Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 2 Study # 6
October 9, 2018
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
(018)
1901 ASV
4 John came, who baptized in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins.
5 And there went out unto him all the country of Judaea, and all they of Jerusalem; and they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
6 And John was clothed with camel's hair, and [
had] a leathern girdle about his loins, and did eat locusts and wild honey.
7 And he preached, saying, There cometh after me he that is mightier than I, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.
8 I baptized you in water; but he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit.
- I. The Baptizing of John "In The Wilderness".
- A. The prophecy of Isaiah 40:3 sets the stage for Mark's use in our text. Mark wanted to note the number of issues in the prophecies that are directly met in the fulfillment.
- B. "In the wilderness" follows Mark's desire: the prophecy mentions the arrival of the "voice" as related to "the wilderness" and John's appearance is tied to "the wilderness".
- C. Why "in the wilderness"?
- 1. The task of the prophesied "voice"/"messenger" was declared to be a "preparation" of the "road" of the "Lord". The description of the "preparation" is said to be "make straight in the desert a highway for our God". The key word here is "straight". It is used in 26 texts of the Old Testament, but its meaning is made clear by Isaiah: "straight" as opposed to "crooked" in both Isaiah 40:4 and Isaiah 45:2.
- 2. The magnitude of the "problem" that called for the preparation of the road of the Lord is presented by "the wilderness". The wilderness posed multiple obstructions to a prepared road. Isaiah 40:4 lists the problem areas: "valleys", "mountains and hills", "crooked paths", and "rough places". The instructions also clarify "straight"; it means "level", "not crooked", and "having no rough places".
- 3. That the "voice" was focused upon the "wilderness" with all of its "problems" means that the "voice" was to make sure that the task was clear: this is no small task, nor will it be easily pursued or accomplished.
- 4. Thus, the burden of both "prophecy" and "fulfillment" was to make it very clear that the "summons" to "prepare the road of the Lord" was a summons to extreme and extended diligence on the part of the "road crew". This has potent implications for The Beginning of The Gospel of Jesus Christ: the chiefest being that "baptism in the wilderness" was an overt method of establishing, for those who were "being baptized", that they were, by embracing the message, beginning an entirely new "pursuit in life" as well as an entirely new "methodology". This was not an offer to have a long, healthy, pleasant, carnal life in this world with a ticket to heaven in one's back pocket. Paul told Titus that his Gospel of Grace "teaches" that one is to "deny ungodliness and worldly lusts" so that we may "live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" while "looking for that blessed hope" that is defined as "the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:11-13).
- 5. The hermeneutical difference between "spiritualizing" the words of the Scriptures and the use of physical realities to point to relational realities. "Spiritualizing" declares the words to have no actual, physical implications or applications; using the physical realm to set up our grasp of the non-physical realms of soul and spirit does not deny the actualization of the physical world; it simply uses those more easily understood issues to open a door upon the understanding of the parallel universe of the relational world. Isaiah referenced the building of a physical highway in more than one place and intended his readers to assume its eventual physical presence in the land. But, he also referenced the physical world as an opening into the relational world in more places than have been counted.
- II. The Preaching of a Baptism.
- A. John, himself, in Mark's summary of his ministry/message (Mark 1:4-8), focused upon his action of baptizing his "followers" with water.
- B. In this focus, John declared the weakness of this action (note particularly 1:8). However, the weakness was in the action, not the message.
- C. Mark's point in calling John a fulfillment of the Isaiah/Malachi prophecies is that John was doing all that was humanly possible by a person "filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15 and 1:41) to "prepare the road of the Lord". [The maximum that any man can do is to "preach" in the power of the Holy Spirit and "act" in a "ministry function way" that maximizes the impact of that "preaching". That this is fundamental truth is revealed by John's predecessor in ministry, Isaiah, who was pointedly told that his "preaching" would result in destruction, not in construction, and that is how it worked out as Isaiah 53:1 clearly points out.]
- D. This "preaching" was of "a baptism".
- 1. The word "baptism" is in the accusative case: it is the direct object of the action of the verb, "preaching".
- 2. This "preaching" was an importunate appeal to John's audience to seek God's forgiveness for their many and destructive sins. As a "preaching of a baptism", it was a summons to do all that one can to obtain God's forgiveness.
- a. This "all that one can do" had two elements: "faith" in the message, and an expression of an "intentionality" to embrace that message to its greatest possible degree.
- 1) It is one thing to be convinced in the heart that a "message" is true.
- 2) It is a different, but associated, thing to "take action" as a consequence of that conviction.
- 3) But the two work together to the same end: God's insistence upon being "believed" does not settle for a "faith" that produces no positive ancillary response. A person to whom the promise of forgiveness is extended, but who refuses, for any reason, to "yield" to its "insistence" that one "embrace" the newly granted unity with God by following the summons of the "extender" can not claim that his/her "faith" in the message is the kind of "faith" upon which God insists.
- 4) In John's case, he "summoned" his audience "into the water" so as to do all that he could to confirm in them the trustworthiness of God's gracious offer to forgive them on the basis of "repentance". Clearly, his admission that his "baptism with water" was "weak" (Mark 1:8) is significant, but it was a part of his "ministry methodology" as one commissioned to call for the building of the Lord's highway in the heart/mind of man.
- b. This "preaching" of a "baptism" is more fully explained by the description of the response of the people: they believed the what of John's declaration as to the way to be forgiven, and they responded to his summons to baptism by not only entering into the Jordan, but also by attending that baptism with "the confession of their sins" (1:5).
- 1. This indicates both the sincerity of a desire to be forgiven and a confidence in the offer of forgiveness upon repentance.
- 2. This is not a contradiction of "grace", but an unfolding of how grace and faith cooperate together.
- III. The Message of the Baptism.
- A. Mark's summary words are "of repentance unto forgiveness of sins".
- B. Mark's declaration of John's "message" is this: Repent and God will forgive you.