Mark 1:1-8 – 2026 Apr 30 – John the Baptist

KV8: Into What Were You Baptized?

1-3: The Forerunner Foretold
4-5: The Forerunner Arrives
6-8: The Forerunner Identified

Introduction

There is no more compelling story than that of Our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no story more essential to humanity than the gospel. There have been books written, movies made, television shows, radio broadcasts, and all agree it is the greatest story ever told. It is seen this way because it is about the greatest man who ever walked on the planet. This gospel, as we considered last time, is one of four that tell the story in detail.

The gospel of Mark does not begin with Jesus Christ after verse 1. While one could argue that it began before the foundations of the world, the text of Mark begins with John the Baptist. As a cousin of the Lord Jesus, the coming of John was foretold about 400 years in advance of Jesus’s birth in the final Old Testament book Malachi 4:5, “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.”

Many individuals look upon this as a prophecy about the second coming, but I think there is more to it than that. This may speak of two arrivals, but in any case, Malachi is prophesying the arrival of John the Baptist as a forerunner of the Saviour to “prepare the way.” The Lord Jesus certainly thought of him this way: Matthew 11:11 “Truly I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist! Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” He is considered as the very last Old Testament prophet.

That this servant of God is deployed before the Lord Jesus can only be seen as preparation for the long-foretold advent of Messiah, and we now know that is exactly what happened.

Let’s get into the text.

1-3: The Forerunner Foretold

The first verse may be seen as the title of the book, and everything else as the written narrative in this case. It’s pretty obvious, so let’s look.

1: The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The “gospel” Mark mentions here is what I think of as the “good news,” or the “blessed story” that Mark is about to tell. That story covers most of the essential story; the life, death, resurrection, and glorification of our Lord and the gathering of those who believe Him which started then. Two things characterize the entire gospel; abruptness and brevity. Both are put to good narrative effect.

The word for “beginning” is the Greek Ἀρχὴ, meaning “origin” as in John 1:1, where it says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The subject of the sentence is Jesus Christ.

Something interesting I discovered is that the Greek does not contain υἱοῦ θεοῦ in at least some manuscripts, though it is contained in the Greek of Matthew 4:3 “And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” Given some of the textual issues that are contained in Mark, this should not be surprising. Because this is the title of the book, it is not a critical omission. What Mark is attempting to accomplish is to present his goal in writing, and he has been very sucessful at it.

2: As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: “BEHOLD, I SEND MY MESSENGER AHEAD OF YOU, WHO WILL PREPARE YOUR WAY;

Mark continues his work by telling us where this was prophesied in the Old Testament, and it comes for two places. We will look at both.

“Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,” says the LORD of hosts. (Malachi 3:1)

A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God. (Isaiah 40:3)

Both places tell us that men who served God in the Old Testament knew that one of their own was coming as a forerunner to prepare the way, and that is precisely what John the Baptist did, as we will see in the next verse.

3: THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS, ‘MAKE READY THE WAY OF THE LORD, MAKE HIS PATHS STRAIGHT.’ ”

John the Baptist, according to the Lord, is that very forerunner. In Chapter 9, this conversation takes place between Jesus and His disciples: “They asked Him, saying, ‘Why is it that the scribes say that Elijah must come first?’ ​And He said to them, ‘Elijah does first come and restore all things. And yet how is it written of the Son of Man that He will suffer many things and be treated with contempt? ​But I say to you that Elijah has indeed come, and they did to him whatever they wished, just as it is written of him.’”

Making His paths straight is equated by the Lord Himself as a restoration of all things. What could that mean? At that time, the earth was not restored like the Lord will do in His millenial kingdom when He returns, so they must have been speaking of a more spiritual and therefore unseen ministry for John. What was John’s ministry? It was to proclaim the coming kingdom of God. As a prophet of the Lord, it was His job to tell them what the Lord said to them specifically and give them guidance on how to act to obey the Lord. Enter the Baptist. He was advocating a moral return to the Law of God and walking before Him with a good conscience. He instituted the practice of demonstrating your repentance by the symbolic washing away of your sins, that is, your old life, that was also supposed to have a commitment to live under the Law as much as possible as you waited for Messiah. Further, he had no time for the hypocricy of the ruling religious elites of his time, calling the Pharisees and Saducees, “a generation of vipers” in Luke 3:8, which says, “Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham for our father,’ for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.”

Primarily, the sins common in his day were self-love (selfishness) and coveteousness (often as a matched set, I suspect). To combat this, he would have made his core message about love for others and generosity in all things, as well as consideration for others. Anyone who has been with us from the Pauline Epistles will be familiar with this as a core message in the New Testament. He, like his Lord, warned tax collectors against extortion. He warned soldiers against lawlessness and plundering people (robbing them of their stuff). What he taught and how he lived were the talk of the entire region at the time. People came to see and hear him from all over the region. When his message reached the ears of Jesus of Nazareth, He journeyed specially to meet John and participate in his baptism. I suspect that His commitment to walk in His heavenly nature still holds, even today. He gave us the example to follow as we also use Baptism as a declaration of our own faith in Christ and lifelong effort to walk in His nature.

John’s baptism, it must be said, was not what we today view as Christian baptism. It was not practiced by Christ’s disciples until after His resurrection. Salvation through Christ was not available in the New Testament sense until then. It bound the people who did it to repentance, and not faith in Christ, although John pointed to Him. It was not administered in the name of the Trinity, and those baptized by John who became Christians later were rebatized by Paul (see Acts 18:24–25 “Now a Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus; and he was mighty in the Scriptures. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he was speaking and teaching accurately the things concerning Jesus, being acquainted only with the baptism of John;” and Acts 19:1–7 “It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and came to Ephesus, and found some disciples. He said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said to him, “No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.” And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” And they said, “Into John’s baptism.” Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying. There were in all about twelve men.”) This baptism by John is the very beginning of Jesus’s public ministry.

4-5: The Forerunner Arrives

We have already looked at some of this and discussed it in some detail, but there is information aplenty, and more of it uncovers itself as we go through the text. Let’s see what it says.

4: John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

We have to remember that the main goal of Mark in writing our text for us was to not only relate John to Jesus, but to make the ministry of John the Baptist the focal point as the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, and John’s coming words an accurate prediction about the Lord Jesus. We’ll talk about that when we get there.

The text says that he “appeared in the wilderness,” and I don’t think he came from nowhere. Clearly he had some kind of theological education, maybe from his father Zechariah, but I suspect because of some common practices, that John the Baptist was an Essene, that “sect” that lived around nearby Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The proximity of Qumran to the part of the Jordan River make this very possible. The Essenes also practiced the immersion in water for repentance, and the same ascetic lifestyle attributed to John. John also came from a priestly family, as did many of the residents of Qumran, ascribing their lineage from Zadok the High Priest, though I don’t recall all of the details of that. There is a piece that for me makes a substantial case given all that other common ground: The Essenes had a scroll they title “the Messianic Apocalypse” which tells of a Messiah that will “raise the dead” and “proclaim good news to the poor,” which mirrors Jesus’s response to John’s followers that asked Him if He was the One or if they should look for another. His response, seen in Luke 7:22, which says, “And He answered and said to them, ‘Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the gospel preached to them…’” mirrors that scroll, and if John were associated with the Essenes at Qumran, he would be very familiar with the answer Jesus gave.

John the Baptist is also identified in Josephus, in his Jewish Antiquities, 18.5.2. I’ll read the relevant portion: “(116) Now, some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist; (117) for Herod slew him, who was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to righteousness towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for that the washing [WITH WATER] would be acceptable to him, if they made use of it, not in order to the putting away [OR THE REMISSION] of some sins [ONLY], but for the purification of the body; supposing still that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. (118) Now, when [MANY] others came in crowds about him, for they were greatly moved [OR PLEASED] by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties, by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it should be too late. (119) Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death. Now the Jews had an opinion that the destruction of this army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God’s displeasure against him.”

Josephus was no friendly witness like the disciples, and later the Apostles of Christ and Jesus’s followers. Flavius Josephus was a Jewish apostate that worked for Rome. If anything, he was a hostile source, though he wrote as a historian. Anyone that’s ever taken a law course in high school can tell you that positive testimony from a hostile source is the best kind to have. He called John a good man that was trying to turn the Jews toward righteousness and piety. I wish that could be said about me someday! But back to topic. John had clearly arrived.

He “appeared,” perhaps from nearby Qumran and preached a “baptism” or “dipping” of repentance, and it is a form of our Greek word μετανοίας, which is well-known to us if you’ve been around any legth of time at all. It means a change of mind. Repentance is a faoundational behaviour for sinners and a way of life for saints after they become believers in this present age. John taught that one had to “change their mind” about their sin. Can you see how he was preparing the way for the Lord NOW? How many other places have we read thos from the text itself, and how many more have this as a direct application? I didn’t count, but I can tell you that it is one of the major themes of the New Testament itself. It is not mere chance that Mark is beginning his gospel in this way. As we go on into the book, it will be a major theme and direction for believers. We change our mind to recognize that our action or lack thereof was wrong! It was a violation of an ancient and holy standard set by God Himself! We see it was wrong, and we change our mind about it, about doing it ever again, about how it is sin, maybe for the first time, and we turn away from it 180 degrees toward Jesus and the perfect atoning sacrifice He performed when He died on the cross in our place. That’s what this verse means. Moving on.

5: And all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.

Talk about celebrity! The whole country went out to see John. What I suspect was going on was a kind of awakening, spiritually speaking, in the hearts of many of the residents of Judea. Like our society today, it seems that life in Judea was at a societal turning point in its political history and that will always involve a set of spiritual realities no matter how people try to ignore them. Many people were growing tired of Roman occupation, and rebellion was in the air. Say what you will about political conflict, but it always makes people think about deeper things. Many people could understand at a basic level that not all was right between themselves and their Creator, God. This had to have influence on what was happening.

John was reckoned by the people as a prophet. We know now that he was the last Old Testament prophet. What I mean is that He was the last prophet under the Old Covenant, because no other prophet was called before Jesus rose from the grave. It had been about 400 years since the last recorded prophet walked on the planet in the person of Malachi, who foretold John’s coming (we read that earlier). God called another prophet into being from a childless couple who were well past child-bearing years. Hmmm, have we seen this before? Oh yeah, Isaac, the child of promise. John had the distinct privilege of introducing the change of mind idea of repentance before the coming of the One who would solidify the fact for everyone that would ever turn away from their old standards and toward God’s instead.

I don’t hold that there was anything special about the Jordan River. What was special about it was that it had water in it for the ritual cleansing of John’s baptism. I’ve heard celebrities brag about how they decided to be baptized in the Jordan and try to extol how much better that makes their Christianity than everyone else’s. Beloved, that’s a form of pride, and pride is the sin of the devil. Such an individual should be reminded that the important thing about his or her own baptism is that they followed Christ in obedience. For the Christian, there is no ritual you can undergo, no act you can perform, no location to which you can travel, no spell which could be cast, and no deed you can do that will save you. Christ saves you. End of discussion. Those who would follow Him will want to undergo baptism as a representation of the reality that has already happened inside them on a spiritual level. This is a symbolic representation of what has already happened, not a “seal” of salvation. That’s the Holy Spirit living inside you. Read your bible and tell me I’m wrong.

What did they do that was important instead of getting dunked in water? They “confessed their sins.” The Greek word for confessing is ἐξομολογούμενοι. It is the nominative, masculine, present-tense verb in the plural and middle voice. It literally means “to agree.” Yes, Lord. I see that was sin. I agree it was wrong. I commit to not doing that again, even though I blew it for the 491st time just now. I will keep confessing and changing my mind about it, as many times as needed. The great news for believers is that such a day will come. It may not be far off, but I don’t have a date on that.

I think it safe to say that the predicted forerunner has arrived in the person of John the Baptist. He has begun to make the paths straight before the Lord to attract a people to Himself who will confess their sins and change their mind about having to be right all the time and submit to His lorship and walk with Him. Let’s go on.

6-8: The Forerunner Identified

Here is wheere we get our first look at a description of John, and it has some useful and identifying information in it, so let’s have a peek, shall we?

6: John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and his diet was locusts and wild honey.

There seems to be a concerted effort by Mark to explain John the Baptist was wearing clothing made of camel’s hair with a belt around his waist. Why would this be? As it turns out, we can draw a straight line to an Old-Testament prophet – Elijah. King Ahaziah had a problem. Ahaziah, you may recall, was the son and succesor of King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. None of these folks were good, and Ahaziah followed in his own parents’ footsteps. It seems Ahaziah sent messengers to the “god” Ekron for word on whether he would recover from a bad fall he had suffered. His problem wasn’t just the fall. It seems that Elijah was intercepting the messengers, and sending them back with a dire prediction about the king. The King wanted to know who this guy was, and so he asked for a description. This is where we will pick up the narative in 2 Kings 1:8: “They answered him, ‘He was a hairy man with a leather girdle bound about his loins.’ And he said, ‘It is Elijah the Tishbite.’” This became the garb of a certain class of prophet, apparently, they are even called “Elijah-type” prophets in commentaries.

John’s diet is also described in great detail. It tells us that he ate locusts and wild honey. Wild honey is simply honey that is made by wild bees, but it does have a deeper flavour than honey that is made by kept bees. It may also be a reference to the sap that runs from decidous trees. Think of maple syrup of sorts. You know, I used to feel sorry for John, but then I took a fourth-year entomology course from Dr. Henry Howden at Carleton University. He had the oppotunity to try it, and he explained to the class that it was a “good feed,” his way of saying it was more than adequate nutrition for him. It certainly has enough protien. For the record a locust is in the same order in which you would find grashoppers, but are bigger and sometimes more destructive. The variety my professor ate and that John the Baptist would have eaten are likely the same, the Syrian locust. Both dietary items were seen as “clean” under Jewish dietary law, as one would expect.

This description, spiritually speaking, I think says something else. It means that John was anything but mainstream. We will see that with his teaching in the next verse. To go and hear John in the wilderness around the Jordan River would have been to break from the mainstream. Oh, it is true that the Pharisees and Saducees checked him out, but by and large drew ire from John as God’s primary prophet. Remember, the Pharisees preached the “traditions of the elders,” a sort of fence that was formed around the law, initially intended to keep you from going anywhere near it and breaking it. It turned out to invalidate it. To be fair, we should have realized this; it didn’t work in the garden either. The Saducees didn’t really believe in anything. That doesn’t work either. Psalm 14:1 says “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good.”

John stood apart from both of these groups. He taught the idea that there was a God, that all of humanity had sinned, and we needed to repent of those sins and live a moral lifestyle under the Law! Now, where have we heard this before? Oh yeah, that’s the first half of the gospel, because the second part that gives it its power (Romans 1:16 says “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”) had not happened just yet, but it will by the end of Mark’s book. He was a prophet who was sent by God to call the people back to obedience to God. Next verse.

7: And he was preaching, and saying, “After me One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to stoop down and untie the thong of His sandals.

Here is John’s teaching. There is another individual coming after me, he is stronger than I am, and I am not worthy to tie His shoes. John tells us in this phrase that He is NOT the Messiah. Remember, our Lord Jesus called him the greatest among men born of women in Luke 7:28, which says, “I say to you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.” And yet in the kingdom of God, the very least of individuals is greater there than John was here.

John preached other things. Luke 3:3–9 might be the first sermon of John the Baptist. Look what he said: “And he came into all the district around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Make ready the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight. Every ravine will be filled, And every mountain and hill will be brought low; The crooked will become straight, And the rough roads smooth; And all flesh will see the salvation of God.”’ So he began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham for our father,” for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’” The brothers in the Brethren Assembly used to say, “How to win friends and influence people.”

Some of His other teachings were softer, but just as poigniant. In the same sermon in Luke 3:10–14 he went on to say, “And the crowds were questioning him, saying, ‘Then what shall we do?’ And he would answer and say to them, ‘The man who has two tunics is to share with him who has none; and he who has food is to do likewise.’ And some tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they said to him, ‘Teacher, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Collect no more than what you have been ordered to.’ Some soldiers were questioning him, saying, ‘And what about us, what shall we do?’ And he said to them, ‘Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages.’” He was trying to use the law as a basis for a moral way of living, and he was incredibly practical. When the Lord died and rose again, the power of the Holy Spirit became involved in transforming believers and the whole “living morally” actually became possible and even desirable to those who follow Jesus to do the right thing as a way of life. This is what John’s baptism was all about. Next verse.

8: “I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

John taught that his own baptism was ceremonial. It wasn’t just an empty ritual, although some today treat it that way. He waded out into the river to wait-deep, and then he dunked people in the river and brought them back up. This is my preferred form of Baptism today, although there are others, and I won’t debate them. I have been involved with an effusion baptism, where the lady in question was elderly, and could not descend or ascend the stairs of our baptismal tank. She couln’t get to the water, so we brought the water to her. However, John was crystal clear that he only wanted people that were serious and wanted to live that moral life and escape the coming destruction of the warth of a holy God. Luke 3:7–9 says, “So he began saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, ‘You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham for our father,” for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham. Indeed the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; so every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.’” I know we have gone over that earlier, but nothing other than this illustrates the point that baptism, whether for John or for believers and followers of Christ, should only be gone by believers that are ready to live for Christ, and that life should be regardless of the cost. Even for a ceremonial baptism.

Our baptism as Christians is different than John’s baptism, though the same elements are maintained. There must be a repentance, that is a change of mind to live for God in the name of Christ (Greek for Messiah). You must make this commitment despite what it may cost you before you even know the full cost. You can only be this willing if God has transformed you by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit by your confession of faith in the name of Christ. Why? Because Jesus, the Christ of which we speak, literally died in YOUR place on a Roman cross to pay the price for all of YOUR sins personally. We have spent some time to define all the terms, so I’m just going to say this straight. If you will repent and turn from your sins and toward Jesus Christ, and you will believe in your heart (meaning your moral decision centre) that God raised Him from the dead (proof), God will save you, and transform your life by sending you the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, to live in your heart (again, your moral decision centre) and guide you into all truth. That’s the gospel, that power of God that results in salvation we talked about earlier. Romans 10:9–10 says “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” I invite you to durn to Christ today, not because your life will get better, but because it will allow you, as John taught, to escape the wrath that is coming. Our last study was in Revelation. That was, among other things, a list of everything that will happen during that wrath. Read it and consider it if you must, or find the paylist on Rumble and watch the series.

Mark begins his gospel with the very beginning of Jesus’s public ministry, and that is what we will look at in our next study, which will be chapter 1:9-15. This introduction of John shows with absolute clairty that there is NO difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament in terms of how one is saved and must ultimately submit to a Saviour who is anointed by God. On the Old Testament, they looked forward to said Messiah’s coming. After the Resurrection of Jesus, we could rely on the risen Messiah, that is, the Christ, that is, the Anointed One of God for our salvation. We must turn from our sins and towards the Saviour, forsaking the sins we so treasure in our natural selfish state. When we do, He, God, will transform us and renew our minds so that we will live for Him going forward.

As you do this, may the Lord bless you, and keep you; may the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, may He lift up his countenance upon you, and give you His peace. Amen and Amen.

As I said, next time, we will look at Mark 1:9-15. Until then, may the Lord give you grace and peace.

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