Sermon on Mark 1:1–15: Four witnesses to the identity of Jesus
A sermon by James de Costobadie, Senior Pastor at Latimer Church, on the opening verses of Mark's Gospel.
Summary
James de Costobadie preaches through Mark 1:1–15, arguing that Mark opens his Gospel by presenting four distinct witnesses to the identity of Jesus: Mark himself, the Old Testament prophets, God the Father at Jesus' baptism, and the devil during the temptation in the wilderness. De Costobadie contends that the central claim of Christianity is not a set of moral improvements or self-help principles, but the person of Jesus — the Messiah, the Son of God — whose coming was long predicted and whose identity is confirmed from multiple directions. The sermon closes with a direct call to repentance, warning that delay is spiritually dangerous and that the evidence of genuine Christian faith is ongoing, identifiable repentance.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: The problem of mistaken identity
James de Costobadie: Christianity is the only world religion which offers a personal relationship with its founder, Jesus Christ.
I'm not sure when you last went for a sight test. My eyes have never been great, and over about 25 years they got worse each year. Then I found one of the benefits of reaching a certain age — your eyes start moving the other direction and they start improving. There are not many things that actually get better in life, but they're on the rebound now and coming back.
Physical sight is one thing. Spiritual sight is another. How good is your sight of Jesus? Can we see who he is? Many can't. They know one or two things about him perhaps, but they don't see him for who he really is.
Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund, likes to tell a story about his dad. After his great ascent of Everest, Sir Edmund spent a lot of the rest of his life helping the people of Nepal — building schools and that kind of thing. Peter tells the story of being there one time with his dad during a photo shoot. They were leaning on a rock, there was a camera there, and his dad was casually holding a pickaxe and one or two bits of climbing equipment. Around the corner came a group of tourists with a rather loud tourist guide. The guide pointed to Peter's dad and said, "Now, a proper mountaineer would never hold a pickaxe like that man over there," and then carried on. Peter said he remembered his dad roaring with laughter and wondering how long it would take the guide to realise who he had been speaking about.
It is easy to have a case of mistaken identity in life. It is easy to have a case of mistaken identity about Jesus — not to see him as he really is, and therefore not to treat him as we really should. For how we treat Jesus shows whether we see Jesus for who he is.
The Gospel writer Mark provides four witnesses to testify to Jesus' identity in these opening verses. That is what we are going to look at now over these next few minutes.
First witness: Mark himself (verse 1)
The first witness is Mark himself. Chapter 1, verse 1: The beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.
Do you like a summary sentence? Here it is — the summary of Christianity. The beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God. Let's break that up.
The beginning. This is going to be a story of new beginnings. The Bible is full of new beginnings, and God through this gospel will offer us a new beginning. He is the God of second chances, the God of fresh starts.
The good news. This was the word used in ancient Roman times by an emperor to declare victory as he came back from battle — an announcement of good news, an announcement of victory. Mark says that is what Christianity is about. It is an announcement of good news, not bad news as many people fear, not the kind of news you want to keep away from or keep yourself distant from, but good news — in fact, the best news in the world. And when we think of our world at the current time, is our world in need of good news? Of course it is. You look at the headlines, or perhaps you look at your own life. We need good news, and here is the best news in the world.
It comes through a person. Notice what Mark says in verse 1 — not the beginning of the good news about us, not the beginning of the good news about us being good people, not the beginning of the good news about us self-improving, not the beginning of the gospel about humanity being the answer to humanity's problems, but rather the beginning of the good news about Jesus. For Christianity is Christ, nothing more and nothing less. It is Jesus who makes the difference. It is the beginning of the good news about him and about him alone.
Life can get complicated. Sometimes maybe we overcomplicate the Christian life. It is the good news about Jesus.
There was a young Indian man in the early 20th century called Sadhu Sundar Singh who, at age 16, had a vision from the risen Jesus. He came from a devoutly Hindu home and he announced to his father that he was converting to Christianity. His father immediately disowned him. His brother tried to poison him on a number of occasions, and villagers threw poisonous snakes into his bedroom window. He became a missionary within India, and later on, as a well-known missionary, was interviewed on one occasion and asked what he found different about Christianity. He said, "The Lord Jesus Christ." "Well, yes," said the interviewer, "but what made Christianity actually better in his view?" "The Lord Jesus Christ," he said. "So what persuaded you to actually become a Christian?" said the interviewer. "The Lord Jesus Christ," he said. A fairly simple interview. But he was right, because it is the man Jesus who makes all the difference.
As it is said here: Jesus — yes, that is his human name, the man — but not just a man. Jesus, the Messiah. The Hebrew word, Christ the Greek word, the same word meaning the anointed one — that is the long-awaited saviour king who had come to save humanity, rescue us, and restore us to God. He is, says Mark, the Son of God, who has come to reconnect us with the living God.
Mark helps us to see he is the Christ, that person of whom the Old Testament speaks. And that leads us on to the second witness.
Second witness: The prophets (verses 2–8)
James de Costobadie: The second witness is the prophets, in verses 2 through 8.
Jesus didn't just come as a bolt from the blue. And sometimes I think that is how it comes across to people. "What? I'm being asked to believe in someone who apparently existed 2,000 years ago? Those who've got enough faith to believe that, well, they believe it, and those who don't, can't." That is how it seems to many people — very arbitrary. Like, if you just believe this happens, you believe in him, then you get eternal life. It feels arbitrary. But we realise it is much less arbitrary when we realise that Jesus is the fulfilment of a whole plan. There is a backstory to this, and God tells us the backstory.
Over many years, over many centuries, he sent a line of prophets to speak his words, to prepare people for the day when he came to earth. So that when he finally did appear in the person of his Son, in one sense it was the least surprising thing that has ever happened in this world, because Jesus had been long predicted. God knew that this world was a broken world. God knew that this world was a suffering world, suffering under the weight of sin and under the weight of his judgment for our rebellion. We see that suffering everywhere across the world today. All is not right with the world. All is not right with us.
And so God, in love, determined to take action. Through the prophets, he spoke of the day when he would come into this world to sort out the problems. But before doing so, verse 2, he would send a messenger. You see in verse 2: As it is written in Isaiah the prophet: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way — a voice of one calling in the wilderness, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'"
The messenger would come as a lone voice to urge the people to be ready. Mark here has actually taken two Old Testament prophecies and stitched them together. The first bit comes from Malachi and the second part from Isaiah. In both of them together, God says that before he comes to earth, he would send a messenger to announce his coming. Because a special visit requires special preparation.
I remember when I was at school, we were told one morning with no notice that we had two hours to get the school ready for a special visitor. Two hours — sweep the leaves off the street, pick the chewing gum off the lampposts. We were told to scrub up. Then we were put in two lines, and there was a little dip over the top of the road where the special guests were coming. I began to guess who it might be. I was hoping I'd get the right one on my side of the line, and sure enough, on the other side of the line was Prince Philip, and on our side of the line was Queen Elizabeth, who came down.
Now here — how much more preparation is needed? Not just for a monarch, but for the judge of the world. Because listen to the whole quote that is given from the book of Malachi: "I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare the way for me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant whom you desire will come. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire."
The people were to get ready to meet God himself, the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings, to prepare the way for him in their lives and in the life of their nation. If you knew that you were going to meet someone special today, you would make preparation. And Mark says, if you know that you are going to meet God, you should definitely make special preparation. Make straight paths for him — in other words, get rid of your crooked ways, things that are wrong in life, get rid of them, turn your back on them, turn back to God. That was the message for the people. This is not a message where you just carry on until he appears. This is a message: he is coming, we have two hours to prepare, so get ready. Get rid of your crooked ways, get straight, and get ready to meet the Lord your God.
And so John the Baptist appears. There had been 400 years of silence after Malachi had spoken his words — 400 years of silence — and then John appears in the desert. In one sense he is the last of the Old Testament prophets, and he speaks, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He is telling the people: be ready, repent, turn around, for the forgiveness of your sins.
Here is the good news of the gospel — that we can be forgiven for anything, and we can be forgiven for everything. It doesn't matter what we have done in life, it doesn't matter how long we have done it for. If you turn back to him now, you can be forgiven. There is an opportunity for cleansing. There is an opportunity to be put right with God and not to be exposed by him.
And the people seem to realise this. You see in verse 5: The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem — in other words, rural folk and all the townies — they all go out there, and confessing their sins, they are baptised by him in the Jordan River.
And as if to emphasise his message, John gives a visual demonstration by what he chooses to wear. It is not that John just has a slightly strange wardrobe. In wearing camel's hair with a leather belt, he positions himself as the second Elijah. Elijah was a well-known prophet in the Old Testament, and this was his garb. The prophet Malachi, who was quoted before, had said that before the great and glorious day of the Lord, a second Elijah would come. And so John says, "I am that person," dressed in his camel's hair and leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey. This is what he does as the second Elijah — to show that the Lord is just around the corner. And he confirms that with what he says: "After me comes one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptise you with water" — I can only make you wet — "but he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit." In other words, he will bring the very presence of God with him to you.
This person, this Son of God, is about to appear. And so the people were to get ready. The prophets help us to see that Jesus is the judge.
Third witness: God the Father at the baptism (verses 9–11)
James de Costobadie: The third witness is God himself. At that time, we read, after John had spoken his message, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, verse 9, and was baptised by John in the Jordan. Not because he had any of his own sins to be washed away — which he didn't — but so that he could identify with us who do have sins to be washed away.
And as he does so, this amazing sight greets him. Verse 10: As he comes up out of the water, he sees heaven being torn open and the Spirit of God descending on him like a dove. God's presence is with him. And then this voice from above, this voice from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased."
Again, God takes two prophecies from the Old Testament and speaks them over Jesus. The first one — "You are my Son" — comes from Psalm 2. In Psalm 2, the son of whom he speaks is the most powerful person in the world. He is so powerful that he rules the world, and we are told he is able to dash the nations to pieces like pottery. He can do whatever he wants.
Over the last couple of years, it has been very striking how there are some world rulers who would like to have done that to other countries and find they can't. You think of Russia, you think of President Putin — I reckon he thought it would take him about ten minutes to walk into Kyiv and take over. Five years later he is still struggling to make any ground. Think of President Trump with Iran — I don't know how long he thought it would take for that to fall over, but struggling, because as humanity we are never as powerful as we think we are. But this ruler here is unlimited in his power. And God says, "It is he — you are my Son."
But alongside that, he then puts in another prophecy: "With you I am well pleased." Those words come from a totally different strand of prophecy. One strand speaks of the power of the ruler who is to come. Another strand speaks of a figure who is a servant — very humble and very unremarkable in some ways. We are told in the book of Isaiah you could walk past him on the street and you would not even notice him. Completely different.
And so God speaks this second prophecy over Jesus and says, "With you I am well pleased." In other words, these two strands — so different, the most powerful and the most humble — find their resolution in the head of one person. They are fused together in Jesus. Jesus who is the greatest and Jesus who is the most humble. Jesus who is the king, but Jesus who will show his power by serving his people.
When we come to the Gospel of Mark, Mark shows us through God's words here that Jesus is the one in whom all the prophecies are met.
Many years ago, when communism ended in Poland and the eastern bloc, the country held elections, and the first man to be elected in a free Poland in 1990 — which I well remember — was a man by the name of Lech Wałęsa, who is still alive today. Lech Wałęsa was a fine man. He had worked as an electrician in the shipyard in Gdańsk, and in 1990 he was elected to be the first president of Poland after the country had been freed from communism. He ruled for five years, but in 1995, in the second set of elections, he was voted out of office. Because he was a good man and had not used the office for his own corruption or stolen money, and because he had not earned a huge amount of money beforehand, when he finished work as president he had to go back and find another job. So he went back to his former job. His last trip in the presidential limousine took him back to the shipyard in Gdańsk.
You could imagine the scene — early one morning, five or five-thirty, as the workers queue up to see the limo arrive, the door open, and out steps the former president, now in his blue overalls. His colleagues were aghast. One of them was interviewed by the journalists who were there and said, "I don't know — where else in the world would you find someone so high as a president come down so low as one of us?"
I don't suppose he was looking for an answer to his question, but if he had, Mark chapter 1, verse 11 might have given him the answer. For here, someone much higher than a president had come down much lower than an electrician. The Lord of all had come to earth as a servant, as a slave, and he would do so to rescue his people.
The question for us is: will we listen to him? "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." There are a lot of people with opinions about a lot of things, a lot of people very opinionated about Jesus. But will we listen to God's view of his Son, whom he loves? God helps us to see that Jesus is the servant king.
Fourth witness: The devil in the wilderness (verses 12–13)
James de Costobadie: And that leads to the fourth witness, who is the devil. Have a look at verse 12: At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
Mark wrote his gospel very likely in the 60s AD. He wrote to Christians in Rome who were undergoing dreadful persecution under Emperor Nero. As we look through the gospel, we will see that Mark writes this drama as a battle, as a fight, all the way through — to encourage the Christians he was writing to that if you follow Jesus, life will be a battle and it will be a fight. And so straight away, Mark takes us into the fight.
Interestingly, it is actually the Spirit who sends Jesus out into the wilderness, and there is a reason for that. Jesus has come to save humanity, but he can only do that by being different to humanity — by standing tall where humanity had previously fallen. And so the Spirit takes Jesus out, knowing that he will be tempted there by Satan.
Earlier in the Bible, when first tempted, humanity had fallen. Adam fell, and Eve fell. And then a bit later on, you remember that Israel were in the desert — the wilderness — for forty years, being tempted. God had only just rescued them through the Red Sea, but despite all the evidence of his power and his protective love, they would not trust the word of the Lord. They had this catastrophic failure to trust God and to submit to him — a failure that you and I know all too well, because naturally that is how we are. It takes so little in life to trip us up, and to trust God we find so very difficult.
And so Jesus steps forward — the second Adam — to do what Adam had not been able to do: to resist the serpent and the temptation that the devil would bring, to do what the Israelites had not been able to do, to trust God one hundred percent, in order to be able to save his people as the spotless Son of Man.
And the devil knew it. And so the devil throws everything at him. He wastes no time. He goes into the wilderness to tempt Jesus to fall. For Satan knows that if he can get Jesus just to make one mistake, the salvation of humanity will fall with him. And so here is a backhanded testimony from the devil, who helps us to see that Jesus is the Saviour who has come into this world.
We can tell that Jesus survived this ordeal because the story carries on — otherwise it would end right there. But the devil does not give up. Because in verse 14 we see this rather ominous news that John was put in prison, which is a portent of things to come.
The call to repent and believe (verses 14–15)
James de Costobadie: Nevertheless, Jesus now launches his public ministry. We are told in verse 14 that he went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, proclaiming the victory of God. "The time has come," he says — the time that the prophets have spoken of, the time that humanity has been waiting for.
There are many people out there who are hoping for a better day, who are dreaming of a better day. And that dream they have is because that is what we were made for. And that is what Jesus came to bring. He says the time has come for this to happen, for the kingdom of God to break into this world. Here is the king to announce it. The kingdom is not yet here in its fullness, which is why he says the kingdom of God has come near rather than "the kingdom is here." But nonetheless it is breaking in, in the person of Jesus. The king is here. And so he says: "Repent and believe the good news."
It was a message for the people back then, and it remains the same for people across the world today. Jesus Christ came into this world once. He was born as a baby, as you know, that first Christmas time. He grew up into a man, and as he spoke, many times he declared that one day he would return. His resurrection from the dead is the evidence that one day he will return. But when he does so, he will come back not as a baby into this world, but as he now is — the living Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. He is the one and only, the true Son of God.
And so the message is the same to people everywhere: to repent — that is, to turn around, to get ready, to get rid of our crooked ways — because if Jesus returns today or tomorrow or next week or whenever he returns, we need to be ready. To be surprised on that day would be the worst outcome possible.
Sometimes people say, "Can't I repent on my deathbed?" To which we might say: why would you want to leave it that long, even if you were able to do so? Many years ago I was giving a talk in a different part of the country one evening, back in the UK. It was dark, I didn't know where I was going, and I drove up a street that turned out to be the slip road leading onto the motorway — the wrong way. As I got up there, I saw a sign. I thought that looks interesting. I looked at the sign and it said: Wrong Way. Okay, right — turn around, get out of here.
Now, to try and repent on your deathbed is to say, "Okay, well, why don't I just go all the way up to the motorway and then I'll turn back." Well, good luck. You may make it or you may not. But why would you want to take the chance, rather than as soon as you see the wrong way sign, getting off it now and getting back the way you came?
That is what we should do with Jesus. Why leave it any later? Underneath us here is how many tons of cement I do not know. At one time, as that stuff bubbles down, it was soft. But over a period of time, as the chemical reaction takes place, of course it hardens. And that is like us with Jesus. That is like a person in life — we are slowly setting concrete.
Sometimes people say, "I can get around to becoming a Christian another time." But what makes you think you will want to at a different time in life? What makes you think it will be easier? If we spend every year of our life saying no to Jesus, what is the chance that then at the end we will say yes to him? That is not how we work. It is not how life works. We should repent — turn to him while we are able to — and believe the good news.
What is not to like about a message of forgiveness before God, of being put right with God, of being able to discover the purpose for which we were made — the purpose to know and serve the living God, to be brought into his family? So many people are lonely, isolated. When you become a Christian, you join the family of God. You don't know everyone in the family, but you begin to meet the family of God, and I hope this morning you enjoy that privilege as well.
Repent and believe the good news. And the same is true for Christians. The only evidence that a person is a Christian is that we are actually repenting. So if you are a Christian here this morning, can I ask you: what are you repenting of? Can you think of the thing for which you last repented? Because if we can't, it may show that we are not actually repenting. Turn around, identify something, and then turn from it. Mend our crooked ways and come back to God. Seek his help, seek his face, and as we do so, rejoice in his good news.
The good news that he has done the heavy lifting for us. The good news that he has lifted away our sins, that he has taken the judgment, the good news that he has restored us to God, the good news that we have each other to walk with on the road to heaven. Here is the best news in the world. It is the news that every person needs to hear. It is the news that we will be proclaiming as long as this building stands. It is the news that there is life in Jesus.