The gospel of Mark chapter 1: "prepare the way of the Lord"

Scripture: Mark 1:1-3
"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."


Here begins one of the most significant narratives in the history of the world. There has never been such a time as this, a time that God, the creator of this world steps down into his own creation to go through the embarrassment of an infant, the mockery of his home town, even the beating of those that he created and the ones that he came to save.

We should find such a sentiment with John the baptists' message: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." A concept that can be lost on us because of such a tremendous time difference between the time of Mark and our own. The sentiment that John the Baptist gives us should be the same message that we proclaim as Christians: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." First, we should ask this question: what did this statement mean for the people of that time?

Imagine yourself in the position of the Pharisees. The religious law of the time was at its peak of religious importance, no other time was the law sought after in such a militant and oppressive fashion, this was the effort that the Pharisees made. The sobering aspect of this statement can only be understood if we consider the original implications of the text, the nation of Israel stepping so far away from the law of the Lord.

"Although Israel had been given priests to teach and mediate on behalf of the nation for the forgiveness of sins, there was always the need for a greater intercessor. Although the law of the Lord was present, the nation still needed an intercessor to mitigate the wrath of God that had obviously been provoked" (Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets Calvin, John)

Now we find approximately 400 years later, after the Babylonian exile and the rebuilding of the temple, the people of Israel return to the promised land and make an intentional, yet damaging religious correction. The synagogue would have feared another time of exile for their disobedience to the law of God. Their solution was to add regulations to the ones found in the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy). Understand that this was a severe and damaging overcorrection. Here we see the purpose of John the Baptist and the message that Jesus will put into action.

John the Baptist was sent for the sake of blazing the trail that God had chartered for His son; for the purpose of confronting the religious leaders and calling them to remove all the barriers to salvation that had been set up by the synagogue in an attempt to avoid straying from Gods law.

The Pharisees had set an impossible to attain standard to live by, what standard do we set for ourselves?

This calling for John the Baptist to prepare the way fo the Lord was a high calling. He was called for the specific purpose of preaching the baptism of repentance, to baptize Jesus in his coronation to begin his earthly ministry, and to get beheaded by the king of his time. A short and abrupt ministry for John the Baptist, yet he served the purposes that God had planned and engineered for him. Now, we are at a similar time. We, as Christians, are called to prepare the way of the Lord. We are called to preach against the moral institution that our culture establishes as "the way to salvation" and point out the futility in our "overcorrection" and speak the message of redemption. Redemption in Christ. 

We lean on our own works to get into heaven and to have heaven guaranteed. I want everyone reading this to recognize that the rules the Pharisees had set for themselves were a reason that they couldn't believe in Jesus, they had created an extra toll booth on the path to God. What they did was require a cost that couldn't even be paid by the one's that instituted the booth. This means that we need to get over our own abilities and recognize that it's not our talents and good works that get us to heaven, but hearts that are prepared to receive Jesus, the one who can truly save and be our guarantee to salvation and heaven. 

Have you made straight the way of the Lord? Have you understood that your good works don't save you?

The good news of the gospel destroys any validation that we can receive from a "religious" system (When I say religious, I mean a set of rules that provide salvation, not the following of an organization) is eradicated. The good news of the gospel is that we are dust, incapable of doing anything to benefit ourselves. The good news is that God saw our need for salvation because of our incapability to perform righteous deeds to save ourselves. The gospel is the fact that God sent a messenger to warn us about the crooked path that we created to get into heaven so that he could give us the straight, although narrow, path to salvation.

Therefore, make straight the paths of the Lord. Lean on His righteousness and proclaim the good news that there is a savior who died and rose again to impute his righteousness on those that call on his name.