WWUTT 2132 John the Baptist Prepares the Way (Mark 1:2-8)

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Mark cuts right to the chase, right at the beginning of his gospel. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the

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Son of God. So right from the start we know that Jesus is the Messiah and God's Son when we understand the text.

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This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the word of Christ that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

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Thank you, Becky, and greetings everyone. In our study of the gospel of Mark, we come back to, well,

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I guess the beginning. We haven't started our study of the gospel of Mark. Yesterday, I did an introduction to the book.

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Today, we'll actually get to our text. So let's start by reading verses 1 through 28.

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That's about half the first chapter, and it will give you a feel of the way that Mark writes here, the fast pace in which he presents these events.

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One of the things that I didn't do yesterday in our introduction to Mark, it was already full enough, so I didn't say a lot about the author.

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I mentioned a few things, but there are more details that are given to us about Mark in the New Testament, and I'll touch on some of those things here too.

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So let me begin with the text, verse 1 to verse 28 out of the

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Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the Lord. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the

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Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, behold, I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way.

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The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.

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John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

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And all the region of Judea was going out to him and all the people of Jerusalem. And they were being baptized by him in the

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Jordan River, confessing their sins. And John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and was eating locusts and wild honey.

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And he was preaching, saying, after me, one is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals.

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I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. That would happen that in those days,

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Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And immediately coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opening and the spirit like a dove descending upon him.

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And a voice came out of the heavens. You are my beloved son in you.

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I am well pleased. And immediately the spirit drove him to go out into the wilderness.

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And he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild beasts and the angels were ministering to him.

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Now after John had been delivered up into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

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Repent and believe the gospel. As he was going along by the sea of Galilee, he saw

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Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.

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And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee and John, his brother, who were also in the boat, mending the nets.

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And immediately he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and went away to follow him.

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And they went into Capernaum and immediately on the Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and began to teach.

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And they were astonished at his teaching for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes.

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And immediately there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit. And he cried out saying, what do we have to do with you,

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Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God.

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And Jesus rebuked him saying, be quiet and come out of him and throwing him into convulsions.

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The unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice and he came out of him and they were all amazed so that they were arguing among themselves saying, what is this?

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A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him. And immediately the news about him spread everywhere into all the surrounding district of Galilee.

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Did you notice how many times we saw the word immediately there? It was about a half dozen times. And like I said yesterday, we're going to see this word pop up over 40 times over the course of this gospel.

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It's one of Mark's favorite words, but he is a really fast paced writer, like one event after the next and summarizing those events too.

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What we just read here when we were in Matthew, it took a couple of chapters to cover that. And here we're just halfway into the first chapter of Mark and already he's covered so much ground.

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It was when I taught through the gospel of Mark that I came to appreciate Mark's writing style.

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There was one point that I didn't like it so much. I like the detail more in Matthew and Luke and John and Mark to me seemed like an inexperienced writer.

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At least that's the way that I interpreted it. He just isn't as crafted a writer as the other gospel writers, but that's just not true at all.

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It is definitely his own style, but it is a brilliant writing. Of course it is because the

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Holy Spirit is working through this young man. But Mark is a gifted writer in and of himself.

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He's writing the gospel the way that Peter preached it and the way that he quickly moves through events like this.

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As I said yesterday, his audience is primarily Gentiles. So he's presenting the same gospel that's been preached by the other apostles, but doing so in a way that is more to the point, capturing more of these events in a small space so that he can convince the

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Gentiles that Jesus is the son of God. That's the way that we start. That's the very first verse. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

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The declaration right at the beginning of Mark's gospel that Jesus is God. And this isn't too different than the way that Matthew began.

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Hang on. I got to flip back a few more pages here. But Matthew started this way. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

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So Mark jumps straight into he's the son of God. Matthew does begin with the book of the genealogy of Jesus.

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So he starts that with the beginning. It is the beginning of Jesus. The New Testament starts the way the

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Old Testament starts. In the beginning, God. And Matthew is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

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So you have in the beginning, God. But Mark cuts right to the chase. The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God.

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And then goes into the Isaiah prophecies about John the Baptist. A very brief section on John, Jesus being baptized,

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Jesus being tempted. You don't have the exchange between Jesus and Satan. Only that he was tempted by Satan and was successful in resisting him.

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Then coming out of the wilderness, calling his first disciples. Then you have the first miracles, even casting out demons.

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So you have the confession of demons that he is the holy one of God.

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You haven't had that confession made by any people yet here. Except for John the Baptist saying that he will baptize you with the

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Holy Spirit. But here you have an exalted confession that comes from a demonically possessed person recognizing exactly who it is that Jesus is.

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Now, I said that the skeptics love to say that Mark is the first gospel.

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Because they're trying to establish how there was this developed mythology concerning Jesus.

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Mark is a bit shorter. Matthew expounds on those things. You have more teachings from Jesus in Matthew.

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And then more teachings in Luke. And then John has even more claims that aren't included in the other gospels.

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So that's what a skeptic wants to try to say. They begin with a lot of presuppositions there, though.

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The skeptic already believes that there's this mythology that's developed about Jesus. So they're coming up with a historicity concerning the gospel books to fit with their already preconceived ideas.

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They don't know. You know, these ideas about Jesus were just evolved over time. But as I said, according to church history,

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Mark is not the first gospel. Matthew is. Matthew was written within a dozen years of Jesus ascending into heaven.

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And then next, I believe, was Luke. And then Mark. And then John. And Mark would have been written in the 60s, just shy of the destruction of the temple in AD 70.

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The reason why Mark goes through these things more rapidly than Matthew does is because Matthew's already covered this teaching.

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For Mark, who is going to be writing a concise gospel to the Gentiles that they can see quickly who

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Jesus is. He moves more rapidly through these events. We're still going to see teaching from Jesus in Mark's gospel, but it's just not as broad as what

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Matthew was covering. And Matthew had major discourses that he put together, that he compiled in his gospel so that you get this teaching from Jesus that the

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Hebrews may know that he was the fulfillment of all these things that had been foretold in the law and the prophets.

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And Mark's going to make those connections, too. We begin with prophecy, after all, Isaiah making the prophecy, one who is coming that is going to prepare your way, crying out in the wilderness.

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And that was talking about John the Baptist. So immediately, to use that word that Mark likes to use, he is throwing out prophecy and the fulfillment of that prophecy.

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So that's going to come up in this gospel as well. Mark just has a different objective in writing. And because these things have already been covered by Matthew and Luke, he doesn't find it necessary to have to spend as much time on teaching that is already known to the church.

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It's almost as if Mark is being more evangelical with his effort in writing this particular gospel, evangelical to the

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Gentiles anyway. Mark is an understudy of Peter.

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I said that yesterday. He's mentioned in 1 Peter 5 as being there with Peter.

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He's known most commonly in the New Testament as John Mark. He's first mentioned by that name in Acts chapter 12 as the son of a woman named

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Mary. And it appears as if John Mark is from a very wealthy family and John Mark becomes a disciple.

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Now, he's mentioned here in Mark's gospel. At least we believe that he talks about himself in this gospel, though he never mentions his own name.

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And it is when Jesus is arrested in the garden. There is a brief mention of a young man who runs away naked when

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Jesus is arrested. This is in Mark chapter 14 verses 51 and 52. And a young man was following him wearing nothing but a linen sheet over his naked body, and they seized him.

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But he pulled free of the linen sheet and escaped naked. And some historians, some

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Bible scholars believe Mark was actually talking about himself there. So he was a disciple that was following at a distance.

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He wasn't among the 12, of course, wasn't among the 11. But there were many other disciples than just the 11.

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You had those 12 disciples who were the closest to Jesus, and then there were many other disciples in addition to that.

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We know that from those other disciples was chosen the 12th that would replace Judas. That's talked about in Acts chapter 1.

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But Mark was a young man, and he was among the disciples who followed Jesus, who witnessed

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Jesus in his earthly ministry, an understudy of Peter. And the gospel of Mark is

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Mark writing down what it was essentially that Peter preached. Mark was also the cousin of Barnabas.

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He's mentioned as Barnabas's cousin in Colossians 4 .10. We know that at one point,

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Barnabas wanted to bring Mark along with him and Paul. And Paul did not want to take

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Mark along. And so there was a dispute that arose between Paul and Barnabas.

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Paul did not want to take Mark along because there was at one point where Mark had abandoned them.

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This is in Acts chapter 15, starting in verse 36. Now, after some days, Paul said to Barnabas, let us return and visit the brothers in every city in which we proclaim the word of the

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Lord and see how they are. And Barnabas wanted to take John called Mark along with them also.

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But Paul kept insisting that they should not take him along who had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not gone with them to the work.

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And there's no details given to us as to as to why Mark left them there. Was he afraid of something?

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Did he think that he needed to go home and settle accounts with something first? Whatever happened there, the details aren't given to us.

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We just know, verse 39, that there was a sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas that they separated from one another.

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Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. But Paul chose Silas and left, being committed by the brothers to the grace of the

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Lord. And he was traveling through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches. So you have these two brothers.

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They still love each other. They're still committed to the work of spreading the gospel. But this disagreement causes them to split.

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And Barnabas takes John Mark and continues in one direction. Paul joins with Silas, and they go another direction.

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And in this way, the gospel spreads to more places. I actually believe that Paul later on realized that he was wrong and should not have had this disagreement with Barnabas over this thing and had thought of John Mark poorly.

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He had thought of John Mark in a way that he should not have considered him. Because there's this statement that's made at the end of Paul's final letter.

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It is the last letter that he sends to Timothy in 2 Timothy, where he mentions John Mark there again.

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And he talks about John Mark this way. Let me start here in 2 Timothy 4, verse 9.

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Be diligent to come to me soon, for Demas, having loved this present age, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.

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Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me.

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Pick up Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for service.

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So somewhere along the line, Paul recognizes his error, welcomes

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Mark into his service, and even says of him in his last letter that he is useful to me for service.

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Demas, who was mentioned at the end of Colossians, he was mentioned, is it Ephesians is the other way, either

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Ephesians or Philemon. There's a couple of letters in which Demas is mentioned favorably, positively, as being part of the missionary brethren that Paul has taken along with him.

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But it's Demas that deserts him. And Paul is heartbroken over this because he goes to Thessalonica.

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He's in love with the world, having loved this present age, Paul says. It's not just that Demas had other matters to attend to.

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He abandoned the ministry and abandoned Paul in his darkest hour. But here, Paul says of John Mark that he is useful to me for service.

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So I think that Paul came around on that eventually. Mark is such an important figure in the

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New Testament. And I don't think we ever have him saying any dialogue, do we? I don't believe so, unless there's a word or two that he mentions earlier in Acts.

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Of course, he writes this gospel, but we don't hear any dialogue from him. Yet his name is so prominently spoken of in the

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New Testament, how influential this young man was being one of the disciples of Peter.

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That surely must have been a treat in and of itself. So what we're reading here, as I said, is the gospel, the way that Peter preached it.

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Peter may have been rather rapid fire in the way that he presented the gospel in this way that Mark writes it.

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We have this action story here, jumping from one event to the next. And I hope you will enjoy this study as we continue.

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Let's cover a few more verses here as we wrap up. So Mark 1, verse 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, as we read, as it is written in Isaiah, the prophet, behold,

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I send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the

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Lord, make his paths straight. John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

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And all the region of Judea was going out to him and all the people of Jerusalem, and they were being baptized by him in the

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Jordan River, confessing their sins. You know how whenever you watch an action movie or a big blockbuster film, sometimes things are really exaggerated, right?

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There are some directors that love their huge explosions, and it's completely unnecessary, but we're just going to make this thing really big, be big or go home.

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We want to fill these seats with people who want to come and watch an action adventure, and we're going to blow their minds with everything we're going to be throwing at this screen.

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So Mark kind of exaggerates things a little bit as well. Notice that statement that's read there in verse 5, all the region of Judea was going out to him and all the people of Jerusalem.

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Yeah, there's a little hyperbole there, because was it every single person in Judea?

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No, it was not. Was it every single person in Jerusalem? No, it wasn't.

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And I've had this conversation before, especially with dispensationalists who will take certain things in scripture to be absolutely literally.

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And it's that passage that I'll come back to them and say, are you sure you want to take that as literal as you're taking it?

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And literal meaning that it's this number. It's exact because that's what the Bible says.

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Well, I mean, scripture can exaggerate things. It doesn't mean that scripture is lying in any way.

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It's a writing device, just like using a metaphor. Jesus is not literally a shepherd, nor did he ever have that occupation.

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Nonetheless, he refers to himself as the good shepherd. He's not ever herded sheep, but he is the good shepherd in the sense that we are his sheep.

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And he is the one who leads and guides and disciplines us. He is the one who lays his life down for the sheep, as Jesus was illustrating there in John chapter 10.

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So there are many literary devices that are used, and we come to understand the meaning by looking at the context.

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And here Mark is using a literary device of hyperbole. He's being hyperbolic.

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He's exaggerating a little bit, but it is still to say that a large number of people in Judea and a large number of people in Jerusalem came out to John to be baptized.

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It was not every single person, but John the Baptist name was surely on the lips of every person like they knew who he was, because what he was doing out in the wilderness and the attention this was calling to himself had certainly been known to all.

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Verse six, John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and was eating locusts and wild honey.

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And he was preaching saying after me, one is coming who is mightier than I. So here he is fulfilling what was spoken about in the prophets.

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He is preparing the way of the Lord, the one who was going to come after him. One is coming who is mightier than I and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals like you guys are all coming out to me.

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I have your attention. This is the one that you need to be paying attention to. And this is why I'm here to point to him so that you know the son of God who is coming.

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I baptize you with water, John says, but he will baptize you with the

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Holy Spirit. And John is preparing the people for this. The baptism that he is doing is cleansing the people.

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It is washing them. It is making them ready for the Lord who is to come.

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Jesus is holy. He's going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit. He is the

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Lord. Make ready the way of the Lord. And so nobody could just go into the king's presence having just jumped out of the field or having just been tending their sheep or they're all filthy and dirty.

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They had to wash before they stood in the presence of the king. And so this is what John the Baptist is doing.

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He is cleansing the people and making them ready for the son of God who is coming.

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And we're going to pick up there tomorrow with the baptism of Jesus in verse nine.

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Let's finish here with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read here as we jump into the beginning of the gospel of Mark.

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A fast -paced book. Maybe it'll be fast -paced for us as well as we consider these events and go through what

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Mark has to communicate about Jesus Christ, knowing that he is the son of God who was promised in the prophets who has come to give his life as a ransom for many.

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May we put our trust in Jesus. Forgive us our sins that we may be made righteous and holy before you.

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Looking to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith. It's in his name that we pray.

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Amen. Pastor Gabe keeps a regular blog sharing personal thoughts, alerting readers to false teachers, and offering commentary on the church and social issues.

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You can find a link to the blog through our website, www .utt .com. Thank you for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue our study in God's Word when we understand the text.