Mark 1:1-8

John the Baptist Prepares the Way
1The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2It is written in Isaiah the prophet:
"I will send my messenger ahead of you,
who will prepare your way"—
3"a voice of one calling in the desert,
'Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.' " 4And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River. 6John wore clothing made of camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. 7And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."


BACKGROUND READING:
Malachi 3:1-5
Isaiah 40:1-11


Dig Deeper
Israel believed that they had been in exile for over five hundred years. Even though they had returned from their Babylonian exile hundreds of years before, they felt that the exile wasn't truly over because God had not returned his presence to Jerusalem and the Temple. They had long awaited the Messiah to come and set things right. They believed that the Messiah would come and defeat Israel's biggest enemy, which at the time was Rome. It would be this long-awaited Messiah that would restore the Temple and usher in the age to come, which was God's Kingdom on earth, This was when the righteous would be resurrected, sin would be done away with, and God would rule on earth with his people. Based on the passages that Mark quotes here (see the background reading) and others, the Jews were expecting a forerunner to the Messiah; they thought that it might very well be Elijah, himself, or at least someone that came in the spirit and power of Elijah.

Now, Mark tells us that out of nowhere, John the baptizer bursts onto the scene like a loud voice that wakes you out of a sound sleep. They were expecting a Messiah that would lead them in a glorious revolt over the Romans, not a prophet telling them to repent. They were expecting freedom, but had no clue of what that freedom would actually look like and what it would require of them. They were expecting an Exodus story but not one like this.

Every Jew of the time would have been very familiar with the Exodus story. It was the national story that identified them as YHWH's (the Hebrew name of God) people. Now John was telling them that they were going to be actors in a play that would recreate the Exodus. They were to come through the water to be free from their Egypt, except their Egypt was the world of sin that they would leave behind. They were looking for freedom in the wrong direction. They were waiting for a violent military rebellion when what they really needed was to turn around and go in the right way spiritually, which is what repentance really is. They needed to change the way they thought and lived, radically.

John wore the traditional clothes of an Old Testament prophet, and now he was telling them to straighten up, someone far greater than him was about to burst onto the scene. It doesn't appear that even John knew for sure who that someone would be, or what he would be. He did know, however, that what he was doing with the water, symbolizing the willingness of people to turn their lives in another direction, the one to come would do permanently with the power of the Holy Spirit. Israel was waiting for a repeat of the Exodus story, when YHWH would come and free them from their enemies. He would return and live with them just as his presence had dwelt with them in the Tabernacle after the first Exodus.

What is clear is that the people of Israel saw John as a prophet like those in the Old Testament who had tried to tell the people that God was more concerned with their heart than with their ritual sacrifices. John quickly became very popular with the people, as they had been waiting for a prophet like him for a long time.

They were not ready, and maybe John wasn't either, for what they got. Mark is trying to surprise his readers here into seeing the shock that God was doing a new thing, something no one expected. This was like an alarm clock going off in the middle of the night that no one expected.

Devotional Thought
Israel was, in many ways, asleep. John came to wake them up to this new thing that God was about to do. What areas of your life are you asleep in? Where are the areas that God wants to work in your life, but hasn't because you're just not aware of what he wants to do? In what areas do you need to wake up so that God's will can be done in your community, your church, your life? What are the areas in your life in which you need to repent so that God can do something new in your life?