12/3 Sermon - Prepare for Jesus with Baptism

Prepare for Jesus with baptism

Mark 1:1-8

Intro: A knock sounds at the door. You open it. A man stands there. He seems poor. His clothes have patches and holes. He hands you a single piece of paper, coffee stained, and scribbled in crayon with this message: “The president will visit tomorrow. Prepare your house.” What would you do? Take the message seriously? Would you prepare? Probably not. If the president visited your house, you’d expect people in suits, a limo, fancy invitations.

- Mark writes in 1:1, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.” Wow! Amazing! The beginning story of the Son of God. This must be impressive… right? Who would you expect to announce the Son of God? Someone grand, majestic, glorious.

- Instead, we see John the Baptist. He wore camel hair and a leather belt. He ate honey and locusts. He preached out in the wilderness, in the desert. And he was baptizing people?! Do we need to take a bath before we meet Jesus? He just seems to… unimpressive, right? 

- Why would God work through John the Baptist? Why would John preach a message of baptism?

- This is a theme in the Bibe, and here in Mark too: The more glorious the message, the lowlier the messenger.

- illustration: this is all over, but let’s look at the birth of Jesus, our Savior: a manger, animals, poverty, shepherds, a nothing town, etc.

- Would you work this way? No, of course not. “I” would work with power, might, glory. “I” would try get things done. What does God do?

- “Look!” That word is so important in our reading. “Look! There in the barren, lifeless, wilderness, a voice cries out and brings life in the wilderness. What does the voice say? What does John the Baptist say? What does God say? “Prepare for Jesus with baptism.”  

- Illustration: Kings often sends gifts ahead of them when they travel. If they pass through a village or a town, they’ll give away gifts or money.  This is exactly what God does with John, but in a different way. God sends John the Baptist, a lowly messenger, to prepare the way for Jesus by baptizing people.

Our reading from Mark 1 and Isaiah 40 show us that John’s baptism revolves around Jesus. I should tell you two important things about John’s baptism:

1) John’s baptism was different than ours. Jesus hadn’t appeared yet, he hadn’t died on the cross, he hadn’t rose and commanded to baptize.

2) John’s baptism is the exact same as ours. His baptism gave the forgiveness of sins, just like ours, and his baptism revolved around Jesus, just like ours. Let’s see.

And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Baptism isn’t just simple washing. It’s something more.

- illustration: Imagine a giant arrow. Many Christians think that baptism is something we do for God, an arrow pointing up. Look at the text! it’s the opposite. Baptism is a giant arrow point from God to us.

- Look, right there! A baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Baptism is about what God does for us. Because of your baptism, your sins have been taken away and forgiven.

- How? Isaiah 40 connects to John’s baptism helps answer that question, “Comfort, comfort my people. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sin.”

- When John baptized people, he pointed them to Jesus who would come to take away their sin. His baptism was connected to Jesus.

- We are baptized in Jesus’ name. That’s not just an empty phrase! It’s the Word of God. As the water washed over you at your baptism and name of Jesus was spoken, your sins were washed away. in our baptism, washed with water and God’s Word and the name of Jesus, our lives are connected with Jesus. That means we have life and forgiveness.  

John’s message of baptism was never about what who we are and what we do, but about who Jesus is, “And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.”

- John was not worthy to touch Jesus’ sandals. Neither are we!

- But that’s not the point. Jesus says later, in Mark 10, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus came as our Savior, to die on the cross and save us from our sins. Baptism is about Jesus, and what he does for us.  

- Illustration: So, the president is coming to your house? How would you prepare? Maybe that will never happen.

- But Jesus is coming. That’s what our reading from 2 Peter tells us. Jesus came once, and he’s coming back! How do you prepare for Jesus? - One word: Baptism happened in our past, but it still has meaning right now, each day in your life. It means we have a life of daily repentance and forgiveness. Let me explain.

Illustration: I have a jarring illustration for you. What if you had to drown someone every day That would be traumatic, right? Terrible?

- That’s what our baptism means. That’s what we do every day. Baptism is daily repentance. Every single day we repent of our sins, we drown ourselves and our sinful nature.

Illustration: other pictures are used in Scripture for this: crucifying your old nature, boxing yourself, taking off your old clothes.

- This is hard! It’s terrible! It means we take our own wants, our opinions, our thoughts, and we say, “Because I’m sinful, all I have is also sinful. I need to drown and destroy this and start over with Jesus.” Every day, we question our motives, our thoughts, our actions, our words. Either it’s from the sin in my heart, and we drown it. Or it’s Jesus speaking through us.

- Baptism is daily repentance. And we need that daily repentance! Our heart is a wilderness, just like the place John preached.

- Illustration: The wilderness of Judea is barren place. Rock and sand cover the ground. Prickly shrubs dot the landscape. Desert animals scavenge around. A lifeless place, hard to survive.

- Our own hearts are a wilderness, lifeless and dead. We are by nature dead to God, sinners who deserve only God’s anger. We are by nature lifeless, unable to truly live before God.

- But we often can’t even see our own sin. We are so quick to get angry at others, to point out the sin that’s out there in the world, to find flaws in our family… but ignore the sin in the mirror.

- But for all that sin, we have forgiveness.

You see, baptism doesn’t stop there. But like I said before, it’s easy for us to forget about this. Baptism is not something we do for God.

- It’s about what God does for us, it’s an arrow point from God to us.The evidence is right here! “John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Peter says the same thing in a sermon in the book of Acts, “repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.”  

- You were baptized in the past, but it still has meaning right now.   

1) It’s an adoption. You were adopted into God’s family. Right now, you are a child of God, and your inheritance is eternal life.

2) It’s forgiveness. Your sins were washed with Jesus’ blood. That forgiveness stays with you every day.

3) It’s a new house. The Holy Spirit made a home in your heart. And he still lives there! Your heart is, right now, a temple of God.

4) It’s a connection, in baptism we have been brought into Jesus and connected to her. Just like him, we will die and rise to eternal life.

5) It’s a rebirth. You were baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection. Your old nature died. You are a new creation, a new person, through Jesus. And right now, today, through Jesus, we have the power to live for Jesus and to live for others.

- Do you see what I mean? Baptism matters, every single day.  

I only have one encouragement for you, just one. I beg you, do this one thing: Prepare for Jesus with baptism.

- Jesus won’t knock on your door to remind you. You’ll have no warning. We don’t know when Jesus will return, he’ll be like a thief.

- So, every morning, remind yourself of your baptism. Find a picture, a passage, include it in your prayers. I encourage you, even when you do something as simple as wash your hands or take a shower, or wash the dishes, take a moment and remind yourself of your baptism: drown your old nature, see that Jesus washes your sins away, and live as a new creation.

- It seems so unimpressive, right? Just a little bit of water, some words. There’s no obvious reason why baptism should be we important.

- There was no obvious reason why John should be so important. But John announced the arrival of Jesus’ first coming.

- Remember: that’s how God works. The more glorious the message, the lowlier the messenger. God works with unimpressive, ordinary means. Through John the Baptist, through Jesus, through baptism.

- Prepare for Jesus with baptism.

- Every day, repent and drown your own thoughts, actions, and motives in the waters of your baptism. It’s going to be hard.

- Every day, take comfort in baptism, that your sins have been washed away, you are a child of God, and live according to God’s Word.