Heaven Opens, Hell Opens - Sermon On Mark 1:10-13 Series

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Mark 1:9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” 12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, 13 and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.

Introduction

What Is It Like to Be Loved by God?

If you’re like most Christians, chances are you struggle with really believing that God loves you. You know it intellectually, but you really don’t feel loved by God. Why is that? I can understand a wife who doesn’t feel loved, because even though her husband loves her, he’s not very good at expressing it. But God is perfect at expressing love. So if God loves us so much, and he expresses it perfectly, why do we struggle so much with feeling loved by him?

I believe in many cases, it’s because we have a skewed understanding of what his love is like. We cry out to God and say, “God, you seem so distant. I’m in the desert. Please, come near to me. Let me feel your love.” We say that to God, but how can you tell when he has answered that prayer? What is it like to be loved by God? How does it feel, and how can you tell when it’s happening?

If you struggle with feeling loved by God, this is going to be a great passage for you, and a great book of the Bible for you, because Mark is going to show us what it looked like for God the Father to love his Son. And since that’s the same love we receive from the Father, this is going to be a great lesson for us. We’ll learn what his love is like, so that when he shows it to us, instead of missing it because we’re looking for the wrong thing, we’ll be able to enjoy it.

Jesus Anointed

Heaven Torn Open

We left off last week with Jesus coming up out of the water as John baptized him. John referred to Jesus as the one who comes after me – my disciple. And sure enough, Jesus comes like all the other followers of John and is baptized right alongside them. Jesus publicly joined the community of people who were committing to the way of obedience to God - a pledge of good conscience toward God. So Jesus is just like all the other disciples of John – right up to the point where John pulls him back up out of the water.

But at that moment, something happens that makes it clear that Jesus is not just your average Joe. Look what happens.

10 As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open

The other gospel writers just say that the heavens opened, but Mark uses a more violent word – ripped open. That language comes from Isaiah 64:1.

Isaiah 64:1 Oh, that you would tear the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you!

Isaiah is speaking for the generation who has been punished by God and is out in the spiritual desert because God has left them and is distant from them. And they can’t stand it anymore, so they cry out, “God, you’re way up above the heavens, we’re down here – come down here to us.” They want him to rip up the heavens because the heavens are what stand in between God and them. Picture a father who sees a bully beating up on his kid and instead of just opening the front door he knocks it down because he’s trying to get out there so fast. They want God to do that for them. An earth-shattering, heaven-shattering rescue.

That’s Isaiah 62, and by using that wording about ripping the heavens open, Mark is telling us – that prayer is being answered at Jesus’ baptism. When Jesus was baptized, God shredded the heavens and came down to earth to rescue his people.

There was a tradition that said when the Messiah came, he would split the Jordan river. So when Jesus arrived, did he split the Jordan? No. He was baptized in the Jordan, and he split the heavens!

One other thing you need to know about that word rip. Mark only uses that word one other time. He uses it here at the beginning of the book to describe the heavens being torn open, and then he uses it again at the very end of the book to describe something else being torn open. Care to guess what that is?