God is working his purpose out
Readings: Mark 1. 1-8, Isaiah 40. 1-11
As I mentioned earlier in the service, today we remember the prophets. To clear the decks a little, prophets in the Bible aren’t, as is in the common imagination today, those who can foretell the future. Instead they’re those who God speaks to and through. And often they come with warnings, sometimes with encouragements and words of hope. And sometimes these are about the future, warning about coming consequences or reassuring the people that God is coming to intervene and save.
So whilst they often speak of the future, what characterises them isn’t so much an ability to foresee and foretell, but a nearness to God, and speaking his words.
And in our Gospel reading today we have John the Baptist, presented as the last of the Old Testament prophets, that’s why there’s this focus on his clothes and eating habits, he’s the very image of the prophets of old. He’s the hinge on which the Old and New Covenants pivot as God himself comes to bring in the new.
And what Mark does as he presents us with this new prophet, the last of the line of Old Testament prophets is that he does so in the words of Isaiah, read through the lens of Malachi, with reference to the Exodus. In this simple citation we cover the great sweep of the Old Testament so let’s dive in.
That opening quote ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way’ is taken from Malachi 3.1 ‘I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple.’ Malachi is the last of the Prophets in the Old Testament, and he speaks a lot about the coming Messiah, the coming Saviour. He speaks the words of this promise and then all goes silent. He’s the last one to hear God’s voice for 400 years, he’s the beginning of this gap which John the Baptist is now ending. There’s this sense that this hanging thread is now being picked up as the messenger arrives ahead of the Lord.
But the reference as I say goes further back than that. For Mark also quotes from Isaiah, one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament. His book speaks of the coming Saviour, speaks those servant songs of the one who will be wounded and afflicted. And his ministry and that of his disciples spans the time before the exile, warning God’s people to turn back to the Lord before they are cast from the land, whilst also offering hope, and as the exile ends offering them comfort and hope, but also challenging the people to keep his ways. Mark cites his words at the opening of this latter section speaking of the ‘voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “prepare the way of the Lord.”’ The forerunner who would prepare God’s people for the coming Saviour has come, crying out in the wilderness.
And finally both of these citations are with reference to the Exodus, where God leads his people from slavery in Egypt into a land where at last they will be free, where they can live as God calls them to. The quote echoing in these first two is taken from when Exodus 23. 20 where God’s people are at the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses has just read them the 10 Commandments and various other laws and regulations which they are to keep, and as he finishes reading them he assures them that God will bring them to the land he promised and he says ‘See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared’.
As John prepares God’s people for Jesus, for the coming Saviour, there’s this great arc of the history of God’s people sitting in the background. The last prophet before the great silence, the greatest prophet who accompanied the greatest disaster that befell God’s people until this time and the words spoken at that great moment of rescue and freedom. There’s this sense that all the threads of history are being drawn together at this moment, that everything that has happened, from silence to exile to exodus, has all been leading here, to this time, to this place, to this person.
And as creation holds its breath out of the wilderness walks a prophet dressed like the prophets of old, and the silence is broken as he announces that the long awaited Messiah is here. That the long promised Saviour has come.
As Isaiah tells us this morning, ‘The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever’. He reminds us that all of us, all people are like grass, we fade and we die, and yet God’s purposes go on. For me that’s at the heart of this tiny section of Mark. Throughout these many generations and hundreds of years of history, as people live and die, as rulers and empires rise and fall, as grass and flowers sprout up and die back thousands of times, God’s purposes continue uninterrupted, his word endures through it all.
And you could read that perhaps rather cynically. That God has his own purposes and plans, and that people don’t really factor into them, God is doing his thing regardless of what happens of the earth. You could read that as uncaring, disinterested.
But it’s actually the precise opposite. God’s word and his purposes endure not because he is unaffected and unmoved by what happens here, but precisely because he is working to intervene. It’s not that he doesn’t care for his people and is distracted by his plans, it’s that his plans are precisely for his people, for their hope, their salvation.
It’s no accident that each of these references happen around times of great turmoil. God’s words of hope at the base of Mount Sinai as the people face 40 years in the wilderness. God’s words of comfort and restoration as the people either head into exile or come out of exile depending on how you read that passage from Isaiah. God’s words of the promised Messiah as his people are faced, unknowingly, with 400 years of silence from God. In all these moments where God’s people might start to feel that God has abandoned them, that he is uncaring, that he is unmoved by their pain and struggles. In all of these moments God reminds them that the word of his commands and the word of his promises continue. They are not dependant on our circumstances, our impression of his faithfulness, but on his enduring, unceasing faithfulness.
So if you’re in the wilderness, if you feel like you’re in exile, thrown from your normal life and routine, if you feel like God is silent. Be assured, his promises to you still stand. He is still working for your good, even in the midst of disaster, of pain, of challenge, God is working for your good. That isn’t to say that he brings the disaster, but that he isn’t thwarted by such things. Just as all the threads of history are drawn together as Jesus comes, as the Messiah at last appears publicly on the edge of the Jordan. So too God is drawing all the threads of our lives, all the threads of history to that day when he will bring us home, when he shall at last heal and restore us. As the hymn goes ‘God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year’. God is working for his people, working for you, even in the midst of our troubles.
All we are like grass, the grass withers and the flower fades, but God’s word endures forever. Not because he is uninterested or uncaring, but precisely because he is not, because he is faithful and he will not allow his promises to fail, for our sake, and the sake of our salvation.
Amen.