Prepare the Way

So we're in Mark's Gospel.

It's the beginning of another new year to state the obvious.

I don't know what comes to mind for you when you think of new, new.

I immediately think of a precious new granddaughter that I got to meet last year, and an equally special daughter-in-law when Ben married Courtney.

Some new people that I've been blessed to get to know in the last little while.

My brother-in-law, on a more or a less special note, he was telling me about his new electric car.

There is nothing like a new car for that minty freshness idea of new, is there?

I don't know what you think of when you think of new, but new is an incredibly important concept for Christianity, would you agree?

jesus said at the end of the whole Bible, Revelation 21, there was all about the end.

He said, Behold, I am making all things new.

There's a new beginning.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, we're told in Lamentations, his wonderful memory verse, his mercies never come to an end.

They are new.

Every morning great is your faithfulness.

The grace and the love and the power of God transforms sinners into saints.

Our God is in the business of doing new things in people's lives, amen?

It's just what he does.

The Gospel is so much about new, new life in Christ.

So today, this morning, we begin a new year of worship services and our first of 2024 and the mercies of God are new to us this morning.

This year will be a new beginning in the Gospel of Mark, a series that will be, for me, the longest series I've ever preached, Lord willing.

And I won't be preaching all of them, but we're 72 messages in the Gospel of Mark.

So we're looking at the whole Gospel throughout the year, at least that is the plan.

And I feel confident we'll be immensely blessed as we do so.

We will be studying a Gospel that is known for its new beginnings.

It's the Gospel of New Beginnings.

And that's a contrast for us as a church.

We were studying, for some time, Revelation.

We did a Bible loop read through last year about how things will end.

Well, we're going to focus now on new beginnings in Christ, as I said before.

There is always the opportunity of a new beginning.

We're in the first eight verses.

And in these first eight verses of the Gospel of Mark, we find out about new beginnings, new messengers, and new power, new beginnings.

The beginning of the good news about jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.

Mark is very different to Luke and Matthew, and even more different to the Gospel of John.

The Gospel of Mark leaves the Christmas story out and just dives into this statement, the beginning of the good news.

Beginnings.

In fact, the idea that Mark focuses on beginnings is probably a helpful truth to understand when you think of how the Book of Mark ends.

Are you familiar with the ending of the Book of Mark?

And the controversy about the last 11 verses, verses 9 to 20 in chapter 16, are typically always in italics because the Bible translators say the ancient manuscripts don't have these.

The earliest manuscripts, verse 8 of chapter 16, might then be our ending, which is weird.

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.

They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

Full stop.

So it's an odd ending, and we don't exactly know how to take it.

But it's interesting to think if Mark's Gospel is all about new beginnings.

It's a bit like a TV series.

It finishes and then everyone's left hanging on their seat.

What happens next?

And I guess we find that out in the Book of Acts.

New Beginnings.

Mark was most likely written towards the end of the 60s, the first century 60s.

We're not sure exactly who Mark is, but he has definitely based his Gospel account on the teachings and preaching of Peter.

It's been written in Rome at a time when persecution has been unleashed on the Christian Church.

It's terrible when you read about it.

Genuinely a genocide.

The Christian Church were relatively ignored.

Not completely, but relatively ignored up until 64 AD, certainly around Rome.

That's when things changed dramatically after a disastrous fire that swept through the city of Rome.

When rumours began spreading that Emperor Nero had ordered the fires himself under a urban renewal scheme, a scapegoat was required, and this became the Christians of Rome.

Let me read from tacitus, the Roman historian.

He said, to scotch the rumour, Nero substituted as culprits and punished with the utmost exquisite cruelty a class loathed for their abominations, whom the crowd styled Christians.

christus, from whom the name is derived, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of tiberius by sentence of the procurator pontius Pilate.

Accordingly, arrest was first made of those who confessed to being Christians.

Next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the charge of arson as for hatred of the human race.

Every sort of derision was added to their deaths.

They were wrapped in the skins of wild beasts and dismembered by dogs.

Others were nailed to crosses.

Others, when daylight failed, were set afire to serve as lamps by night.

Nero had offered his gardens for the spectacle and gave an exhibition in the circus.

Can you see how Mark's Gospel, with all of its emphasis on power and action, is counteracting the suffering that the church is experiencing under the powerful, seemingly all-powerful hand of Rome, of the Order of the Emperor.

There is immense suffering.

Mark responds with a Gospel filled with power.

It's also something to think about when you consider reading 1 Peter.

Do you remember 1 Peter and how it starts?

It's all about the suffering.

So Peter, whose testimony Mark bases his Gospel on, is the one saying, I know you're suffering.

It's probably the outpouring of the genocide that happened around the middle of the 60s.

Three truths we're told at the start of Mark's Gospel.

The beginning of the good news about jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, augustus Caesar had been hailed as divine just before the birth of Christ.

And his reign was described as the good news of augustus.

In fact, the Gospel.

And he was described also as the saviour of the world.

The Peace of Rome, the Pax Romana, was to change everything.

This Gospel came from a man, but not from Mark.

Mark wanted to counter that from the bastion of the Empire, the great centre of Roman power, the city of Rome.

He says in his Gospel, no, no, God is doing a new thing.

God's promised solution is the good news.

It's the Gospel.

And this good news is about the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, the saviour of the world.

His name is jesus, who is the true son of the living God.

If you want a perfectly succinct summary of the whole book of Mark, just listen to how Peter, who Mark based his Gospel on, listen to how Peter chose to begin his first sermon.

This is after the Spirit's been poured out in Acts.

And think about the book of Mark.

Men of Israel, listen to this.

jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs.

Think of the book of Mark.

Which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.

This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge, and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.

But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.

Isn't that a strikingly clear summary of the whole book of Mark?

The good news is that for everyone who would place their faith in Christ, there is a new beginning.

Hallelujah.

That's the truth we come under today.

Throughout Mark, we will meet people who have been possessed by evil spirits, given a new beginning.

Paralyzed people suffering physically, a new beginning.

A man with leprosy, made clean.

A woman with a fever, made well.

Young men called to a new life vocation, given a new calling for their lives.

New beginnings.

And that's all in the first chapter.

That's the power of the Gospel of Mark.

I wonder if you played games over the holidays.

Anyone a card player?

A few of us.

We often play 500.

And like most card games, you get a bunch of cards in your, what's handed in the round.

And you can have a bad run, can't you, in cards?

It's like, wow, when am I going to, you know, get a decent hand.

But there's always a new beginning.

You get another set of cards and you look, you open up, oh, is it all red or is it all black?

Is it the high cards?

And I thought of that, because maybe some of us are playing games, to believe the Christian gospel is to believe that jesus has lived the perfect life that we could never live, to die the death that we needed to die because we're all sinners.

He has paid completely the price for our sin.

And when we put our faith in him, there is a divine exchange that occurs.

We get what he deserved, perfect relationship with God the Father, as though we'd never sinned.

And he took what we deserved, our death on the cross.

That is the great and divine exchange.

The perfect, sinless, immaculate, clean slate that the Son of God has with his Father, that's my clean slate.

That's my new beginning.

If you have faith in Christ, that is your clean slate.

Hallelujah.

It's your new beginning in Christ.

Every day is a new beginning filled with enormous potential because the good news is that jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of God.

He is the news that we need to hear that is good every morning.

So I wonder if we're honest.

Do you live with guilt and shame?

You say amen to that spiel, but deep down you feel like you're not new.

Can I encourage you?

Find the truth of the grace of God at the beginning of this year.

In Christ, you are a new creation.

The old has gone.

The guilt?

Yeah, we do wrong.

The shame?

No, no.

It doesn't belong in your heart.

If you are racked with regret, remorse, your failures have turned into chronic fears.

Can I encourage you at the beginning of this year?

New beginning means exactly that.

A new and fresh start.

It's wonderful.

It's the truth of Christianity.

And God is looking for new messengers just to take that wonderful truth to the world.

As it is written in chapter 1 verse 2, as it is written in Isaiah, and by the way, I put Acts 2 up there just to trick you.

It's really Mark 1.

I only worked that out this morning.

I didn't have time to fix it.

As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, I will send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare your way, a voice of one calling in the wilderness.

Prepare the way for the Lord.

Make straight paths for him.

And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The 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.

John wore clothing made of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist and he ate locusts and wild honey.

And this is a quote about the ministry of the new messenger, John the Baptist, but it comes from Isaiah 40.

Isaiah 40 continues on in this quote, make straight in the desert a highway for our God, every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low, the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places are plain and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all people will see it together.

This is quoted just before the launch of the ministry of John the Baptist.

But when was it first about?

What was it first about?

It's about the exiled Israelites over in Iraq first, which is Babylon in Iraq.

They'd been exiled and taken all the way east, and then they were taken over by the Persians, so they're basically in Iran.

So from Iraq and Iran, there's lots of hills and valleys.

It's a windy trip back to the city, the holy land, the promised land of Israel.

The promise that Isaiah 40 told Israel was, a day will come when I will say enough, my people.

I'm gonna take the hills down and bring the valleys up, and we're paving a highway back home.

And so that's the prophecy that John the Baptist is used to introduce his ministry.

He's the cousin of jesus, but no ordinary cousin, is he?

He's strange, he's eccentric, he's wild, but he's getting the people ready for God's new thing, amen?

He's the new messenger.

He did a lot of baptising.

Is that just because he loved baptising people?

We probably did enjoy it, but his ministry was to be a type of the New exodus.

Remember when the people had 400 years in slavery, that they had to go through the Red Sea really to get to the Promised Land.

John the Baptist is reenacting getting all the people to come to the Jordan and get baptised because he's saying, it's like we're all going through the Red Sea, we're going to the Promised Land.

The second exodus, God's massive new, most important thing is about to happen.

He's preparing everyone as a matchmaker, isn't he?

John the Baptist is a matchmaker.

He takes the groom and the bride and he joins them up.

I wonder if you got match made at all?

I did.

I was, my best mate had a beautiful cousin, his name was Leanne, and my best mate's sister sort of did some subtle work to make sure that Leanne was around at the right time and we connected a long time ago.

That's the ministry of John the Baptist, he's a matchmaker.

And I think that's our ministry.

We're all called to be new messengers.

We're meant to, I loved what Carlo said in his prayer, Lord, give us an opportunity to share the message of the Gospel with people who don't know jesus this year.

That's our calling, to be new messengers, to be matchmakers.

And we're not meant to hang around, we're meant to take the groom, jesus' message to a potential bride, someone who would come to know him by faith, and the bride of Christ is the church, and the bride meets the groom, and then the matchmaker gets out of the way.

That's what John the Baptist did.

So, 2024, I wonder who God has planned in your path, that you're meant to share jesus as the new messenger to.

That's an exciting thought, isn't it?

You might be a brand new Christian.

You might, I don't know how to introduce anyone to jesus.

I bet you do if you step into it.

Tell them about what he's done for you.

That's the greatest thing you could do.

And then point them to what he has done for the world on the cross and in his resurrection.

So, we serve a God of new beginnings.

Our prayer is that we would introduce others this year as new messengers.

And it comes with a new power.

The Gospel provides new beginnings for everyone who would put faith in Christ.

It empowers new messengers with a new power.

This was his message.

After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I'm not worthy to stoop down and untie.

I baptise you with water, but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.

John knew that there was a new outpouring of power coming.

jesus said this in Acts chapter 1, Don't leave jerusalem, but wait for the gift my father promised, which you've heard me speak about.

This is after he's died, risen from the grave and talking to his disciples.

Said, for John baptised with water, but in a few days you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit.

What is extraordinary is what we read in Matthew 11, 11 about John.

This is what jesus said, Truly I tell you among those born of women, there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist.

Of course, he was so special, wasn't he?

And then what does it say next?

Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

So if you think John the Baptist was special, we've got more because we're living post-Banachost, amen?

We've got the gift of the Holy Spirit, the promise of the Father living in us by faith, and it is wonderful.

It is a power, the power that raised Christ from the dead that is in us to fulfill the task of being the new messengers that we're called to be.

So who was John writing these words to?

Many of them persecuted Christians, seemingly powerless.

In contrast to the supposedly almighty power of Rome, Mark writes to remind every hearer of his Gospel, that jesus and his power is enough.

His grace is enough.

Even when, like the women at the end of the Gospel, you and I might feel like we are trembling and bewildered.

The women went out and fled from the tomb.

There's a new power coming by the Spirit, and Scripture says, if you let it, it will flow from within you like riving waters out of your guts.

That's what it says.

It's going to flow from within you, the power of the living God.

New beginnings, new messengers, new power.

Our theme for the year is GO24, and we'll talk more about it, Lord willing, in the next coming weeks and months.

GO24 is pretty obvious.

It stands for, it's 2024, and it's a time for us to step out.

We've been in this ministry centre for a good couple of years now, and we had to survive our way through COVID, and we've set ourselves a challenging budget.

It's $11,000 a week.

It's $1,000 up from what it was last year, and who knows if we're going to make that, but we're giving money away.

We've got money in the bank, but we're just going to trust the Lord.

So we want to step out.

We believe as a church that God is saying, go for it, guys.

Go.

Step out in my name.

But it's not just Go24.

That's made up of Go24 hours a day.

365 days in this year will be Go24 year made up of Go24 each day.

And every day, as we talked about last week, we're asked the most important question of the day by the Holy Spirit.

He says about jesus, who do you say that I am today?

Who do you say that I am?

And if we answer correctly, as Peter answered, in Matthew 16, 18, we say, you are the Christ of the living God.

The Christ, the son of the living God.

And when we make that assessment of who jesus is, of just how worth he is, of my worthy he is of everything in my life, then there are some things we have to do.

It's very simple.

When we answer correctly, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.

You are my Lord, the King of the Cosmos.

I'm here to serve you and do your will.

The good works that you've prepared in advance for me to do, there will be things I need to say yes to in this 24 hours.

And you can't say yes without saying no to other things.

So GO24 means yes and no and start and typically stop.

Amen?

It's just habit theory.

You can't say yes to everything.

So our plan is together to work out what would be a great bunch of things to say yes to if we were committed to receiving and accepting the command to go in the name of jesus.

So John the Baptist was called by God to go into the wilderness, be clothed in unfamiliar ways, eat unfamiliar food and he said yes.

He stopped some other things in his life to do that so he could start God's next calling on his life.

God said go to Abram, leave the country of Ur, go to a place I will show you and Abraham said yes.

To say yes, he had to say no.

jesus said to the disciples, leave that, stop that fishing, come, I'll get you fishing for people.

You've got to stop that to start this, you've got to say no to that, to say yes to this, come and go.

And he said in Matthew 28, go into all the world and make disciples, go.

And the disciples, after a little bit of persecution and help, they said yes, which meant no.

Two other things.

So what does it mean for us, Go 24?

Go means leaving comfort zones.

That means places that are cosy and comfortable like a warm duna.

If life is only that, maybe you need to pull the duna off and have a cold shower.

So you get ready for leaving those comfort zones.

Go means obedience.

Give me some nods if you agree.

Go means mission.

Go 24 means activate.

Go means adventure.

Go means apprenticeship.

Go means courage, but not the absence of fear.

Go means vision.

Go means risk and rest.

You've got to go away from the busyness and sup with the Lord.

Yes and no, start and stop.

Go means unhurried time with the Lord.

Go means repent and forgive.

There's such a powerful verse, just before the Lord's Supper, it says go first and be reconciled.

Go.

Go means give and go means receive.

Go 24 means a year of intentional kingdom living made up of 24 hour days walking in and with the Spirit of jesus.

As we are going, may we make disciples of jesus.

Really, that's our prayer at NorthernLife.

because if we're honest, that's pretty dusty, that baptismal.

It's just not getting filled up enough.

Whose fault is that?

I don't know.

We can't save anybody.

But I know that it's the Father's will that none would perish.

I know that jesus is going to all the world, and the Gospel it saves will save.

So, we're called to lead people to the good news of jesus and eternal life in His name.

Amen?

Let's pray into that, that we would make disciples of jesus as we are going, and let people know this wonderful truth.

His mercy is anew every morning.

Great is His faithfulness, new beginnings, new messengers, new power.

In jesus' name.

Amen.

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