Mark 1:9-20

Mark’s rapidly moving Gospel has Jesus’ baptism, testing, and the beginning of his ministry all in 11 verses.  At the baptism of Jesus we see all three persons of the Trinity acting together-the Father speaks, the Spirit descends, and the Son is baptized.  Having no need for baptism personally Jesus is identifying with humanity.  Jesus’ humanity was so complete that while perfect He identifies with us in baptism so that in our baptism we identify with Him.

It is the Spirit that impelled Jesus to go into the wilderness.  During this time of tempting by the enemy the Lord is tested. Mark says nothing about the specifics of the temptations.  He points out that wild beasts were with Him.  We shouldn’t romanticize this into a paradise of nature.  In the Jewish mind the wilderness was the place where the demonic had sway.  This was a place of danger, death and the demonic. This is not a picture of a quiet camping trip for reflection and rest, but 40 days of constant danger and conflict. 

The ministry of John the Baptist ends.  Humanly speaking, John’s followers may have had a hard time with Jesus’ presence and ministry as long as John was free.    The evil of Herod not only sets up Jesus’ ministry, but also protects it from needless rivalry.  Jesus’ ministry begins with a simple message, “Repent and believe in the gospel.”  These are the two ways to deal with evil.  Some would only try to get rid of the consequences of evil such as guilt feelings or a bad reputation.  But this doesn’t solve the problem of evil.  The other way to deal with evil is to adopt God’s attitude or perspective about evil.  This is what is meant by repent.  Repentance is more powerful a command than we might imagine.  It is not feeling sorry for doing evil, while that can be a part.  Repentance is to hate evil itself.  A repentant person hates evil even if they suffer no consequences from that evil.

The second part of Jesus’ message was to “believe in the gospel”.  If we end here the message is vague.  To understand what the gospel is we have to see what Jesus does next.  The next thing that Jesus says is, “Follow me.”  That is the gospel message: Following Jesus.  Not a philosophy, not a theory, not a religion, not a teaching, but a person.  The gospel message is the call to follow the person of Jesus.  We in the church often get involved in a lot of good stuff, but forget that the gospel is the person of Jesus.