Fulfilling the Father’s Will

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You know, I will never forget when I started teaching school. It did not take me long to figure the students out. It didn’t take me long to figure out what they were there for because they made their intentions pretty clear from the beginning.

I was told early on in teaching that you want to let your intentions be known. You want to come at them hard to start with and show them that you’re a force to be reckoned with, and then you can ease up on them. But it’s easier to do that than start off easy and lenient and then try to get stricter later.

So you come in strict and you let your intentions be known. Well, the kids let their intentions be known too. It took me about five minutes to figure out which ones were there to learn and which ones were there to be a problem.

Any of you who have ever worked with kids have probably experienced that too. Just very early on, you can tell. Some of the things, there were so many things that I said that I never thought I would say or that anybody else would say in their lives.

You know, don’t lick that. Of course, now I have more children and stuff like that is just normal conversation. Don’t lick that.

Don’t put that chair there. You know, stuff like that. And we’d figure out pretty quickly what the kids, what each kid was there for.

And we knew kind of going in whether they were going to be cooperative or not. Charlotte, each morning I’ll come downstairs and I’ll find her there usually fixing breakfast for one child or helping another one get something ready. And at least once a week she’ll look at me and go, it’s going to be that kind of day.

You ever had that kind of day? And of course me, I get to go off to work and work with adults. And so I say, it’s only that kind of day if you make it that kind of day.

Wrong. You know, the kids have already made their, the kids have spoken. They’ve made their intentions known, what they are setting out to do, what kind of day they’re setting out to have.

They have made their intentions known. And as we look at the beginning of Mark here in chapter 1, I know we’re not just now starting chapter 1. We did that last week, but we’re still in the early stages of Mark chapter 1, still in the introductory part of it.

As we’re in this early part of Mark, we can see that Jesus is making his intentions known. He’s the very beginning of his ministry, what he’s all about. Now Mark moves very quickly through some of these things that he writes about.

We’re going to look at some things tonight that the other gospel writers spend a lot of time explaining. And Mark basically just says, this happened. One thing that I’ve noticed about Mark is he’s very energetic.

He likes action. He likes things to move fast. He likes to get on to the next story and explain. You’ll see a lot of times immediately or in the King James straight away, which means immediately.

Mark just keeps it moving. I’ve heard J. Warner Wallace, the cold case detective turned Christian apologist, explain the difference between these in this way.

A lot of people, a lot of secular scholars or skeptical scholars will tell us Mark is so much shorter and he’s so much shorter on detail because a lot of things were embellished by the other gospel writers later. They say Mark came first and the others just kind of embellished and the legend grew. Jay Warner Wallace, as a homicide detective, explains it this way, that they will put out a, I forget what he calls it, I should have looked that up again, I just drew a blank, but he talks about a statement that’s put out in the immediate aftermath of a crime.

Here are the basic details of what just happened, because they want the other law enforcement to be aware of what has happened, the most important, the most pertinent details of what has happened, who they’re looking for, why they’re looking for him. It’s basically to get the information broadcast out as quickly as possible. And Mark, if he was the first one to write this down and appears to be pretty excitable, he’s trying to spit out the details as quickly as he can.

The others, it doesn’t mean that they invented details. It doesn’t mean that they added details. It means they came in later and filled in some of the gaps in what Mark left out.

All writing under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit. All telling God’s truth, but approaching it from different perspectives. And Mark’s perspective is to get the information out there, to get us the pertinent details, to clue us in on what the action was.

So I said all that to say, we’re going to look at some things tonight in Mark chapter 1 that if we were looking at any of the other gospel accounts, each of these would probably be a message unto themselves because they would go into such great detail. Mark basically says, these things happened, and then moves on to the miracles. So tonight we’re going to be in Mark chapter 1 verses 9 through 15 as he begins his explanation of what Jesus was there about.

He lets us know from the very beginning what Jesus’ intentions were and what the purpose of his ministry was going to be. He’s sort of like that child who lets you know in the first five minutes of the school year what he’s there for. He says, this is what Jesus came to do.

So if you would, once you get to Mark chapter 1, if you’d stand with me. And we’re going to read, as I said, from verses 9 through 15 tonight, if you’re able to stand. Starting in verse 9, it says, It came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.

And immediately, coming up from the water, he saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove. Then a voice came from heaven, You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Immediately, the Spirit drove him into the wilderness.

And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. Now, after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.

And you may be seated. As I said, a couple of things you’ll notice. Mark says immediately a lot.

He moves through these things quickly. As I said, the temptation story, Matthew spends a lot more time going into the details. And I believe Luke as well spends a lot of time going into the details about some of the specific kinds of things Jesus was tempted with and his responses.

We see quotes of him and the devil arguing back and forth. Mark just says it happened. There’s more detail in the other gospel accounts of the conversations at Jesus’ baptism about how Jesus and John kind of went back and forth over who should be baptizing whom.

Mark just says it happens. And then he launches right into, and Jesus went out and began to preach. Because what he’s doing in taking these three stories and summarizing them for us, is he’s introducing us to the entire point of Jesus’ ministry, and that was to fulfill the will of God, the will of the Father.

Throughout his entire gospel, he emphasizes Jesus as the servant of God. We see each of the four gospel writers emphasizing one aspect of who Jesus is. It doesn’t mean that any of them were wrong.

It doesn’t mean that any of them were less right than the others. It means they were looking at it from different perspectives. God was inspiring them to write to different audiences, and so they would emphasize different things.

Mark is writing primarily to a Roman audience, and he’s emphasizing the idea of Jesus as being the faithful servant of his Father. And so he starts off with this summary, explaining how Jesus came to serve the Father, came to fulfill the Father’s will, and from the very beginning, He was doing things that were in line with fulfilling the Father’s will. And we see throughout this passage, I say throughout like it’s a long passage, it’s really not, but we see Him fulfilling the Father’s will consistently throughout this.

Let’s look at each of these stories. In verses 9 through 11, we see the story of Jesus’ baptism, and we see Jesus fulfilling the Father’s will obediently. Now, some people have made the baptism of Jesus out to be some kind of great turning point in Jesus’ life or ministry.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t a turning point beyond anything of any kind. It wasn’t a turning point of any kind beyond a sort of public announcement that He was ready to begin His public ministry.

When I say people have made it to be some kind of turning point, there are people out there who say Jesus became the Son, that Jesus was a man and Jesus became the Son at His baptism. Jesus became God the Son at His baptism. That can’t possibly be the case.

For starters, the Bible tells us that in the beginning was the Word, Jesus, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And it explains to us in In verse 14 of John 1.

1, that’s a quote of John 1. 1, and he goes on to explain to us in verse 14, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among them. He’s talking about Jesus being the Word who was God and who was with God before there was anything else.

Also, just from a logical standpoint, if we understand God to be an eternal being, then to ever be God, He must always be God. If He can ever be God, He must always be God. And if He can ever not be God, then He can never be God.

Because God can’t change and stop being God. God can’t slip in and out of Godhood. Jesus either is the Son of God at all times, even before His baptism, or He never was the Son of God.

And Mark comes down decidedly on the side of the Son of God, as do the other gospel writers. This was not a turning point of His relationship. It’s not a time where He became God the Son.

It’s not a time where He became the Son of God. It’s not a time when He suddenly became the Messiah. He was all of those things.

It’s also not a mark of repentance. Up to this point, John has been baptizing people as a sign of their repentance of their sins. That’s part of the disagreement that Jesus and John have.

Jesus comes to John and says, I want to be baptized. And John says, you should be baptizing me. Because if you look at this purely as a sign of repentance, then of course John is right.

Jesus should have been baptizing John because it’s John who’s the sinner, not Jesus. John said rightly, I’m not worthy to even unbuckle your shoes. You should be baptizing me.

And Jesus’ response to that in Matthew 3. 15 was, thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. So he’s not becoming something he’s never been before.

He’s not repenting of anything that he’s done. What he’s doing is setting an example for us, among other things. You could also go into the whole idea of him identifying with us, identifying with sinners.

But ultimately what he’s doing here is setting an example for us for obedience. That’s why he said it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. It’s the right thing for us to do to fulfill all that the Father has sent us here to do.

That included undergoing baptism, even if he didn’t technically need it from the standpoint of needing to repent. Even if he wasn’t a sinner, still he was undergoing baptism as an example to us of obedience to the Father. Because not all the time are we going to be able to make sense of what the Father tells us to do.

We look at the baptism of Jesus and we may wrestle with it and say, but why? But why? And you and I are left so many times with instructions from the Father where we say the same thing.

But why? It doesn’t make sense. Hear me on this.

It doesn’t always have to make sense to us what the Father tells us to do. The main thing is for us to be obedient. And Jesus was setting the example in that.

Not that it didn’t make sense to Him, but it doesn’t necessarily make sense to us. And yet Jesus, as God the Son, was not confused by this. John was confused.

We may be confused by it. Jesus wasn’t. He was setting the example of obedience.

You know, there are times with my kids, I will tell them, I don’t mind explaining my reasoning for the things I tell you to do later, but I really need you to get used to just doing what I say because I say so. Yes, we can have a conversation about why you can’t play in the street. Although we live in such a quiet area, our kids play in the street all the time.

It makes me nervous, right? but why it’s a bad idea for you to play in the street. We can have a conversation later about why you don’t handle guns.

Not that you ever find any land around the house anyway, but if you ever were, why you don’t handle them. We can have a conversation later about why you don’t get into cars with strange people. We can have a conversation later about why you don’t touch the stove when it’s hot.

We can have conversations about all those things later, and I will be glad to explain my rationale in excruciating detail. Do I not tell you way more than you wanted to know when you ask why? Yes, yes.

The way of teaching them, stop asking what now. I’ll be glad to explain that to you, but right now I just need you to say, yes, daddy. I need you to just be obedient because there is a reason whether it makes sense to you or not.

And Jesus is setting the example here for us of obedience to the Father, even if it doesn’t make sense to us. It made sense to him, but what he did to be obedient didn’t make sense to us, and he did it anyway. So he set that example saying it was fitting for him to fulfill all righteousness.

And as I said earlier, he was announcing the beginning of his public ministry with his father’s blessing. He wasn’t just saying, I’m here, I’m starting my ministry. He was doing it in a way where the father was publicly blessing him.

By the way, we see the entire trinity in action here. We see God the Son coming up out of the water. We see the Holy Spirit like a dove landing on him.

And we hear the voice of the Father saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I’m well pleased. We see all three of them working in concert here together. But by those who were there hearing the voice of the Father saying, This is my Son.

What higher stamp of authority and approval could he have than for those around him to hear that voice that they knew was the voice of God saying, This is my Son. That was the stamp of approval needed for John the Baptist, needed for all of his disciples, needed for all of those who just happened to be on the outside looking in, to hear that Jesus was called by the Father, his Son. And he was well pleased in him because he sent him to fulfill his will, and he was doing just that.

By his baptism, he was dedicating his entire time on earth to the goal of accomplishing every bit of what the Father sent him to do. Even in what we would look at and say, it was such a little thing. Jesus, of all people who’ve ever lived, did not need to be baptized, and yet the Father said, do this, and He was obedient even in that, even in something He didn’t need to do.

That for His eternal destination, He didn’t need to do it. But He was remarkably obedient to the Father. And that set the stage.

It really set the stage for who He was going to show Himself to be, what His ministry was going to be about, that everything He did was about fulfilling the Father’s will. He told people later on, I don’t say anything unless the Father who sent me tells me to say it. I don’t do anything that’s out of the confines of His will.

He made it clear on numerous occasions throughout His public ministry that it was all about fulfilling the will of the Father. And He made that clear from day one here with His baptism. Then we move on to verses 12 and 13, and we see the mention of His temptation.

And we see how Jesus fulfilled the Father’s will persistently. See, he wasn’t just obedient in reasonably good times like his baptism when there’s this spiritual high of the Holy Spirit being there and the Father speaking his approval over the situation. He was obedient to the Father, and he was fulfilling the Father’s will even in difficult times.

This was likely one of the most difficult times in Jesus’ entire earthly ministry. Now, I imagine that that’s behind the cross, but this certainly ranks right up there. Imagine going 40 days without food and having to stand up to anybody or anything.

I get cranky. Sometimes I get home from work and I’m cranky because I haven’t eaten dinner since yesterday, right? That’s supposed to be a joke.

Unless you’re having multiple dinners a day. None of us have eaten dinner since yesterday, but I’ll tell the kids that. I’m so hungry, I haven’t eaten dinner since yesterday.

And already just a few hours since lunch, I’m getting a little cranky. We call it hangry at our house. You’re hungry and you’re angry.

Jesus was expected to function in dealing with the greatest enemy that any of us could ever face after going 40 days without food and probably with minimal rest because he’s out in the wilderness and he was tempted there for 40 days. As a matter of fact, the other gospel writers record three instances of temptation. I’ve told you before, I believe that those three happened just as they’re recorded to have happened, but I also believe they were representative.

They’re a representative sample of everything that Jesus was tempted with over those 40 days. I don’t think that Satan showed up three times in 40 days to tempt him. I could be wrong in that.

That’s just my opinion. But I think instead of explaining every bit of the temptation he endured over 40 days, the Holy Spirit inspired the gospel writers to record the kinds of temptations that he experienced. And so when Satan said, you know, make those rocks into bread, that sounds pretty good.

I think that really happened, but I think that was just one of many kinds of temptations like that, where Satan went after what he perceived as his physical vulnerabilities. And then we get into the spiritual and the emotional vulnerabilities, and Satan attacked every bit of that. But Jesus faithfully endured the struggle of temptation.

He kept going. He persisted for the sake of the mission his father gave him. Now, a few months ago, I was writing a paper over this temptation of Jesus.

I had to spend time digging into it, and the debate over whether Jesus could have sinned or not. And I’d really not given it much thought. There’s apparently a theological debate over whether Jesus, is it possible that he could have sinned and he just didn’t?

Or was it impossible that he could have? And the more I thought about it, I come down on the side of being God in human flesh. No, he could not have sinned.

And so this temptation then would not necessarily be a testing of Jesus to see if he was really up to the job. If he’s God, of course he’s up to the job. It was for him to prove.

It was for him to prove what he already knew. It was for him to prove it to Satan, among other reasons for it. It was also for him to teach us a lesson about the power and the authority of God’s Word in dealing with sin and temptation.

It was to demonstrate his victory over sin. I think it was also for him to understand in an experiential way what we go through. Now, God, as all-knowing, he knows everything that’s true and everything that can be known, but he experienced, Jesus Christ experienced what it meant to be human and to go through all the temptations that we as humans experience and he did it without sin.

But as I was studying and delving into this and having to think through things that I’d never had to think through before, I realized that if he was incapable of sin, how much more excruciating that would make the temptation. Because what do we do when temptation gets rough? What do we do when it just keeps pounding us and pounding us and pounding us and it gets unbearable.

What do we do eventually? Okay, I know y’all are super spiritual and you never do this, right? But what do most people do when the temptation gets too hard to overcome?

We give in. All right, thank you. Making sure y’all are awake.

We give in. Sort of like when you’ve got a sunburn or eczema and you know you shouldn’t scratch, but it just gets to itching and you’re like, I’m just going to ignore it. And it keeps on and it keeps on, and I’m making myself itch talking about this.

The itching gets worse, and I’ve got to fight it, I’ve got to fight it, but the more you try to fight it, the more you think about it, and the worse it gets, and eventually you start scratching, and for a moment it feels better. And you’re like, the temptation to scratch is gone. That’s what we do.

We’re weak, and we give in. If Jesus couldn’t sin, the temptation just kept ratcheting up, and he suffered through that, and experienced every kind of temptation that we could ever experience and demonstrated the power of God over that. That no matter how bad it got, God’s word is the answer.

And so he went through all of that. He went through this brutal temptation that was made even more trying by the fact that he couldn’t just give into it and end it the way we would have. Not that that’s a good thing.

But through his responses to every one of Satan’s temptations, he set an example for us and he showed us how we are able to resist as well. I’ve drawn the parallels for you before between what Jesus went through at the temptation and what Adam and Eve went through in the garden. And the difference, other than the fact that Jesus Christ was God in human flesh, which is a pretty big difference, the difference in their responses is telling.

Adam and Eve fell to the temptation because there was a lot of question about what God’s Word actually was. And Eve, for her part, appears to have been ignorant of what God actually said. And I’ve said before, that may not have been her fault.

Adam may not have told her the whole truth of what God said. But when Satan came and started to twist around what God said and started to question the authority of what God said, she eventually had no leg to stand on and she fell into the temptation. But Jesus Christ knew the word inside and out because as I said this morning, he was the God who inspired that word.

So that when Satan came and tried to twist that word and tried to question God’s authority and tried to question his authority, Jesus knew exactly how to answer back with God’s Word. And yes, I understand. He’s God in human flesh.

He can do things we’re not capable of. But He’s the one changing us. And as God transforms us as believers from the inside out by the power of His Holy Spirit, He’s conforming us to become more and more like Jesus Christ. He’s the example that we’re supposed to follow.

And it’s better for us in dealing with temptation and fulfilling the Father’s will if we’ll follow His example that He said here. But he followed, he fulfilled the Father’s will persistently. He kept going, not just when it was easy, but even when it was at its most difficult.

And we see that right here from the very beginning. Jesus is going to be faced with other difficulties throughout his ministry. But it never dissuades him from fulfilling the Father’s will.

And then we move to verses 14 and 15. We see that Jesus fulfilled the Father’s will boldly. It says he went out from that time even after John was put in prison.

John was put in prison for preaching, and Jesus picked up right where John left off and went out and continued preaching too. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand.

And here’s what he said, repent and believe in the gospel. He was proclaiming a bold message. Nobody likes to be told to repent.

Do you like to be told you’re wrong? I don’t. I really don’t like it.

Sometimes I need to be told I’m wrong, but I don’t like it. Jesus went out preaching. Jesus was not preaching a feel-good message.

This was not cotton candy fluff that you can turn on a lot of TV stations and get today about how wonderful we all are. No, he’s telling people we are wrong, we have sinned against God, and we need to repent. We need to believe the gospel, which at its very core, the gospel says we are sinners and can’t get right with God on our own.

That is not a message that pleases the flesh. That is a message that today people still have a hard time coming to terms with and don’t always want to hear. On top of that, as I said, John had just been thrown in prison for preaching the same kind of message.

None of that mattered. None of that mattered because the Father had sent Jesus to proclaim that very message. The Father had sent Jesus to reveal the holiness of God.

Because we see all throughout the New Testament that Jesus is the ultimate revelation of who God is. That when we look at Jesus Christ, we see God in all of His glory. No man has seen God, meaning the Father at any time, but the only begotten Son has declared Him.

Hebrews chapter 1 basically calls Him the spitting image of His Father, calls Him the express glory of His person. Colossians chapter 1 calls Him the image of the invisible God. We don’t need images and idols and icons to bow and to look at, because if we want to know what God the Father is like, just look at God the Son.

It’s right there. So He was sent here to reveal to us the holiness of God, but also to call us out when we fall short of that. Now, at times he called people out in a harsh way for that, as he did with the Pharisees in the message I brought you this morning, calling them an evil and adulterous generation.

I certainly don’t want to be on the receiving end of that critique. With others, he was gentler in his response. Neither do I condemn thee, but go and sin no more.

But either way, whether he was able to be gentle or whether he needed to be harsh, He was revealing to us the holiness of God and showing us how we fall short of it, telling us that we need to repent and that we need to be made right with God. And he went out and he didn’t beat around the bush. He didn’t sugarcoat the message.

He went out immediately and he did what the Father told him to do, what the Father sent him to do, and he went out and called people to repent. And folks, here we see throughout this passage that Jesus set the example of what’s expected of us. All throughout the New Testament, we’re told to be like Jesus.

We’re told that the Holy Spirit works in us to make us more like Jesus. He is the example. He’s the pattern.

He shows us what we’re supposed to do. And He made it clear, as I’ve said repeatedly throughout this message, He made it clear from the very beginning of His ministry what He was here to do. To fulfill the Father’s will.

What are we supposed to do? Fulfill the Father’s will. Obey Him.

Do what He says. Jesus set the example of what’s expected of us. But He did such a good job that He shows how bad we are at it.

Right? I don’t say that to make you feel bad. I’m right there with you.

I look at the things Jesus said and did. I look at the kind of attitudes He showed. And the more I learn about Him, the more I realize how far short I fall of the example He said.

Guys, if He’s the bar, if He’s the standard, I can get nowhere close to that. He not only showed us what we’re supposed to do, but He showed us how bad we are at it. And that’s the bad news, that we can’t fulfill the Father’s will in the way He did.

None of us can perfectly fulfill it. We do well to accomplish a few things here and there that He called us to do, but we’re not as consistent as we ought to be. We don’t always do it with the right motives.

Sometimes I’m bad about grumbling while I do it. I won’t ask you how many of you are in the same boat with me. I’ll just say I do it.

And it’s because we’re sinners. He set the example but also showed us what sinners we are and that’s why the good news is that we can find salvation in him he showed us that we fall short and need to repent but Jesus wasn’t like so many people around us today who are really good at diagnosing the problem and really bad at presenting solutions and we see this with all the the way everybody criticizes each other on social media we hear it with the back and forth with our politicians everybody’s really pretty good at diagnosing what the problems are with our society and with each other, you can probably look at me and tell me what my problems are. Please don’t, unless you want me to do it back to you.

But we can tend to look at each other and say, here’s your problem, we’re really bad at offering solutions. Jesus diagnosed our problem, which was sin, and he was the solution. He is the solution.

He’s the example for us to follow. He’s the evidence that we fall short, and he’s the solution for every time we do because his fulfillment of the Father’s will was perfect. Where ours will never be and can never be, his was perfect.

He fulfilled the Father’s will for us so that when he died in our place, on our behalf, his sacrifice, which is part of what the Father sent him to do, was enough. He paid for every time that you and I will fall short. And from the very beginning, he made it clear that that’s what he was coming to do.

He fulfilled the Father’s will because we couldn’t. And so this evening, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, that needs to be where this starts, not with trying harder to follow his example, not with trying harder to do good things, but with realizing that we all fall short of his standard. And the only way we will ever be right with God is to come through Jesus Christ, to recognize that we’ve sinned and he paid for that sin and rose again from the dead three days later.

He paid for that sin on the cross, rose again three days later to prove it, and he offers forgiveness and salvation if we will believe and we will ask for it. It starts with asking God for that forgiveness. But for those of you who are already believers, we need to recognize that if He is the example to follow, that means being earnest about fulfilling the Father’s will, seeking to do the things that Jesus did, knowing that we’re never going to do them perfectly, but seeking His help a