FBC Sunday Evening Service

Back this evening.

Hope you had a good restful afternoon today.

It was a good afternoon to rest, wasn't it?

Be quiet, take a nap maybe.

So, well, let's begin tonight with number 538, 538.

Chose this song, it's more of a gospel song and it's not particularly a hymn,

but chose it because of the story of the gospel of Mark.

Let's stand together as we sing.

We'll sing stanzas 1, 3, and 4.

First, third, and fourth stanzas.

But seems each time I tell it, they're

fully sweet to tell the story,

for some have never heard of

salvation.

What we testify, I love to tell the story, we tell it, tell it, tell it.

You wonder, Mark wrote his gospel in the early 1850s,

and so that would have been 20 years roughly after Jesus ascended.

So, you wonder, did the Holy Spirit just inspire him to get tired of telling the story

over and over again, and he wanted to write it down so that he could just say, here, here's the story, here's the story, the whole story.

Well, I don't know.

But anyway, thank you Father for our time together today.

Thank you for this day of rest, set aside from the week's cares and

responsibilities and so forth.

We can just have a change of pace, an opportunity to hear from you and

to explore your word, to be challenged by it, to be encouraged by it.

We thank you for the fellowship that we can have one with another as we

gather in these occasions.

We pray that you bless the service this evening and our time in your word.

We ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So, we're doing some Psalm reading, and that's corresponding to our Psalm book.

So, I want to read tonight Psalm 72.

Psalm 72 and just the first 11 verses.

I chose this Psalm because the title of it says, it's a Psalm

of Solomon.

Of course, the son of David, and he is the king to

succeed David.

All of this anticipating David's ultimate son, the Lord Jesus.

So, Psalm 72 verses 1 -11.

Psalmist writes, give the king your judgments, O God, and your righteousness to the king's son.

He will judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.

The mountains will bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness.

He will bring justice to the poor of the people.

He will save the children of the needy, and will break in pieces the oppressor.

They shall fear you as long as the sun and moon endure throughout all generations.

He shall come down like rain upon the grass before mowing, like showers that water the earth.

In his days, the righteous shall flourish, and abundance of peace until the moon is no more.

He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.

Those who dwell in the wilderness will bow before him, and his enemies will lick the dust.

The kings of Tarshish and of the Isles will bring presents.

The kings of Sheba and Seba will offer gifts.

Yes, all kings shall fall down before him, all nations shall serve him.

So clearly, you can see that that psalm attributed or dedicated to

Solomon and his reign is clearly anticipating the ultimate reign of the Lord

Jesus, where all kings will fall down before him, all nations shall

serve him.

Well, the psalms, the Psalter psalm that goes with that is number 153.

Number 153, Hail to the Lord's Anointed.

Sometimes I can just follow along the notes on the melody line and tell whether or not it's a

familiar tune.

I think this is.

Do you think it is?

Kelly says she doesn't think it is.

John, is it?

It is?

It is familiar to John, okay.

John's familiarity with hymn tunes is far vaster than ours, so I've got to take my hat off to him.

Well, Kelly, since it's not familiar to you, maybe it's not to others, so why don't you play it for us, okay?

All right, it's a good Deutsch song.

You see down there at the bottom, it's a traditional German song or tune from the 17th century.

Pretty simple, I think, to learn and to sing.

So let's try it together.

Hail to the Lord's

Anointed.

Hail in the time appointed.

His reign on earth begun.

He comes to break oppression, to set the

captivity.

He comes with comfort

speedy to those who suffer wrong,

to help the poor.

Them songs foresighing their darkness turn to

light.

Whose souls condemned and dying are precious

in his sight.

He shall come down like showers upon the

fruitful.

And love, joy, hope like flowers

shall peace come.

Simple tune.

Back to that, I'm sure.

Well, I do want to give you some opportunities to share a testimony or two tonight.

So we'll do that in just a moment.

But a reminder that those in the finance committee meeting, finance committee will meet for a few minutes after the service.

Go over the report from, let's see what month is this, May, from April, and look at that

tonight.

And then Wednesday night, this little different kind of get -together of a meal at six o 'clock

for those who would like to partake.

I think the menu includes sloppy joes and corn casserole and some kind

of chips and cookie bars.

Some kind of, gotta have some sweets to go with it.

I mean, it wouldn't be a Baptist meeting without the sweets.

So if you haven't signed up for that, do so tonight on the way out.

And then the service or program or whatever that we're doing

Wednesday night, starting at 645.

So the children will go do their thing, and then the adults will meet here in the auditorium at 645.

And I've got a topic that I will address in

that time together that I think will be beneficial to all of us, will be beneficial to all.

So if you're not in the YMSA group, don't worry about that.

You will gain some benefit from that on Wednesday night.

All right, next week, Williquettes.

Scott and Victoria in the morning.

Looking forward to them being here.

Victoria is, just so you know, Victoria is going to play next Sunday morning.

So she'll play the piano and do some offertory prelude stuff.

So that's her bailiwick.

And then Scott, of course, is going to bring the morning message and then update us on the PEP ministry in Sunday school.

I think one of the things he's going to do is tell us maybe in a little more

detail that he can, as he can in a private, sort of private setting,

what he knows about what's going on in Myanmar.

Because he's been to Myanmar three different times.

And I think one of the last trips he was able to take before the COVID stuff hit was in

Myanmar.

So he's gotten to know a lot of believers and he has some communication with a lot of believers there.

And they are in some real dire, dire circumstances.

So it'll be good to get a more, a little more of a firsthand kind of account,

what's going on in Myanmar.

All right, so I wonder, any word of testimony tonight to share with us?

What's been going on, how the Lord's blessed and worked?

A prayer request.

Jodi this afternoon had a CAT scan done and the purpose of it was to

see if there's any neurological damage and so forth.

That was at 2 .15, haven't heard any response from that, results from it.

Rebecca did mention that this morning she was really restless and yet

later on calmed down.

So she asked us to pray that she, Jodi, remained calm and

that's probably one of the most important things.

Let me, I'm trying to remember, Bob sent me a text this afternoon and I

don't know how much to say, we are live streaming

this.

And what's heard from here, what's said from here can be heard on the live stream.

What you say out there, it isn't.

But one of the things they were concerned about is that maybe she's having so much restlessness problems

because of the long -term use of fentanyl

and how that's just a terrible thing to get off of once you've been on it for a long time.

So anyway, we've got some things to continue praying about for her.

All right, so who will share a word of testimony tonight?

Don't say I didn't give you an opportunity.

All right, let's turn to, in your supplement book then, number 22,

supplement.

I didn't mention it when you were coming in.

Anybody need one of these blue books?

Think you got them?

All right, number 22, fullness of grace.

Often think of this as a song at Christmastime,

but Gospel of Mark, it's talking about the life and ministry of Jesus.

And this song in its entirety deals with that.

So let's stand together as we sing.

We'll sing all three stanzas, fullness of grace.

Fullness

of grace in man's human frailty This is the wonder

of Jesus Laying aside his power

and glory Humbly he entered our world Chose

the path of mean -ass worth Scandal of

a virgin birth Born in a stable cold

and rejected Here lies the hope of the world

Fullness of grace, the love of the Father Shown in

the face of Jesus Stooping to bear

the weight of humanity Walking the Calvary

road Christ the holy

innocent took our sin and Fullness

of God despised and rejected Crushed for the sins

of the world Fullness of hope in Christ we

had longed for Promise of God in Jesus Through his

obedience we are forgiven By the blood gates of

heaven Our hopes and dreams we

bring Gladly as an offering Fullness of

life and joy unspeakable God's gift of love in the

world

You may be seated.

Let's turn to Mark chapter one.

Mark one and read the first eight verses.

These first eight verses are preparatory.

They're preparation.

Hence the message tonight, preparing for Jesus.

Mark one, verse one.

It says, The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your

way before you.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.

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.

Now, John was clothed with camel's hair and with a leather belt around his waist and he ate locusts

and wild honey.

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 lose.

I indeed baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

Just a brief prayer.

Father, I pray that we would gain an appreciation for this ministry of preparation tonight.

We ask it in Jesus name, amen.

I'm sure everyone here has done something by way of preparation.

And sometimes all of that preparation that you went through for that

event or that project, you were so glad that you did all the preparing because it went

off like a hitch.

There are other things I'm sure you prepared for that after all the preparation

never materialized.

A couple of years ago, well, several years ago, five, six years ago, I had this

dream of hiking the Long Trail in Vermont, 280

miles from the border of Massachusetts to the Canadian border.

And I kind of set that up as a goal, as a dream, before I get to be too old

and can't navigate those mountains and so forth.

And so a couple of years ago, it looked like that was the time.

Set the time aside, prepared for that, prepared for it with the church.

I met with the deacons and set up the time and all that kind of stuff.

And they said, oh yeah, great, go for it, et cetera.

Had the time set aside and spent a lot of time and energy preparing for that trip.

Bought all of the, I have a credit card that gives

rewards for REI.

That's a outfitter kind of a place.

And so I used all of my reward dollars that year for purchasing the

dehydrated meals to take on that trip.

And I mean, it's a 28 -day, 30 -day trip if you do

about 10 miles a day.

So I needed to have 28 of these things, 28 of these meals.

So I had those all figured out and I picked out the appropriate variety so I

wasn't having the same thing every day.

And then I actually created an Excel spreadsheet to prepare for this where

I said how far I was gonna go in a particular day, what shelter I was gonna stay at, which meal I was

gonna prepare.

And then I had to prepare by buying all the materials for mixing up

like breakfast every day.

It's like some kind of an oatmeal thing or whatever and mixing those up.

I had to prepare by figuring out where I was going to mail

to send resupply stuff.

I mean, because you don't leave and get there and carry 30 days worth of food on your back.

I mean, you just couldn't do that.

So you carry five days or four or five days and you have a place where you resupply.

So I had to figure out where those resupply places were gonna be and what was gonna go in those boxes,

et cetera, et cetera.

I booked a couple of hostels to stay at on particular

days and so on.

And then it never happened.

All that preparation, all that work, all that time, all that energy expended and

I've still got the box of dehydrated meals, which may be good because I hear inflation is gonna kick in and

food's gonna be so expensive we won't be able to buy food and, well, we'll have at least a few days worth of dehydrated

stuff.

So all that preparation and it didn't really materialize and it seemed like for naught.

Well, these first eight verses are really about preparing for Jesus.

Is this going to actually materialize?

All this preparation that John is going to go through, is this going to actually

materialize?

And I want you to notice that right off the bat in the first couple of verses that the beginning, as John talks

about or as Mark writes about it, the beginning is about the preparation.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is about the preparation for Jesus

actually coming in his ministry.

And it is the preparing for something quite significant, hence the term

gospel.

And I mentioned this last Sunday night that that word gospel, it's not a strictly

biblical term.

It's a term that was used in the culture in the Greek language at the time and it spoke of any

kind of an epic -making event, any major

empire -wide event that would rattle people or

excite people or whatever, that would be considered a gospel, some kind of world -changing

historical event.

It also was used, the term was used, for something new and something significant.

And I mentioned the birth of the Roman Emperor Augustus and the word was spread, this

gospel event in the Roman Empire, this good news event.

The new emperor has been born.

So this was a preparing for something significant, for the gospel, the good news, related

to someone significant.

So the preparation wasn't just about something significant, it was preparation for someone

significant.

It is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The good news of Jesus, speaking of His work of salvation, the name

itself, meaning Yahweh is salvation, the Lord Jesus is our

Savior.

The name Christ, or the title Christ, is referring to His role as the Messiah, the Anointed

One, the promised Son of David who would come to rule and to reign

on the throne.

He's the one, Messiah is the one everyone in Israel has been looking for and longing

for.

And truly, even today, the

religious Jews, and there are plenty of Jews who aren't religious, but the religious Jews are still

looking for their Messiah.

They haven't accepted the fact that He's already come.

But this is the one that is being looked for, Christ, the Messiah.

He is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And this, of course, is an assertion of His deity, that Jesus is God, He's

equal with God.

And we get that from John 5.

In John 5, verse 18, the Jews sought to kill

Jesus because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father,

making Himself equal with God.

So this title of Son of God is one that asserts the deity

of Christ, but it's also a foundational truth that Jesus Christ is the Son

of God.

It's a foundational truth because that person who is

the Son of God is absolutely vital, that Jesus, the

Anointed One, is the Son of God, is absolutely vital for the

satisfactory work that He carried out on the cross.

How could the death of this man on the cross satisfy the wrath of

God against the sins of mankind if He was but a man?

He wasn't but a man.

He was the Son of God.

So this beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about the preparation itself.

And this preparatory work, this preparation, is a work that was prophesied,

verse 2 tells us, as it is written in the Prophets.

Now, the place of this prophecy is really kind of interesting.

There isn't a one place to go to.

Notice how he says it's written in the Prophets, plural, and it's not written in the Prophet,

as if this is a quotation from one prophet.

In fact, look all the way back to the book of Exodus, chapter

23.

Exodus, chapter 23.

And we're going there because Exodus, of course, was written by Moses, and when you think

about the place of prophecy that is fulfilled in the New Testament, especially the

coming of Christ, oftentimes we have the phrase, as it

was written in Moses and the Prophets.

Let me give you a couple examples of that.

In Luke 24, Luke 24,

27.

Remember, this is Jesus as he encountered those two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

In Luke 24, verse 27, he says

to them, Luke records that, beginning at Moses and all the Prophets,

Jesus expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

So, what Jesus was telling these two disciples is that, look, the truth about me, of my

coming, and my work, and so forth, is written in Moses and the Prophets.

Moses and the Prophets.

And then in John, chapter 1, verse 45.

John 1, 45.

Philip, again, some of you are watching The Chosen, so you can remember this scene in The Chosen.

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law

and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

So, again, the assertion that Jesus' coming was prophesied in Moses

and the Prophets.

Now, in Exodus 23, the reason I mention that is in Exodus 23 and verse 20,

you have this beginning phrase that shows up

again in the preparation for the coming of Messiah, where

the Lord says to Moses, behold, I send an angel, or

a messenger, before you.

Now, he's not talking about John the Baptist, but he's talking about truly the messenger that's going to be

before them and lead them and so forth every way that they're to go.

But it's a bit of a precedent, if you will, that the Lord sends before

his people a preparatory messenger.

I'm sending before you a messenger.

Now, the wording that Mark uses in his

gospel as a fulfillment of the prophecy is a combination of two different

prophetic passages.

First of all, Malachi chapter 3 and

verse 1.

Malachi 3 and verse 1,

where the Lord says through Malachi, behold, I send my messenger, and he

will prepare the way before me.

Now, Malachi's prophecy goes on with further material,

but Mark zeroes in on that.

I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.

And he also incorporates Isaiah 40 and

verse 3.

Isaiah 40 and verse 3, which says,

the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for

our God.

All right, so going back to Mark chapter 1, you look at our text and verse 2,

behold, I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way before you.

Mark is quoting Malachi 3, verse 1.

He continues, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.

He's quoting Isaiah 40, verse 3.

So Mark is fusing these prophetic passages together as he records this

statement, this prophecy of preparation, and he says it's written

in the prophets.

So the place of prophecy here is significant.

It's been hundreds of years since these prophetic oracles

were announced.

Now let's look at the content of the prophecy itself.

He says, the prophets say, a messenger would come.

And that messenger, look at the wording, look at the wording carefully and notice

the precise things that are said.

The messenger is one who would be sovereignly chosen and sent.

Behold, I send my messenger.

I send him.

So this John the Baptist, who's doing the work of preparation for the

Messiah, he's not one who got up one day and said, you know,

I think I want to be like a spokesperson or a person who's going to announce Messiah's coming sometime.

No, this is the sovereign work of God to prepare for the Messiah's

arrival.

Sovereignly chosen and sent.

And he is, this messenger, uniquely God's.

He says, I'm sending my messenger.

He's my messenger.

And then he declares that he will be, this messenger, a herald.

A herald.

He will be a voice crying in the wilderness.

And what he cries is, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight.

Now, what's the point of that?

The point of him being a herald?

This work of preparation for the Messiah is not a political work.

He's not preparing by doing something political.

You know, in the politics of our day, there are campaign

strategists, and they organize these events for the

candidate to attend and to speak at and all this kind of stuff.

And there is a ton of front work that takes place to prepare for

the political speech or whatever that the candidate is doing.

There's all kinds of political preparation for a candidate before he ever gets into office.

That's not what John's doing.

It's not military preparation either.

Again, you know, before a military campaign to bring,

you know, to conquer a foe, there's a ton of preparation that goes into that

before there's ever the blowing of the trumpet or the sounding of the alarm or

the issuing of the order to charge, to attack.

A lot of preparation, militarily.

None of that's going on.

None of that's going on.

There's no economic preparation.

You know, John doesn't go around Judea and Galilee and Transjordan

and passing around a hat and saying, come on, you need to contribute.

We want the Messiah to come, don't we?

We've got to have enough money for him to come.

This isn't economic preparation.

This is strictly verbal preparation.

He's heralding a message.

He's preaching a point.

So the messenger is to herald.

Well, the message would then confront.

He says, I will send my messenger before your face, before your face.

It could be interpreted a couple of different ways.

It could mean the messenger will come in front of the face of the one who's behind him.

You know, see, I'm leading his way.

Or it could be referring to, I'm going to send my messenger and he's going to come

right in front of your face.

He's going to come in your face.

He's going to get in your face and confront you with what's happening next, with what is

to come.

So the messenger would confront.

And this messenger would also be very inconvenient.

Of all places, he doesn't go to the cities.

He doesn't go to the populated regions of

Palestine.

Where does he go?

He goes out in the wilderness.

And it's interesting that this preparation is going to take place out in the wilderness.

And people are going to be drawn to him for that confrontation that's going to take

place.

And the messenger, of course, his work is to prepare.

The work itself will be preparatory.

You see this at the end of verse two.

I send my messenger before your face who will prepare your way before you.

So the work itself is preparatory.

But there's also the preparation that comes in the challenge that the

messenger issues.

At the end of verse three, this voice crying in the wilderness is going to say, announce,

prepare the way of the Lord.

Make his paths straight.

And what he's doing is he's calling upon his hearers to remove whatever obstacles are in the way

for the reception of their anointed one,

the Messiah.

Now, with all of that said about the prophecy as preparation,

there are a couple of lessons we can get from this prophecy.

And I want us to catch this.

If you go all the way back to the initial statement in

Exodus to the Lord, to Moses, I'm sending my messenger before you.

And then you couple that together with Malachi's prophecy, Isaiah's prophecy.

There's a span of a thousand years between those things.

And from the end of Malachi's prophecy, all right, now watch this.

From the end of Malachi's prophecy until John the Baptist shows up and says,

hey, prepare the way of the Lord.

You're talking about 400 years.

You know, I say that, and it just rolls so easily off the tongue,.

Doesn't it?

But do we get the sense of that?

Do we get a sense of how long that actually is?

400 years?

I mean, how old is our nation?

Our nation hasn't even been around 400 years, right?

So my point is this, the last word of this prophecy that there was a

messenger that was going to come to prepare the way of the Lord and to announce prepare the way of the Lord,

from the last of that prophetic announcement until the fulfillment of that prophecy,

four centuries pass.

Now, the point is that we

tend to be so impatient, don't we?

We tend to be so impatient.

We want to see and experience the fulfillment of all

God's promises now.

We want to see them now.

I was watching an interesting little lesson, video lesson,

John Piper did on the subject of providence the other night.

And he says, you know the thing that astounds me about providence

is God's providence in redemption.

How that he went in Genesis chapter 12,

after all the events of creation and the fall, all this time passes.

And finally in Genesis chapter 12, he reaches down and picks out this guy Abram

out of the pagan era of the Chaldeans.

And he says, I'm going to make you a great nation.

And all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed in you.

And he says, he does all of this through the Jews.

But it takes so long for that to happen.

Thousands of years from the time Abram is picked until Messiah comes.

He says, this is the strangest thing in our mind.

It just takes so long.

Why didn't God just do it?

Why didn't he just do it?

We don't have answers to all those kinds of questions, do we?

All we have is the record.

And the record is that God issues these kinds of prophetic announcements.

And it can take centuries to see the fulfillment of those

prophecies.

It can take a long time to experience the fulfillment of some of God's

promises.

One of the commentators that I read on this subject, his name

is English, he said this, he says, Patience in Christians is part of our response

to the sovereignty of God.

Think on this.

Only God knows the time, place, and circumstance for things to happen in our lives.

Often, because we know some of the context, we imagine that we know it all.

How often the moment must have seemed right to the prophet, but God knew better.

The best answer to some of our prayers is wait.

And sometimes, no.

Not because God doesn't love us, but because the time and circumstance are not right just

now.

In a go -getting, instant culture, we do well to cultivate the Christian quality of

patience over against the constant pressure for success, results,

and fulfillment.

Four centuries.

Four centuries go by, and finally, in verses 4 -8, the prophecy is fulfilled.

And notice how John fulfills this prophecy by being a unique, a

most unique messenger in verse 6.

Clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.

I'm telling you, one of the stories, and maybe

Lynn can bear this out, but one of the stories that captures the imaginations of these little kids in

children's church and these young Sunday school classes is the story of this

odd guy who's living out in the wilderness and he's wearing this coat

of camel's hair, and he eats these bugs.

He doesn't even have them chocolate -covered.

He eats these locusts, puts some honey on them to kind of mask the

bitterness of the flavor.

Little kids, they just eat this up.

How do I know that?

Because I remember that as a kid.

I remember that story.

I remember thinking, wow, what kind of a guy this must have been.

He was a unique messenger.

But what the thing about John, the weirdness of it all to us,

what it's communicating is his set -apartness, that he is God's

messenger.

No, he's not like every other guy running around the streets.

Something different about this guy, and the different thing about him is he's God's unique messenger.

And he fulfills this prophecy, the first part of verse 4 tells us, by being in the

wilderness, just as the prophecy said.

He'd be a voice crying in the wilderness, and he came baptizing in the wilderness and issuing his message.

And he came fulfilling this prophecy by being a voice, a voice.

There would be a voice of one crying in the wilderness, and sure enough, verse 7 tells us he preached,

saying, and he issues this pronouncement.

He's a voice.

He's a voice.

He came baptizing and preaching, preaching a baptism of

repentance for the remission of sins.

So he fulfills the prophecy by being a voice.

And he fulfills the prophecy of preparation by preparing.

By preparing.

By preparing the way.

Just as he used to do at the end of verse 2, he will prepare a way before you.

At the end of verse 3, his announcement would be to prepare the way of the Lord and to make his paths straight.

Now look, what was not needed here?

What was not needed?

And I want to take a minute on this because of what I often come

across as a pastor, where I'm told, you need this in your church.

You need this in your ministry.

And I've run across it through the four decades of pastoral ministry.

All these different ideas or things that I'm

pressured to, you need this.

What was needed?

What wasn't needed was a polished image.

Where image is everything.

What kind of image does this guy have?

This, you know, scraggly guy out in the wilderness wearing a camel's

hair coat and eating locusts and all this kind of stuff.

What kind of image is he portraying?

He doesn't have to have a polished image.

I'm not suggesting that those of us who are followers of Christ

shouldn't care for appearances and things like that, but that's not the important thing.

That's not the important thing.

Again, I mention that because I served in a ministry where that seemed to be all that was really important.

The image.

The image.

And there have been too many cases in the last few years that we've heard about and read about where

sins and so forth were covered up within the church

because the thing that was of great concern is the image.

The image.

No, what's needed is not a polished image.

What was needed is not a glitzy package.

You've got to package everything really glitzy.

You've got to have the latest stuff up on the screens and all this kind of stuff.

People have to come in and be wowed by the glitz and the glamour.

It's like, wow, you guys are really with it.

You're really up in the 21st century.

This looks like something right out of Hollywood or whatever.

Really?

Is that what's needed?

No.

What's also not needed is a popular appeal.

That's interesting because John ended up appealing to the masses, but he didn't set out that way.

And it certainly wouldn't be thought of as this guy being one who would appeal to the masses.

What's needed is not a popular appeal.

What's also not needed is a kind of tailored approach

to a particular demographic.

You know, like, okay, well, we've got over here in this area in our community, we've got this kind

of people.

And so we've got to tailor everything to that kind of people if we're going to be able to reach that kind of people.

No, John is just out there in the wilderness.

He's preaching this message of repentance, and he's calling people to

repent.

And it didn't matter who they were.

It didn't matter where they came from.

It didn't matter if they were Pharisees, scribes,

commonplace, ordinary Jews.

It didn't matter if they were lowlifes, highlifes.

It didn't matter.

Same approach.

Repent.

Repent and prepare the way.

You notice how he didn't focus on felt needs either?

Well, what do you think you need?

How do you feel?

What do you feel that you need?

No.

He said, look, this is what you need.

Whether you know it or not, this is what you need.

Whether you agree or not, this is what you need.

Whether you like it or not, this is what you need.

No, what wasn't needed is all that stuff.

What was needed is what is recorded for us in verse 4.

What was needed is a proclamation of the truth.

He came preaching.

He came heralding, proclaiming the truth.

What was needed is a confrontation with sin.

Preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

People need to repent.

And they still do.

That hasn't changed.

It's still needed.

But he also came and gave what was needed, which was an invitation for baptism.

Which is to say, this is an invitation for commitment

and change.

Commitment and change.

Now, admittedly, the baptism that is spoken of, of John's baptism, is different from when

Jesus said, go into all the world, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It's a different purpose of those baptisms, but the point is still the same.

The baptism marks a commitment and change.

The old is dead, a new has come, and I'm committed to it.

And that's what was needed.

He invites them to do that, to follow that need.

And then what also was needed, and still is, is an elevation of Jesus.

An elevation of Jesus.

So, in verses 7 and 8, what does John do?

He says, hey, look at me.

I'm what you need.

I'm all important.

Everything revolves around me.

Which reminds me of a TED talk I saw the other day of a

woman, and it was really sad.

It was really, really sad.

Because the woman who was speaking was, her story was that

she grew up, her parents were Jesus

people from the 70s.

Hippies, you know, from the 70s.

They got converted out in California and hate Ashbury or whatever in that period of time.

And became followers of Jesus.

But what happened was so many of the Jesus people in that time was they

lacked solid biblical discipleship.

And so her parents, without that grounding and becoming a part of a good

local church where they would be discipled and taught and trained and so forth.

Her father and her grandfather started their own

ministry called The Assembly.

And it was a Christian, she called it Evangelical

Christian Assembly.

But it had a bunch of weird little nuances to it.

And this woman was talking about how she called it a cult.

She called it a cult.

And she called it that because, you know, for a lot of reasons.

But one of the things she said that stuck out to me was that everything

revolved around the grandfather.

Her grandfather.

Everything.

If you had an idea that was contrary to the idea of grandfather, you

were put down.

You were silenced.

If you wanted to do something, you had to get the approval of the grandfather.

And this was everybody in the church, not just her.

Because the grandfather was central.

Grandfather was central.

So, I mean, it took her a long time to find out that

it really is not sin for a girl to have her ears pierced.

And it really, she talked about how she

was sent to get her hair cut to this one place.

And when she came back, her grandfather was horrified because her hair

was cut too short.

I mean, only men have their hair cut short.

Like, you know, how in the world could you?

And she was five years old.

So anyway, the point is that everything revolved around the grandfather.

What's John doing?

What's John saying?

Is he saying, hey, everything revolves around me.

You run everything through me.

No, no, no, no, no.

He's saying, look, I'm getting out of here.

Because there's somebody coming after me that I, as he says in verse 7, who is mightier than

I.

I'm not even worth, it's not even worthy of me to stoop down and

loose the straps on his sandals.

I'm just baptizing you with water.

That's a nothing.

He is going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

He, this one coming after me, Jesus, is a far superior person than

I.

And he will do a far superior work than mine.

Well, what is the effect of all this preparatory work of John?

Does it have any effect at all?

Yeah, it does.

In verse 5, it seems to.

The impact was huge.

All the land.

Everybody heard about John.

Everybody wants to go out and see John.

Everybody wants to go out and hear John.

And the impact of his preparatory work was

life -changing.

Because verse 5 says, all kinds of people from all the land of Judea and Jerusalem,

they went out to him and they were baptized in the Jordan River.

This was a life -changing thing for these people.

They were communicating, hey, look, something big has happened.

They're saying this.

I'm changing.

I'm going in a different direction.

I'm counting on the coming of the Messiah very quickly.

That he's already on the scene.

He's right behind this John guy.

And I am confessing my sins.

They confessed their sins.

So the impact wasn't just numerical, even though it was, and

it wasn't just life -changing for a few people.

It was life -changing for a lot of people.

The impact was a spiritual impact, confessing their sins.

So this preparatory work of this strange guy, out in the wilderness,

near the Jordan River, a couple thousand years ago, was really

profoundly important work of preparation for the Lamb,

to whom he was going to point.

So our Father in Heaven, we thank you for John preparing the way for Jesus.

It led to the conversion of so many when Jesus did come on the scene and begin to preach the gospel

of the kingdom.

Lord, we can also learn so much from his example and from his work,

preparatory work, to point to the Lamb of glory.

We thank you for it in Jesus' name.

Let's close this evening with number 183, and that hymn, The

Lamb of Glory.

Number 183.

Oh,

poor Kelly's got to do a sprint coming down that aisle.

Number 183.

Let's stand, shall we, as we sing?

From God's word that kings and priests and

prophets heard, there would be a

sacrifice, and blood would flow to

pay sin's price.

Precious Lamb of glory,

love's most wondrous story.

Of God's redemption of man, worship the

Lamb of glory.

God loved the world, while all the powers

of hell.

The one they saw was Christ, the

precious Lamb of glory.

Lord, I give you a good week, and that since this is the first day of the week, it's gotten off to a good start

for you.

So, Father in heaven, bless as we go from here to our homes and then to our various

arenas of responsibility and calling in life that you've given to us.

May we be faithful.

And, if you give us the opportunity, help us to prepare the way for the Lord

Jesus in the hearts of those around us.

We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Alright, we're dismissed.