about the Messiah is that He has come and accomplished what He intended. He has saved and rescued and delivered His people, He has taught them the way to go and He has revealed to them the truth of Who God is. The thesis statement of Mark goes one step further in verse 1, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” It’s the gospel or good news that this Jesus, this Messiah is the Son of God. It means that Jesus is human but especially it means that Jesus is God. That’s where this Gospel aims to take us. The beginning for Mark is not just where the road starts, it’s where the road ends, the good news that Jesus has come to earth and done something that only God could do. He has saved us, Jesus Messiah!

II. From the Drawing Board to Blazing the Trail and Laying the Road Bed.

So Mark doesn’t begin with Nativity scenes, he begins with the architectural plan, the last drawings before the project actually begins. Mark quotes two Old Testament prophets. The first is from the prophet Malachi 3:1, “Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, Who will prepare Your way before You.” That was from about 450BC, then he quotes Isaiah (40:3) some 300 years before Malachi, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the LORD; Make His paths straight.” Two passages of Scripture welded together to make one statement, ‘There will be one who comes just before the Messiah who will in some way get the people ready to hear and receive and believe in Jesus the Christ, The LORD.’ So where does John begin to blaze the trail, to get people ready to hear the words of Jesus, where does he begin to make straight the path of the LORD? It’s not in the cities nor is it in the Temple, it’s in the wilderness down into the dry and barren country quite near the Dead Sea. How many would ever see him there, who would he be able to reach in the wilderness and what would he say to them that they would even come to him? Look at verses 4 and 5, “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Then all the land of Judea, and those from Jerusalem, went out to him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.” The message John preached was not a popular one, repent from your sin and then proclaim that repentance by being immersed in the water of the Jordan. The murky slow moving waters of the Jordan were not pleasant or attractive to the point you’d want to wade in and yet this was where John prepared the way for the Christ. So it wasn’t the place nor the method that drew the people to proclaim repentance from sin opening the way to hear, receive and believe in Jesus. It was the Spirit of God using a simple obedience. The baptism of John didn’t bring a forgiveness of sin, it confessed sin and a repentance of it but the actual forgiveness of sin was soon to arrive. The work of preparing your heart or the heart of another begins with the recognition that people are fundamentally flawed, from the very best of people to the worst… for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That is what the preparation is and what it accomplishes is an opening of your heart to now hear and receive and believe in the truth of Jesus Christ.

III. From Flagmen to Cat Skinners, God Creates a Way To Christ.                            

When God chose to use John the Baptist He didn’t tell John how to do the job, He just filled him with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit directed him. Look at verse 6, “Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.” The camels skin and hair were coarse and the leather belt held it close to the skin. The locusts and wild honey were the food of the desert, both were foods allowed by the laws of Leviticus. Perhaps it was this very clothing that God used to draw people to John because it was like the kind Elijah the prophet wore (2 Kings 1:8). Jesus would one day remind the people of why they went out to the wilderness to see John, “But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and more than a prophet. For this is he of whom it is written: Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, Who will prepare Your way before You.” (Matt 11:8,9) John was the fulfillment of the Malachi prophesy, the forerunner of the Christ. So what made John so effective as a flagman blazing the trail to Christ or a cat skinner who makes the paths straight? The answer is in verses 7, 8, “And he preached, saying, “There comes One after me who is mightier than I, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to stoop down and loose. I indeed baptized you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” It was simply this, his eyes were on Jesus, his call was to serve Jesus and nothing was ruled out in how that service might look. His role in serving Jesus was to make the need for repentance evident but what John could do was nothing compared to what Jesus Christ will do in forgiving and saving all of who we are. To keep your eyes on Jesus is to constantly be aware of who you are before Him. Your role is not to save people, that’s Jesus work. Your role is to be the flag man, to be the cat skinner, to be the preacher, to be whatever God has set you to be as the one who prepares the way for Christ. Will you do that, will your life be used for that, will you prepare the way for the LORD?