Mark 1

Chapter 1. The PreparationThe beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (Mark 1:1)It is a familiar truth to Bible students that the four gospels are four distinct pictures of our Lord. The Gospel of Matthew is the gospel of the King. The Gospel of Luke is the gospel of the Son of Man, the human Christ. The Gospel of John is the gospel of the Son of God, the deity of Christ. The Gospel of Mark is quite different: the gospel of the Servant of God. “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight” (Isaiah 42:1). It is the gospel of the toiling Christ, the pattern Worker, the Man of action rather than the Teacher. Its type is the ox—patient, toiling, suffering, standing midway between the plough and the altar, ready for either or for both. The Gospel of Mark commences without an introduction and plunges at once into the busy field of active service. It is full of action from start to finish. Its notes ring like the call of a commander leading his victorious troops, and its pages glow with the graphic and vivid touches of a living picture. It closes with a vision of the Master still at work. “Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it” (Mark 16:20) is the closing verse of the gospel. Let us turn our eyes upon this pattern Worker, the Lord Jesus Christ, and learn from Him the spirit of true service for God. Preparation for Work God’s work is always well prepared. It is no afterthought. It is carefully planned, wisely laid out and long looked forward to. We have here the account of the preparation of this great work which Jesus came to inaugurate and finish, “the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). Before we look at this subject we need to find out what the Lord’s work was. What Is the Lord’s Work? What is the service on which Christ came? What is the ministry that Christ commits to us? What is Christian work? What was Christ’s work? We have it all here—“the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” That is the work for which He came. That is the work for which He leaves us here. That is the only work that is worth doing. Striking in this picture of work is the fact that the frontispiece is the gospel of salvation. That is our business, our trust, our occupation, to give the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to men. The gospel means good tidings, a word of cheer from heaven and that word about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. How simple, how beautiful, how satisfactory! Good news! Good news from heaven to suffering, sinful men that God has sent Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to settle things, to remedy things, to make things right. That is the gospel. Christian work is not trying to save the world, or reform society. You cannot reform society, and you cannot save the world, but you can tell the world that Jesus Christ has saved it. You can proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christian work is not our busybody activities, but it is holding up Jesus and giving Him to men, and nothing else is worth a thought. Our philosophies and inquiries into nature and science are all apart from real Christian service. This is the business on which Jesus came, and from start to finish the Gospel of Mark is crammed with this and nothing else, and our lives should be full of this and nothing which does not work for this. How God Prepared for This Great Work First of all “it is written in Isaiah the prophet” (Mark 1:2). It was laid out, and announced, and predicted in ancient prophecy. It was no afterthought. God was thinking of it when He talked to Isaiah and to Malachi and told them to say these things; “A voice of one calling: ‘In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God’” (Isaiah 40:3). “Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20). The whole system of truth from Adam and Abraham down was just a portraiture of the coming Redeemer and the coming gospel. “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10), and how careful He was before He left them to explain, as He opened up the Scriptures, how in the Psalms and in the Prophets all these things were written concerning Him, and “this is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day” (Luke 24:46). And in our Christian work we must never get away from the Scriptures. The Lord Jesus worked according to the Scriptures. His business was to fulfill everything that has been written concerning Him, and He could not die until the last prophecy had been fulfilled down to the casting of the lots for His clothes. So it is our business to fulfill everything that was written concerning us. Have you found out everything that was written concerning you? This Book was written as much about you as about Jesus Christ. You must find out what it says about you. You have no business to meet Jesus in the new revelation of the coming day until you finish the old. Have you found out what it says about you as a sinner, as a child of God, as a servant of God and a witness for Jesus, and have you worked it out? “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). Preparation of John Next is the preparation of the herald. The messenger came in advance to announce this gospel and this greater Messenger. While John was not the great Pattern, he was a very beautiful pattern. As Christian workers we will find some splendid examples in the preparatory ministry of John the Baptist. Look at his humility. They asked him, “Who are you?” (John 1:22), and his reply was, “I am the voice” (John 1:23), a voice crying in the wilderness, the message that was breathed into him from heaven. He is not an original. He does not need to think out some wonderful discovery and read up the marvels of science; but he must be a good listener and echo, catching the voice from heaven and ringing it out to the world around. And then how he constantly hides under the shadow of the greater Servant. “After me will come one more powerful than I” (Mark 1:7). There can be no service for God without humility. God cannot use you if your shadow comes in His way. The saddest picture in the Old Testament is that withered gourd at the gates of Nineveh, and that man under its shadow who was rejected after the greatest revival in the history of the world because he wanted his own glory rather than the salvation of Nineveh. Jonah is thrown aside like his withered gourd, left a spectacle of shame and failure because he thought only about his own importance. Your own natural gifts, your spiritual experience and ministry will wither and become a positive curse if you always see yourself or think about yourself. No matter how sweetly you may sing the gospel, if you are thinking of your tones, it will amount to nothing. No matter how eloquently you may tell the story of Jesus, if you are studying your elocution or seeking the praise of your admirers, it is a failure. God save us from self-consciousness and self-importance and everything but nothingness. The ripe ears of wheat hang down because they are ripe. The greatest apostle looked around for a name, and he took “Paul the Little.” He went on diminishing until he became “less than the least of all saints and not worthy to be called an apostle” (see Ephesians 3:8; 1 Corinthians 15:9), and “the chief of sinners” (see 1 Timothy 1:15). God give us this grace of humility. Then He will use us and hide us in the shadow of His hand, and the more He uses us the more He will hide us. If we do not stay hidden, He will send the devil after us to scare us into the shadow and keep out of our own sight. John’s Message His message to men was about sin. His call to men was “repent.” No honeyed words, no silly talk about developing people by drawing out what is in them. If that is all we ever get, the Lord have mercy on us. The word “education” means to lead out, to draw out, and education without God ends where you may expect. There is no greater curse in modern civilization than culture without Christ. It is the particular peril of the present century. They tell us that just as the artist sees the angel in the marble and must chisel it out, so there is a God in every human being. It is a demigod, a devil god. You do not get God that way. You must have Him put Himself in. John the Baptist’s work started with the recognition of the great and awful fact of sin. Jesus Christ’s ministry never got away from sin. He talked gently to the woman of Samaria for a time, but He did not play with her. “Go, call your husband” (John 4:16). She knew what that meant, there were five husbands, and none was her husband. Jesus was after sin. When the woman anointed His feet with her tears, He accepted the tears and love, but He did not wink at her sins. “Her many sins” (Luke 7:47) were forgiven. When He gave us the matchless picture of the prodigal, there was no home-going to the father until the cry came, “I have sinned” (Luke 15:21). That is Christian work. Start with sin and repentance and out and out dealing with souls. John handled sin without gloves. They came to him, and his cry was, “Confess your sins,” and the lightning of God struck into their consciences and revealed to them their awful peril under the wrath of God. Their one thought was to flee from the wrath to come and to get right with God. That was John’s work. It was honest work, foundation work, excavating deep down and not trying to put up a flimsy building without a foundation. It is the same old fallen heart you Christian workers have to deal with. It is the same old gospel He has left to you, and it is the same old preparation that it needs still—the message of sin, the message of repentance. Give it tenderly; give it always with the blood in view; give it always depending upon the Holy Spirit; but, in God’s name give it. John’s Baptism What did baptism mean? Up to John’s day they only baptized proselytes; no Jew was ever baptized. But a Gentile entering Judaism was baptized. When John demanded that the children of the kingdom should go down to the bottom and start at nothing, start like the heathen started and get baptized as a confession they were not even consistent Jews and had no rights or privileges, but were lost, vile sinners—that was thorough work. That was treating human nature as it has to be treated by God—as so thoroughly worthless that there is no remedy for it but death. Baptism just means death. It is God’s own type of death. The burial beneath the water and the rising afterwards set forth the fact that there was no room for self-improvement. They were so steeped in sin no cathartic would cleanse them, no chemical wash them white. They must die and be raised from the dead by regeneration. That was just what John said the new religion was going to bring. “The ax is already at the root of the trees” (Matthew 3:10). Do not talk about making yourselves right. You must be baptized into death and then resurrected into supernatural life. Dear Christian worker, that is the foundation work of all true ministry. You must recognize men as made of that kind of material and as needing that kind of radical gospel. I know it is not popular in this humanitarian age, but He that sits in the heavens is laughing at man’s new religion, and in a little while He is going to overwhelm it in ruin and shame. And that which is founded upon the rock will stand when the winds rage, and the rains come, and the floods beat and the testing day will discover whether our work is built on the rock or on the sand. I would rather have half a dozen true hearts convicted of sin, and saved by the precious blood of Christ, and regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit, than a whole mob of modern whitewashed Christians. You are not going to get the crowd this way, but you are going to get His approval when the judgment comes. Witnessed to Jesus John pointed his followers forward to Christ. He said, “Don’t look at me; don’t stay with me.” Even his beloved disciples, John and Andrew, left him and followed Jesus; at which time he told them, “Go, He is mightier than I. I am not worthy to unloose His shoes. He is the One, go to Him, follow Him.” John’s ministry pointed the people to the Savior. Let yours and mine. Do not stop with even conviction of sin because that will not save men. Man’s conscience may be blasted with the lightnings of heaven, and he may cry out in the agony of Judas and yet be lost. It is Jesus who saves. It is seeing Him and trusting Him that accomplishes the real work of the gospel. The other is preparatory, but this is the essence of the gospel itself. So he pointed them to Jesus. Let us so point them. Let us know the way, and let us always be crying “Behold the Lamb of God.” You will notice here especially that John points to the One that baptized with the Holy Spirit. “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” (Mark 1:7-8). “Don’t take less than that,” was John’s message. “My washing will not keep you clean. You will be vile and foul tomorrow after I plunge you in the Jordan. You must get a supernatural power, something I cannot bring you, the Holy Spirit to fill you, to recreate you and then to keep you. This One who is coming is to bring power, to bring God into man, to be the supernatural force in the building of character and the saving of souls.” Two Kinds of Religion We see here two kinds of religion and two kinds of Christian work. “I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.” Get people convicted, crying out for pardon, superficially saved perhaps, the baptism of John, outward reformation perhaps, but nothing more. God keep us from uncharitableness, but I am afraid nine-tenths of the members of the churches today have gone no farther than the baptism of John. I am afraid that nine-tenths of our preachers have led their converts no farther than the remission of sins. That is not the gospel. That is the scaffolding that leads to the gospel. But the gospel is the Holy Spirit filling the hearts of saved men and changing them super-naturally, sanctifying them from the power of evil and keeping them for that great day. That is what John said was to be the characteristic of this new Teacher, that He would put God into men, the power that would change them spiritually and make them stand. O Christian workers, be sure of that. The apostles did not leave their converts till they had their Pentecost. The Preparation of Jesus How very solemn that even our Master had to be made meet for His work. If He had to be prepared, how are you going to do it without the same divine equipment? He was baptized by John. “Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan” (Mark 1:9). That was His first preparation. He had to be baptized. Why? There was no sin in Him. There is a very deep and tender lesson here. He was baptized not because He needed it, but because we needed it. He was baptized that He might be made identical with us. He was baptized into our sin and death and resurrection. They went down in the Jordan because of their sin. He went down in the Jordan because He took sin upon Himself. In that act He identified Himself with sinful men. He went down there sharing my curse and yours, and when He came out again, His resurrection was typified in that symbol; and John could point to Him and say, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He buried it in Jordan just as He was to bury it in the grave afterwards. Before you can help people, you must be baptized into sympathy and fellowship with the men and women you are going to save. You cannot stand up on the mountain and say, “Come up,” but you must go down and share their sorrow with them. You cannot save them at arm’s length. You have to be baptized into their conditions. The missionaries in Jamaica could not get near the blacks because the blacks were slaves. They tried in vain to touch them. Then the missionaries became slaves too; they gave up their freedom, went down into slavery, and then the broken-hearted men and women understood and responded and believed, and a great and mighty work for Christ was done. When our missionaries go to China, they have to go down and love these people. They do not mind the smells of the Chinese cities; love identifies them with the people. That is what the Master did, came down to where we were and took us up to where He is, and He will keep us there forever. That is the first principle of Christian work—sympathy with those you seek to save. As the Holy Spirit comes in deeper preparation for service, you will find some strange things in your experience. People you do not love naturally, you will learn to love. There sometimes comes to us such a sense of evil. As we pray and pray, we find Christ has put into us the need of a sinful soul, some of the curse that is destroying one dear to us. We have to pray it through, take it in our arms and bear it to His blessed feet until He withers it. He will baptize you into sympathy with the need of people and the unworthiness of people until you will be patient and long-suffering with a love that never tires. That is Christian service; that is the way He did it. Are you willing that He should thus baptize you into the conditions of a sinful world? The Baptism of the Holy Spirit The next thing in Christ’s preparation was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. As He came out of the water, there came a second baptism. The heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit like a dove came down and abode upon Him and remained with Him from that moment. I don’t know of anything so wonderful in the life of Christ. Why did He need the Holy Spirit? Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit, but He was not baptized of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit had given Him His divine humanity, but the Spirit was not yet living with Him and in Him. But now on the banks of the Jordan, the Holy Spirit came to Him as a Person. From that moment there were two persons in the life of Jesus—the Son of God and the Spirit of God—and the two were working together all through His ministry, and He did not do a thing without the Holy Spirit. “But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:28). Beloved worker, you must have the same baptism. You may be born of the Holy Spirit, you may have the Holy Spirit with you, you may be a real Christian, but there is infinitely more for you. There is the coming to you of the personal Holy Spirit as He came to Jesus, so that from this day there will be two people in your life, your consecrated self and the Spirit of the living God of whom you are the temple. Until that comes you are not fit for Christian work. You will be doing your work rather than His. But when He comes, it is no longer you but the Spirit of your Father. If the Son of God needed the baptism of the Holy Spirit before He began His ministry, how dare you attempt your ministry without it? I cannot tell you how He will come to you. I do not believe we have any business to limit His coming by any sign or method. He Himself is greater than His gifts or manifestations. It is Him you want. Accept any gifts He may be pleased to give you. Do not rest in any gift or manifestation but in Him. If you need Him, you can have Him now. “And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased’” (Mark 1:11). Beloved, you and I must have such a vision of God, you and I must have such an acceptance with the Father, you and I must have such a consciousness of living without doubts and fears. So long as you are groping through shadows and singing ‘Tis a point I long to know, Do I love the Lord or no? you will not bring anyone to Christ. Spurgeon told his doubts to his congregation one day, and they said to him afterwards, “Don’t tell us them again. We have enough of our own. We want a voice of victory from the pulpit, a leader living in the light of the Lord.” O beloved, keep there, and you will draw people to Christ. Keep in the place of fellowship. Keep in the place of joy. Say to people, “My God will meet all your needs” (Philippians 4:19). It is glorious to go to people with the consciousness that you have something to recommend; it is glorious to have Him so shine in your face that they will come and say, “Take me with you to your Jesus.” Keep in the sunshine of victorious joy, and you will be able to bring others where you are. Preparation for Work by Temptation"At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan" (Mark 1:12-13). Strange is it not that that had to come, too? That was part of the Master’s preparation for work—temptation. Luther was asked what was the first qualification for the ministry, and he answered, “Temptation.” What is the second qualification? “Temptation.” And what is the third qualification? And once again he answered, “Temptation.” The Lord had to know what sore temptations are before He could help us. The Lord had to fight the battle alone before He could stand for you. Beloved worker for Christ, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which comes to you. In my early ministry a woman came up to me and said, “Don’t be discouraged. If God wants to use anybody, He puts them into a furnace seven times heated.” I have always found after strange, peculiar testing someone has come along I could not have helped without it, someone on the same lone path. God sent me on ahead to blaze the way. Beloved, He will test you, but remember, it is victorious temptation that helps people. If God honors you with peculiar trials, take Him to carry you through. He went into battle with the devil for the purpose that He might come back and overcome in you. As surely as He overcame, And triumphed once for you. So surely we who love His name, Shall triumph in Him too. As workers for God we must have this same Christ in us to give us His power for service. “I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). “To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:29). My hands were strong in fancied strength, But not in power divine, To take up many tasks at length That were not His but mine. The Master came and touched my hands, And might was in His own, But mine since then have powerless been Save His were laid thereon. For it is only thus, said He, That I can work My works in thee.