Title: Walk this Way / Live this Way
Text: Mark 1:1-8
Thesis: Advent is a season that reminds us to walk the Jesus Way.
Introduction
In Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder plays the part of Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, great grandson of the infamous, Dr. Frankenstein who was known for his work in reanimating the dead. Dr. Frankenstein is embarrassed to be related to his great grandfather so he changed his name to Fronkenstei. Then one day he received word that he had inherited his great grandfather Frankenstein’s estate so he traveled to Transylvania to inspect his inheritance.
At the train station he is met by a hunch-backed, bulging-eyed old man named Igor (played by Marty Feldman) who is there to pick him up and take him to the estate. When they arrive at the castle Dr. Frankenstein is eager to get settled so he said to Igor, “Let’s go.” Igor then took his bag and turning said, “Walk this way.”
Hence the famous Gene Wilder’s mimicking of Igor’s hunched over, exaggerated limping walk as he descends some stairs and makes his way to his room.
Shortly after seeing the film Steven Tyler, of Aerosmith, and his bandmates wrote “Walk This Way” which was immensely popular despite its dubious and nonsensical lyrics.
Walk this way…
Our text today speaks to the role of John the Baptist who was God’s messenger sent to prepare the way by announcing the coming of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.
I. The Way, Mark 1:1 (The Good News is about Jesus.)
(Our text begins, This is the Good News about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God…” Mark 1:1
A. The Good News is the Jesus Way to Salvation
Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me. John 14:7 And…
B. The Good News is the Jesus Way of Hope
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.” Luke 4: 18-19 (Isaiah 61:1-2)
The Jesus Way of Hope plays out in two ways:
1. Hope in Jesus
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies.” Isaiah 61:1-2 specifies just how this Good News played out in Jesus’ life.
Isaiah 58:6-8 specifies how Good News plays out in our lives. This is where the rubber meets the road…
2. Hope in Jesus through us
“No this is the kind of fasting I want: Free those who are wrongfully imprisoned; lighten the burden of those who work for you. Let the oppressed go free, and remove the chains that bind people. Share your food with the hungry, and give shelter to the homeless. Give clothes to those who need them, and do not hide from relatives who need your help.
“Then your salvation will come like the dawn, and your wounds will heal. Your godliness will lead you forward, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind.” Isaiah 58:6-8
The hope Jesus lived out during his lifetime did not end when he died, rose from the grave and ascended into heaven… that same hope plays out in and through us until he comes again. Jesus taught that very hope continues in and through us!
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered in his presence, and he will separate the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come you are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.”
Then these righteous will reply, ‘When did you do those things for you…’ And the King wills say, ‘When you did it to the least of these my brethren, you were doing it to me!’” Matthew 25:31-40
Of course we are familiar with what the King will say to those on his left… “When you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.” And they will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous will go into eternal life.” Matthew 25:41-46
The Way for Jesus was a way of life that played out in loving service to God and others. The Way of Jesus was a way to live… live this way! Walk this Way means Live this Way.
I recently read about a university professor in Austin, Texas who went through a divorce after which he decided to down-size as a little research experiment. His experiment involved moving into a 36-square-foot dumpster on the University grounds. He said the takeaways from this way of life are feelings of freedom with less stuff and a new sense of being connected to his community and neighbors in new ways. Among his discoveries were things like the Laundromat. He found new venues to be with and interact with people he would not have met or known if he had a flat screen TV and a recliner and a washer and dryer and all the other amenities of life that pretty much keep us inside and out of touch with others. Living out of a dumpster is the way that man lives.
Jesus’ lifestyle was living out his love for God and for others. Jesus’ lifestyle was living out a life of obedience to God and service to others.
Smart people say the average person’s brain has 100 billion neurons all firing around 200 times per second, giving a capacity of 20 billion firings per second. So, if in Jesus life-time among us – from his birth in Bethlehem all the way to the Cross was 33 years, he lived 1 billion, 57 million, 157 thousand, 21 seconds (1,057,157,021 seconds).
So… 1,057,157,021 seconds X 20,000,000,000 firings = a really big number!
Jesus never made one decision in all those innumerable split seconds that was not completely consistent with loving his Father and his neighbor. His way of life was a lifetime of unwavering love for God and others.
Point: To Walk this Way is to Walk His Way!
Our text continues by reminding us that the Jesus Way is not a new way of living… it has its origins in antiquity.
II. The Way from Way Back
It began just as the prophet Isaiah had written: “Look I am sending my messenger ahead of you to prepare your way. He is the voice of one shouting in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord’s coming! Clear the road for him!’” Mark 1:2-3
A prophecy that looks into the future and foretells or predicts what will happen.
In 1949 George Orwell published his dystopian (imaginary anti-utopian) novel 1984. The setting is a post-atomic war world in which Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain is a providence of the superstate Oceania, set in a world perpetually at war. The government is one of omnipresent surveillance (Think Person of Interest in which everyone is constantly monitored and a gigantic computer keeps tabs on everyone.). The government is a privileged Inner Party that seeks to control everything and everyone… think Big Brother. There is no interest in the good of the whole. The Party is in it for themselves.
Novel or not… Orwell took a prophetic look into a pretty bleak future where war was perpetual and Big Brother was ever present with surveillance cameras and phone tapping, monitoring personal email. And now that corporations are people and giving money is an expression of free speech, influence is now bought through anonymous donations to Super Pacts that essentially buy elections.
We may easily think the story of Jesus begins with Mary and Joseph and a donkey ride to the little village of Bethlehem where Jesus is born in a stable and angels sang and shepherds left their flocks in the field and walked into to town to worship the newborn King.
We may even think the story of Jesus begins with John the Baptist as something of a front-man who comes into town ahead of the circus and nails up posters on power poles and sticks them in store windows and on Laundromat bulletin boards, maybe buys a little air time on the local radio station and invites the local pastors to a prayer breakfast to pave the way for Jesus, and puts it on Twitter and Facebook, and does an email blitz.
But preparations for the coming of Jesus the Messiah began a long, long time before John the Baptist and Joseph, Mary and Jesus.
The Jesus Way actually has its origin in eternity past.
A. The Way in Divine Providence
Even before he make the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do and it gave him great pleasure. Ephesian 1:4-5
The Jesus Way is a rooted in Old Testament prophecy.
B. The Way in Old Testament Prophecy
Listen! It is the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord! Make a straight path through the wasteland for our God! Fill in the valleys and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. The Lord has spoken. Isaiah 40:3-5
The Jesus Way is also evidenced in the New Testament record of Jesus’ genealogy.
C. The Way in New Testament Genealogy
This is the record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah, a descendant of David and of Abraham. All those listed include 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Babylonian exile, and 14 from the Babylonian exile to the Jesus the Messiah. Matthew 1:1-17
If we keep in mind that we have the advantage of a much larger frame of reference than did the people in this biblical account, our text states that the story of Jesus began just as the prophet said it would in Isaiah 40… and so it did.
The Jesus Way is not just another religious fad… it is a plan that has long been in the works.
Point: The Jesus Way is God’s preordained way… The Jesus Way is God’s plan being played out in history. (To preordain or foreordain is the decree in advance…)
We know that God is still at work and there is much yet to unfold. We know that the birth of Jesus is only part of the story. We know that there is more… that Jesus will come again.
So we might ask, “What does this mean for us today?”
III. The Way Today
The Messenger was John the Baptist. He was in the wilderness and preached that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God. Mark 1:4-9
Starting Quarterbacks for the Broncos (1979 – Present)
• Craig Morton, 1979-1981
• Steve DeBerg, 1982
• John Elway, 1983-1998
• Brian Griese, 1999-2002
• Jake Plummer, 2003-2006
• Jay Cutler, 2007-2008
• Kyle Orton, 2009-2010
• Tim Tebow, 2011
• Peyton Manning, 2012-Present
Each of these quarterbacks had their time as a Bronco. John the Baptist was a man for his time. The people who heard John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus were people of their time. We are men and women for our time. God speaks to and works through his people throughout history. So though we are not the immediate audience who went out into the wilderness to hear the archetype of Elijah the Prophet fulfilling the prophecy in Isaiah 40… God continues to speak to us in our time.
In our text today John the Baptist says the same two things to us that he said to the people of his day. He said, “Someone is coming soon who is greater than I am – so much greater that I am not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” Mark 1:7-8
As we prepare the way for the Messiah we too:
A. Turn from Sin
B. Turn to God
When I went home for my brother’s funeral I saw that my nephew is now living in town… I knew he had been living on an acreage in the country and loved having a large shop to work on his classic Cadillac and enjoyed the solitude of country living. So I asked him why he had moved to town. Bart said, “I found a snake in the basement and 3 days later I moved to town.” Bart was absolutely unwilling to live in a farm house where there was a snake in the basement.
I read a Snap Shot Survey from USA Today regarding pests people will tolerate and will not tolerate and actually hire an exterminator to get results;
24% of people will hire an exterminator to get rid of spiders.
27% of people will hire an exterminator to get rid of ants.
56% of people will hire an exterminator to get rid of bed bugs or rodents.
58% of people will hire an exterminator to get rid of cockroaches
87% of people will hire an exterminator to get rid of termites.
A lot of people are willing to live with certain pests rather than take action to be rid of them. The obvious spiritual parallel is how many of us would rather live with spider sins or ant sins or bed bug sins or rodent sins or cockroach sins or termite sins or even a snake in the basement sin rather than take action to be rid of them?
Walking like Jesus is no different today than when John the Baptist said what people need to do to do to prepare the way for Jesus is repent of their sins and turn to God. That means you stop doing them and start doing what God pleases God.”
Point: The Way today is still the Way of turning from sin toward God. Turning means to make an about face or a U-Turn in your life.
Conclusion:
There was a time when baseball was not America’s Favorite Spectator Sport. In the 1870s and 1880s. Americans would pack indoor arenas and outdoor stadiums to watch people do competitive walking. They walked in circles or ovals around the clock for up to 6 days at a time. They called the sport Pedestrianism. One competitor walked away from a 6 day race in what we now know as Madison Square Garden with $18,000 prize money ($425,000 today).
Many of us feel like we are walking in circles. Doing the same things over and over. Practicing the same habits over and over. Being the same jerk at home over and over. Being hateful or mean spirited over and over. Needing to change over and over but we keep on going around and around and around. God is not pleased. People are not helped and are often hurt… but on we go. You can’t continue to do the same things and expect different results.
What the bible says to do this second Sunday of Advent is make a U-Turn and walk His Way… Advent is a season that reminds us to walk the Jesus Way.
