Preparing for Gospel Action

When John saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance. (St. Matthew 3:7-8)

 

 

          Most weekday mornings, my life – probably like yours – is automatic. I wake up, plug in the coffee pot, wait a minute and a half at most, pour a cup – and I’m satisfied. The coffee is nice, but at 6 a.m. on a Wednesday I don’t want to talk about Juan Valdez or roasting techniques or aromas. I want coffee, and that coffee is just another part of my day.

          Weekends are something different.

          When life is a bit more relaxed, I enjoy the buildup to a robust cup of coffee. I enjoy choosing the coffee beans. I enjoy pouring the beans into my grinder (and one friend of mine actually is obsessed with coffee grinders!). I enjoy the unrivaled fragrance of freshly ground coffee. I enjoy waiting for the water to hum, then to teem with warmth, then to rumble and boil. I enjoy pouring the boiling water into my French press (fresh coffee grounds at the bottom) and waiting with delicious anticipation as the grounds settle and the water mixes with and separates from the coffee to produce that glorious elixir. Coffee – as you can tell – means so much more to me when I take time to prepare, and to prepare for, it.

 

          This year, Lord willing, is going to be a year for action for the Leakesville Presbyterian Church. That’s in part why we have chosen to study the Gospel according to St. Mark this year: Mark relates the salient parts of Jesus’ life and ministry, stressing both his divinity and his humanity, as he calls on Jesus’ followers to be a people of theologically informed action.

          It would be comfortable for you and me to jump right into the fray. To start acting, planting churches, welcoming new members, in the Name of Jesus without first contemplating who Jesus is. To proclaim the Good News when we’ve spent no time coming to terms with the Bad News.

          And so Mark, at the “beginning” (as he styles it) of his gospel – written largely to Gentiles in the mid-50s, most likely, and based in part on Peter’s testimony – begins with the Old Testament and particularly with John the Baptist. Mark 1:1-8 calls on you to prepare for Jesus Christ in three ways: through studying the Old Testament prophets, through heeding John’s call to repentance, and through expecting the ministry of Jesus, fuller and richer than all who came before him.

          This will be a year of Gospel rejoicing and Gospel action for you and me, we pray. Let us begin, though, with Gospel preparation.

 

          You and I must prepare for the Gospel of Jesus Christ first through the study of God’s Old Testament prophets.

          St. Mark’s gospel is about, and from Jesus Christ, whose very name points to his saving mission (“Jesus,” a form of the Hebrew “Joshua,” means “the Lord is salvation;” while “Christ” indicates that Jesus is the promised Anointed Prophet, Priest and King of the Old Covenant). Jesus is the Son of God, enjoying an eternally unique relation to God the Father and bringing you and me, who trust in him as our Savior, into membership in God’s family by adoption and grace. As the Lord’s Christ, and as the Son of God, the Good News about Jesus could not have begun when Jesus turned 30, or even when he was born. The Gospel began even in eternity.

          Scripture teaches that God the Father entered into a covenant with God the Son outside of space and time, a covenant of redemption in which the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world would claim his church through covenant obedience. Salvation is bigger than when you came to Christ; your salvation is in fact the outworking of God’s eternal plan to redeem you from your sins.

          Mark the Evangelist, for his part, focuses on the witness of the Old Testament prophets to John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus Christ. (On a point of Greek grammar, the literal rendition of Mark’s words is, “As it has been written in the prophets.” The perfect tense indicates something that occurred in the past that still has consequences today; here, it is the prophetic word from the Old Covenant that is brought to fulfillment in John’s ministry). As you search the Old Testament you will note how the gospel appears in Genesis 3:15, and in God’s shedding of blood to make skins to cover Adam and Eve, and in the Mosaic sacrifices, and in the ram caught in the thicket when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac. Jesus himself said the Old Testament centered on him.

          Here, specifically, Mark quotes the prophets Malachi and Isaiah in depicting the ministry of St. John Baptist. In Malachi, God the Father promises God the Son He would send a forerunner before the Son to prepare his way. After the forerunner would come the Covenant Messenger himself, Jesus Christ, who is the eternal Lord. He who is the temple would come to his temple, his church, and his coming would mark a time of division among believers and unbelievers that continues to this day. Apparently the coming of the Messenger would be so momentous (and we know it was) that the Father chose to send a forerunner.

          Isaiah’s prophecy in chapter 40 is comforting for believers in Israel, who had suffered in exile for the nation’s general apostasy. But before full consolation would come in the person of the Redeemer, God would send a messenger in the wilderness – John – to call the people to repent of their sinful lifestyles and postures and thus clear a highway for the Lord in their hearts. Before they could know the comfort and blessedness of the Gospel of peace, they first had to repent of the sin that had driven them into exile. This was the message of the Old Testament prophets, and it finally was the clarion call of John the Baptizer.

          Jesus is, of course, fully glorious in his own right as the Son of God, the only Redeemer of God’s elect. Yet if you will spend time in this year of action studying the long buildup in Scripture to Christ’s coming – and indeed the painful silence between Malachi and John the Baptist – you will have a richer, deeper appreciation for the coming of the Final Word.

 

          You and I must prepare for the Good News, secondly, through heeding John’s call to repentance.

          Mark, as is his custom, doesn’t relate a great deal about John’s background or ministry. From the other gospel records we have reason to believe he was born again in the womb (he leapt for joy in Elizabeth’s womb when he heard Mary’s greeting), but here you and I are confronted with his stark presence and preaching.

          Pay attention to his appearance: he was dressed roughly and wildly, like the prophet Elijah. Camel’s hair and a leather belt apparently were suitable for this prophet of God who had no interest in the religiosity of his day or of his people. Likewise, his appetite was not fixated on fancy foods. He ate locusts and wild honey, which Middle Easterners living in the wilderness would eat. He evidently was more concerned with sustenance than with more-sumptuous fare, probably unlike the Jewish leaders of that era. Note also his place: he preached in the wilderness, a place not of ease but of deprivation, of dis-ease and of preparation. His Jewish forebears wandered in the wilderness for 40 years in a time of testing and of winnowing from the Lord before some could enter the Promised Land. Jesus later would fast for 40 days and nights and be tempted of Satan in the wilderness. John’s place – the wilderness, not the traditional environs of Jerusalem – was the ideal locale for his call to total turning to the Lord from a life of self-worshiping sin.

          His proclamation therefore centered on repentance, on a thorough change of heart and mind from sin unto the Lord. John clearly was not swayed by large crowds, even though St. Mark relates that “all Judea and Jerusalem” went out to be baptized by him. (Neither, as the good bishop John Charles Ryle reminds us, should you and I flock to a church with a large crowd simply because of the number of attendees). John demanded specific evidence of repentance from his hearers: the people were to share, not hoard; the publicans were to be honest; the soldiers were not to treat anyone with violence. So he still calls you to make a straight highway for Jesus in your heart – no bumpy allowances for pet sins, no curves that veer off into false religiosity. John wasn’t interested in words, which everyone in Greene County spews forth (“Oh, I know Jesus. I’ve been a member of the church for 800 years!”), without fruit. He wasn’t interested in heritage.

          He was interested in your heart.

          His practice, like his proclamation, focused on repentance. John baptized as a sign of repentance for the remission of the sins of those who confessed them and truly turned from them. We will examine his baptism more thoroughly in a moment, but note for now that his practice matched his proclamation matched his place: he was a devoted prophet of the Lord intent not on tickling ears but on assaulting man’s pride, paving the way for Christ’s joy.

          He is hard to hear. Oh, but how you and I need to hear John!

 

          Your preparation for Gospel joy and action comes, third, through an expectation of the Greater One to come – Jesus.

          John’s preaching shone the light on Jesus, not on himself. “Behold the Lamb of God!” he cried in St. John’s gospel. Here in Mark, the Baptist confesses that Jesus is mightier than he, and that he is not worthy even to perform the most-menial of tasks: loosing Jesus’ shoe-latchets. Although foretold in the prophets and declared by Jesus to be the “greatest man born of woman,” John was not enthralled by accolades. Today you and I would label him, in his own wilderness way, a “rock star preacher,” as we do so many others. But the Baptist knew well that there is no place for rock star preachers in the church. The focus of every message and of every ministry and of every minister must be totally on the Mighty Lord Jesus.

          His baptism likewise pointed to the fuller work of our Lord Jesus Christ. You should note there is some debate even among Reformed commentators about whether John’s baptism was the same as or merely anticipated Christian baptism in the Name of the triune God. In Ephesus (as recorded in The Acts 19) Paul met some believers who only had been baptized by John, and the apostle baptized them in the Name of Jesus (surely in the triune formula) because their knowledge of the Spirit was insufficient. While we might debate the nuances of John’s baptism, two things are clear: his was a washing of water signifying the inward cleansing from sin for the repentant, and Jesus’ baptism would be with the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

          Baptism as you and I know it in Scripture is in the Name of the full, thrice-holy and eternally glorious Trinity. While there is nothing magical about the baptismal waters, baptism is a sacrament – a sign and, for the believer, a seal – of God’s covenant of grace in Jesus Christ. When we baptize today, we do so looking back on the finished work of our triumphant Lord and with a richer, biblically full-orbed understanding of the work of the Trinity in salvation. John’s baptism, true as it was, looked forward to Jesus’ work. Christian baptism rests on Jesus’ completed work at Calvary.

          Above all, the Baptist did not want his hearers focusing on him, as challenging and as life-changing as was his divinely given message. He placed the spotlight on the only One who deserves it, on the only One who can effect what John preached: Jesus Christ.

 

          Are you ready to act for Christ in 2009? Are you ready to see a church plant begin in George County, with the help of Grace Presbytery? Are you personally anxious for deeper discipleship with the Lord Jesus Christ?

          Outstanding!

          But before Canaan came the wilderness – and its rugged preparation.

          Before Jesus came John – and his startling call to repentance.

          Spend time this week considering the Old Testament witness to Jesus. Spend time looking into your own heart and repenting of cherished, but hindering, sins. Spend time considering whether Christ or you has the place of prominence in your life.

          Then you will be ready for the Good News, and for Gospel action.