Sermon Notes on Mark 1:1-8

God always has a reason for calling a person into the wilderness.

One of my favorite memories of our trip to Alaska is of the three days that we spent in Denali National Park. Of course it was breathtaking in its beauty, but there was something else that I found compelling and a little frightening. When we were camping in Denali National Park we were really in the wilderness. If Rachel and I had met some unfriendly grizzly bear as we were hiking toward the top of the foothills near our campsite, we may have never been found. A fellow camper warned us to keep an eye on our little dog, Pepper, because the eagles were known for swooping out of the sky and snatching them up before we would know what had happened.

When you can drive into the wilderness in your motor home and enjoy it for a few days with plenty of fresh water and scrumptious food, it’s a blast. We tend to think of the wilderness as a great place to get away and enjoy nature, a vacation spot. The wilderness Mark is describing in our text for today is something entirely different.

In ancient times the wilderness was not understood to be a beautiful vacation spot. It was seen as a place of danger and hardship. It was a place to be avoided if at all possible.

In the Bible we see that God often used the wilderness as a teaching tool. Many of God’s people and prophets learned to trust God in the wilderness. The suffering and struggle for survival was an effective tool in helping a person to focus on what was really important in life. The people of Israel needed 40 years in the wilderness to make their hearts ready to receive God’s promises.

The Holy Spirit drove Jesus himself into the wilderness for a time of testing and struggle.

So for the people of God in John the Baptist’s day it would have been no surprise that he appeared in the wilderness. It would have been no surprise that, in order to hear his preaching, receive his ministry, and respond to his call for repentance a person would have to leave the safety and comfort of home and head off into the wilderness. They would have seen something very familiar in an invitation to meet with God in the wilderness.

You see, when there is a need for someone to break free from the bondage of sin, when there is a need for someone to turn around and take a new direction in their life, when God is trying to tear someone away from the things that are choking their soul, it never happens through feasting and abundance and comfort…it always happens in the wilderness.

And the wilderness can take all kinds of different forms. You don’t have to travel far away from civilization to be in a place of emptiness, suffering, and danger. The wilderness can form right in a person’s heart.

The question I want to ponder today is, what are we supposed to do when we find ourselves in the wilderness?

Some people become very gloomy. They complain about all the emptiness, loneliness, and suffering. All they see is what they don’t have any more. By their very attitude they cause the wilderness around them and inside them to become barren and meaningless and hopeless.

Others, like John the Baptist, see a calling in the wilderness. They see an opportunity. They recognize that here, where most distractions have been stripped away, a person’s true spiritual condition can be more clearly seen. They realize that, in the wilderness, the still, small voice of God can be more easily heard.

Some scholars believe that John the Baptist spent a long time in the wilderness growing in his own relationship with God before he began calling others to join him in his wilderness experience.

I guess that’s the other thing a person can do in the wilderness. Once we have allowed the Holy Spirit to bring our hearts back to God, once the clarity of the suffering or the emptiness has opened our eyes to what is really important, God can begin to use us to call others into the wilderness. God can use us, just like the Spirit used John the Baptist, to call others away from the things that are keeping them from God. God can use us to point them to Christ.

Advent is a time when God calls all of us into the wilderness with John. Instead of joining the rest of the culture in stuffing ourselves until we are in a spiritual coma, God calls us to clear away some time, to eliminate some distractions, to create some wilderness in our lives so that we can hear the call of the Baptist to examine our lives and to make them ready for the coming of the Messiah.

Some of you may not need to do anything to create some wilderness in your life. You may already be in a place of loneliness, hardship, or suffering. John has a different call to you. God, through John the Baptist, is crying out to you, “Don’t waste this wilderness time!” Don’t bury yourself in hopelessness and sorrow. Ask the Holy Spirit to meet you in the desert and help you examine your life. Turn away from the things that keep you from being the person God longs for you to be. Turn back toward God and the things God yearns to see in your life and in your heart. Pray that the Holy Spirit will empower the change you know that you need in your heart. Although God doesn’t cause suffering in our lives, God will use it if we are willing.

All of us will face a journey into the wilderness at some point. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will use these times to lift up the valleys and smooth over the mountains in our hearts. My prayer is that God will use the wilderness times in our lives to prepare us for the coming of the Savior. My prayer is that God will use us to call out to others who are in the wilderness so that they too can learn from their time in the wilderness to listen to the Holy Spirit and prepare to meet the Savior when he comes. Amen