“My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes – many times – my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens – and it happens every day in some measure – I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.” – John Piper
Prayer
The Way to Life Changing Faith
Mark 1:1-3
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way,
3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
Life Changing Faith in Jesus
That’s what we’re here for
2 Peter 3:9
[9] The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
In his book about the Gospel of Mark, Tim Keller relates this story
“I came across an article in a magazine entitled “The Book that Understands Me,” by Emile Cailliet, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary.” In his college days in France, Cailliet had been an agnostic. He graduated from university without having ever actually seen a Bible. Then he served in the Army in World War 1. “The inadequacy of my views on the human situation overwhelmed me,” he wrote. “What Use…the philosophic banter of the seminar, when your own buddy—at the time speaking to you of his mother—dies standing in front of you, a bullet in his chest?”
The bullet actually got Cailliet as well, and he began recuperating during a long stay in a hospital. Reading literature and philosophy, he began strangely longing—“I must say it, however strange it may sound— for a book that would understand me.” Since he knew of no such book, he decided to prepare one for himself. He read widely, and whenever he found a brief passage that particularly struck him and “spoke to my condition,” he would carefully copy it down in a leather-bound pocket-sized volume. As time went on and the number of quotations grew, he eagerly anticipated sitting down and reading it from cover to cover. He expected that “it would lead me as it were from fear and anguish, through a variety of intervening stages, to supreme utterances of release and jubilation.”
One day he went out to sit under a tree in his garden to read his precious anthology. As he did so, a growing disappointment came over him. Each quote reminded him of the circumstances in which he had chosen it, but things had changed. “Then I knew that the whole undertaking would not work, simply because it was of my own making.”
Almost at that very moment, his wife appeared after a walk with their child in a baby carriage. She had with her a Bible in French that she had received from a minister she had met on her walk. Cailliet took it and opened it to the Gospels. He continued to read deep into the night. The realization dawned on him: “Lo and behold, as I looked through the Gospels the One who spoke and acted in them became alive to me….This is the book that would understand me.”
We are beginning a new series on the Gospel of Mark
“The way to Life Changing Faith”
If we don’t know the way to where we are going, then it’s difficult, right? We will get lost? Or be lost.
Let’s read our passage
Mark 1:1-13
[1] The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
[2] As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way,
[3] the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’”
[4] John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. [5] And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. [6] Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. [7] And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. [8] I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
[9] In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. [10] And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. [11] And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
[12] The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. [13] And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.
———
A bit of background here:
Author is Mark – John Mark from Acts
These are likely the first hand accounts of Peter
There are 4 Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
With Matthew, Mark and Luke being the synoptic gospels
Synoptic means – “see – together”
Mark is the shortest of the Gospels but not lacking in story.
Mark has more stories of what Jesus did than he does of Jesus’ sermons.
Jesus’ ministry starts up north of Jerusalem in Galilee
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Mark opens with clarity in verse 1
This is the Gospel – Good News
Jesus is the Son of God. Not just a man sent from God to rescue, but God himself.
Then he tells us 3 events that the reader or listener needs to understand to appreciate what Jesus is doing in His ministry. Hint: He is showing us the way to Life Changing Faith and if we don’t know the way we will get lost.
- John the Baptist (pointing to the way)
Mark 1:4-5
[4] John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. [5] And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
John baptized people when they gave evidence of repentance. “A baptism of repentance” means a baptism characterized by repentance. The Jews John baptized not only changed their minds, but they also changed their behavior. The unusual thing about John’s baptism was that in his day Gentiles baptized themselves when they converted to Judaism, and the Jews baptized themselves for ritual cleansing.
- The Baptism of Jesus (an example of the way)
Mark 1:9-11
[9] In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. [10] And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. [11] And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Jesus underwent John’s baptism to identify with man and man’s sin. He did not do so because He needed to repent. He did not. He also submitted to baptism because by doing so He identified with the particular group of people that John was baptizing, namely, the Israelites. Jesus associated His baptism with His death (10:38; Luke 12:50).
Jesus’ baptism didn’t change who he was, it didn’t make him God. He was already God in the flesh, it shows he has come to be the Suffering Servant, the Savior, the Messiah.
- Jesus’ temptation (showing us the way when it’s hard)
Mark 1:12-13
[12] The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. [13] And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.
The Greek word for temptation means to put someone or something through a trial to demonstrate its character.
So you all understand that temptation is not sin, right?
We might feel something, but we don’t have to act upon it.
We’re all tempted.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5
[3] For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. [4] For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. [5] We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,
“Jesus’ struggle with Satan is a clash between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of evil. In the temptation, then, Jesus Son of God shows what his ministry will be about: the binding of Satan and the beginning of the age of salvation”
God created us to have fellowship with us, but Satan is out to destroy that. Even your thoughts and perceptions on what a relationship with God should look like.
Tim Keller says it this way. – “God created us to give out joy..and if you glorify me (God) , if you center your entire life on me, if you find me beautiful for who I am in myself (not what I can answer or give to you) then you will step into the relationship which you were made for. You are made not just to believe in me or to be spiritual in some general way, not just to pray and get a bit of inspiration when things are tough. You are made to center everything in your life on me, to think of everything in terms of your relationship with me. To serve me unconditionally. That’s where you will find your joy.”
Look at this story of temptation of Jesus (longer version in Matthew if you want to read it for yourself). Let’s go back a second to creation in Genesis.
God creates….”the Spirit of God hovers above the waters” land and animals and man are created and what happens right after?
Satan tempts Adam
Let’s look here….
The Spirit hovers over the baptismal waters of Jesus….then what happens? Satan comes and tempts Jesus
Mark treats Satan as real…not an image of evil, but real
Mark reminds them and us that Satan tempted in the Garden and won
Mark reminds them and us that Satan tempted in the wilderness and lost
Temptation isn’t impersonal.
Keller – “In the Garden Adam was told to obey Me about the tree, do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, or you will die.
Why? Because He said so.
We want to know and Adam and Eve wanted to know why but didn’t fully trust God even though he had been good to them. It’s about trusting God. You see we want to know why on everything and we’re limited, we can’t know everything and there are times to trust.
God then tells Jesus “obey me about the tree…on this time the tree is the cross..and “you will die”
And Jesus did obey. And He made a way for us.(sweat drops of blood)
So what do we do? We trust…we follow the Way!
John 14:6
[6] Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Remember, you aren’t alone. God knows and he’s working in you with the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that drew you to God, is the same one helping you, calling you, praying for you…inside of you.
Jesus is perfect to cover our sins, but we are to follow His lead in obedience or we will get lost along the way. This is how we change, this is how we make sense of all of this. We cannot forget all of the wrongs we’ve done, nor what’s been done to us, but we can learn not to dwell on those. We can learn to “follow the way”. For Life Changing Faith
“My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes – many times – my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens – and it happens every day in some measure – I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth.” – John Piper
