« “Come On Down!” | Main | “Zechariah’s Song” »
December 07, 2008
“A Pavior for the Savior”
Mark 1: 1 - 8
December 7, 2008
Even in a nation the size of the United States, our leaders can be anywhere except Alaska and Hawaii within 6 hours. So when it is necessary for our president to travel to various parts of the country, arrangements can be made quickly.
In 600 BC, the days of Isaiah the prophet, such was not the case. Travel had to be done on foot, in boats or by horse drawn vehicles. So rulers rarely left their capital cities. Occasionally there was a pressing need for rulers to travel to other places in the kingdom or outside the kingdom. In such cases, it took months or years of planning. Sometimes new roads had to be built or old roads needed to be repaired. Sometimes dangerous valleys had to be filled in so roads could be built over them. This is the kind of endeavor that Isaiah was referring to in our first reading. He was looking forward to a visit to Earth and the Holy Land from Almighty God, the King of all kings.
As he contemplated the visit to earth by God he suggested that God’s people needed to make some preparations. Some of the rough places on earth needed to be smoothed out to prepare for the coming of the Lord.
600 years later, As he wrote his Gospel, Mark identified John the Baptist as a Kindred Spirit to the prophet Isaiah. Mark understood that John the Baptist was the one whom God sent to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus.
Luke informs us that John was a distant relative of Jesus and was about 6 months older than Jesus. Mark informs us that John started his ministry before Jesus began His. There are two interesting things about John’s ministry that are recorded here. One is that he seems to have stayed in the wilderness or brush covered area around the Jordan River. Jesus would later tour villages in Galilee and Judea. John did not. He stayed in the Southern part of the Jordan River valley and people came to him. How he became well-known enough for multitudes of people to travel to the wilderness to see him is not disclosed.
The other thing that was unique in John’s ministry was his use of Baptism. Baptism and ceremonial washings were sometimes applied to Gentiles who became Jews. The baptisms were applied to them as a symbol of their being cleansed from their unclean Gentile ways and heritage.
For John to have insisted that Jews be baptized was a bit of an insult to many Jews. It implied, No, it clearly stated that the Jews too needed to be cleansed from their unclean ways and heritage.
Yet for a few years John was tremendously popular and many people made the trek to the wilderness to hear him and to be baptized by him.
John’s message was simple. He said that God was about to visit in the form of the Messiah, the promised one, and that all people, even the Jews needed to get ready for the visit. John’s Baptism was a part of the message. Mark tells us that Johns Baptism was a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins”.
The way to prepare for the coming of God was to repent of one’s sins. The Greek word used here and usually translated in the bible as repentance means much more than just expressing sorrow for one’s sins. The word is Metanoia. And as you may have suspected from the first syllable Meta.. it denotes a major and deep change, as in “metamorphasis”. Metanoia denotes a change of Mind, a change of outlook, a turning away from former ways and turning to God. That is how people need to prepare for the coming of God. John’s baptism was a sign that the baptized person had turned from his sins and turned toward God to prepare for God’s arrival
John was a pavior for Jesus. He prepared the road for him, he paved the way. (Pavior is a Middle English word for those who paved roads with paving stones.) (Since it rhymes with Savior I just couldn’t help but use it in the sermon title.)
But the road John paved with his message and his baptism was not for Jesus. Jesus was coming on his own path through Mary from God. The road that John was paving was so people could get to Jesus. He was preparing their minds and hearts so they would accept Jesus as being from God.
God still needs paviors to help people come to the Savior. Some preach the gospel, others give testimonies of their faith, others show the love of God through acts of kindness and deeds of mercy.
But the road to Jesus still involves repentance for those of us building the road and for those of us traveling on it.
We all need to turn from our previous evil ways and turn to God and his ways.
Let us now repent of our sins and come to the Lord’s table. Then let’s live our lives as paviors for the Savior.
Let us pray. Almighty God, make us aware of our sins as we come to your table. Break our spirits with grief and restore us to a relationship with you through the body and blood of our Savior. Then help us to pave a way for others to come to Jesus.
Pastor David Horner
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at December 7, 2008 02:46 PM