Preparng the way Part 4- Pulling up weeds Mark 1:1-9

 

Mark opens his gospel like a film that delays the reveal of its hero, drawing us first into the wild landscape and the voice of John the Baptist — the messenger promised centuries earlier — calling people to clear the road of their hearts for the arrival of King Jesus. This reflection explores how spiritual “weeds” grow unnoticed or even appear good, yet still block the way for Christ’s reign in our lives. Through confession, repentance, and receiving God’s forgiveness, we learn to prepare the way afresh, pulling up anything that hinders us so that Jesus may fill us again with his Holy Spirit and holy fire.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

The best stories don’t begin by introducing the main character straight away; rather, the story gently unfolds and we are led to them, with everything setting up so we know who they are. So it is with the Book of Mark.

Almost like a movie script, the title is revealed so we know what it’s about, but then we are led through…

…the back story, introducing us to the main character. Up comes the title. This is the gospel, or the good news about Jesus, and it rolls across the screen. And then the camera focuses not on Jesus, but on this strange, almost wild-looking man, walking through the haze and dust in the wilderness.

It’s not a desert; it’s a wild, untamed place, full of scrub and wild animals.

And as the lens draws closer to him, so does the narrator remind us of a promise — a promise from 600 years before, a promise given by the Lord himself through the prophet Isaiah.

“Look,” or “behold” — it’s the Bible’s way of saying, look, the camera is now focusing in on something completely different, a little detail we hadn’t seen before.

Behold, look, I am sending my messenger ahead of me, just like a messenger coming ahead of a king to announce his arrival, shouting out in the wild places, the disorganised places, to get ready.

Clear the road, fill in the potholes, remove the stones, make the road straight, so that the king can come in. Get ready.

As the camera pans outwards, suddenly we see that this messenger isn’t in royal livery. We see a man in handmade, rough clothes, a man living off the land.

Coming closer, he is calling — calling people to get ready, to get ready for the one who is coming. And people start to get ready, not by repairing a physical road, but by filling in the potholes in their hearts, clearing out the obstacles in their lives, by confessing their sins and being baptised.

Why? Because the king is coming — the one promised by the Lord himself, the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit. And Dr Luke, in his gospel, adds: baptise with fire.

Who is this one who is coming? It is Jesus.

The truth is, we all need more of the Holy Spirit, and we all need more of the fire of the Lord. We all need to come closer and closer to Jesus. But how do we do that?

Just as the passage leads to Jesus, and just before his actual ministry began, someone came to prepare the way. That man was a man called John.

There was a journey to come to Jesus and to know him more.

The 5th‑century monk Philemon of Gaza, as he reflected on this passage, commented that when you hear this prophecy of Isaiah, you can imagine people getting out their shovels and their picks and working on a road, smoothing it out and getting ready for Jesus to come.

But the truth is, as he mentioned, we don’t need physical picks or shovels — but we do need to clear the roads to our hearts, to clear them from all the weeds that grow up and block the way for King Jesus to fully come in and reign in our lives.

Here’s the thing about weeds: some can actually look quite nice and even have great flowers on them. There are sins that will develop in our lives that can look and feel great, but actually they’re sins and they’re getting in the way of Jesus.

Other weeds will grow very, very slowly. You can see something out of the corner of your eye, but it looks small, not really worth bothering with. But before you realise it, it has completely taken over.

There’s actually another definition of a weed, and it’s this: a plant in the wrong place. You can have a beautiful plant, something even producing wonderful fruit, but if it’s growing not in the garden but in the middle of the path, blocking the way, then it is a weed.

You can have something growing in our lives that is, in one sense, quite good — but when it’s misplaced and it gets in the way of us coming to Jesus, and Jesus coming fully into our lives, then it is still a weed.

In a moment, we’re just going to pause, and I’m going to invite you, if you would like to, to think about the road to your heart as we get ready to meet him in the autumn, when King Jesus, the great I Am, the Living Word, is going to come — as we explore him together, as we read the Book of John.

Just pause for a moment.

Are there spiritual potholes? Are there weeds growing up in our lives, preventing Jesus from coming fully in?

Maybe they’re attitudes, behaviours, habits, dreams, expectations — little sins that have just started to grow up, things that can feel so familiar that we ignore them.

Things we know that maybe are not fully of the Lord, but somehow they’ve become acceptable to everybody else around us, so we carry on doing the same thing.

Maybe there were good things — like family, or serving, or helping others — that are good, but rather than growing in the garden, they are now blocking the path. And those good things have become the priority, and not Jesus, and now they’re becoming a weed and blocking the way for him to come into our lives.

We can all have these things growing in our hearts, and we need to take the time to weed, so we can fully allow Jesus to come and rule and reign, and release his Holy Spirit and his fire into us again.

Do we need to do some weeding?

The question is: how do we pull up these weeds?

Our passage is really clear.

We confess our sins. We repent of them. And we return to the Father for forgiveness.

We confess — that means being honest and naming those things and bringing them to the Lord that should not be there.

We repent — yes, that is saying sorry, but more than that, it is asking for the help of the Holy Spirit to turn around and to live our lives the right way.

And we receive His forgiveness. This is the amazing truth about the grace and the mercy of the Lord. The God who made everything, who knows all things — even the number of hairs on our head — chooses to forget our mistakes and our sins. When we repent and we confess, He chooses to forget those sins and mistakes, and in His eyes, it’s as if those things have never, ever happened.

In Romans 8 verse 1, it says: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” This is the amazing truth of what happens when we follow God.

So let’s do some weeding.

Let us pause. Let’s take a moment to examine our hearts and our lives.

Maybe there are things in our lives that need to be dealt with — acceptable and unacceptable sins, familiar sins, and misplaced priorities: good things that have replaced the Lord in our hearts and are blocking the way for Him to come fully into ours.

We take a moment to confess them. We take a moment to repent — yes, saying sorry, while asking for His Holy Spirit to come and to help us to live God’s way.

And now we receive His mercy, His love, and His forgiveness.

And finally now, we ask that the Lord Jesus would fill our hearts and our lives again, to overflowing with the Holy Spirit — and that He would release His fire.