Mark 1 in context

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Isaiah 40:1-11                                                                     Malachi 2:17-3:6
Mark 1:1-4

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God.
“Encourage Jerusalem, proclaim to her
                          that her hardship has been completed, 
                                         that her sin has been paid for—
             that she has received from the LORD’s hand 
                                         double for all her sins.”
You have wearied the LORD with your words. 
“How have we wearied him?” you ask?
 By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the LORD,
and he is pleased with them,” or,
“Where is the God of justice?” 
“See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.
 Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple;
the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,”
says the LORD Almighty.
A voice is calling,
                          “In the desert, clear a path for the LORD;
              make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
                            every mountain and hill be brought low;
                let the hilly place be a plain,
                            and the mountain ranges a wide valley.
The LORD’s glory will be revealed
                          and all people will see it together,
              because the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

But who can endure the day of his coming?
 Who can stand when he appears?
 For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.
 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver;
he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.
 Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness,
and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD,
as in days gone by, as in former years.

A voice says, “Call out!”—
                          and one answers, “What shall I call out?
              All people are grass,
                          and all their mercy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers,
                         the flower fades,
              because the breath of the LORD blows on it.”
“Yes, the people are grass—
                         ‘the grass withers,
                                           the flower fades’—
              but the word of our God will stand forever.”
Go up on a high mountain, Zion who brings good tidings;
                         lift up your voice in a shout, Jerusalem, bearer of good news.
              Lift up your voice, do not fear;
                         say to the cities of Judah,
                                           “Look, your God!”

“So I will come near to you for judgment.
I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers,
against those who defraud laborers of their wages,
who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice,
but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.
 “For I the LORD do not change;
therefore you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.”

The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  
It is written in Isaiah the prophet,“I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way”—
“a voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.’”And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins.

Posted in Scripture, Uncategorized.

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