Class Notes: 3/7/2013

Study of Mark verses 3-5; John the Baptizer taught salvation and the spiritual life

In our verse by verse study of Mark and we were looking at the initial verses that are quoted from Mal 3:1; and Isa 40:3; when we left off last time were looking at the phrase in Mark 1:2; that is translated "ahead of you".

The words "ahead of you" are the Greek words "mou pro" that literally mean "before your face" and can also be translated as "before you" and in our passage it means that John the baptizer is going to precede the arrival of Jesus Christ and announce His arrival.

"he will prepare" is prophetical and refers to John the baptizer. The word in the Hebrew is the piel perfect of the verb "panah, that means to clear the way or to clarify the situation. The piel stem is intensive and it is the perfect tense that means he fulfils his mission.

"your way" in the Greek is "ho hodos su" that literally means "the way of you" referring to preparing the way for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Luke 1:3; At this point the quotation starts quoting from Isa 40:3; "A voice of one calling out in the wilderness (desert) ". "Phone' boontos en ho eremos"

The use of the word "voice" immediately makes an issue of the message rather than the individual. A voice gives a message. A voice communicates information using words.

A voice is heard but nothing is seen because the message is so important that the person and the personality who is communicating are not important.

The word translated "wilderness" is literally desert. A desert is a place where there are no people so why would a man with a message be in the desert? It shows that when a person has a brain that is filled with doctrine, and he has a commission from God to communicate then God can put him anywhere including right in the middle of a desert and God will take care of the rest.

This is an indication of God's grace policy under the principle that God provides everything except uncoerced positive volition.

God brings the people the to the messenger of God. The messenger does not have to go to the people. God will provide because the messenger is prepared; he has doctrine; he has the gift. He didn't go to Jerusalem where the crowds were. He went where God wanted him to go.

All he had to do was to be prepared with doctrine, and John was. Once he was prepared with doctrine the rest was up to God. He went out into the desert where no one was and the people came to him.

And why did God set it up this way? He set it up this way to test positive volition. There were a lot of people who were positive at God-consciousness and ready for this message. There also were a lot of people who were curious. So they all had to demonstrate positive volition by getting up and traveling out to the desert to hear the message.

The desert also represents the concept of separation. Jerusalem is the religious headquarters. Out in the desert, there is no religion. This is the perfect set-up for the communication of Bible doctrine as truth… no religion.

The worst people in the world to deal with are legalistic religious people because they have to unlearn so much. When people go out into the desert they are completely away from a religious atmosphere and therefore John is free to teach and they are free to hear.

He is relaxed in his teaching and he uses the grace approach. So when religion comes out he castigates it. He calls them vipers. Matt 3:7; The religious crowd goes back home and John goes right on with the message.

John the baptizer separated himself from religion. He would not have had a ministry in Jerusalem because by now Jerusalem is too religious, so he separates himself from religion completely and totally. Therefore God can fully bless his ministry.

Mark 1:3b; "Prepare (make ready) the way of the Lord". This is a technical phrase that was called out by the heralds. Heralds went ahead of a king as he came to a city and always called: "Prepare the way of the king."

It meant that the king was going to spend the night there and the people had better turn out and give him the proper respect, honor and obedience. In this case Jesus Christ is the King.

This message refers to two categories of preparation.. The first is salvation for unbelievers; the second is repentance for believers.

This is broken down to show that not only did John evangelize but he also taught doctrine to those who responded to his message. It is not enough to simply evangelize because the ones who do believe must subsequently be properly oriented to the plan of God.

"Prepare" is an aorist active imperative and this to be contrasted with the present active imperative "make" found in "make his paths straight"

Both verbs are in the imperative mood but the first one "prepare" is in the aorist tense while the second one "make straight" is in the present linear tense. The aorist tense "prepare" refers to salvation, the point where an individual believes in Jesus Christ. The second "make straight" is a present active imperative and it means literally, "make upright."

This refers to the principle of, 1John 1:9; and 1Cor 11:31; and 1Thes 5:21; John not only taught them the way of salvation but he also showed them how to live as believers on this earth. His emphasis for believers was on the principle of consistently evaluating yourself in light of the word of God and making the proper adjustments.

The aorist tense refers to salvation that is a once and for all event that is contrasted with the present imperative that refers to linear action that describes a habitual or continuous occurrence.

Believers have to habitually evaluate their situation, acknowledge sins when necessary and make the proper adjustments as part of living the spiritual life.

Mark 1:4; John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Matthew and Luke consistently use the noun "Baptist" as a title when they refer to John, Mark uses the participle "baptizer" or "the one who baptizes" to describe him.

The Greek word "egento" is translated "appeared" means that his coming was an epoch an event that marks a new period or development. It was not a normal event because as we have seen he appeared to fulfill specific Old Testament prophecies.

"A baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" was a call for preparation for the arrival of the Lord's salvation. To participate in this baptism was a recognition of the need for God's forgiveness with a sense that one needed to live differently in response to it.

The Greek word "kerysson" that is translated "preaching" means to announce or proclaim or to be a herald. He was announcing "baptism the transliteration of the Greek word "baptisma" that means to be identified with and in this case it is associated with the ritual of immersion in water.

The baptism or identification was with repentance. Repentance is the translation of the Greek word "metanoia" that means to change your mind or to have a change of mind.

This change of mind resulted in the "forgiveness of sins" so he was preaching a change of mind for the forgiveness of sins and the ritual he associated with this was immersion in water so he was baptizing people as and external indication that they had become identified with Jesus Christ the King by their change of mind.

We do not have any exact transcriptions of John's messages but we do have four different Biblical references that generally describe what he covered in his messages. From these we can see the content of his message.

First of all we see in, John 1:28-39; that he talked about Jesus Christ: "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

This teaching related Jesus Christ to the ritual of the Levitical offerings of Israel. This means that he knew the Levitical offerings and he understood how Jesus Christ was portrayed in the Old Testament ritual and he related these things to the reality of the actual Person who was walking on the earth at the time.

Secondly we see in John 3:30; where he makes it very clear that Jesus Christ is the most important person for the human race and when he spoke of his own situation as it related to Christ and said: "He must increase but I must decrease."

His message was a message, not only of declaring Christ, but also of declaring Christ and His word in such a way that the Word was important butt the person who was heralding the Word was not.

We see in our verse Mark 1:4; that he preached repentance or a change of mind regarding Jesus Christ and that the change of mind regarding Jesus Christ resulted in the forgiveness of sins.

This is because Jesus Christ as Savior would carry all sins in their judgment on the cross so that sin is never an issue. Jesus Christ and the cross are the issue but personal sins were never to be an issue because Jesus Christ was to carry them in His own body on the cross just as all of the Old Testament rituals had portrayed.

The next concept in his message is: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved" Acts 19:4; So John not only talked about Christ but he told about how to enter into eternal relationship with Christ.

The way of salvation is therefore found in both "repent" and "believe" because they are opposite sides of the same coin. Repent is the mental attitude toward Christ when you believe so when you believe you have repented.

Believe is also the actual mental mechanics for salvation because believing is simply faith perception, the only non-meritorious system of perception.

So when you believed in Christ, whether you knew it or not, you repented. You couldn't have believed without repenting because repent means to change your mind about Christ.

The word "repent" has absolutely nothing to do with sin, it has to do with Jesus Christ with the result that sins are forgiven. The object of both of the transitive verbs repent and believe is Christ. The object of repent is Christ; the object of believe is Christ. Christ is the Savior.

John the baptizer's message is therefore: "Behold the Lamb of God." The subject is the unbeliever: "whosoever." Whenever an unbeliever changes his attitude toward Christ, the unbeliever has believed in Christ, and that is when he becomes a believer with the resultant forgiveness of all presalvation sins.

John the baptiser was qualified for this role as herald because he was directly descended from Aaron and as a result at the time he was he was the true priest in Israel.. His father Zacharias was a priest from the course of Abija, 1Chron 24:10, and his mother, Elizabeth, was also descendant of Aaron Luke 1:5;

Mark 1:5; And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.

© Copyright 2024, Michael Lemmon Bible Ministries. World Rights Reserved.