Who is Jesus? (Mark 1.1-15)

We’re excited to be starting a new series on the gospel of Mark today—this will be the first gospel we’ll have done beginning to end since doing Luke, which we finished back in 2020. We took almost three years, and eighty-one sermons, to finish that series; I promise, this one will not be as long.

Now let’s talk a little bit about this book before we get into it.

According to early church records, Mark was the attendant and record-keeper for the apostle Peter. So Mark wasn’t himself an apostle, but he kept written accounts of what Peter told him concerning the life and ministry of Jesus.

This gospel was the first to be written (likely around the mid- to late-50s A.D.), and it was used as a kind of blueprint for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Large chunks of Mark’s gospel are quoted almost verbatim in Matthew and Luke.

So what is Mark’s objective in his bare-bones version of the story of Jesus?

Mark’s first goal in writing this gospel is to tell us who Jesus is. And he goes about fulfilling his goal by giving us a kind of episodic view of Jesus’s life and ministry. Instead of trying to present everything, Mark gives us snatches of moments, teachings or events. The result is a kind of mosaic of the life of Christ, in which we’re able to get a really quick, easy-to-digest presentation of who Jesus is, what he said, and what he did.

To whom was he writing? He’s writing to the church as a whole, but likely, he’s particularly aiming at Christians who are facing the imminent threat of persecution in Rome. It’s important to keep this context in our minds as we move forward, because this gospel would have reminded these Christians of the salvation they had in Christ, which would give them courage for what they would need to face. It would also give them a potent reminder that whatever suffering they were enduring, Christ endured first. He went before them, in order to save them.

And we can see that fact from the very beginning of this gospel. So let’s get started.

Our passage today tells us four things about Jesus, and there’s one question I want you to keep in your mind the whole time we move through this passage today: Why does it matter? When Mark tells us anything about Jesus, we want to ask ourselves, What difference does it make?

I’ll go ahead and spoil it for you—everything Mark tells us about Jesus here all adds up to one thing, and that one thing changes everything.

Jesus Is God’s Promised Savior (v. 1-8)

Mark wastes no time starting his gospel. His very first sentence is a thesis statement for his entire book. Look at v. 1:

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Mark’s entire agenda is summed up in this one very succinct phrase.

First of all, this is “the gospel”. It might be helpful to clarify something quickly, for those of you who are new to the Bible. Even within the Bible itself, you’ll see the word “gospel” used in two different ways.

The word “gospel” simply means “good news.” Sometimes that word is used as a title for one of the four books that tell the story of Jesus: the gospel of Mark, the gospel of Matthew, Luke or John. But most of the time, the meaning is more general than that: most of the time, when we talk about “the gospel,” we’re simply talking about the “good news”, the message of what Jesus Christ did. When we talk about proclaiming the gospel, or sharing the gospel with others, that’s what we’re talking about: sharing the good news of what Jesus Christ did.

In this verse, Mark is sort of using the word both ways: this is “the gospel”—this is a book recounting the life and ministry of Jesus, and the story of his life and ministry is very good news.

Secondly—notice he says that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. He doesn’t just say that this is “the gospel of Jesus.” That word “Christ” isn’t Jesus’s last name; it’s a title that means “Messiah”. That might not be helpful if you don’t know what “Messiah” means—the Messiah was a figure who had been prophesied in the Old Testament; he was the Savior that God had promised to send to save his people. What that salvation would look like was a big question mark for a lot of people at the time, but Mark wants it to be clear from the beginning that he’s not just telling the story of an ordinary man; he’s telling the story of the Messiah, the promised Savior: Jesus Christ.

Thirdly, he gives us more information about Jesus: he is the Son of God. So this Messiah, this Jesus, isn’t just a human warrior that God sent to save his people. He is a human being, yes, but not only—he is the Son of God.

Mark doesn’t go into details about Jesus’s birth or his lineage or any of that, so I won’t either—if you want to know more about that, go read the beginnings of Matthew’s gospel or Luke’s gospel, they both give a lot more information about it. That’s not Mark’s goal.

Mark’s goal here is to show us that although Jesus is human, he’s not only human; he is divine. Everything in this passage—in all the verses we’re going to see today—places emphasis on Jesus’s divinity.

Now that being said, in v. 2 Mark immediately makes a right turn and quotes the prophet Isaiah and the prophet Malachi (he mentions Isaiah because he was the more “important” of the two).

2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet,

“Behold, I send my messenger before your face,

who will prepare your way,

3  the voice of one crying in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way of the Lord,

make his paths straight,’ ”

These prophecies we see quoted in v. 2-3 are prophecies of hope for a weary people, speaking of a messenger who would get the people ready for the coming of the Lord, for the day when these weary people would finally see the glory of God.

When John appears, the people of Israel are living under Roman occupation, and the prophets have been completely silent for hundreds of years. The people have been waiting and praying for the day when God would come and finally show his face again, but so far, it hasn’t happened. It would be easy for them to feel like the only answer to their prayers has been silence.

But then, we see in v. 4:

4 John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 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.

This was a really big deal, because the law of Moses was still applied; the people of Israel, if they kept the law, were pure—they didn’t need anything else.

At least that’s what the Jewish religious leaders thought. But now, here comes this guy John—a pretty crazy-looking figure, dressed in camel’s hair and eating bugs—telling people that the rituals of the law, although not wrong, weren’t enough. God wasn’t just looking for ritual purity; what God wanted was a changed heart.

That’s what repentance is—it’s a commitment to obedience to God. It’s when we stand before God and say, “I want to be like you. I want to follow you. I want to obey your commands.” So they would come before God and confess their sins, telling God, “I don’t want to live like this anymore; I want to change”, and John would baptize them as a symbol that it is this heart-change that saves us, not ritual sacrifice.

Two really important things we need to see before we move on.

First, we need to see that John’s not reinventing the wheel here. The religious leaders, if they had been paying attention, would have seen that John is doing no more than applying what the prophets had already said. The prophet Micah, the prophet Ezekiel, and many others, had repeatedly told God’s people that all the sacrifices in the world are useless unless the people’s heart is changed. John is taking what the prophets said, and giving the people a visual aid, to help them understand it better.

Secondly, we need to see that John’s baptism is actually lacking something. John’s baptism can show the people their need for a new heart, their need for repentance for forgiveness of sins…but his baptism can’t give them a new heart; it can’t fully bring them to repentance. Only God can do that.

Someone in our home group mentioned that when he was a young Christian reading this book, it sort of seemed like John was almost misleading the people, because he knew his baptism couldn’t actually save anyone. That would be true if John hadn’t been up front about his own limitations—but he was.

Look at v. 7:

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. 8 I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

So John is really up front about the fact that his baptism isn’t enough—someone else is coming, he said, someone greater than John. He will baptize you, not with water, but with the Holy Spirit.

Who can baptize with the Holy Spirit? Only God.

Do you see how John was effectively fulfilling his role of “preparing the way of the Lord”, getting the people ready for Christ’s coming? Through John’s ministry, he showed the people what they needed, and then he said, “Don’t worry—God is coming to do it.”

Jesus Christ is coming to do it.

Jesus Has God’s Approval (v. 9-11).

And that’s exactly what we see happen next.

V. 9:

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 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. 11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Remember I said before that everything in this passage points to Christ’s divinity? This is an incredibly clear indicator of that.

When Jesus is baptized, the Spirit descends on him “like a dove”, and the Father’s voice rings out from heaven, saying, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” This was, presumably, a voice that everyone standing around could hear: it was a sign that this man who has just been baptized has the full approval of God himself—and even more: this man who has just been baptized is himself divine.

Mark has two goals in telling us this little story. The first is to show us that Jesus is both fully God and fully man.

Jesus is a man—he came from Nazareth, a little town in Galilee that everyone could go to if they wanted. Some of the people by the river probably knew Jesus, if they had followed John—Luke’s gospel tells us that Jesus and John were cousins. Jesus is a man.

But at the same time, he is fully divine. God himself speaks from heaven, saying “You are my beloved Son.”

This is one of those subjects that are of primary importance. There are a lot of things we can disagree about and still be Christians, because there are some things the Bible teaches that are clearer than others, and some things go to the heart of the gospel more than others.

This is one of those subjects on which we cannot disagree: without the divinity and humanity of Christ, the entire Christian faith comes unraveled. If Christ were not man, he could not take man’s place. If Christ were not God, he would have no more power to save than you or I.

So Mark wants Jesus’s divinity to be crystal clear. Jesus is a man, but he is not a man like any other. He is fully man, but he is also fully divine.

That’s his first goal.

His second goal is to show that this fully human, fully divine Jesus was not asking anyone to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself. He didn’t need to be baptized, because he didn’t need to repent of sin. But he did it anyway, because one of his tasks was to represent human beings before God. So he would do everything God commanded man to do, and he would do everything man couldn’t do.

So Jesus is the Son of God, and Jesus has God’s approval.

Jesus Has God’s Strength (v. 12-13).

But there’s another piece that will carry on into the next section, and that is that Jesus has God’s strength. We saw the Spirit descend on him like a dove—now, we read in v. 12 that this same Spirit

immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 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.

Here we see a new character brought onto the scene, and that is Satan, the devil, the enemy of God. Some people want to paint Satan as a symbolic character only, taking any mention of him metaphorically. But the Bible just doesn’t give us that latitude. Satan is a real spiritual being who hates God and who wants to take down God’s people.

Nowwe need to keep something in mind, that Mark helps us see. Look at how little time Mark spends talking about Satan here. He mentions him almost as an afterthought. He wants our attention firmly centered on Jesus, not on Satan. His goal isn’t to downplay Satan’s power, but rather to elevate Jesus’s strength.

Mark tells us that Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. No human being has ever withstood such a thing. When was the last time you went forty days without sinning? We can’t even imagine such an ordeal. Again, Jesus was fully God, but he was also fully man. He was hungry, and thirsty, and tired. It was not easy to resist the temptation to eat, to drink, at Satan’s behest.

And why did he have to go through it? It’s not as if Satan thought Jesus would actually give in to temptation; he knew who he was dealing with.

We actually see the answer to that question in Hebrews 2.10, 18, which we saw this past Christmas:

10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering… 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Jesus’s temptation by Satan was God’s plan, not Satan’s. It was the Holy Spirit who drove him into the wilderness, so that he would be tempted, so that Jesus would be perfectly qualified by what he endured, and so that he could come to our rescue when we are tempted.

Jesus was perfectly qualified because he went into that wilderness with the strength of God’s Spirit. Mark wants us to see that in this most hostile of environments, Jesus held firm. He wants us to see it so that we might remember that this man was no ordinary man: he is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.

Jesus is God’s promised Savior; Jesus has God’s approval; Jesus has God’s strength.

Jesus Proclaims God’s Gospel (v. 14-15)

And lastly: Jesus proclaims God’s good news. V. 14:

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Shortly after Jesus’s baptism, John the Baptist is arrested, and after his arrest, Jesus comes back to Galilee. What does he do?

He proclaims “the gospel of God”, the “good news” that God had sent him to proclaim.

What is that gospel? What is the content of this good news?

First, we see a declaration of…well, good news! “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.” Remember earlier, when we talked about how long the Jews had been waiting for the fulfillment of these prophecies, for some kind of sign that God was still listening, and that he still heard them?

That time has come: the kingdom of God is at hand. It’s coming. It’s almost here.

We just celebrated Christmas. Every Christmas morning, there’s a moment when parents go get their kids and say, “Okay, you can come out!” and the kids rush out of their rooms to go see the presents under the tree.

This is that moment, for an entire people. Except they haven’t been waiting a month; they’ve been waiting for centuries. And they’re not waiting on Christmas presents; they’re waiting on deliverance. It’s like they’re back in Egypt again, praying for God to deliver them from the Pharaoh.

And finally, this man whom John spoke of as being “greater”, the one who will baptize them with the Holy Spirit, the one who had received divine approval at his baptism, this man comes saying, “You’ve been waiting a long time. The wait is almost over. The kingdom is coming.”

That’s good news.

And next, he tells them how to get in on that good news: “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

We’ve already said that the gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ. At this point in the story, the people hearing Jesus have only the tiniest inkling of what he has actually come to do. At this point, they didn’t know that Jesus had come to live the perfect life God calls us to live, in our place, and to take our sin on himself and be punished in our place, and to be raised to apply that work to us. These people knew none of that.

But they knew this much: the good news of the kingdom was coming through this man Jesus, and his message was consistent with the message of John the Baptist. It’s not enough to follow rituals and offer sacrifices: they must repent, and believe in what this man will tell them.

Conclusion

This is the beginning of Mark’s gospel, and in it we see him quickly and methodically laying out Jesus’s credentials—this man Jesus came with God’s approval; he came with God’s power; he came with God’s message. All of that could theoretically be true of an ordinary human being, like the Old Testament prophets. It was true of Moses; it was true of Elijah; it was true of Elisha.

What makes Jesus different is very simple—as simple as a voice speaking from heaven, saying, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

I said earlier that everything Mark tells us about Jesus here all adds up to one thing. This is that one thing: the story that Mark is going to tell us throughout his entire book is the story of the Son of God. Not a healer, not a prophet, not a good, moral teacher: the Son of God.

And that fact, if it is true, changes everything.

C. S. Lewis famously wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

Lewis is right. Either Jesus was a fool, a madman—or he was and is really and truly the Christ, the Son of God. There is no in between, and Mark means to leave us with no in between. He wants to force us to confront this man, this Son of God, so that we have no other choice open to us other than to accept or to reject him.

And that is the choice we’ll be constantly faced with in this gospel. If Mark’s first goal in writing his gospel is to show us who Jesus is, his second goal is to call all people to be his disciples. The lines in the sand are drawn very clearly here: you’re either for Jesus, or you’re against him; you’re either his followers, or his opponents.

It’s very black and white; when it comes to being a disciple of Christ, there is no room for gray.

So if that doesn’t sound like something you’re interested in, I suggest you find another church. Because week after week over the next several months, these are the choices that you will be faced with over and over again: the choice of accepting or rejecting who Jesus is; and the choice of accepting or rejecting his invitation to follow him.

That invitation is made to believers and unbelievers alike, and there is no bad time to respond to it. If you are an unbeliever, then right now, today, through the words of this gospel, Jesus is proclaiming the gospel of God to you. He is saying to you, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is here; repent and believe in the gospel.” There is no class you have to take, there is no minimum number of credits you have to earn. You don’t even have to get to the end of this gospel.

Today, right now, you have everything you need to respond to his invitation. Repent, and believe in the gospel.

And if you’re a believer, this invitation is for you too, because we all know how easy it is to slip back into unbelief. It’s notable, isn’t it, that Jesus called the apostle Peter to follow him…twice. Once when he first invited him to be his disciple, and then once again, after Peter had denied him. The invitation to follow Christ is always actual, always for right now, because it is the choice we have to make day after day.

So whoever you are, whatever you’re going through, the choice before you and me both is the same: Repent and believe in the gospel.