W. Robert Godfrey (0:00)

Repentance is essential in the Christian life. We have to recognize we're sinners, we have to regret we're sinners, and we have to turn from our sin. But repentance is not strictly part of the gospel. If we're going to be clear about the goodness of the good message, it's that we do have to repent. And then we have to having looked at ourselves and seeing our need and wanting to be different, we're we have to look away from ourselves to Jesus. That's the good news.

Host/Announcer (0:36)

We don't want to get the good news wrong, as W. Robert Godfrey just reminded us. We don't want to confuse repentance with the announcement of what Christ has accomplished for his people. And Mark is very careful in his gospel. This is the Tuesday edition of Renewing youg Mind, and this week you're hearing a new series from Dr. Godfrey in the Gospel of Mark, following Jesus and how this gospel vividly reveals who Jesus is and encourages us to joyfully proclaim all that he has accomplished for us, his people. So be encouraged by the good news of the gospel. Today, as Dr. Godfrey begins at the beginning.

W. Robert Godfrey (1:20)

Let'S plunge into the gospel itself and into this first section of nine that we're going to look at, a section I'm calling Jesus and Foundations. And we may linger in this section a little longer because it is foundational. It is very important to seeing the way in which the rest of the gospel develops. And I think Mark is sparing no effort to lay a foundation in which we can understand the gospel, the good news as it is in Jesus Christ. And as we said last time, the gospel begins somewhat abruptly, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Why does he say the beginning? Well, that's the kind of question only a professor could ask. Isn't it obvious it's the beginning because it's the beginning, but exactly the beginning of what? Is it the beginning of the book? Well, then it would be sort of so obvious. Why say it? Is it the beginning of the chapter? Does it apply to the whole gospel or just to the first part of the gospel? Is it referring just to John's ministry? Is it referring just to the quotation from Isaiah he's giving us? I think he is leading us into thinking about how the gospel has come and continues. The gospel has begun for those who have heard it already preached. And so I think Mark, in a sense is saying we're beginning, but we're going on. The beginning doesn't really come to an end Till Jesus comes again. And so this opening word draws us into the gospel and is going to carry us all the way through. And then, of course, he says the beginning of the gospel. And we're so accustomed to the word gospel that we don't pause to think about that maybe gospel is actually a somewhat strange word. It's an Old English word derived from to Old English word, God's spell, which really meant God's word. And it's trying to capture a single Greek word. And that single Greek word is euangelion. Eu means good, and angelion means message or word or news. That's why it's sometimes translated good news. And the gospel is good news. I kind of like to translate it here, good message. Because Mark goes right on to talk about messengers. And the word for messenger is a related Greek word to the word for good news or good message. So in Greek, it's immediately obvious that message and messengers are related. But if we talk about gospel and preachers, we don't see the relationship in Mark. Over and over, we return to the themes of message and messengers. The two things are inseparable. God has a message, but he also has messengers. And the message would not be carried except by messengers. And already in this opening of the gospel, we have the message and the messengers. Who are the messengers? Well, Isaiah and John and Jesus are the initial messengers. That's why the opening goes right on to say, as it is written in the prophet Isaiah. And of course, we already know that we could add to those list of messengers. Malachi, he's snuck in here by Mark. But this is the stress. God has always operated by his word and by his messengers, by the message and the messengers. And that's what we're seeing here as foundational. There is a message that is already an old message. Mark is implicitly saying, Isaiah already talked about this. And Isaiah, you know, wrote about 800 years before the coming of John the Baptist. So 800 years previously, to the opening of Mark's gospel, Isaiah had talked about a coming time when a messenger would come as a voice, crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. And by citing that, Mark wants to say to us, people have been waiting a long time. People have been waiting 800 years. They've had a promise from God, they've had a prophecy from God, and they have been waiting to hear that promise fulfilled. 800 years is a long time to wait. How many generations would that be? How many people alive in the days of John the Baptist could have spoken of Their ancestors who might have heard Isaiah. How many of your ancestors do you know who lived 800 years ago? This is remarkable and testifies to how we have to be a patient people. God has his own timing. It's not our timing. We would not be eager to have to wait 800 years for a promise to be fulfilled. But God is faithful. He fulfills his promise, even though it takes time. And what is being gloriously said here is the time has come. So we have preaching at the beginning of this section of Mark's Gospel. And then we have preaching at the end of this section of Mark's Gospel. When we come to Mark 1:14, where we read now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. So we have the gospel at the beginning of this section and the gospel at the end. We have Isaiah and John preaching at nearly the beginning of this section and Jesus preaching at the end of this section. And what is Jesus preaching? He's preaching the gospel. God preached the gospel through Isaiah. God preached the gospel through John the Baptist. God preaches his gospel through his Son. And what does Jesus say? This is verse 15. Jesus says that time is fulfilled. Do you see how wonderful that is? When we clearly connect what Isaiah said 800 years ago, what Malachi said 400 years ago, with what Jesus is saying now in this gospel, the time is fulfilled. You've been waiting. You've been waiting and waiting and waiting. And part of the good news I bring to you is the time is fulfilled. The time of waiting is coming to an end. I am the end of the waiting. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Now, what is the essence of the kingdom of God? This is not a trick question. This is an easy question. What does a kingdom need? A kingdom needs a king. So what Jesus is really saying is, the coming of the king is at hand. Who's the king? This isn't a trick question either. Jesus is the king. Jesus is really saying, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand because I am here. So what should you do? Well, you should do exactly what John the Baptist said you should do. You should do exactly what Isaiah said you should do. You should repent and believe the good news. Believe the gospel, believe the good message. Now, just a little point here. Repentance is essential in the Christian life. We have to recognize we're sinners, we have to regret we're sinners and we have to turn from our sin. But repentance is not strictly part of the gospel. You See, you have to repent is one thing, and you have to believe the gospel is another. I'm not saying repentance isn't necessary. I'm saying if we're going to be clear about the goodness of the good message, it's that we do have to repent. And then we have to, having looked at ourselves and seeing our need and wanting to be different, we have to look away from ourselves to Jesus. That's the good news. He's the Savior. We don't save ourselves by repenting. We find salvation in him when we trust him, when we believe in him. And Mark is very clear in the way in which he puts that. So Jesus message is summarized for us here in the preaching of the gospel at the end of this section, just as it's summarized for us at the beginning when John appears in fulfillment of the words given by God to Isaiah and to Matthew Malachi. And we read verse four of chapter one, John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. You see, Jesus came preaching repentance and believing the gospel. John came preaching repentance and believing the gospel. And what's so important here is foundationally this message that we have to see ourselves as sinners. We have to long to turn from our sin, and we have to accept the message that the forgiveness of sins comes from another. That's what baptism, above all else, tells us. One of the distinctive things about baptism is nobody baptizes themselves in the Bible. In the history of the church, there have been people who baptized themselves. Not a good idea. We are baptized, whether we're baptized as adult believers or baptized as children of believers. Someone else baptizes us and it says, we don't have forgiveness in ourselves. We don't have forgiveness from ourselves. It comes from outside. And so John comes with this ritual that it seems he largely established himself, the ritual of baptism, and uses this ritual to say to the people of Israel, something new is happening. A new time has come, a fulfillment is coming. He doesn't use that word of fulfillment, but he says, a new time is coming and you need to be a people prepared for that new time. You need to be a people who are repenting and seeking the forgiveness of God. And the reason I belabor this a little bit is because this is foundation of the whole gospel. He assumes you're going to remember this as we go along. Repentance and forgiveness are the essential things. And in our world we are constantly being challenged. What are the essential things we need to know and do and believe and practice. And of course, the world has little interest in the theme of forgiveness. The world has little interest in the theme of being reconciled to God. But what Mark's Gospel, of course, the Scriptures as a whole say is, forgiveness is the absolutely essential thing. Forgiveness is the foundational thing. It's what is most necessary. What is our greatest problem in life? God is our greatest problem in life. I can almost see RC Saying that God is our greatest problem when we are sinners and he is holy. And it is the mercy of God that seeks to overcome that problem. And the tragedy of so many is they don't see their greatest problem. They deny their greatest problem and therefore don't seek forgiveness in a Savior outside themselves. But this is what Mark is teaching us in this foundational section. And we have this encouraging word, verse 5. And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to John and were being baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. They heard the message, they understood the message. They responded to the message. Now, later, I think in another Gospel, were told the Pharisees refused to be baptized with the baptism of John. And we're not really surprised by that because the Pharisees didn't believe they were sinners. They didn't believe they needed to start over. They didn't believe that there was a time coming of fulfillment. They believed they kept the law of God and were right with God. And so right here at the beginning, we see a kind of fundamental contrast between those who recognize they're sinners, recognize they need a new beginning, and those who resist that message. And Mark's point is the message of Jesus repent and believe fulfills the message of John, which was repent and believe, which fulfilled the message of Isaiah, which was repent and believe. And so right at the beginning, we're seeing something very important. Early Christians, the apostles, Jesus, John the Baptist, said the leaders of Israel, the Pharisees in particular, have misread and misinterpreted and misapplied the whole Old Testament. What you can really say is a lot of what is going on in the first century is a contest between the apostolic reading of the Old Testament and the Rabbinic reading reading of the Old Testament. The rabbinic reading is keep the law and you'll be fine. The apostolic reading is, you can't keep the law, only Jesus does. You're only finding Jesus. And that claim is all over the New Testament. And we're going to see it again and again as we go forward in reading this. Now, John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. Probably means he came from California. Why do they record these details? That's a vivid detail, isn't it? Why is that in there? Because that's very much a description of Elijah in the Old Testament. And so Mark is alluding to the fact that John the Baptist is Elijah come again in a figurative sense. And John says, 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. I have brought a ceremony that symbolically speaks of what you need, but Jesus will bring what you really need. Jesus will bring what you really need. And John is doing this preaching in the wilderness. Now, the fact that he's doing it in the wilderness is very important because prophets almost always came in the wilderness, because Israel was tested in the wilderness for 40 years. And so we're back to a time of testing. We're back to a time of prophecy. And John is being presented as one who is bringing Israel back to its wilderness experience and wilderness testing to see who they are. So you can see how we've been moving back and forth a little bit. I hope not too unclearly. And this whole first section is set up chiastically to lead us to see relationships, but also to lead us to see the center. The center of this first section is the baptism of Jesus, described for us in verses 9 through 11. And again, Mark is relatively brief. He doesn't tell us as much as Matthew tells us about the baptism. All we really see in verse nine is in those days, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. Now, as a kind of footnote, notice here in verse nine, for the first time Galilee is mentioned in Mark's Gospel. The first part of Jesus ministry will be in Galilee. You notice at the beginning we're told about the Gospel of Jesus, the Christ and the Son of God. The first half about of Mark's Gospel is showing Jesus is the Christ. The second half is showing he's the Son of God. But in the first half of the Gospel, Jesus is in Galilee. There are no doubt several reasons for that. It's where Jesus gathers his disciples initially. It's where he does his initial teaching and healing. It's where his reputation as the Christ begins to spread. But I think it's also significant because after the Resurrection as we find it told to us in Mark, chapter 16. The Word of Jesus to the women who come to the tomb is, tell my disciples I will go before them and meet them in Galilee. Why does Jesus do that? Well, because I think he's saying, I'll meet them in Galilee and we'll start this whole process of teaching them again because they didn't get it. We're going to go back to Galilee. I'm going to do it faster this time. We'll just have 40 days there in Galilee to talk about all this truth. But we're going to go back to the beginning. We're going to go back because they didn't get it. And I think Mark ends the gospel that way. To say to you and me, okay, you think you've read the gospel, Go back to the beginning and start again. Because we never quite get it. There's always more to get. And so the introduction of Galilee here, I think, is preparing us. And then again, you noticed that verse 14 says, now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee to begin his ministry. But the baptism of Jesus again is vivid in Mark. Did you notice that? Verse 10? And when he came up out of the water immediately he saw the heavens being torn open. The heavens just don't open as in the other Gospels. They are torn open. This is the vividness of Mark's account. It alludes to Isaiah, who cried out, oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down. God is rending the heavens, tearing them apart. This verb is used only one other place in Mark's Gospel. The rending of the curtain in the temple when Jesus died. And Mark does this very deliberately. That baptism of Jesus is a picture of the saving work of Jesus. Jesus goes down in the water identifying with sinners, sinners who need to be cleansed. Jesus comes up out of the water identifying with sinners who need to be resurrected. And God bears witness that this is his Son who will cleanse us and who will raise us by drawing us up out of the water. Do you see how powerful that is? And we see that only, as we put it carefully in the context of Isaiah, of waiting, of anticipation, of time fulfilled, of the king coming, and Jesus being the king who hears the word from heaven. You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased. That's the very heart of God's testimony to us about Jesus. Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God. And we know that because God himself has borne witness to that recorded for us in the Scripture. God will say almost the same thing on the Mount of Transfiguration, because he wants to reiterate, this is my Son who is faithful. This is my Son who has done what I wanted him to do. This is my Son in whom the times are fulfilled. This is my Son in whom the kingdom comes and so repent and believe in Him. He's the messenger of the new Covenant. But even more importantly, he's the message of the new Covenant in whom we find life and hope. Hmm.