Messiah (Who is Jesus)

The AVENUE podcast discusses the topic of Jesus as Messiah in the book of Mark. The passage starts with a prophecy from Isaiah, establishing Jesus as the Son of God. John the Baptist prepares the way for Jesus and baptizes him. Jesus is then tempted in the wilderness and proclaims the good news. The passage emphasizes the power of the gospel and how it is for all people, regardless of background. The humility of Jesus is highlighted, as he is baptized despite being sinless. John the Baptist recognizes Jesus as greater than himself and humbles himself before him. The passage sets up the book of Mark as a powerful gospel that shows Jesus as the Messiah. Welcome to the AVENUE podcast, where we're passionate about unleashing God-given potential through the life-transforming power of the gospel. I'm Raquel. I'm a third-year education student. I'm Henry, and I'm a fourth-year engineering student. And we've both been impacted by this community. In this episode, we will be discussing the topic of Jesus as Messiah as we begin our series, Who is Jesus? Now, Henry, would you mind reading the text for us? Certainly. I'll be reading from Mark chapter 1, verses 1 to 15, and this is from the New Living Translation. This is the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. It began just as the prophet Isaiah had written, Look, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, and he will prepare your way. He is a voice shouting in the wilderness, Prepare the way for the Lord's coming. Clear the road for him. This 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 to be forgiven. All of Judea, including all the people of Jerusalem, went out to see and hear John. And when they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. His clothes were woven from coarse camel hair, and he wore a leather belt around his waist. For food he ate locusts and wild honey. John announced, Someone is coming soon, who is greater than I, so much greater that I am not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he baptizes with the Holy Spirit. One day Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. As Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice from heaven said, You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy. The Spirit then compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan for forty days. He was out among the wild animals, and angels took care of him. Later on, after John was arrested, Jesus went into Galilee, where he preached God's good news. The time promised by God has come at last, he announced. The kingdom of God is near. Repent of your sins and believe the good news. Thanks Henry. I love this part of Mark. I think Mark is a gospel, it's a very busy gospel. Jesus is always doing lots of things and it focuses a lot on his actions. But what I really love about Mark is that the book was written with people other than Jews in mind, right? It was written with sort of Romans and Gentiles in mind, and I think that the way Mark writes it is in order to explain and illustrate that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think that this start to Mark really emphasizes the power of the gospel, which is that it goes to all people, regardless of things that conventionally would have held people back. I think we really see this in this chapter in many ways. Jesus is displayed coming from Nazareth, which in this context was looked down upon, and yet from this area comes the Son of God, the Messiah, the Anointed One. And so yeah, I think this comes up many times throughout this chapter. Yeah, absolutely. And I love it because Mark begins by establishing who Jesus is to these people, right? To these Gentiles and believers who are not Jewish. And he says in the first verse, this is the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. And I love how he does this because in this version, in the NLC version, it says the good news, but that is essentially the gospel, right? This is the gospel of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. And the word gospel to the Romans meant joyful tidings, and it was associated for them with festivals and celebrations for the emperor. And so for them, reading this passage and aiming to understand it, they would have understand when Mark writes gospel, good news, joyful tidings, they would have understood that this gospel means that Jesus is significant. Definitely. Absolutely. And what I love even more is directly after this, it then goes into describing prophecies and Isaiah. And so this is meeting both the needs of the Gentiles through those connotations to the good news and to the Roman culture, as well as the ancient scriptures, which have been held by the Jewish people. So this really shows that it's going to everyone regardless of their background. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's really important that he begins with this prophecy from Isaiah. The Jews who were reading this would have caught onto that and would have been looking out for signs of the Messiah as they had these prophecies from the Old Testament. And so when Mark does this, not only is he cementing the fact that Jesus is the Messiah for the Romans and for the Gentiles, but he's also cementing that he's the Messiah for the Jews as well. And then he goes in to talk about John the Baptist. Yeah. Why do you think that this is significant that he talks about John the Baptist and adds his story in here? Yeah, I think that these verses follow a very chronological order. We start off with the prophecies of Jesus in Isaiah, and then we move to John the Baptist who prepares the way for Jesus. And that also has prophetic background. With this, afterwards, then Jesus comes onto the scene and then gets baptized. And it's all following a very chronological order. And I think that this is powerful because we get a little snippet of the gospel as a whole. Jesus is then baptized, is blessed with the Holy Spirit. He then immediately goes into the wilderness and is tempted for 40 days. And then after this, he's proclaiming the good news. And in many ways, this is the gospel right here. Jesus comes into humanity, he's tempted, he's tested, and he endures a lot of pain for the sake of humanity. But at the end of it, he comes out victorious and can proclaim the good news to all of humanity. And so we get this profound story of Jesus within the first few verses, which really sets this book of Mark up to be a really powerful gospel. Yeah, and I think that's what's so amazing about it. Jesus was perfect. He didn't need to sort of, you know, baptism is a representation of your sins being washed away. For him, that wasn't the case, but he came and he was sort of in solidarity with us as sinners as he got baptized. And baptism was practiced in the Jewish community, definitely. They had a lot of ceremonial immersions, but I think it was more typically common amongst the Gentiles who wanted to become Jews and become sort of baptized into that community. So for Jews to be baptized by John, it was basically saying, it was them saying, I am as far away from God as Gentile and I need to change that. And I think that's what's so cool and amazing about what Jesus did here is he's saying, yes, despite the fact that, you know, I have no sin, I have not sinned, I'm going to be baptized. And it's his example that we follow. We are baptized because he showed us that this is what we should do. And I think that's amazing that even though he was God, he came down to our level. Definitely. And I think that this really shows the humility that Jesus had and the great lengths that he went to for us and for all people to receive salvation. Like you say, he was innocent. He certainly didn't need to go through, didn't deserve to go through the things that he did, but he did it for our sake, out of his love for humanity. And the passage goes on, it talks about Jesus being baptized and it talks about John. And in verse six, it says, his clothes were woven from coarse camel hair and he wore a leather belt around his waist and for food he ate locusts and honey. And I think that is a really specific correlation to Elijah in second Kings, who was also someone who called the people of Israel to repentance. And it's cool because although John is calling people to repentance, he's paving the way for the Messiah. And because of the previous prophecy of Isaiah, we know that and then we can see this is John. John is the messenger. And people thought John was great. You know, people wondered if he was maybe the Messiah. But he says in verse seven, someone is coming soon who is greater than I am. I'm not even worthy to stoop down like a slave and untie the straps of his sandals, which is pretty significant because people like him who had a large following and rabbis of the time, there's a lot of things that they would ask their students to do. It would be pretty much anything. But the one thing that they wouldn't do would be to ask them to untie their sandals. And it was seen as a task too menial for that. But here John is saying that he's not even worthy to do that for Jesus. That is how mighty he is. And so Mark's established at the start, Jesus is the Messiah. He then talks about the prophecy. He then details how he gets baptized later in the chapter. But he's building up this picture, this image of who Jesus is so that there can be no doubt in people's mind as to that he is the Messiah. Yeah. And what I love from this example of John the Baptist is even though he did amazing things and was very important, it was never about him. It was always about Jesus. And so I think as we go out into the world as Christians, we need to follow in John the Baptist's way and remember that we're doing this to lift Jesus up and it's not about lifting ourselves up. We must humble ourselves because we are not even worthy to stoop down to untie the straps of Jesus, like of his sandals. So we need to remember that and to follow in John's example. Absolutely. And I think it's really amazing because you come into this text and there's so much sort of sin. You know, you have the sin of the world. You have us as humans who are just, would be nothing without Jesus. But Jesus, particularly when he comes, you know, from Nazareth, Galilee and becomes baptized, this sort of the verses from verse 9 to verse 15 is really interesting because in my mind there's two parts. There's sort of Jesus, you know, quite a common name from Nazareth, a very looked down upon village of Galilee, also not a very religious area at the time, sort of very diverse with the people that were there, was baptized and in that he sort of identifies himself with sin in the Jordan River, which was a pretty filthy, like physically filthy river. But then you have the heavens parting, like the heavens splitting apart and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. And God's presence comes into this sin, comes into this sort of mess. And we also have a voice from heaven, you know, that's pretty rare in the Bible to have a voice from heaven, but how amazing that God comes into this space and praises and affirms Jesus publicly as his son. It's a beautiful example of the Trinity working in perfect harmony. We've got the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus. We've got God's voice from heaven, the heavens splitting open. And it's even in these places like you said, you know, Nazareth, the Jordan River, sin and the need for baptism, that God is still so present. Yeah, I think it's a very beautiful depiction. Absolutely. And I love how Mark does this, because like you were saying before, it's sort of almost chronological. You almost have the whole gospel in here in this one passage. But yeah, he says at the start, he's the son of God. The prophets have called him Lord, you know, Isaiah calls him Lord and says the Lord is coming. And John the Baptist said Jesus was mightier than him and he was a mighty prophet himself. And then God himself comes and says Jesus is the beloved son of God. And so when we talk about who Jesus is, and we read through the gospels, you know, it couldn't be clearer. This is Jesus. This is Jesus as the son of God, as Messiah. He is the one that people have been waiting for. And it kind of, it sometimes seems really obvious to us, having grown up, at least for myself and I know yourself as well, growing up in a Christian household. We sort of, people who know about Jesus today know him as the son of God, or, you know, who Christians say is God. But back then, they'd had these prophecies for so long. And so it was really, yeah, sort of split in culture to actually claim to be the Messiah. But here Mark is saying, look at all these things, all these things have happened. This proves that Jesus is the Messiah. This is the one that you've been waiting for. Yeah, I definitely agree. I think it's very important that there was no question about who Jesus was and that he was the Messiah, the Anointed One. And I think that this sets it up so that there's a lot of compelling evidence that at the time, you know, people reading this, they may not have, it may not have been general knowledge that Jesus was the Messiah and is the Messiah. So yeah, I think it's very important that Mark has written it like this. Yeah, and I love also how he puts these things together. Not only does Jesus sort of identify with us as he gets baptized, but also in the way that he's tempted in the wilderness. You know, he goes out into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan for 40 days. And what's significant about the number 40 or the idea of 40 days? Yeah, 40 days is a very significant number. For 40 days, the flood occurred. For 40 years, the Israelites wandered around in the desert until they entered the promised land. And so this 40, it often symbolizes a time of transition or growth or spiritual development in the case of the Israelites, they required 40 years until they were prepared to go into the promised land. And I think that this 40 days that Jesus was being tempted for, which is a very long time, it's almost six weeks, which puts it into perspective of how long this was that he suffered. I think it prepared him for his mission and for his journey on earth. And it also goes to show how strong Jesus was. And also how God didn't leave him in these struggles. It says that angels took care of him. So even though Jesus was being tempted by Satan himself, God still gave him provisions to get through those temptations. And so I think we can take this and apply it to any situations we're in currently that we're struggling with. Even if we feel under attack, God will comfort you and will give you the resources to get through whatever you're going through. So I find this very encouraging, especially in times of difficulty. Yeah, me too. I think it's amazing that although he was God, he was also fully man at the same time. Mark doesn't go into the wilderness experience as much as some of the other Gospels do, but I love how he talks about it, like Jesus struggled as we struggle. He didn't come and, you know, obviously we know his life wasn't perfect. He had these struggles and he was tempted by Satan himself, like that's a pretty big thing. But yeah, angels took care of him, he overcame that. And afterwards he goes on to preach the good news and he says, you know, the time promised by God has come at last, the kingdom of God is near, repent of your sins and believe the good news. Yeah, such a beautiful way to end. And yeah, I think this applies to us today. The kingdom of God is near and the good news is here. The good news is Jesus and we should hold on to it and share it with others out of love because it's good news. Absolutely. Thank you for listening and tune in next week as we continue our series, Who is Jesus?