MARK 1:1-13

MARK 1:1-13

MARK 1:1 - “The gospel of Jesus Christ” is God’s good news concerning His blessed Son who came into this world to reveal His heart to mankind and to offer Himself as the great sin-offering for our redemption. 

  MARK 1:2-3 - Malachi had predicted the coming of the messenger who was to precede the Lord and prepare the people for His advent. This messenger was the voice crying in the wilderness, as foretold in Isaiah 40:3, calling upon Israel to prepare the way of the Lord and make His paths straight. The word here rendered “Lord” is really “Jehovah” in the Old Testament passage. So that we have here a clear affirmation concerning the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who came in such meekness and lowliness was the Everlasting One who had condescended to unite His Deity with our humanity apart from its sin, in order that He might become our Kinsman-Redeemer and purchase our deliverance from sin’s bondage and the judgment to which we were exposed. 

  MARK 1:4 - John came baptizing in the wilderness of Judea, immersing in the turbulent waters of the Jordan—the river that symbolized death—those who confessed their sins and thus professed repentance. Multitudes went out to him from all the surrounding and continguous territory and were baptized in response to his message. Their baptism was not in any sense a meritorious act, but it was the acknowledgment that they accepted the message and acknowledged their need of cleansing and forgiveness. We know from John 1:29 that these penitents were directed to the Lamb of God as the only One who could take away the sin of the world, and so make it possible for guilty sinners to become reconciled to God. 

  MARK 1:9 - Next we read that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized of John in Jordan. That baptism was our Lord’s pledge to carry on to completion the work He had come from heaven to perform. This was ratified in heaven, and Jesus was publicly consecrated to this service when there came a voice from above saying, “Thou art My beloved Son, in whom I well pleased.” He who had been baptized as identifying Himself with confessed sinners was thus declared to be Himself the sinless One. 

   MARK 1:12-13 - When Satan left Him angels came and ministered unto Him. He was their Creator, and they delighted to serve Him in His humiliation. I take it that it was the Holy Spirit who drove or moved Jesus to go into the wilderness in order thus to be tested. As Man on earth He chose to be under the Spirit’s direction in all things. His temptation was not to see if, perchance, He might fail and sin in the hour of stress, but rather to prove that He would not fail, because He was the absolutely sinless One. Scripture guards against any such misconceptions when it tells us that He was tempted in all points even as we are, yet without sin—or, literally, apart from sin. There was in Him no inward tendency to sin. The temptations were all from without and found no response whatever in His heart.