Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon December 7, 2008
Listen to these headline news from Google News on business just last night.
Guardian News’ headline reads, “Bleak prospect for Detroit Three despite bail-out” It reports how a leading auto-industry think-tank believes that “America’s Big Three car makers will struggle to stay afloat until 2015- even if they win a $34bn government bail-out.”
Chicago Tribune’s headline reads, “Workers at Republic Windows continue sit-in after company closes.” Apparently Bank of America due to sharp downturn in business canceled company’s line of credit causing the company to shut its doors on three day’s notice.
The Wall Street Journal’s headline reads, “Job Losses Worst Since ’74: 533,000 shed in November.” And, The Economic Times’ headline reads, “Job losses reflect economy in recession: Bush.” The rise in the US unemployment rate to 6.7 percent “reflects the fact that our economy is in recession,” the president Bush said. And, the recession really began back December of 2007. The Seattle Times headline reads, “2009 outlook: It’s gloomy for our region.” “Economists rarely agree on anything, but this time is different: 2009 will offer little, if any, relief from a recession that is already officially a year old.”
Well, we don’t have to read business news to hear how hard things are these days. Unless your parents work as professionals in health care industry, I know how difficult it’s been for some of your parents and for you as well. As you drove into the parking lot, you probably notice that parking lot is not completely cleared of snow and ice. It is because Korean congregation instead of hiring snow removers, they decided to do it themselves to save money.
Car breaks down; you get lower grade than you expected; you dread the cold air and gloomy; there are conflicts in your families, with your friends, with your spouses, with your co-workers; you dread long hours at work, at school, long hours at home with your kids; you are not sure what’s going to happen to your job next year; you are still waiting for that elusive job. My sister was recently diagnosed with Thyroid cancer and had to get surgery and radiation treatment. I was with her for the initial meeting with her surgeon and when she went in for surgery. She was discouraged; few years ago, her doctor told her that her blood sugar was high and she needed to regularly exercise to loose weight. She started to eat healthy and exercise regularly and she had a phenomenal result. But, then to be hit by this news of thyroid cancer, it was discouraging to her.
When I was young from the age of 10 to age of 15, my mom raised me, my sister and brother alone in Korea without my dad; he was living in the U.S. during this time; they were divorced. My mom worked really hard to take care of us, but it was grinding her down. Somehow it got into her mind that things could get better if she attended church. So, she did for few weeks. But, she stopped going to church one day. I remember asking her why she stopped going to church. She replied something in the line of, “Well, things are not getting any better.” I wasn’t Christian then and I didn’t know any better; my mom wasn’t Christian and she didn’t know any better either. She thought going to church would magically make things better for her. Well, it didn’t.
Do you ever ask yourself, “Dang, why does life have be so hard? Why can life be easier?” Do you get tired of bad news in the world and in your little world? Do you get tired of feeling out of source, having to deal with people, issues in life that are beyond your control? Do you ever get disappointed with God because he doesn’t seem to act to change your circumstances to make things better and easier for you? What do you do when your emotion takes you to discouragement, disorientation, confusion, feelings of hopeless and despair, even bitterness, resentment towards God?
The answer is we must look to Jesus by freshly hearing the gospel about him, the Son of God. That is the answer from Mark 1:1-8. Life can get dizzyingly disorientating and confusing, discouraging and out of control, sin infested unless we freshly hear the gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Christ means anointed. Christ is not Jesus’ last name, but refers to his title. Christ, the anointed refers to Jesus’ kingly status. Jesus is the Christ, the King who can take your disorientation and confusion and speak clear purpose to you. Jesus is Christ, the King who can take your out of control life and ground you in him, on the rock solid Cornerstone, to journey with him with self control. Jesus is the Christ, the King who takes your bitterness and resentment towards God and then shows you God’s goodness and kindness for you through his scars.
Mark 1:1-3, “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is written in Isaiah the prophet: “I (God) will send my messenger (John) ahead of you (Jesus Christ), who will prepare your way (Jesus)- a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”
In verse 2 & 3, Mark used three passages from the Old Testament to speak to the gospel about Jesus Christ, Exodus 23:20a, Malachi 3:1 and Isaiah 40:3, although he only highlighted Isaiah.
1. Looking back to Exodus
There was time when the Israelites felt life was nothing but misery. Everyday they woke up, they woke up not as free people, but enslaved to work like animals. Slave masters watched them with disgust as though they were inhuman, easily disposable; the Israelites were oppressed into forced labor. Exodus 1:14 recorded their predicament, “They made their lives bitter with hard labor in bring and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.” The Egyptians were so disgusted by the Israelites in their land, they devised devilish plan to rid of them; you can call it genocide or ethnic cleansing; the preferred method was systematic infanticide; the king of Egypt ordered all male Jewish new born to be thrown into the Nile and only to allow girls to live.
Life was hard, unimaginably unbearable; harsh reality grinded them down, worn them out; they were damaged goods who could only groan in pain.
And, it was during this time that God saved Moses from being killed as a newborn and raised him up to be his servant to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. When things were dark, hopeless, tiresome, when each day only brought bad news after bad news and piercing pain; when only groaning could be heard, that is when God entered into their midst and led them out of Egypt through Moses by demonstrating his power in his miracles.
He led them through the desert and to the Mount Sinai, and there he told them in Exodus 23:20, “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.”
This was the good news. Coming out of the slavery now in Exodus to the Promised Land, God personally stepped in to lead them through an angel, a messenger. Mark uses the portion from this Exodus passage in Septuagint, which was Greek translation of Hebrew scripture to speak about the gospel of Jesus Christ. “I am sending an angel, my messenger ahead of you.” God was going to send his messenger John ahead of Jesus who would point people to Jesus, to turn to God by repenting, turning away from sins.
Exodus was all about God coming, breaking into the sin infested, oppressed, enslaved people’s lives to lead them to the Promised Land. That is what God wants to do with you through his Son Jesus.
God broke into your world by sending his Son into the world, to die for, to be raised from the dead. The Israelites must trust God for leading in the desert. And, you must trust God to lead you in the desert through Jesus who is near you.
2. Looking to God’s refinement and the final judgment
Then, there was the life in exile, where Jerusalem, the temple, and the presence of God were just a distant memory. God intervened and brought them back to the Promised Land as he did with them in Exodus, but the Jewish remnants gave into the sins of disbelief. Looking at the broken walls of Jerusalem and the broken temple, discouragement set in, questioning if God really loved them, if God really cared for them, “How have you loved us?” Malachi 1:2. From the leadership of the priests down to people they all remained faithless. “Judah has broken faith,” says the Lord in 2:11. And, they basically had given up on God and became cynical and corrupted as they questioned, “Where is the God of justice?” in 2:17.
When the Jewish remnants tried to marginalize God to irrelevant corners of their lives, God promised to come down upon them. Malachi 3:1-3, “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant whom you desire will come, says the LORD Almighty.” He warned them that the day of his coming and he would be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” With his purifying work, the Lord will have then people who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord…” says, verse 4. And, he announced the final days of accounting. Verse 5, “So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers, and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows, and the fatherless, and deprive of aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.” God will refined his people, purified them, to be ready for his judgment.
“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way,” Mark quoted from Malachi. When God broke into our massed up world through his Son Jesus Christ, he suffered, died, and was raised from the dead, but more than that. Jesus now sits at the right hand of God ready to come to judge the world when the time is right. And, until then, now is the time of purification, time of refinement for you and me.
That means we must be brutally honest with our sins before God. Sugar coating sins and explain it away with excuses will not do.
Jesus in his parable of tenants in Luke 20:9-19 speaks about what God did. “What shall I do? I will send my son, whom I love; perhaps they will respect him.” But, the tenants not only recognized the owner’s son with respect, but killed him.” And, the judgment against those who show contempt and disrespect toward the son will be, “He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”
We must not take these warnings lightly. The humble King who hung on the cross as blameless lamb will return in his second advent as the lion of Judah. We will need to give account of our lives to him. So, it is now when we must deal with our sins before merciful Jesus who seeks to purify us, to present us blameless on the day of his coming.
3. Looking to the second Exodus
Mark quoted from Isaiah 40:3-5, which speaks to the reality of the second exodus. “A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. And, the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” Mark quoted this verse and now it is about Jesus. It is about preparing the way for the Lord Jesus, it is about making straight in the wilderness a highway for Jesus.
No one’s going to stop God from paving the way for the second Exodus. God is fully in control and Jesus is obedient to the will of the Father; Jesus submitted to his grand salvation plan by going to the cross and laying down his life and to die.
Our response must be gratitude. God is committed to paving the way for Jesus to the salvation plan. God is committed to save you and to bring you home through his Son. You are now in the second Exodus with Jesus leading the way for you.
Meditate on God’s unmovable commitment to give you salvation through his Son. Meditate on Jesus’ resolute commitment to die for you your sins. The spiritual truth is that you cannot prepare the way. The way is prepare for you. Your call is to walk in the way of the second Exodus God the Father prepared for you through his Son Jesus. And, when you learn to be thankful in God’s salvation for you in Jesus, you will have sure footing and fall in your journey of the second Exodus.
Conclusion
The gospel about Jesus Christ spelled out for us by Mark is to look to the first Exodus and remember God broke into your world by sending his Son Jesus. It is to look to the final judgment that is sure to come and live in sober humility before God by dealing with sins honestly. It is also to look to the second Exodus Jesus leading the way through his death and resurrection; and you do this with thankfulness.
Then, our journey will be no longer about what’s happening around us, but it will be about what’s happening in us and how we can be used to be the witness to the gospel. It is not about getting more comfortable in life. It is not about wishing there will be no more bad news. But, our journey will be about living the gospel of Jesus Christ. It will be about spreading the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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