Reflections on Mark's Gospel - Mark 1:5

Popular and Purposeful

Mark continues to set the scene for us. The beginning of the gospel recounts the promises God made in the OT. It follows with the arrival of John the Baptist, and his ministry of proclamation and baptism. It continues with the account of its impact: huge!

The first sentence indicates very succinctly that John the Baptist was hugely popular. Although there is probably some hyperbole in the account, it is fair to say that no person in Judea or Jerusalem was untouched by his teaching. The snippits of information we have elsewhere indicate that John's influence was very significant, and even stretched to Ephesus (in Act_19:1-7). In the other gospel accounts he is shown to interact with crowds, the religious leaders (Pharisees & Sadducees), tax collectors and soldiers.

As Edwards says in the quote below, John was actually not interested in popularity for the sake of popularity. He was concerned about preparing the way for the one who would come after him. He was launching a spiritual movement of repentance and reform.

Read these quotes:
"In Israel, people were ready for Jesus, too, and they flocked to hear this wilderness preacher. There had been no God-sent prophets for 400 years, since the days of Malachi (who wrote the last book of the Old Testament). Anticipation was growing that a great prophet, or the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament, would soon come" (see Luk_3:15).
LASB

"We are apt to lose sight of him who went before...and yet it is clear that John's preaching arrested the attention of the whole Jewish people, and created an excitement all over Palestine. It aroused the nation from its slumbers, and prepared it for the ministry of our Lord, when He appeared."
J.C. Ryles,
"Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Mark"
[1965] p.4

"John's intention, however, was not to gain popularity but to initiate a movement of repentance and reform in Israel to prepare for "one more powerful" to come."
James R. Edwards,
"PNTC: The Gospel According to Mark"
[2002] p.32

The result of John the Baptist's minsitry was a whole nation of people who had been awakened spiritually to their own condition before God and had been provoked to place a high priority on addressing that condition.

The method of addressing their sin that John prescribed was confession followed by baptism. Individuals had to publicly admit their own failures and accept the baptism that John offered. It would have been a powerful scene, seeing thousands coming continually out to hear John speak, to see them confess their sin, and to see them baptised.

Mark states that they were baptised in the Jordan River. Scholars seem to think that this was north of Jerusalem, closer to Galilee, although he probably had various places where he performed baptisms.

So often in our ministries we try to call people to repentence who are still slumbering in their sin. The work of John the Baptist, the activity of exposing people to basic gospel concepts, cannot be underestimated.

The challenge we face in our ministry is that "expose" activities often do not result in measurable results, or immediate response. The equivalent mass media campaigns we have access to today cost lots of money, usually beyond the budget of an average church, and their scope also extends beyond the immediate community of a local church. And local church leaders want to see "bang for their buck" when it comes to major investments.

But raising the spiritual temperature of a whole society is a major exercise. Creating awareness of basic gospel concepts, so they can later be arranged into a meaningful comprehension of the gospel, requires lots of effort.

These sort of activities are not being conducted in a vacuum. There are many competing values or belief systems prevalent in our society, just as there were in John's. We should not underestimate the effort required to initiate and sustain this sort of "expose" activity, just as we should not underestimate its necessity.