“How Sweet the Name: Christ our King” | Mark 1:1-20
February 28, 2016 | Brian Hedges
Good morning. So, for the last several weeks we’ve been talking about the threefold office of Christ as part of our larger series on the names of Jesus. And a couple of weeks ago we talked about Christ as our Prophet, last week Christ as our Priest, and today we’re going to talk about the third of these offices—and perhaps the most misunderstood—which is Christ our King.
To ground our thinking this morning, I want us to go to the gospel of Mark, and we’re going to be in the first chapter. So Mark chapter one, and I’m going to read verses one through 20 to us. You can read along in your Bible or follow on the screen.
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,
“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,
who will prepare your way,
the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’ ”
John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 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. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. 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. I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 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. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 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.
Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” 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 in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. (Mark 1:1-20)
This is the word of the Lord.
So, we’re talking about Jesus as the king, and I want us to look at three things that we see in this passage from the gospel of Mark. I want us to look at:
The Promise of the King
The Arrival of the King
The Call of the King
I. The Promise of the King
We’re all familiar with the importance of symbolism and how a symbol or an image or a statement can evoke for us a whole world of memory. We’re meaning-makers as people, and so we make symbols and we do things and say things, and when we do we’re trying to make sense of our history and of our hopes and of our dreams, and so on.
We’re familiar with that. So you know, for example, if you hear the phrase “Stars and Stripes”, or if you see the American flag or the Statue of Liberty or fireworks on the Fourth of July, or you hear the phrase, “Liberty and justice for all,” that evokes for an American citizen the memory of our nation’s independence. It evokes all of our American hopes and dreams—there’s a whole world that lies behind those symbols. Symbols of Stars and Stripes, or the symbol of the Statue of Liberty.
In the same way, when we come to Scripture, there’s a whole symbolic world that sometimes is lying right there on the surface of the text, but sometimes we don’t recognize that. That’s important to note when we read the gospel of Mark and we see these opening stanzas that are setting the context for the ministry of Jesus.
I just want you to note several of these things that kind of help us understand what’s going on when Jesus arrives on the scene, when Jesus arrives as the king—the context in which he came. Mark goes to great pains to show us the kinds of memories and aspirations and promises and hopes that are in the hearts of God’s people.
(1) The place: wilderness (vv. 3-4, 12-13)
I just want you to notice here, first of all, the place, which was the wilderness. You might have noticed as we read this that Mark speaks of the wilderness four times: verses 3 and 4 and then verses 12 and 13. The wilderness is an important image, an important symbol, for the people of God in Scripture.
The wilderness was the place of beginning. That was where Israel as a nation was first constituted as the people of God. You remember that when Moses came to Pharaoh with the command from God, the command was, “Let my people go that they may serve me in the wilderness—may serve me, worship me—in the wilderness.” It was there in the wilderness where God gave them his law and he made them his people, and they were to be a people, a kingdom, of priests to God.
The wilderness was also a place of testing. It’s where Israel’s obedience and faithfulness to God were tested. We see this in Deuteronomy chapter eight, where Moses says, “Remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.” It was a place of testing where Israel, by and large, failed the test.
It was also a place of renewal. You see this especially in the prophets. So for example, in the book of Hosea, it was to the wilderness that God allures his wayward bride, Israel, and seeks to win her back to himself. In a moment we’re going to see there are similar kinds of symbolism in the prophet Isaiah.
The wilderness was also a place of triumph. It was a place of conquest and victory. In one scholar’s words, “It was the staging-ground for Yahweh’s future victory over evil.” Many Jews of the first century believed that the final holy war would be fought in the wilderness, and the Messiah was thought to appear in the wilderness.(David E. Garland, Mark: The NIV Application Commentary, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996, p. 52-53)
James Edwards in his commentary summarizes it well. He says, “The wilderness was the place of repentance, the place of God’s grace, the place where God brings deliverance to his people.” (James Edwards, The Gospel According to Mark, Pillar New Testament Commentary, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, p. 29)
So it’s significant that John shows up in the wilderness, and then Jesus is driven out into the wilderness. This is the place—that’s symbolic, that’s evoking for God’s people these hopes of a kingdom.
(2) The prophet: John the Baptist (vv. 4-8)
And then you have the prophet John the Baptist, who shows up on the scene. He’s a strange guy, right? I mean, he’s wearing camel hair, and he’s eating locusts and wild honey. Why is he doing that? It’s very clear; he’s a new Elijah, and so he’s wearing the garb of Elijah, he’s eating the ascetic diet of a prophet, and he’s coming in the wilderness with this message.
What is his message? His message is a message of repentance. He’s even using the words from Isaiah chapter 40. He’s the one who’s preparing the way for the Lord; he’s the one who’s inviting the people of God to come out. What is he asking them to do? He’s asking them to repent. He’s calling them to repent and to be baptized.
That was a significant thing. There were, of course, washings—all kinds of ceremonial washings—that the Jews observed. But baptism was something that was for Gentiles. It was for Gentiles who were going to leave paganism and join the people of God.
But John shows up on the scene, and he’s essentially saying, “All of you need to be baptized! The whole thing’s starting over again. You’re not the people of God anymore. You need to be cleansed, you need to confess your sin; there needs to be a new start.” He’s doing this in the wilderness outside of Jerusalem in a very anti-institutional kind of way, and his message is one of repentance, and then he’s looking forward to someone who’s going to come.
He says, verses 7 and 8, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” So he’s looking forward to the Messiah who’s going to come in the power of the Spirit and do this new work.
(3) The prophecy: Isaiah’s new exodus (vv. 1-3)
And then, the way Mark actually begins all of this—he tells us the setting of the wilderness, and he tells us about John the Baptist—but he begins all this with a quotation from the book of Isaiah. I want to read verses 1 through 3, and then I want you to just see for a minute what’s going on in the context in Isaiah, the passage that he’s quoting, and how this really sets the stage for everything that’s going to follow in the gospel of Mark. It helps us understand what this promise of the kingdom involved.
Mark 1, verses 1 through 3: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, the voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.”’”
There’s an incredible resonance here—it would have been an incredible resonance in the minds and in the hearts of the people who heard this who knew Isaiah, because in the second part of Isaiah (really Isaiah chapter 40 to the end of the book) there’s something going on in Isaiah. Isaiah is telling about the renewal and the restoration of the Kingdom of God, and he’s using this word, the word “gospel”.
In fact, in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, Isaiah used this word “euangelion”. It’s the word from which we get our word “evangel”, or “evangelism”, or “evangelical”. It’s the word for “gospel”, and it’s the word that Mark uses here when he opens his gospel, “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” the euangelion of the Jesus Christ, “the Son of God.” Isaiah used that word. He used it in Isaiah 40 and again in Isaiah 52, and I just want you to hear these passages.
Isaiah 40, verse 9: “Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news. Lift it up; fear not. Say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’”
So here’s the good news—this is spoken to the people of God in exile. You know, they’re away from their homeland, they’re away from their country. The glory of God has left the temple; they’re away from God, and they’re in this exile, and Isaiah says, “Here’s good news: behold your God, your God is coming.” He’s preparing the way for Yahweh; he’s preparing the way for the Lord, he’s building a road for the king to come.
And then, in Isaiah 52, we read this, verse 7: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’”
Okay, now that’s kingdom language! That’s kingdom language. So here’s the hope. The hope is that God himself, Yahweh himself, would return to Israel. He would defeat the enemies of God. He would deliver the people of God. He would lead them on a new exodus journey through the wilderness to Jerusalem and there would be enthroned himself in Jerusalem, to reign over his people. That was the kingdom expectation. That was the kingdom hope.
This lies in the whole background of the gospel of Mark. Now there were really three parts to this—I just said them, but let me spell them out here. There are three parts to this expectation, as it’s spelled out in Isaiah. Those were deliverance, and then journey, and then enthronement. I’m drawing this from a study, a man named R. E. Watts, who wrote a book called Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark. It was just critical in helping me understand the gospel of Mark. This is what he said. He says,
The prophet’s message of deliverance presupposes both Israel’s founding moment of redemption and an underlying three-part Exodus schema:
Yahweh’s deliverance of his exiled people from the power of Babylon and her idols,
a journey along the ‘way’ in which Yahweh leads his people from their exile to Jerusalem, and
arrival in Jerusalem where Yahweh is enthroned in a gloriously restored Zion.
In sum, the prophet presents the vision of Yahweh who, after smashing the powers of chaos and making a way in the wilderness gently leads his flock home to Zion.
Now, that schema, as we’re going to see in just a moment, actually outlines for us the gospel of Mark. That was the promise of the kingdom. That was the expectation. This is what people were longing for and hoping for and looking for, and this is what John the Baptist arrives on the scene saying: “Prepare the way! Prepare the road! Build the road for the king; the king is coming!” That king, of course, is Jesus.
That leads us to the second point.
II. The Arrival of the King
It’s really interesting here how Mark presents his story, how he presents this narrative. It’s so compressed. I mean, he just has things packed in tight here that, you know, Matthew and Luke will take two, three chapters to unfold, and Mark just has them in a few verses. So it’s easy to read over this and not even realize what’s going on. And that’s very typical of Mark. He’s very condensed in his writing style. But I just want you to notice these things quickly—what’s going on here in the baptism of Jesus and the testing of Jesus and then his message.
(1) Identification: the king’s baptism
The first thing we see is identification. In verses 9 through 11, Jesus is baptized. He comes from Nazareth of Galilee, is baptized by John in the Jordan, “and when he came up out of the water immediately he saw the heavens being torn open”—and that’s a reference to Isaiah 64, “Oh that you will rend the heavens!” The heavens are literally torn open, they’re rent asunder, “and the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’”
What’s going on here in Jesus’ baptism? You know, when I was growing up—I grew up in a very Baptist church—and I always thought of Jesus’ baptism as basically an example. Jesus is baptized in water, by immersion nonetheless, and you should be as well. Did you know that there’s not one time in the Bible—not once in the Bible—where the Bible tells us to be baptized because Jesus was? Now, I believe in baptism, I believe in believers’ baptism, and I believe in immersion, nonetheless, but that’s not what’s going on here. That’s not the point.
What’s the point? I mean, why is Jesus being baptized, and why is he being baptized in this baptism of repentance and confession of sin? I mean, here’s Jesus, a righteous man, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. Jesus is completely without sin; why is he being baptized? It’s all about identification. Jesus is going out in the wilderness and he’s identifying himself with the people he came to redeem as their representative.
In fact, in the gospel of Matthew, when John protests and says, “I’m not going to baptize you! You should be baptizing me!” Jesus says, “Suffer it to be so now, for so it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness.”
Jesus is the representative for Israel, and he’s identifying himself with Israel. He’s going into these waters in the same way Israel passed through the waters of the Red Sea and into the wilderness for forty years of testing, so Jesus passes through these waters and then forty days of testing in the wilderness. So it’s an identification with the people of God.
But there’s another identification that happens here as this voice from heaven, God the Father, speaks and identifies Jesus as his Son. “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” That phrase “Son of God” is Scripture.
That means not only, ontologically, that Jesus is divine, the eternal Son of God; it means that, but it’s not just that. “Son of God” was a phrase that meant the king, right? The king of Israel would be called the “son”. So there are Messianic implications here as well. God is identifying Jesus as the Messiah. This is a kingly coronation as God anoints his Son with the Spirit.
By the way, there’s also Trinitarianism right here too, right? Jesus is being baptized, the Spirit descending and the Father speaking, all three at once—one God, three Persons. It’s an anointing of Jesus as the new King.
That’s the identification part, that’s the baptism.
(2) Temptation: the king’s testing – vv. 12-13
Then there’s the temptation. Jesus is driven into the wilderness by the Spirit, and he’s in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan, with the wild animals, and the angels ministering to him there.
Again, it’s evoking the story of Israel. Israel had passed through the Red Sea into the wilderness to be tempted for forty years, and here is Jesus, the new Israel. He’s living the story of the Exodus all over again, but in every point where Israel was tested and failed, Jesus is tested and succeeds.
Perhaps also Jesus is here fulfilling the role of the new Adam, because Adam was also someone who failed at temptation. Adam was tested in the ideal, pristine circumstances of Paradise, tested in a garden, and he failed. And here is Jesus, the second Adam, who’s tested in the wilderness and succeeds.
Oh loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A second Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.
Oh wisest love! that flesh and blood
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against their foe,
Should strive and should prevail.
(John Henry Newman)
Jesus, the new Israel, the second Adam, is here on the scene. It’s the arrival of the King.
(3) Proclamation: the king’s message – vv. 14-15
And then you have the King’s message, his proclamation, verses 14 and 15. Jesus comes into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God, the euangelion, the gospel of God, this good news. And here it is: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.” So Jesus comes on the scene proclaiming the Kingdom, and that proclamation is the thread that runs all the way through the gospels—Jesus proclaiming the kingdom, and he’s coming and implicitly claiming to be the king who has arrived in person.
Now get this: John the Baptist is quoting Isaiah, saying, “Prepare the way for Yahweh,” but who is it that shows up? It’s Jesus! It’s Jesus. You know what that means? It means that Jesus is God manifest in the flesh.
Now let me tie this into what I just said about Isaiah a couple of minutes ago. I said that there’s this threefold schema in Isaiah 40 through the end of the book—Isaiah 40 through 66. The schema is deliverance, then journey—building a highway for God and a journey through the wilderness—and then enthronement in Zion. That schema really outlines for us the three acts in the book of Mark.
You can see this in a map. It’s interesting that Mark starts in Galilee, and he just traces Jesus’ movement from Galilee to Jerusalem. The other gospels don’t do it exactly this way, but that’s what Mark does. The book breaks down into these three sections. In Act 1 you have deliverance as Jesus inaugurates the Kingdom of God through mighty deeds to deliver people from their disease and from demons.
I mean, he passes through the waters and then into the wilderness. And then in Mark chapter 5, what happens? In Mark chapter 5, he delivers a man who’s possessed by a legion of demons. What do the demons do? You remember, he casts them into this herd of swine, and they drown in the sea. There’s Exodus imagery here, just like Pharaoh and his army, his legion, drowning in the Red Sea. Jesus is conquering the enemy!
This is the hope of every great mythological story, right? What do we want? We want a king who’s going to come and slay the dragon, wake us from our sleep of death, rescue the princess, and be re-enthroned, right? The return of the king. That’s what’s going on here in the life and ministry of Jesus. He’s delivering people from the powers of darkness. He’s exercising his authority, showing his authority, over sin and over Satan and over death. That’s Act I. Deliverance. Jesus, the mighty warrior, the king.
Then Act 2, about the end of chapter eight through the end of chapter ten, is the journey, where Jesus is leading his blind disciples along the way. All right? I didn’t read all of the text. I’m trying to keep this short, trying to condense two hours of material into 40 minutes here. So I didn’t read all the text, but you go back and read Isaiah, and just underline “the way”, “the highways of God”, and then read Mark eight through ten and underline every time Mark talks about the “way”.
What’s very clearly going on here is Jesus is leading his disciples on this way to Jerusalem. He’s leading them on this road. And his disciples, like Israel, are blind to these realities. Jesus is doing these healing miracles, like healing the blind man, and it’s a parable for what’s going on in his own disciples.
And then in Act 3, Jesus comes to Jerusalem, the true king, he comes to Jerusalem with salvation and with judgment—judgment against the temple, Mark chapter 11.
And then enthronement, but enthronement with a twist. He’s not clothed in robes of splendor and crowned with a crown of gold; he’s mocked and he’s crowned with a crown of thorns, and his throne is a cross. But Jesus is bringing the kingdom. He’s bringing the kingdom, but he’s bringing it in a way that nobody could have expected.
Now, just to illustrate this—I know this is kind of heavy material, so I want to show you a video, all right? There’s a great group of people who are doing this thing called The Bible Project, and they’re making these wonderful animated videos, little five-minute videos, that are explaining books of the Bible and themes of the Bible. The guys doing this are named Tim Mackie and Jonathan Collins, just to give credit to them.
I want to show you their video on the Good News of the Kingdom, and you’re going to see how all this kind of pulls together. And then I’m going to come back and give you the third point of the sermon in five minutes, okay? Alright, so let’s watch this together.
Isn’t that wonderful? I’m so grateful for artistic and talented people who use their gifts to teach us in this way. “How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of him who brings good news,” and the way this good news gets brought is through the sacrificial love of Jesus on the cross. On the cross, Jesus proclaims the reign of God, the kingdom of God.
In fact, you remember, there was a sign hanging over his head on the cross: “The king of the Jews,” and it was in several different languages, because he’s not just the king of the Jews, he is the king of the world.
Okay, so this is the king. The promise of the kingdom we’ve seen, the arrival of the king, and the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus, and then I want to end by just talking for a couple minutes about the call of the king.
III. The Call of the King
So what is it that Jesus saying when he announces the kingdom, when he proclaims this gospel? You see it in verse 15: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.” That’s the first step, isn’t it? Repentance. That’s changing one’s mind, and then changing one’s ways as a result. And then belief or faith. It’s acceptance, it’s sworn loyalty to Jesus as the new king. That’s the first step for every one of us. The first response to the call of the king is to believe his message and to turn our lives over to him.
And then the the second part is this, in verse 17. Jesus is calling his disciples, and what does he say? He says, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” Now this is a radical thing. Jesus calls these disciples and what do they do? They leave their nets; they leave their livelihood. Then James and John leave their father Zebedee; they’re leaving their family.
It’s like there’s this radical break with the old way, and everything in their lives gets reoriented around king Jesus. Jesus is now taking the throne, Jesus is ruling, and Jesus is now pulling them into his mission, the mission of the kingdom. “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”
That’s the same thing that happens for us as we respond to the call of the king. If we respond in faith and repentance and in following Jesus, Jesus makes us become agents of the kingdom, emissaries of the kingdom, messengers of the kingdom, so that our feet are beautiful as we carry the good news to others.
Now let me just end in this way: probably every single one of us, when we were kids, played at least one of these games, these two games that are common among children. One of them is “Follow the Leader”. You know how that works, right? One person is in the front of the line, and everybody else follows wherever that person goes. You break the rules of the game if you don’t follow the leader.
Do you remember the other game that we used to play? “King of the Mountain.” That’s like the opposite, right? “King of the Mountain” is like, you’re up on the couch, and you’re pushing off everybody else who tries to get up on top. You’re trying to be the one on top, the one in charge.
I want to tell you: those two games represent the two ways of thinking about the kingdom or thinking about kingdoms in the world.
The one way, “King of the Mountain,” that’s the way almost everybody—that’s the way almost every country, I think every country in the world —thinks about the kingdom. That’s the way we think about power. We want to have the power and exercise the power—to be the ones who are in charge, so that other people will do what we want. That’s the worldly way.
But Jesus’ way is “Follow the Leader,” where he’s the Leader and we follow him, and if we follow him, if we walk on this road with him, we walk this way with him. What is that road? It’s the road of self-sacrificial love. It’s the road to the cross, and it’s only through death that resurrection comes.
That’s why Jesus will say in Mark chapter 8, after telling his disciples that he’s going to be rejected, that he’s going to suffer, that he’s going to the cross, he says to them, “If you want to follow me, you have to take up your cross daily, and that’s how you can be my disciple.”
That’s the call of the kingdom. The call of the kingdom is to take up one’s cross and to follow Jesus as the true king. But the good news is that we can trust him, because he’s a king; he’s gone all the way to death and beyond for us, and that’s how he brought his kingdom.
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, we recognize you this morning as an utterly unique king, an utterly different kind of king. You are the servant king, you are the shepherd king, you are the king who’s also the suffering servant, you’re the king who lays down your life for your subjects.
We thank you for that. We thank you that the promise of the kingdom belongs to us, that you will slay the dragon. In fact, you already have, definitively and decisively, slain our enemies of Satan and sin and death and hell. Through your death you defeated the one who has the power of death, and you set us free. Through your resurrection you showed your triumph over death and the grave. We thank you for that.
You’re the one who raises us from our sleep. You’re the one who raises us out spiritual death and gives us new life, and you’re the one who leads us to this new world that you’re bringing, where everything will someday be renewed. So, that’s our hope. And all of our hopes, all of our desires, all of our dreams, they find their fulfillment in you.
So draw near to us this morning as we worship, and for any person in this room who is still trying to play “King of the Mountain” instead of following you, would you give them eyes to see the beauty of your unique way of being king and bring them into your kingdom? We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
