Responding to God’s Silence & Understanding Our Place in the Story of Redemption
Mark 1:6-7
Mark 1:6-7
How is everyone? Prayer Requests? Praise Reports?
Let’s Pray…
Okay, please turn in your bibles to Mark Chapter 1. Tonight we are going to start back where we left off last week. If you remember, we were talking about the opening verses of the Gospel of Mark about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Two main points that we wanted to get at last week were the fact that the Jewish people had been waiting for 400 years to hear from God, and then finally a man appeared in the wilderness fulfilling the Old Testament promise.
Remember the text that said:
We also talked about the people who came out to be baptized and how they CONFESSED their sins to one another. And then I showed you in 1 John 1:8-9; Proverbs 28:13; and James 5:16 the reasons that confessing our sins is still something that needs to continue in our family life as believers today.
Let’s just camp in this part of the review for a couple of minutes and dream Gospel dreams.
Imagine the effects that we as the Church in the Grass could have for this neighborhood.
And just think the effects that we as the Christ followers from all the churches in this area could have for this city and for this county if we could stop being weighed down – if we could stop being shackled tight to the condemnation, guilt and shame of un-confessed sin.
If you haven’t already done it; if you are not developing confession and repentance as a part of your walk with God, then I am calling you to it again, confess your sins to one another.
Find a tight-lipped Christian brother or sister, who will listen and who will then speak the Gospel back into your life and help you, through Christ, to find freedom and escape the bondage of that sin, or those sins, that keep turning your heart away from God, Amen?
AND, start forming relationships where YOU can be the one who speaks Gospel into other’s lives as they come to you in confession.
Now we’re not going to be able to do this. We’re not going to be comfortable confessing to others and other people are not going to be comfortable confessing to us unless we start to make some Gospel-powered changes in our lives.
That means you and I are going to have to break down some walls and let people into our lives, you and I are going to have to build trust. You and I are going to have to become more transparent and less guarded.
You and I are going to have to depend on Christ for our protection and then walk boldly in our mission of reconciliation.
Be the person, that others can turn to.
Remember what I said last week. Mark’s account of the life of Jesus – his Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God – is a book where we see over and over – faith in action. For me to tell you some truths about Jesus and some facts about faith without calling you to live it out, to apply it to your life, is to pastor you poorly.
Confession is a two way street. It is part of living as the Church. It is part of BEING the Church in all the areas of our life instead of just going to A church, for A service, with A message.
God didn’t give us the Church for information downloads. He gave us the church as a place to be encouraged, and equipped in order to transform the world.
Don’t hinder the Gospel mission by neglecting the call to confession and repentance.
It is more important than I can tell you without yelling at you. It is a serious command of Scripture, and like I said last week. Confessing your sins may seem terrifying, but take it from me, it is worth it. Not only worth it for you, not only beneficial for you – beneficial for the people God has put YOU on earth to reach.
Okay, are there any questions about last week’s message? If you don’t want to ask a question in this format, I understand that. You can also come see me after the service or email me at church in the grass at gmail.com, or give me a call. Alright?
Let’s get into tonight’s passage.
I know I said I was going to talk about baptism tonight, but that is being pushed back for another week as I try to shorten my messages.
To start, please read Mark1:6-7:
Let’s pray…
Let’s look at the text again and we’ll unpack it as we go.
This is one of those verses in the Scripture where you will get as many theories as to the meaning as books that you read about it. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this text, except to say that a lot of very smart people have read a lot into this verse, some say that this hearkened back to the odd ways in which many Old Testament prophets dressed and acted. That could be true. I’m not discounting that.
Others have said, this is merely a historical point of interest. That John lived in a rocky, arid place and he wore tough material because lighter weight, softer material would have worn out too quickly.
And they say he ate the locusts and wild honey because there weren’t a lot of other options. It could be true that this is simply a historical tidbit of trivia.
Here’s the point that I want to make from the vantage what the Bible says in its time and place context.
The people were so hungry for a new encounter with the living God of the universe, that they were willing to leave the comforts of the city, listen to, and follow the instructions of some strange guy way out in the sticks.
Now, bringing that forward into your context and mine I want to say this. We all have dry seasons in our faith what old theologians called dark nights of the soul when God seems distant. Where we don’t feel the closeness that we once did. Just like the Nation of Israel felt when John appeared on the scene.
At times, I believe that is because God has simply withdrawn for a time of testing. We should know that our faith is more than a response to outside stimuli.
What I mean is, if we only feel close to God when we are getting our worship on, or when God is filling our life with worldly blessings, that is a problem.
If we have trouble seeing God in the midst of trials - If we turn back to the old, worldly solutions when problems arise in our relationships, or health, or finances, or reoccurring sin, then that is a place where God is showing us a need for surrender and it is an area where we are being sanctified.
But aside from that, or in addition to those times where God is cutting idols away from our hearts, there are other times when we will be in prayer and going to church and doing service for the Kingdom and we will still feel distant, like God is not there.
In that case, I would urge you to keep seeking Him. Be like the faithful Israelites that we see in Mark 1, keep anticipating the upcoming, renewed fellowship with God.
And, in that time of silence - In that time of anticipation - go to any length to find Him. By this I mean, take on a time of fasting, a renewed season of constantly and consistently getting on your face before the Lord in prayer, a time of searching the Scriptures, a season of remembering the blessings of God in your life - and again, a time confessing and repenting of sin. Don’t forget Proverbs 8:17, in which God tells us:
So many times when people talk to me about these dry seasons and I ask what they are doing, there’s just silence, as if the concept of pursuing God was not an option.
In a similar season as this, King David wrote (READ AND UNPACK AS YOU GO),
Don’t let these seasons of dryness – when they come or if you are in one now – don’t let the silence overtake you. Don’t let the silence hinder your pursuit of God.
Moving on. Amen? Seek diligently, without ceasing until you find Him.
Moving on To Mark 1:7
Like we said last week, the Gospel of Mark is all about Jesus, not about us. We are blessed to be a part of the story about Jesus. We are blessed to be a part of the history encompassing, eternally significant story about the Glory of God.
But we can’t ever forget that we are a small part, a piece in the puzzle, we are not the whole picture.
John understood this too. If you read the other Gospels
You will see that some people were really enamored with John the Baptist. He could draw a crowd, he seemed to say that big changes were coming, and the people wanted that message, the people had been waiting their whole lives for that message.
So, John could have leveraged his popularity for his own ends, but he said, No, I am here to point to Jesus. I pray that we will be the same way in our lives.
God has gifted you with talents and abilities, whether those be with music or photography, or with culinary giftings, or administrative abilities, or with incredible intellectual minds a passion to help children and other people in need.
And many times the world will say, leverage what you have. Use your talent and abilities and giftings to “make it” in this world – to make much of yourself.
Some worldly groups will say use some of that to help others, and that is right to a point if helping others includes pointing them to the gospel.
But we need to push past the world and past our self-interest and past our hunger for the applause of men and we need to do everything we do unto the Lord.
That is, do everything for Him while all the time acknowledging that we are only able to do what we do because of Him. As Larry Crabb says, we are instruments in the Redeemers hands.
And I’m not saying put on false humility and say, “Oh. No it’s nothing….”
No take the compliment and use it for a pointer to Christ. John the Baptist said it best in the Gospel of John 3:30:
In fact, say that one with me. After “Jesus Wept” this has to be one of the easiest verses to memorize.
Again:
Now, don’t just remember it, preach it to yourself when you want everything to point to you and how awesome you are or how deserving of recognition you are.
Believe me, when I get up and preach, this is something I have to tell myself all the time.
When I want to turn back to sins of the flesh, I have to remember, “No - He must increase, but I must decrease.”
Remember that key verse in Mark 8:34. which says the same idea. We are going to go back to this a lot in this series:
We must deny ourselves, we must kill the sin by the power of the Spirit, we must deny the old excuses of:
“That’s just the way I am.” Or,
“That’s not possible for me because of _______.”
Fill in your own blank and then deny that excuse.
The power that we are called to live by is completely flipped from the world’s idea of power.
The power of Christ, the power to change our families and our neighborhoods and our city and our own lives – that POWER can only be tapped into by a willing submission to our Lord.
Think back to the Gospel dreaming that I called you to earlier. It will always remain a dream if we don’t put our faith in action. I must call us to that until Jesus returns.
Let’s pray…
