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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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Mark 1:5
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It is wonderful to grasp how Christ was pre-announced, and how the whole land was shaken and prepared for him. The people came out in vast numbers. They came to where John was, and the religious authorities were compelled to investigate this phenomenon, however much they were out of sympathy with it. Interesting, we do not read here – nor in the other Gospels – that people came from Galilee, and it has been said that when Christ came for baptism, he was the only Galilean among all those people. John baptized in the Jordan because he needed a quantity of water. This was not the sprinkling of a small amount of water on the body but the submerging of the whole body in water. It was of course symbolic, but for the symbol to do justice to the reality, it was necessary for the whole body to be immersed, which is the meaning for the Greek word ‘to baptize’. You said, ‘Lord, I want to be washed and I repent of my sin and I believe in the mercy of God.’ In the future, after Christ and his ministry, it would become Christian baptism, clothed with an even deeper sense than merely the washing away of sin.
Application
The things of God are of so much greater importance than the things of this world, and we must at times make extraordinary efforts to obtain them. In an age of dearth of good preaching, are we prepared to travel to where our souls can be fed? In a life which is overwhelmed by business, are we prepared to set aside time for reading God’s word and prayer and to protect that time from infringement?
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