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The Good Life According to Mark

Mark 1:2:13

Several years ago, I had a conversation with university student leaders that took on a rather impassioned direction. It was about “la belle vie”, as a French-speaking student put it: What constitutes the good life in the society/culture each had grown up in? These were undergraduate, graduate school, law school, and seminary students. Some were 20 years old while others were over double that. Some were from urban settings, others, suburban and others rural. Some were American born while others were from Asia, Europe, and Africa. But they all agreed that they had been sold a bill of goods in their cultures. The narrative of the “good life” they had grown up with may have played out differently in their environments but the basic story lines had a lot in common:

• Work hard when your young to get ahead of your peers – in American settings, that even meant not simply going out to have fun playing but always to receive training and coaching in order to be better than your classmates.
• Go to the best schools – and, while there, perform better than everyone else.
• Get the most prestigious job – Become a partner in the firm, a manager, a published author, a recorded artist… Bring honor to yourself and your family. Make a lot of money.
• Get married into a prestigious family – to someone who shares your upwardly mobile goals. Then, of course, have kids who will pass on the same values to future generations.
• And, of course, if you have time, be a good person and go to church.

It was hard for me to believe how energized these students were about this discussion. They acknowledged that the way this kind of narrative of the good life played out differently in their societies but they were just as adamant that the foundation was the same. The way to real living, according to their worlds, was personal, family or tribal success. Many of them discovered that their families were very disappointed when the students told them they were going into ministry. Now, that these student leaders were committed to following Jesus wherever he leads, they still felt the pressure of getting into a bigger and bigger church or of having a world-renowned ministry. I came away from that this matter of how to live life well is an issue that no pastor could ignore.

I believe the Bible has a lot to say about this. This narrative of the good life was also an issue in Bible-times. Then too, people tried to find “life” in the things and ways of the world and its kingdoms. And, I believe our text today gives us the guidelines that will help us live a God-glorifying life in the midst of a self-centered world. In fact, following the title verse in Mark 1:1, the Gospel of Mark records an insight filled text in which the story of the good life according to the kingdoms of the world is addressed head on. Here is what it says:

#1: The Worldview: God is working out a plan in this world.

#2: Our Issue: The most important matter in our lives is finding our place in God’s plan.

#3: The Claim: Jesus is the only one who can introduce us to our place in God’s plan.

#1: The Worldview: God is working out a plan in this world.

After the title in v. 1, Mark pulls us back into the Old Testament to let us know that this good news that God will finish his creation and make all things right is not a new plan. The point is that God has not been caught off-guard by human sin and unbelief but that he has always been working out a wonderful plan to make his glory known in the world. Mark specifically refers to Isaiah’s prophecy – but Isaiah is the one who speaks to a much longer divine plan. The quote in vv. 2-3 is actually a composite three texts:

• Exodus 20:23 – Written as much as 1400 hundred years before Jesus – telling about a messenger who would prepare the way for God’s people to go into the Promised Land.
• Malach1 3:1 & 4:5-6 – Written over 1000 years after Moses telling that God would send an Elijah-like messenger who would prepare for God to complete his work in the world.
• Isaiah 40:3 – Written between Moses and Malachi declaring that God had not forgotten his people. No longer would his people be a wandering, meandering people feeling forsaken by God. Instead, Isaiah prophesies that a servant would come who would suffer and then bring victory.

I hope you see the point. The Bible stands against the existentialists who say history is random and haphazard. It speaks against Eastern religions that say all history is cyclical and dependent upon Karma. The Bible consistently claims that God has always known what he is doing. As Paul put it in Ephesians 1, God had a plan before the world was created. This means that all that happens has a purpose. God knew the evil that would come into the world and has always a plan to overcome it.

In Exodus, God’s people were in slavery and could easily have been assimilated into the people at large. But, the Bible said, “God knew.” He knew not only the suffering of their present but he knew the glory of their future. In Isaiah and Malachi, God again knew the uncertainty and trouble of his people but he also knew that through this people a savior would come. And God still knows. This is the foundational point of a biblical worldview – that God is powerful, that he is good, that he is present and at work in this world, and that he is working out a plan that will be beautiful and just when he is done.

So, there has always been a plan according to Mark. But, then we look at it happening in Mark’s world and it’s confusing. John the Baptist is not a slick and usual world leader. As my son Brandon told me, “We have a guy in the desert with a camels hair shirt and leather belt who eats mostly locusts and honey and he's gonna baptize. In other words, there has always been a plan, but its unfolding in a way you couldn't have imagined and involving a cast of characters that you might not think are exactly the A list. And then it gets really crazy because the camel hair guy baptizes God in the person of Jesus…

So, with that in mind, let’s move from Moses, Isaiah, Malachi and John the Baptist -- to us.

#2: Our Issue: The most important matter in our lives is finding our place in God’s plan.

I contend that this has always been true for everyone. Here, the important word to grasp is “repentance”. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. That’s clear. And repentance is still how we are to respond to God. But, I think we often have minimized what repentance means in the Bible. The Hebrew word is “shuv” and the Greek word is “metanoia”. Both refer to a complete turning around of the whole of our thinking and our living.

Here’s what the Bible is talking about: All people want to live well. No one says, “I hope I live a boring and destructive life.” But, people try to find life by centering on the “kingdoms of the world” – especially the world and the flesh. We think we can find life from temporary things by making the most money, building the most successful businesses, or establishing the biggest retirement plans. Or we think we can find life by experiencing the greatest amount of pleasure or taking the most exotic trips.

Here is Southern California, we have (as much as anywhere in the world) many people who have all the world has to offer – but, in having it, have not found life. Have you read what Cynthia Heimels wrote in her book, If You Can’t Live without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?

I pity celebrities, no I really do – (three celebrities), were once perfectly pleasant human beings. But now their wrath is awful. I think when God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you he grants you your deepest wish and then laughs merrily when you realize you want to kill yourself. You see they wanted fame. They worked, they pushed and the morning after each of them became famous they wanted to take an overdose. Because that giant thing they were striving for, that fame thing that was going to make everything OK, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and happiness had happened and they were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable.

I’m not as negative as Cynthia Heimels is about people like these celebrities who have thought they would find the good life in something -- then they get that something only to find it doesn’t deliver what the world had promised them it would deliver. I want them to use their gifts and enjoy God’s world – but my point is that true life will be found only when God is at the center of their lives. The consistent view of the Bible is that things and pleasure are good parts of God’s world – but were never meant to be put into the place of God. They make terrible gods. When we put ourselves into the center of our lives, we make terrible gods. The world’s narrative of the “good life” says that we should do things for ourselves. But a world in which everyone puts himself first would be a disaster. That’s what leads to war and to division.

We were made for God. In Genesis 2, the world was very good when God was in charge. Then, human life had purpose and meaning. When God comes back into the center of our lives, he does not harm us. I love Jeremiah 29:11: I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Do you know Fleet Foxes’, a Seattle indie band, song, Helplessness Blues?

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see.

The most important issue for you if you will find a life in something “beyond yourself” is finding your place in God’s plan. Who can bring him back into your life? Where do you start?

#3: The Claim: Jesus is the only one who can introduce us to our place in God’s plan.

The Witnesses: John the Baptist and God the Father

Notice here, first, the two-fold witness to Jesus’ identity. John the Baptist, a man who had a huge following both in the city and in the country, both among the rulers and the peasants, declares that he is not worthy to stop down and untie Jesus’ sandal straps. This was the language of a slave. John, the one people felt was the Elijah who would return and announce the kingdom of God, is here announcing the Jesus is the one worthy to be made lord. In fact, John says he is not worthy even to be Jesus’ slave. John says that Jesus is the one who will baptize us with the Holy Spirit – who will bring God into our personal lives.

But the witness of John pales in comparison to the next witness. In v. 11, the Father’s voice from heaven announces, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” The Apostle John would pick up on this and say in John 1:18: “No one has seen God (the Father) at any time except God the one and only son. He has made him known.” And the Spirit that descends on Jesus like a dove is language the Jewish people used for the Spirit hovering over the deep in Genesis 1. The point becomes clear: The one through whom the world was made is coming into the world to make things new. He is ready to enter our lives and remake us.

But how will he make it possible for us unholy people to walk again with a holy God?

The identification with us: Jesus experienced the baptism of repentance

This has always been a tough theological question: Why did Jesus who had never sinned experience the baptism of repentance? He had nothing to repent of! And the answer is that Jesus was identifying fully with our sin. At its root, baptism means identification with someone or something. As the Apostle Paul would say it (with awe): God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).

And Jesus’ identification with us was not just at the cross. He lived in this imperfect world. He went into the wilderness and faced the kinds of temptations we do. In the other gospels, Satan tried to tempt Jesus by offering him possessions in this world and power in this world. The book of Hebrews 4:15-16 tells us: We do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

And let me show you this: Mark points out that Jesus was with wild beasts in the wilderness. Why does he tell us that? No other gospel mentions it. I’m convinced Mark does it because his first readers were among those publicly slaughtered by wild beasts in the stadiums under the Roman Emperor Nero. Jesus even understood that part of their lives.

No one else can stand in our place and forgive our sins. No one else can bring us to the God for whom we were made.

Our response: Repentance and faith

I will talk more about this next week. But, the point is that we were made to have our lives orbit around God. We should change our way of thinking from seeking to find life in the world to full and faith-filled surrender to Jesus. He came that we might have life to the full.

But, let me tell you this – everything in this world will try to get you to leave Jesus out. The whole object of the Exodus we studied all summer was to preserve a people through whom this Jesus would be born. The whole point of all the prophecies of the Old Testament were to speak of this one’s coming. The whole point of John’s ministry was to point to this Jesus as the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world. You can see why Satan tried to keep Jesus from fulfilling his mission.

I want to make it clear: We too will always be tempted to leave Jesus out of our words and out of our venues. I’ve seen it my whole life. People are willing to let us mention some of Jesus’ teaching. Religion is sometimes OK too. Spirituality is really OK. We can even quote some Bible verses at political conventions if they’re vague enough. But, it’s Jesus who is the stumbling block.

The reason is that Jesus is the one who is declared to be the king over all other things in this world. He claims to be the only one to God. In 1 John 3:8, John wrote, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” You’d better believe the devil doesn’t want his work broken – and he knows that only Jesus can break it.

This is why this discussion with the student leaders in Chicago was so unforgettable to me. Most of them had been life-long churchgoers and still the vision of the good life they had been given was all about personal success, personal prestige and personal possessions. To all that Jesus says, “What does it profit us to gain anything and everything in this world and then lose our own souls?" And Jesus is the one who rescues our souls.

We are called to believe that God has been, is, and will continue to be at work in our world. And we are called to believe that Jesus is the one who is the center for God accomplishing his mission. Thus, we are asked to believe in him. That means that we must to turn from the way we usually think and the way everybody else thinks about the good life and follow Jesus — to who knows where (only Jesus). And we'll sometimes see him doing things that make no sense to us. And we will meet smart people rejecting him and saying he cannot be the one he claims to be. And we sometimes will have doubts as we live by faith. And we still have desires inside for the same things everybody else wants but to which he says, "Deny yourself and follow me."

But this great gift of a new life is signaled in Mark’s gospel through a weird man named John as forerunner followed by a man without a place to lay his head who keeps saying he’s come to die on a cross. But, I declare to you – that’s the path to la belle vie, to abundant life.

This message is, of course, a call to you to make Jesus the savior and Lord of your life. But, it also has implications for us all through our lives. Recently, Chris and I met with Aaron and Christy Kilmer who soon will be going to carry the Gospel to a largely unreached part of our world. They spoke so easily of seeking to know what role God would have them play in what he is doing in the world. They said they knew that the only place to find their lives was to be where Jesus wanted them to be. So, I pushed them on this and they said it had been a growing process. At first, they knew that God would surely use particular gifts he had given them or give them a place to fulfill the things they are passionate about. Then, the thought, at least, that God would send them to a place they were familiar with. In the end, they have learned only to want to be where Jesus wants them to be. And, if you haven’t met them, you must believe me when I say – they are people who are finding their lives in obedience to Christ.

Hear me out – Jesus does not send most of us to be missionaries or pastors. But, we are all sent as his representatives – some as lawyers, some as teachers, some as mechanics, come as security personnel, some as politicians, some into the entertainment industry… The important thing is that our hearts desire is to be wherever our Lord wants us to be. We too are not worthy to untie the straps of his sandals. But, he gives us the privilege of knowing his presence. He even calls us to be his ambassadors to our schools, families, workplaces and neighborhoods. He tells us his way may not be the way we would have chosen before meeting him. But, Jesus asks us to believe that living under his lordship is the way to the good life.

To His glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor

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Greg Waybright • Copyright 2012, Lake Avenue Church