Week 36 Mark
Mark starts his NT gospel with two quotes straight out of the OT: look, I am sending my messenger before you, and he will prepare your way. He is a voice shouting in the wilderness: prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming! Mark says Isaiah’s unnamed messenger is John the Baptist.
I flip back to the John story I read last week. John started preaching in the Judean wilderness and Matthew says that: Isaiah had spoken of John when he said ‘he is a voice shouting in the wilderness: prepare a pathway for the Lord’s coming!’
I go back even farther, about 350-pages farther and read what Isaiah himself said: listen! I hear a voice of someone shouting, ‘Make a highway for the Lord…’
So hundreds of years before Mark and Matthew were born Isaiah said that some unidentified person would appear to prepare for the Lord. And now Matthew and Mark are saying that Isaiah’s Unknown Voice is John the Baptist.
The world I’m moving through as I read the bible is a world where time doesn’t necessarily close the door on knowing.
It’s not like in the material world where I peer into the future and hope, believe, guess, forecast or predict – but I can’t know. In the material world the Time-to-come Door is locked.
The rules of the material world lay out definite limits for me.
Being a bible-reader extends my range.
Note: quotes from Mark 1:2-4, Matthew 3:3, Isaiah 40:3 (NLT)