Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Glad to see each one of you. Those of you online, thanks for joining us. Those of you here in the room, thanks for joining us. It's always nice and appreciate it. Thanks. Suzanne and Enrique and is did you say? Lydia liliana. I was like her name's not Lydia Liliana or Ileana Liliana. I was saying ileana. We're glad you're here anyway. Yeah. And Bruce and Myra just drove in. Good to have you. Just came in for the evening. Right from Green Bay. God bless you. Glad you're here. And Rich and Jody dropped in for the evening from West Virginia. Glad you're here. And all of those of you online, glad you're here. Got a good crowd tonight. We ought to do some rousing gospel singing, but I got a three page sermon, so the thing and I'll have to wait till Sunday. We'll do that. Thanks all for being here and for the nice fellowship supper that we had. And it was good, as always. Those of you online, you missed it. Sorry. Next week I took a picture of the birthday cake and I was running around so late trying to get us started that I don't have it here. I'll save it till it's not my birthday or trance. The birthday cake tasted good, though. Yeah. Let me lay this in. Word of prayer and we'll get started. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for sweet fellowship and for the opportunity to come and study the Word tonight in its new venture, a new series through the Gospel of Mark. And pray that the time we spend here would be really encouraging and enlightening as we come to know the ministry of Jesus Christ. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen. So we are studying, beginning tonight, the Gospel of Mark. You noticed on the outline, I'm calling it the Gospel of Mark. Rightly. Divided. What in the world does that mean? Well, the scripture says, study to show thyself approved a workman who has no need to be ashamed. Rightly. Dividing the word of truth. And so my goal as we go through the Gospel of Mark is to rightly divide it. Now, that means to recognize in that the things that are universal, that are true for anybody, anywhere, anytime, and the things that would specifically be for those who are in Jesus's audience, whether it's contextually just specifically for them or it's dispensationally specific for them, that is, those people, remember, lived under the law, and we don't live under the law. So we would not want to take everything in the Gospel of Mark and apply it directly to us. We need the rest of the revelation of the Word, which came later, to understand it correctly. Otherwise, if I were to say and we could have gotten away with this a few years ago, right? If I were to come in, maybe as a guest preacher and say, ladies and gentlemen, I want you to know that if the Bible says it, that settles it. Amen. Good. You all have some Baptist in you. Yeah. And then I could have gone on and said something like, and if the Bible says it and that settles it. If I can show you in the Bible that it says do it, then we're going to do it. Amen. There we go. And then we get to the 16th chapter of Mark and I pull out the snakes. Amen. Because Mark, of course, that's perhaps the most famous section of Mark, and it's not until the end, but we have to figure out what's up with these things. Did someone make it up? I don't think so. I take the Bible as true, but how come we don't do snake handling when it talks about that in the Gospel of Mark? So we have to rightly divide it. We'll do that from the very beginning that we're going to begin tonight. And the Gospel of Mark, I checked today, it has 678 verses. My goal is to get through five of them tonight. That means, let's see, I did the math and I already forgot 135 sessions. I think you got a while. I won't live that long. I doubt it'll take 135 sessions, but it'll take a few. We won't finish this week on the Gospel of Mark, but let's work our way through. Unless I run into something otherwise, I am just going to take the traditional understanding that the Gospel of Mark was written by John Mark, the young man who's mentioned a few times as one of Paul's companions, the one that Paul had the falling out and then they later came together and made amends. That is the traditional understanding. There is no place in the Gospel of Mark that it says written by Mark or written by John Mark. So it is completely tradition. I wouldn't be opposed. And if I were living in the early second century, I might say, hey, why don't we call it the first gospel, the second gospel, the third gospel, the fourth gospel, or Gospel ABCD, rather than putting these names on it, but along the way, I didn't live in the first century, so it's commonly called the gospel of Mark. You know, when we went to the Gospel of John, we did discuss some of that authorship and I presented some other views. But first of all, there's not very many other views on the Gospel of Mark, and none of them really hold much credibility. It's all like, well, I feel like maybe Peter did it, or I feel like there's really not much everything we've got that John Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark comes from, I'll call it tradition, church tradition. But every tradition is based upon something, right? They didn't just wake up and decide to do that someday. So I would say the earliest we have it is a fellow named Eusebius Usbius was a church historian. Eusebius didn't get everything right? But he gave some kind of good insight into what happened a long time ago. And Eusebius said that a guy named Papius said that it was written by John Mark, but Eusebius was like 250 years after Papius, so that's the credibility. Eusebius said that Papius said that Mark said, and there we have it and we've just gone with it. And that's what we're going to do. Because I don't know that we find much value necessarily in parsing it out any further. But if we do find something along the way that we say maybe not, then we'll look into that. And there is one episode that many scholars think that John Mark sort of put his fingerprint hidden in there. I'll disagree with him. When we come to that, I don't think it's John Mark at all. But Mark very well could have been the author, who knows? Let's go. I'm going to bring up the Bible here on the screen and we'll work our way through here. Mark, chapter one. Verse one says the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now, that little phrase, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that is a Hebraism. I gave you a little definition of Hebraism on the outline. You see it, we just finished studying Hosea not long ago. You also see it at the beginning of Hosea, the beginning of the revelation of God to Hosea, something like this. And you see it in some other ancient literature outside of the Bible as well, Hebrew literature. It's not saying this is the beginning of the book. He's saying, I'm starting at the beginning of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now, later on we'll probably rightly divide that little phrase there, the beginning of well, the phrase is the Gospel, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And look at that at this point. Let's say if you were living in John the Baptist day, and that's mainly what we're going to talk about today, if you were living in John the Baptist day, what would you understand about the Messiah? You would understand everything. All of your understanding would come from the Old Testament prophets and you would understand that Messiah was coming to establish the kingdom, to deliver the promises that he had given to Abraham, to overthrow the enemies of Israel, to overthrow the four kingdoms that Daniel talked about. It would be the idea of the kingdom, the physical millennial, we'll call it millennial today. They wouldn't have that that came in the Book of Revelation, so they wouldn't have that in the days of Jesus, but that would be the Gospel. Gospel, of course, means good news. The good news would be Messiah is going to come and Messiah is going to establish his kingdom and overthrow our enemies. We're excited about this. We could go more into that. We won't. But if you want to look into that more a little bit. Look at what John's father said zechariah, the Lord has come to save us from our enemies, was the words that came out of John. And so this is that is what they expected out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, what I think is interesting is he introduces Jesus Christ right from the get go as the Son of God, as if he wants to say, I don't want you to be confused of my perspective whatsoever. I used to hear that pastors should not have an agenda. I don't want a pastor with an agenda. And then I got to thinking about that and I thought what he did or something he doesn't have an agenda. Of course he ought to have an agenda. I think everybody has an agenda to some degree. I think pastors ought to have an agenda and I think they ought to just put that up front. Here's where I'm going, here's my agenda, here's what I'm getting at. And that's what Mark does here when he says, I want to tell you the good news about Jesus Christ. Let me tell you my belief right up front. He is the Son of God. Now, sometimes I hear people come along and say, you know, there's nothing in the New, in the Old Testament excuse me, in the Hebrew scriptures that talk about Messiah being the Son of God. That's a New Testament thing. That's a Christian thing, that's not a Jewish thing. They didn't expect him to be the Son of God. I think put a couple of things together here. One is let's go ahead and I could spend a lot of time trying to build this case, but it would be boring. So will you just take the assumption on it and decide whether you want to take it or not? But let's take this as a Hebraism. Now, this is a pop quiz right at the beginning. What kind of people write Hebraisms Hebrews? Very good. Therefore, because he starts with a Hebraism, that's the way a Hebrew would start a revelation, a book from God that tells me this is a Hebrew, this is a Jew that is writing. John mark certainly would have been a Jew if he's the one. But here's a Jew who is writing and he's writing in the first century, probably put it in the century and he is at that early point. This Jew is not at all opposed to introducing Jesus as the Son of God. And he introduces that kind of matter of factly that here it is. Now, this is kind of true in Matthew, Mark and John, especially Luke is a little more subtle on it. But Matthew, you remember, he begins his gospel abraham begot Isaac and Isaac begot Jacob and Jacob begot Esau and goes through to point him out as really the Son of man. But then you come down to Jacob and he says and jacob was engaged to Mary and she brought forth the son of God. He sort of shifts in there. So Matthew is a little more subtle. John is I would say as we've studied the Gospel of John before, the entire purpose of John is to convince the audience that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. So that's the whole purpose. So Mark kind of just takes it here he is, he's the son of God. I don't need to prove it, I'm just stating it to you. It's a known fact is kind of the way he presents it. Now, I think that in the Hebrew scriptures there are actually passages that present Jesus as the Christ, as the Son of God. And let me back up, let me jump forward, let me jump forward in the story. Remember when John is baptizing Jesus, he says what? Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Nathaniel is the first one who says nothing good can come out of Israel. And Nathaniel says something like Behold the King, and basically says the same thing. Peter says later thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. Peter, of course, the son of the living God. These are people that's before in in some cases before Jesus. He's even done much it's certainly before the death barrel and resurrection of Jesus. And they're everyday kind of Jewish people who are saying, yeah, Messiah, Son of God. I would contend it's worth more study and it might be difficult to study because sometimes it's difficult to study things that happen 2000 years ago. But I would contend that Jews expected their Messiah to be the son of God. I think if you talk to Jews today, and I've talked to some of them, if you talk to Jews today, many of them will say, oh no, Jews never expected the Messiah to be the son of God. We expected him to be just a normal old guy. He puts on his pants the same way we do, but he stepped up to the plate at a time of need. That's what they'll say today. With apologies to my Jewish friends, I think you made that up conveniently. If you say they always expected the Messiah to be the son of God, that kind of leads people to start reading Mark and Luke and John and Matthew and might lead to places you don't want that agenda to lead. So I think very much the Jewish people expected him to be the son of God. Now, there are a couple of passages that you could look at. I printed them on the outline, so I'm not going to put them up on the screen here, but psalm, chapter two, verse seven. I'll get it. I will declare the decree. The Lord hath said unto me, thou art my son this day I have begotten thee. Now that's what took place at the baptism remember it was a quote of Psalm 27. This is my beloved Son, and whom I am well pleased. Thou art my son. Today I have begotten thee. This day I have begotten thee. Now every Jewish commentary would say psalm two is a messianic psalm. And it calls the Messiah doesn't use the words, but it calls him the Son of God. That's the logic there. Two Samuel 714 is very much talking about the coming one who's going to sit upon the throne and overthrow the enemies. And it says, of that one, I will be his Father and he shall be my son. Or Isaiah, chapter nine, verse six. Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. This is like the Son of God. As you go on. Daniel, chapter three, verse 25, he answered and said, Lo, I see four men loose. You go on. And the fourth is like a son of God and a messianic figure that's there, that's just four passages you could look and bring into. But all of that to say, I think the Gospel of Mark is introduced by Mark coming and saying, hey, let me tell you the Gospel, the good news about our Messiah. His name is Jesus, and he's the son of God. And he packs that in just as assumed, you know a little bit. That in and of itself is the Hebrew way of argumentation, is you set your assumptions right up front and then you go with it. Even Paul, you see this a lot. His very first words are Paul and apostle sent by Jesus Christ. And he gives sort of this here's the basis you got to take this on. Once I set that basis on, then we can go on and do business. Or even the Book of Genesis. Does anybody here remember how the Book of Genesis begins? Very good. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Sets it right up there. Doesn't argue for the existence of God, doesn't give evidence that he created the heavens and the earth. It just lays that here's the premise of the study. So I would say here we have the premise of the study, the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And then in verses two and three, he goes on with a prophecy. It's a prophecy of a forerunner, as Mark says, as it is written in the prophets. Notice plural prophets. That's because he's about to quote prophets. Not a prophet, but he's going to quote two prophets. First of all, malachi. Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. That comes from Malachi, chapter three, verse one. And the Book of Malachi. Remember, it's the last book of the Old Testament malachi. As we read it, as we organize it today, they would honestly have it organized a little bit differently in their Jewish text. But in our Bible, it's the last. And really Malachi, chapter three starts with, I will send my messenger before thy face. And it ends with, before the great and terrible day of the Lord. Elijah the Prophet is going to come. And so Elijah the Prophet is in Malachi, chapter three, my messenger. Now, Mark brings that quote as it is written, and he brings that as the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And it goes on then in verse three, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make his path straight. Now that's from Isaiah chapter 40 and verse three and is a very familiar quote. And I suspect that if I were to have a pop quiz somewhere and just say, the voice of one crying in the wilderness prepare you the way of the Lord, who's that talking about? I would suspect you could go even to Wimberley, Texas, and they would say John the Baptist. Even to Syracuse, New York. Syracuse is right. Yes, even in Green Bay with all of the wretchedness and drunkenness of that town, they would say John the Baptist. Everybody knows that's about John the Baptist. They probably wouldn't know. Some would know, but very few, I suspect, would know that. That is actually a quote from Isaiah who lived 700 years before John the Baptist. And therefore we as Christians believe that John fulfilled that prophecy of Isaiah, the voice of one crying in the wilderness. But, you know, I started to say there's no place in the Bible that tells us that except for the fact that we're reading the place in the Bible that tells us that right here in the Gospel of Mark, he's starting with the ministry of John the Baptist. That's where he starts the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He skips the whole birth and any childhood. He just starts with his public ministry and he introduces John the Baptist. Well, he introduces Jesus as the Son of God and then he introduces John as the forerunner. Now this kind of gets kind of interesting here, I think, especially, really, let me back up to verse two here. This malachi quote. Behold, I send my messenger before thy face. Well, when you look at that quote again in the book of Malachi, chapter three, before the chapter is over, it names my messenger. I already mentioned it. It says, I will send Elijah the prophet. So you've got a few options here on Malachi. Let's interpret Malachi a little bit. Okay, you got a few options. Is Malachi talking about literally, Elijah is going to come before the Lord comes? That's one possibility. You know that I prefer to take the Bible literally. If ever you can take it literally, take it literally. If the Bible is speaking figuratively, then literally take it figuratively. But if there's any way to take a scripture literally, that's what I want to do. So a literal reincarnation is one. The problem does become neither Jews nor Christians believe in reincarnation, right? So we don't have a doctrine, either Jews or Christians, we don't have a doctrine that says Elijah will raise from the dead and come and make straight the paths of the Lord. Come and be the one. So we do bump into that little how do I get Elijah back here without reincarnating him? Now, I guess we could say I could have the spirit of Elijah. We think of the Mount of Transfiguration, of course, where you had Moses and Elijah. So we could kind of do it in a glorified sense. Here's Elijah and he's at the door and he's making the past rate. There's the literal option. There is the metaphorical representation. What does that mean? That's the perspective that John the Baptist in this case is an Elijah like figure. He's not Elijah, but he comes. Does the Bible say somewhere John will come in the spirit of Elijah? Yeah, it does. Did I give the passage there Luke 117? If you go to first chapter of Luke, that he comes in the spirit and power of Elijah. So Luke really is also saying, hey, John the Baptist is the fulfillment of Malachi. Chapter three, john the Baptist comes in the spirit and the power of Elijah. He's metaphorically Elijah. He's not really Elijah, but he's the metaphoric representation. And then the third one is the prophetic fulfillment. And that's the interpretation that sees John the Baptist as the fulfillment of Malachi's prophecy. Not in a literal reincarnation, not even as a symbolic representation, but rather Malachi. This says Malachi, chapter three used Elijah in a symbolic way. Now, what's the difference between number one, number two and number three? They sound kind of close, don't they? The difference is that I could come in the spirit and power of Elijah if I did a study of Elijah and I came one day in that spirit would be kind of fun of the people I would like to be I think I would rather be Elijah than I'm trying to think of somebody I don't like in the Bible. Judas. I'd rather be Elijah than Judas. Yes, but even if we're going to have a play and let's do a drama of the Bible and I can choose the people I'm going to choose Elijah. Seems like a fun character to play, doesn't he? That metaphorical is John the Baptist is not a fulfillment of prophecy. He just comes Elijah like. Here's a guy that's Elijah like. They might say, oh, there's another guy over there that's Elijah like and another guy over there Elijah like. And yet then they would say, but the prophecy hasn't been fulfilled because we're either looking for the literal Elijah or something else. The prophetic fulfillment is here is John the Baptist. He is not only Elijah like, but he is the fulfillment of the prophecy. Now, there's a couple of passages, of course, that speak to this. And what we want to know is, is Malachi chapter three talking about John the Baptist? Or is it talking about Elijah? Which one is it? Let's look at a couple of scriptures about this. Let's go to Matthew, chapter 17, verse ten. And it says his disciples ask him, saying, why then say the scribes, that Elias, that's the same person as Elijah, that Elias must first come, comes from Malachi. Of course, Jesus answered and said unto them, elias truly shall first come and restore all things to you. But I say unto you that Elias has come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer unto them. Well, that's interesting. Jesus said Elias, Elijah is come already. Now if you want to take something literally, doesn't that say Malachi, chapter three has already been fulfilled? Elias came, they have done unto him whatsoever they listed. The Son of Man's going to end up in the same fate. But Elias has come. Malachi chapter three has been fulfilled. I don't know any way to interpret that right there, Elias has come already, than to take it as Elias has come already. Jesus said John the Baptist. Excuse me? He said, Elijah's already been here. Elijah showed up. Malachi chapter three has been fulfilled. Which then would take me away from the literal reincarnation or the literal interpretation down to the prophetic fulfillment to say, if Jesus said Elijah has come already, got to be John the Baptist, is that Elijah? Which means the book of Malachi is speaking metaphorically. Would that be the word allegorically when it says Elijah the prophet shall come? But but we didn't, we almost didn't know that until Jesus revealed it, or Mark revealed it and Luke revealed it and Matthew revealed it, we would have been expecting Elijah the prophet, which maybe by the way, is why all our Jewish friends, when they have Passover, they leave the extra seat and the cup for Elijah. And at a certain point in the Passover seder, they go open the door and say, hey, is Elijah out there? Elijah, are you come yet? Still looking for Elijah to come, not recognizing there's a fulfillment. I don't think you would recognize there is a fulfillment without reading the Gospels. And then you see, ah, Malachi has been fulfilled. This comes a little bit into when we start studying Eschatology and we have the two witnesses and we're always saying, who are the two witnesses? Probably Moses and Elijah. Probably we speculate on who it is. Probably we shouldn't bring the Malachi passage into it. If we're going to argue for Elijah, argue somewhere else. But Elias has come already. Now you notice it doesn't say anything about John the Baptist there, except that verse 13, the disciples understood that he spake unto them of John the Baptist. So I think that we can take that and say, okay, what we've got is Malachi, chapter three is prophetic but symbolic of John the Baptist. John the Baptist fulfills Malachi, chapter three and carries that out. And I think the strongest argument against taking it literally because again, I'm always a little bit allergic of not taking it literally. The strongest argument is if you take it literally, you got to have reincarnation. And that causes all sorts of problems with other places in the scripture. And so start looking for an allegorical or metaphoric idea of looking at that. Let's move on. Let's get back here to Mark, chapter one, verse four. So he gave those two passages and then he said, John did baptize in the wilderness. He introduces John as the fulfillment. You know, in some ways that was an awful lot of proof of something the Bible presents as fact. It just says, here's what Malachi says. Here's what Isaiah said. Here's the guy, John. So we wouldn't have had to go through all that to hold that position. But I think it kind of helps to struggle through some of those things and come and say, okay, here's our guy. Now, this is the one that is the fulfillment of this passage. John did baptize in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As we come here, there's a couple of things that are mentioned that the Forerunner did in preparing the way for the Messiah. And the first one, that the first thing there's three of them altogether going to be mentioned. We won't get all three of them this week. But the first thing he did was baptize in the wilderness. If we assume that Mark was written first and a lot of tradition is that the Gospel of Mark was the first gospel written, then in that case, this is the first introduction of baptism that the world has. John comes baptizing and so he comes, he's introduced as the baptism. But once again, that's just sort of stated matter of factly. He doesn't come along and said, John came baptizing. Let's stop a moment and let me tell you what this whole baptism thing is because it's a brand new thing that John invented. He doesn't do that. Why doesn't he do that? Because it's not a brand new thing that John invented. That's why he came doing something that was already being done. And by this point, I think in fact, I think it's undeniable by this point in Judaism, baptism was well accepted and very common. Jews got baptized. They would not use the English word baptism. If they were speaking in Hebrew, they would call it the mikvah or the ceremonial washing, if you will. But if they were speaking Greek, they would say bapto. There it is. John Came doing this very Jewish thing. Now, there's two reasons I say baptism was very common, was very accepted in that day. One is that it's introduced as matter of fact. This is not. Unusual. He didn't have to instruct them. This is what I'm doing. This is why I'm doing it. This is what it means. They weren't having a baptism class. It's just like everybody knows this is what baptism is. And so he came baptized. That's one reason I believe it was very well known, accepted by then. The second is maybe even a stronger argument, and that's the argument of archaeology. You went with us to Israel, right? And how many mikvah did we see? Very many. That's the way a West Virginian would say it. Bunch. Yeah. And actually, my Jewish friends would make fun of me because I should not say, how many micva did we see? How many Mcvote did we see? Plural? How many Mcvote? Very many. They're all over the place, all through Israel, north, south. Wherever you go in Israel, there's a mikvah here, Amykva. There a mikva everywhere. The ceremonial washing pools, the baptismal pools are there. And they're from the first century. In the first century, they did a lot of baptism, jewish people did. So here John comes doing this thing that is very Jewish. That means that somewhere along the way, baptism came up as this is something Jews should do. They started doing it because you don't directly read about it in the Old Testament. There's a few passages I've given. We're not going to look at it. Leviticus 16, Leviticus 14, Numbers 19. They're on the third page of your outline there. If you went into those, there is some instruction about ceremonial washings that are given in there. And I think from those instructions, the rabbis probably from about the time of the Babylonian Captivity, the rabbis began to interpret those things for the average Jew. It became what is known today as oral tradition. And from the Babylonian Captivity in 587 BC do I have my dates right? Close enough. Yeah. Till the time of Jesus at the first century. So over 500 years, the rabbinical traditions of ceremonial washings that come from these Old Testament passages had become very commonplace, just like going to the synagogue and having the Pharisees and the Scribes and the Essenes and all the various that was the religious and political world. So John read this. As John came doing this very common Jewish thing in the wilderness, this common Jewish ceremonial washing, john came and carried that out, and he did it in the wilderness. Now, we know it was at the Jordan River, and I think we have that down. Maybe it's in the next verse, but if not, we know he was baptizing in the Jordan River, which was the wilderness, and so he comes doing this. I think that there's some impact and some meaning of doing it out there. What is the word here? I gave you the Greek word so that you would go home smart tonight. Aramite. Yes, excellent. Excellent point. So so why why not baptize in the custom built mikvah, the very Many Custom Built Mikva. Why do that instead of going into the Jordan River? Kind of reminds me of the story of naming, doesn't it? I got better rumors at my place, but why not? I think there is significance here. Why is John Baptizing in the Jordan River? Which was kind of uncommon. I think there's a message. There two things. The wilderness is the aramas is the Greek word. By the way, we get the word hermit from that aramitic also and some aramas words that have come there. But if you're a hermit, you like to go to the wilderness all by yourself, right? I like to be a hermit from time to time, more so than some other people. But anyway, you go out by yourself. You're in the Aramas and he's in the Jordan River. Two things about this that I think are interesting. How much can we know for sure? The Bible never tells us exactly why the Jordan River. What's up with that? But here's how I'm going to put it together. I'll try to convince you on this line of thinking. The Jordan. Let me back up. Baptism was done prior to an important spiritual event or occurrence. So Jewish people, for example, before they went to the temple, would go into the mikvah before they go to sacrifice their animal, to do all the things that would go on in the temple. The same would be true at the synagogue. Any ancient synagogue in Israel. You're going to find Mickvote there all around the temple. They're going to be there at the entrance to where the temple was. There's plenty of them there. And so it was done prior to and at the entrance point of something big and spiritual. Now it's probably beginning to come together in your mind. Where did the children of Israel enter into the promised land? At the Jordan. I think there is a symbolic sense in which John is saying, hey, nation, we got in. But we have never had what was promised to us. This is not what was promised to Abraham. This is not what was promised to David. We're glad to have it. But we've messed up more than anything. And besides that, we don't really even have it today. The Romans have it and we're under their thumb. So let's come back here, let's reenter and let's reenter. Like we would go into the temple or like we would go into the synagogue with confession and repentance and a ceremonial washing. And even I think you would have to argue that their belief was that there was more than just ceremony there, though. It was also ceremony. That this is how you get into a right standing with God. You don't just cleanse the inside, but you cleanse the outside. Do and that's very much a part of Judaism. Even today in Judaism. When you go to the Kosher hotels in Israel, we should go. Suzanne when you go to the Kosher hotels in Israel, they always have a little wash station. I'll call it a wash station at the entrance before you go into the dining room. And it's not because they want people to wash their hands. It's for ceremonial purposes. But you don't go in. It doesn't matter if you come with a pure heart and clean hands. You still do the ceremonial washing before you go in, especially on the Sabbath. So I think the Jordan is Israel's most symbolic mikvah. That here is where we enter into the Promised Land. So I think John the Baptist, who comes to prepare the way, says, let's get back, let's redo this. Let's come into the presence of our Promised Land and our King, our Messiah, pure in heart. Let's welcome him. And there is that issue. Now, one of the things that's kind of interesting is that there is this group of people called the Essenes. I don't know if you've heard of the Essenes. They're mentioned once or twice in the scripture. The Essenes lived in the wilderness and near the Jordan River. The most famous Essene community is at a little place called Kumaran. In our virtual tour, maybe even as early as this Sunday, this Sunday or next Sunday, we'll do Kumaran, but at 945. So the Essenes were very messianic, very in times. If it were on the news today, they would call the Essenes an end times cult, an end times cult of Judaism. They were looking for the Messiah then and there. And they all went out to the Jordan River to the same spot from Kumaran on the hilltop, you can look down and you can see the Jordan River. And the Essenes were huge on baptism, by the way. The Essenes are the ones that gave us the Dead Sea Scrolls. They wrote down everything, literally everything. Like some of the Dead Sea Scrolls are people's grocery list, which is kind of interesting. What was on their grocery list 2000 years ago, they wrote everything down. And the main thing they wrote was scripture. But because we know a lot about baptism because of the Essenes, the strictest, like the Essenes, an Essene scribe, when he was going to write, he would go to the Mikvah first before he started writing the scripture. And then in writing the scripture, when he came to the holy name of God, the covenant name of God, we might say Yahweh. He would stop, he would go to the Mikvah, he would baptize himself. He would write Yahweh and go on until he got to the next one. And then he would stop and he would go to the Mikvah. They were huge on baptism. I mean, they were the best Baptist there ever were. And they even wrote something in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls that's not scripture, that gives a hint that John the Baptist was among them. It could have been someone else. But it's this very intriguing little thing that they wrote to say, hey, was John the Baptist an Essene, or at least in agreement with the Essenes? Looks like John is certainly associating himself with the Essenes, going out into the wilderness at the entry point. Let's go in again, let's go in fresh, let's go in clean, let's go in pure. And he was doing that. I'm going to finish verse four and then we'll pick up next week. So the first thing he did was baptize in the wilderness. Can I say every now and then you'll find someone who says that baptism is the Christian version of circumcision, that baptism is to Christianity what circumcision was to the Jews, that it's the sign and the seal of the covenant. The problem with that is it's stupid, but to say it nicer. The problem is that baptism was well established by the Jews long before Christianity ever came about. So Christianity is not a Christian. Baptism is not a Christian invention, nor did the Jews not do it. So it's not a replacement. What we get in Christian baptism has its roots in Jewish baptism. Okay? That's the first thing of three he did. The second one is also right here. He preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Now, when you take that, it is awfully Frank, isn't it? The baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. I think whether you take it in English or you take it in Greek, I suspect, even if you were to read a Spanish version of the scripture, there is something here that we in the dispensation of the grace of God, are a bit uncomfortable with. What do you mean? You're baptized for the remission of sins. That the work of baptism gets you forgiveness. Well, that certainly was the baptism that he preached. It was a baptism of repentance. He's going to say, the axe is already laid at the foot of the trees and all the repentance message that's going to come with it. And this baptism was part of at least the remission, which is kind of a washing word, the washing away of sins. Hey, Jewish nation, if you want to receive your king and your kingdom, let me tell you what you got to do. You got to repent and be baptized. That was John's message, right? Repent and be baptized. The kingdom of God has come. I think we have to be careful not in right dividing Mark. We have to be careful not to apply that directly to us. This is the Jewish nation. This is what's happening. We'll get our part about baptism later, but this is what they were doing, is the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. By the way, on the day of Pentecost, remember that they asked Peter, what shall we do? And he said, Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. Peter was preaching the exact same thing as John the Baptist here. Even on the Day of Pentecost, which ought to suggest to us that maybe after the Day of Pentecost more revelation came that brings about things like saved by grace through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Because however you cut it, baptism, symbolic or not symbolic, whatever, is still a little bit of work, right? I mean, there's there's there's the self involved in it that brings that out. So if it's not of yourselves, not of works, it doesn't really go with this. Again, I think we have to rightly divide that and put that out together. Well, I thought I would finish verse five, but I didn't. But next time we'll talk about verse five. There went out unto him all the land of Judea and they of Jerusalem and were baptized of him in the river Jordan confessing their sins. We'll talk about that. And part of what I want to talk about is the I'll call it unbelievable success of John the Baptist. He was a rock star when it came to being of the who's who in Israel. So much so that Josephus, the Roman Jewish historian wrote about John the Baptist. And Josephus said I'm getting ahead of the lesson teaser for next week. Josephus said that Herod was so worried about John the Baptist he thought John the Baptist might overthrow the government. That's how much Joseph has basically said whatever John said happened. John got his way that's the followership that he had. It was huge. Yeah, much. We'll pick up that next week and go down at least through verse eight. Oh, next week will be kind of interesting too that he was clothed with camel's hair and had what girdle of skin about his loins. Odd way to present yourself, preacher. Yes. As a matter of fact, we'll look at Elijah next week who also at one point was his clothing was described in us a lot like John the Baptist, like John came in the spirit and power of Elijah and carries this out. So next week I am going to wear my camel's hair and be ready to go. You don't want to miss it, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah, you'll be here. Okay, let me lead us in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thanks for the introduction to the Gospel of Mark. We've got a long journey ahead, but it'll be exciting and just learning the ins and outs and all the intricacies of this gospel and the things that are there that we never perhaps thought of too much or put together. And yet to think of these and to have the time to do it on these Wednesday nights will be a blessing for us. And we pray you'd guide it. And as we study along, if we discover we have misinterpreted something and then get a latest scripture which shows that to us, we pledge to back up and get it right because we are really more interested in the truth and the revelation of Scripture than we are any of our own pride or anything else. So we're looking forward to the journey between now and the time we finish. Or Jesus comes, whichever may come first. We're grateful. In Jesus name, amen. God bless you all. We're having a virtual tour of Israel Sunday at 945. We're going to do another unlearn it at 1045. I'm not sure exactly which one. I've got several on the list. And I want something that's appropriate also for Memorial Day, so I got to figure that out, but it'll be nice. God bless you. You're dismissed.