GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
MARK 1:6
Agreement Between Hands and Mouth
A missionary told a story about speaking to an audience when one of the men left in the middle of his sermon and took one of the speaker’s assistants out of the room. The man returned a few minutes later and appeared to listen attentively. After the service, the missionary asked his assistant what the man wanted. The assistant said the man wanted to know if the missionary practiced what he preached. When the assistant assured the man that the missionary lived a committed life, the man returned to listen.
St. Mark said that many people from Judea and Jerusalem walked into the wilderness to hear a preacher, not one of the well-clothed, appropriately perfumed scribes in the city with well-trimmed beards. “And John was clothed in hairs of a camel and a belt of leather around his waist, and eating locust and wild honey.” (1:6) There are many curious items in this short sentence—the camel-hair garment, the leather belt, and the diet, but one point is that this speaker was carrying a message that he was demonstrating in his own life.
In the city were leaders who were meticulous about their dress, their daily schedules, and their ceremonial washing, but whose interior was clogged by finding ways to justify their own behavior and overturn the essence of the message they proclaimed. Perhaps one of the most attractive things about this wilderness preacher was that his life and message were congruent. Hmm, that lesson is still true for today. “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight.” (Psalm 19:14)
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