3 minute read
Journey with Jesus
Journey with Jesus
NUGGETS FROM THE GOSPEL OF MARK
Prepare the Way: (Mark 1:1-8, NIV)
Whenever the president of the United States travels anywhere, preparations have to be made months in advance in order to receive him when he arrives. Secret Service agents land up to three months early preparing to clear airspace at the airport, requesting a motorcade route through the city, identifying nearby trauma hospitals, working with local police to identify any threats, and making sure all nearby streets will be cleared of all parked vehicles. It is a major event to have the president of the United States arrive in one’s city.
Two thousand years ago a revolutionary event took place where preparations were made not only months in advance, but thousands of years in advance. Rather than Secret Service agents being sent out early to prepare the area, a messenger had been sent out to make a seismic announcement that would change history forever. The dawning of a new era had arrived. Preparations had to be made.
The messenger was an eccentric prophet, the last of the prophets, and the first to speak after four hundred years of God’s silence to His people. He had been born to communicate one message and one message only. He spent his life in the wilderness preparing to make this God-ordained pronouncement. He was born to prepare his listeners, his fellow Jews, to hear and receive the message.
In a radical move, he is at the Jordan River, intentionally outside of the Jewish Temple’s religious system, making a revolutionary statement that something cataclysmic is taking place. This eccentric prophet, John, known as the Baptizer, proclaims a message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins because the One they have been waiting for, their Messiah, has arrived.
Thousands of people come to see what John is doing at the Jordan. He is calling people to prepare the way for the Lord.
He is calling them to prepare their hearts. To prepare their minds. To turn from their sinful ways, for only then can they receive the One who comes in the name of the Lord. John lets his fellow Jewish kinsfolk know that they can receive their long-awaited promised Messiah only if their lives are changed.
The coming of the Lord Jesus, more than a president’s arrival, requires preparation. The Messiah’s arrival has a lasting impact for all eternity, whereas the president’s arrival may be exciting for the moment, but it does not have any eternal ramifications for our lives.
We need to be prepared for our Lord’s coming to us in order to receive Him. Our lives have to be changed. How are you doing with making preparations for His arrival in your life? Have you prepared your heart and mind for His coming? Have you turned from your sinful ways? Have you turned away from adultery, pornography, lying, stealing, jealousy, and coveting your neighbor and her belongings and success? John lived in a time where people had abandoned their God, and we too, live in such a time today. John called people to turn from their abandonment of God and turn to Him. The message is the same today. John is calling down through the ages, “Turn from your abandonment of God and turn to Him so that you might be ready to receive the One that has been sent to you. Prepare your heart to receive the Lord, for He longs to come to you, but He can only come when you have turned away from your life of sin.”
Lisa Morrison is an ordained minister who has served as pastor, and staff pastor in several positions in the local church, as well as in district ministerial and educational leadership positions. She also has been an Adjunct Instructor for a number of her denomination’s educational institutions of higher learning teaching in the Religion Department.
