Well, good morning again, church.
Would you turn with me to Mark chapter 1, verses 1, verses 14 through 20.
Mark chapter 1, verses 14 through 20.
That's page 785 in the Pew Bible.
It'll be on the screens as I read it in just a second.
But let me encourage you to actually have it open throughout our time of considering
this passage together.
Let me read, and then I'll pray for us.
Mark 1, 14 through 20.
Now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God
and saying, the time is fulfilled.
The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Repent and believe in the gospel.
Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon,
casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.
And Jesus said to them, follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.
And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
And going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother,
who were in their boat mending their nets.
And immediately he called them.
And they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.
All right, let's pray together.
Father in heaven, help us now as we come to this word to do what we just sung,
to turn our eyes upon Jesus and to see in him our Savior ever true, our good and rightful king.
We ask all this in his name and by the power of your Holy Spirit, Father.
Amen.
Well, perhaps you can think of a time when you were waiting for something big to come.
I have to confess, every time I place an Amazon order, truthfully, whether it's small or big,
I get a little excited waiting for that package to show up on my door, right?
But that's nothing compared to waiting for, say, something bigger like your birthday to come,
or if you're expecting, you're waiting for the day when your child will come,
or perhaps you're waiting for a loved one to come home from a long trip,
or perhaps waiting for news about some big event, waiting for something big to come.
Maybe in your life right now you're kind of waiting for something big,
something bigger than an Amazon package anyway.
I think at the deepest level, I think at the deepest level,
we're kind of all waiting for something big, aren't we?
I mean, if we pause and we're just quiet for a moment,
we're waiting for the day when finally, maybe, possibly, hopefully, something will change.
In this broken world, we all catch ourselves sometimes waiting and hoping for something big.
When will the day come?
When will things finally get put right?
Not just the little things, but like the whole thing, right?
When will the world finally get put right?
And I wonder if those little kind of everyday expectations that we have
are like little glimmers or little echoes of that deeper human longing.
You know, at a silly level, I'm waiting for my Amazon package to come
because I'm out of my favorite pens,
and once that package gets here,
finally, my writing needs will be put right at long last.
You're waiting for your promotion at work
because then maybe your financial needs can get put right.
You're waiting for your baby to come
because then maybe your desire for a family, for a home,
for a deep love can get put right.
But maybe, perhaps, something even bigger can come
that will put everything right.
And you know, if you've ever felt that longing,
the good news is you're in good company.
One of the great themes or threads or desires
that kind of drives the whole Bible is exactly that.
It's the hope that the world could be put right again.
If you start reading the Old Testament,
you'll see, well, you'll see that things go wrong pretty quickly.
But then there's a promise.
A promise that one day the wrong will be undone,
everything sad will come untrue,
and at last sickness, sorrow, and death will be no more.
But keep reading the Old Testament,
and you'll see that there's a growing wisdom that develops.
A growing wisdom that the human problem,
the world's problem,
is so intractable and so great and so deep
that humans can't solve it.
As the last chapters of the Old Testament come to a close,
we see that if the world is going to be put right,
then God must be the one to do it.
And as the ages kind of roll on
after the close of the Old Testament,
the Jewish people begin talking about this hope,
this longing in terms of God's kingdom.
That is when God, the Lord,
the world's true king,
comes to reign
and comes to put the world right again.
If you ask many Jews in the first century,
what is it that's going to heal the world?
What's going to take this broken world
full of injustice and wrong and suffering and death,
what's going to heal it once and for all?
The answer would have been
God's kingdom.
Now listen again to verses 14 through 15 of Mark 1.
Now after John was arrested,
Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God
and saying,
the time's fulfilled.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent and believe in the gospel.
Jesus' message was that the reign of God,
the kingdom of God,
the hope of the world,
the healing of the world,
the putting right of all things had arrived.
The time is fulfilled,
the wait is over,
and the healing has begun.
It's at hand.
That is, it's pressing down right now
in this moment.
And Jesus says,
that's good news.
And it's not just the good news,
the gospel of Rome or of Caesar.
It's not the good news of any human empire
or any human endeavor or human striving,
but it's the gospel,
the good news of God.
God's tremendous, history-changing good news.
God's kingdom is at hand.
So this passage from Mark that we just read
helps us to understand then
two very important things,
and we're going to look at them both together.
First, in verses 14 through 15,
Mark helps us to see Jesus' message.
And then in verses 16 through 20,
we see Jesus' call.
That is, how should we respond to that message?
There's a lot of misunderstanding
about both of those things,
but Mark's going to help us to get it right.
What is Jesus' message,
and what is Jesus' call?
How should we respond to that message?
So when we consider first Jesus' message
in verses 14 through 15,
we see that ultimately the message of Jesus
maybe isn't what we expect.
After all, it's common to think of Jesus
as just one of the great religious leaders, right,
who came to start another religious movement.
And what do great religious leaders do?
Well, they come and they give new teaching,
and they give new instructions to follow, right?
The Buddha came and he taught the four truths,
and Muhammad brought the five pillars,
and Jesus, well, well, actually,
Jesus is quite different.
He breaks the mold.
Because his message isn't primarily
a new code of ethics.
Of course, Jesus did teach us how to live.
But the heart of his message,
the real heart of Jesus' message
wasn't something that you and I should be doing,
but something that God was doing.
God's kingdom had arrived.
The time was up.
And that's why Jesus uses the word gospel.
Of course, that's a pretty kind of religious-y
sounding word today, isn't it?
Gospel.
But it wasn't in the first century.
In Jesus' day, the word gospel, or good news,
referred to what messengers proclaimed
when great battles had been won,
or when emperors had been born,
or when kingdoms rose and kingdoms fell.
A gospel in the first century wasn't a religious word.
It was a political word.
It was a social word.
It was a word that you would read
on the front page of the New York Times,
not in your church bulletin.
It was news.
So it's quite significant that Jesus' message
is first and foremost not a dogma or an ethic,
but a gospel,
a message of something that is being done.
Something is happening.
God is doing something.
And God is doing something good.
He's come at last to make things right.
The healing has begun.
But you see, Jesus' message wasn't just
that God's kingdom had arrived,
but that God's kingdom had arrived in him.
Now, we'll take the rest of Mark's gospel
for this reality to unfold,
but we do see it here.
What is it that starts the inbreaking of God's reign?
It's Jesus when he steps forward and says,
the time is fulfilled.
His arrival, his proclamation
is the beginning of God's kingdom.
And so what Mark wants us to see,
even at this earliest point in his gospel,
isn't just that God's kingdom is at hand,
but that God's kingdom is at hand in Jesus.
The healing of the world comes through him.
That is a bit challenging for us today, isn't it?
We can think of all sorts of things we think
that need to happen in order for the world to be healed,
in order for things to be put right.
But if at the center of that,
hope and longing and dream and plan
is not the Lord Jesus,
then we've departed from God's own plan and way
of bringing his kingdom and healing the world.
So, you know, if you would have asked
a typical Jewish person in the first century,
as I said, what's going to heal the world,
they would have said God's kingdom.
But if you would have asked a Christian,
whether Jew or Gentile,
they would have said the same thing with this twist.
God's kingdom, and it's come in Jesus.
God has begun to reclaim his fallen world,
to heal what's broken,
and he's doing it through his eternal son,
the Messiah, the Lord Jesus.
And isn't that good news?
Why?
Well, think with me for a second.
Imagine God,
who he's revealed himself to be,
holy, just, good, sovereign, mighty,
beautiful beyond measure.
Imagine God,
upon whom we all depend for every second,
coming to put things right,
taking all the wrong and injustice and evil
in the world and putting it away once and for all.
That's a wonderful hope, isn't it?
Until you stop to think,
what about my own wrongs and my own injustices?
What about my own heart?
That yes, more often than I care to admit,
is so self-centered and at times even evil.
And then you might start to think,
God's kingdom, yes,
it might be good news for the world,
but is it good news for me,
a sinner?
When God's kingdom comes,
how could there possibly be a place for me?
But consider Jesus.
Jesus arrives in Galilee.
Now, that's a pretty curious place
to begin the kingdom,
to begin the reign of God, Galilee.
After all, think about it.
In the first century,
Rome was the center of the Gentile world
in the first century.
Jerusalem was the center of the Jewish world.
If you were going to start the in-breaking reign of God
and fix things,
you think you would start there, right?
No.
Jesus begins in Galilee.
He begins in the margins.
Galilee is just this ordinary place.
But there,
that's where Jesus begins.
Not among the political elite,
not among the religious or the moral elite,
Galilee.
But Jesus doesn't just begin His ministry on the margins.
He ends it there as well.
Where does the gospel of Mark lead?
Do we see Jesus in a liberating victory march to Rome
to overthrow oppression and injustice?
Do we see a sort of triumphant march to Jerusalem,
toppling all the sort of corrupt religiosity
happening in the capital?
No.
Jesus' ministry comes to its climax
on a hill outside of Jerusalem,
surrounded by criminals,
hung up to die on a Roman cross.
And we ask,
is this how God's kingdom comes?
Through the tragic execution
of a young Jewish man named Jesus?
Is that God's kingdom?
But don't you see?
Jesus wasn't just any young Jewish man.
He was the king of God's kingdom.
And the king knew that if God's kingdom
was going to be good news for you and me,
for sinners,
then he would have to step,
not just into the margins of our ordinary life,
but he'd have to go even further
and step down into the sin
and self-centeredness
that broke the world in the first place.
He would have to take your place
at the judgment
so you could join his place
in the kingdom.
That's what the king does
for you and me.
And that's why it's such good news
that God's kingdom
has come in Jesus.
So do you believe that?
Do you believe that God's kingdom
has arrived in Jesus?
that here lies the secret,
the answer to the healing of the world,
the crucified rabbi from Galilee,
the risen and reigning Lord Jesus?
That is the very proclamation
of Christianity from beginning to end.
And if so,
if you do believe that,
how should you respond?
Well, that brings us
to the rest of our passage.
In verses 16 through 20,
what we see is Jesus' call.
And these verses give us
a vivid picture
of what the end of verse 15 means.
Jesus says in verse 15, right,
repent and believe the gospel.
Well, what does that mean?
Well, we see it here
in verses 16 through 20.
When Jesus comes to Simon,
whom Jesus will give
the new name Peter a little later,
when he comes to Simon and Andrew
and James and John,
he says, follow me.
And what do they do?
They leave their nets
and they leave their family
and they follow him.
Now, let me point out three things
about this call.
First, Jesus says, follow me, right?
He is the object of the call.
Without qualification,
without hesitation,
Jesus says, follow me.
And that was very radical
in the first century.
It wasn't something
that other teachers
or rabbis would do.
You know, notice he doesn't say
like all the Old Testament prophets,
follow Torah,
follow the law of Moses.
And he doesn't say
like everyone says today,
follow your heart.
You know,
a dream is a wish
the heart makes.
Find it and follow it.
Keep navel gazing
until you discover
your true self, right?
No.
Jesus says, follow me.
If you want to be part
of God's kingdom,
you must follow me.
And that means
you must leave something behind.
Your nets
and your family.
If you want to understand
the real meaning
of Jesus' call to repent,
repent,
here it is.
Repentance, you see.
Again,
it's not this sort of
narrow religious word.
We hear the word repent
and we think it means
sort of like
be sorry for breaking the rules.
Well, it is that,
but it's deeper than that.
In reality,
repentance is a whole
life shift
of allegiance.
The direction
of your life changes.
What defines your life
right now?
Your vocation?
Your work?
Your family?
Your people?
Your tribe?
I think for most of us,
it's usually one
or the other
of those two things,
isn't it?
It's either my work
that defines me
or it's my people
that define me, right?
You meet someone new
and eventually
they're going to ask you,
so what do you do?
Right?
And then you tell them
your job
or where are you from
or who are you a part?
What, you know,
what's your people, right?
I'm a Mets fan
or whatever, you know.
Jesus says,
you have to leave them both
and follow me.
I'm what defines you now,
Jesus says.
Now, you might be thinking
that was easy
for a handful of poor fishermen
on the shores of Galilee.
What did they have to lose, right?
But, you know,
the reality is
Simon and Andrew
and James and John,
you know,
they weren't sort of
poor, desperate fishermen
with nothing to lose.
I think that's a pretty,
pretty big historical misconception
we have
about these first disciples.
You know,
when we look at the history,
we see that
the fishing industry
around the Sea of Galilee
was actually this sort of
thriving business
in the first century.
And it wasn't just
sort of a local trade.
You know,
you remember,
in the Greco-Roman world,
fish was like
the staple food, right?
Everyone ate fish
all the time.
It's how they got
their protein.
And fish
from the Sea of Galilee
were exported
and prized
and valued
as far south
as Alexandria
and Egypt
and as far north
as Antioch
and Syria,
which were two
of the biggest cities
in the Roman Empire.
So the fishermen
on the Sea of Galilee
were actually competing
in an international
Mediterranean market
and by all accounts,
they were pretty successful
at it.
I mean,
consider Zebedee
right here,
the father of James
and John.
He has hired servants
working for him.
These aren't poor fishermen
living hand to mouth.
So what were Andrew
and Simon
and James and John
walking away from?
They were walking away
from a thriving
family business
in a culture
where family
meant everything.
In other words,
they had everything
to lose.
So why did they do it?
What would make them
drop everything
and follow Jesus?
Well,
we know from
John's Gospel
that they had met
Jesus
and even spent
some time with him
before this encounter
in Galilee.
So Jesus wasn't
a totally unknown
quantity to them.
But still,
this moment
right here
on the shores
of Galilee
while they're at
their boats
and with their family
and working
on their nets,
this is the decisive
moment.
Why did they go?
What was it
about Jesus
that they were willing
to leave everything
and follow him?
Well,
I think that question
is exactly
the question
that Mark wants
his readers
to be asking.
What would make
four ordinary,
prosperous men
drop everything
to follow this Jesus?
Aren't you curious?
Don't you want to see
what they saw?
And Mark's Gospel
takes us
on a journey
where we can do
just that,
to see in Jesus
what they saw.
So if you're wondering
what would make
people leave
their job
or leave
their family
and follow Jesus,
you need to stay
tuned
and keep reading.
But I like
what Jerome,
the church father,
has to say
about this passage
writing in the
fourth or fifth century,
I think it is.
He writes,
there must have been
something
divinely compelling
in the Savior's
guileless
countenance.
There must have been
something divinely
compelling
in the Savior's
guileless
countenance
that persons
merely upon
seeing him
could trust.
Just
one
real look
at Jesus
is what it takes
to trust him.
Now,
will you literally
have to quit
your job
and abandon
your family
to follow Jesus?
Some of you
might be thinking,
I kind of don't
like my job
and my family
annoys me.
I would love
to quit everything
and follow Jesus.
Sign me up!
Right?
Well,
no.
You know,
more often than not
in the Gospels,
Jesus tells people
who trust in him
to go home
and tell your family
and your hometown
how much I've done
for you.
The point here
is that work
and family,
vocation
and tribe,
however you define it,
they don't have
our ultimate
allegiance anymore.
They aren't
our identity
anymore.
And that means
if we have to quit
our jobs to follow
Jesus,
we would.
And if we have
to leave our social
tribe or our social
network,
we will.
He gets the priority
over everything else.
That's real repentance.
And that's what it means
to follow Jesus
and enter God's kingdom.
But notice the second
thing about this call.
Notice that Jesus says,
follow me
and I will make you
something.
I will make you
become
fishers of men,
he says.
Now of course
Jesus is using
an obvious wordplay
on their profession
but there's also
a subtle allusion
here to the Old Testament.
Earlier in the service
we read from
the prophet Jeremiah
where Jeremiah
looks ahead
to when God
is going to judge
and save
his people
and even extend
his kingdom
to the Gentiles.
And what does
Jeremiah say?
He says,
the Lord through
Jeremiah says,
I'm going to send
out fishers
and I'm going
to send
out hunters
and I'm going
to gather
them all in.
So you see,
the call
to follow Jesus
isn't a call
to mere
observation.
Following Jesus
isn't about
becoming a mere
spectator
to the work
of God's kingdom.
It's about
becoming a participant.
with this new
identity
comes a new
mission,
a new purpose,
a new reason
to get up
in the morning.
Peter and Andrew
and James and John
they were presumably
really good
at catching fish.
That's what got
them up every morning
probably a lot earlier
than you and I
get up in the morning,
right?
But now
it wasn't going
to be about
bringing fish
from water
to land.
Now it was going
to be about
seeing people
brought from
death to life.
Seeing men
and women
lost under
the curse
of the fall
come to know
that God's kingdom
had come in Jesus
and that forgiveness
and new life
could be found
in Him.
You see,
every follower
of Jesus
is also
a minister
of Jesus.
God has
good works
prepared
for you
to do.
God wants
you to not
just enjoy
His forgiveness
and grace
but to join
the mission
of advancing
His kingdom.
A Christian
who doesn't
serve
and minister
is sort of
like a kite
that never flies,
right?
What a shame
to be stuck
on the ground
when you could
be feeling
the wind
carrying you
up
into the sky
and clouds.
That's where
God is calling you.
The call of Jesus
is the call
to join the work.
Of course,
Peter and Andrew
and James and John,
they probably
didn't understand
all this at first,
right?
And they certainly
were not ready
for it.
Ah,
but notice carefully
what Jesus says.
He says,
I will make you
become fishers of men.
Now,
I have to confess,
as I was studying
for the preaching
this week
and I read that verse,
I thought,
that is a clumsy
translation,
right?
Certainly,
we could have
cleaned that up
a little bit
and made that
a little smoother,
but actually,
as I got into it,
it's a really good
translation of that verse,
even though it sounds
a little strange.
I will make you
become fishers of men.
In other words,
Jesus is promising here
that along the way
of following Him,
He will make them
what they need to be.
He will make them
become what they need
to be in order to do
the work He's called
them to do.
The call of Jesus
is a call to follow
and become.
So,
if you're thinking
that you're not ready
to follow Jesus,
you're not ready
to follow Him
and join the mission,
if you're thinking
you're not ready,
well,
you're right.
no one is ever ready
to follow Jesus.
That's why He says,
follow me
and I will make you become.
So,
trust Him.
Put your life
in His hands
and He
will make you
become.
To be sure,
He will use all sorts
of means
to get you there.
He'll use the means
of worship
and community
and His Word
and He'll use the means
of His Spirit
and prayer
and He'll even use
the means
of suffering
and trials.
But the promise
stands,
I'll make you
become.
So,
you don't need
to clean up
your act
or get your life
together
before you follow Jesus.
It's His job
to do the cleaning
and the changing.
What you need
to do
is let down
your nets
and follow Him.
But lastly,
notice one more thing
about this call,
this call
to enter
God's kingdom
and this call
to follow King Jesus.
It's also a call
to a fellowship.
Jesus knows us
and calls us
individually by name.
Isn't that wonderful?
Simon,
Andrew,
James,
John,
we're known
and we're called
by name
but we join
something bigger
than ourselves.
Following Jesus
means following Him
alongside others.
There's no such thing
as a lone ranger Christian.
We have to do this
together.
And when we do it together,
following Jesus
as our King,
then it's like
the mustard seed
that Jesus mentions
in Mark chapter 4.
Jesus said,
with what can we compare
the kingdom of God
or what parable
shall we use for it?
it's like a grain
of mustard seed
which when sown
in the ground
is the smallest
of all the seeds
on earth.
Yet when it's sown,
it grows up
and becomes
larger than all
the garden plants
and puts out
large branches
so that the birds
of the air
can make nests
in its shade.
The kingdom
starts small
and then it grows
and then it becomes
a place
of shelter
and shade,
a place of healing
and a place
of home.
So according to Mark's gospel,
according to Jesus,
what we're waiting for
is here.
It's here
in Jesus,
the crucified
and risen Lord.
And of course,
it's here
oftentimes
in a seed.
Right?
God's kingdom
in Jesus
one day
will come in fullness
and then the glory
of God
will cover the earth
like the waters
cover the sea
and that day
is still in the future
but already
that kingdom
has begun.
The fall
is starting
to set in.
Winter is passing
and the signs
of spring
are starting
to spring up
so come
and follow him.
Mark says,
let down your nets
and follow him.
He's not looking
for polish
and prestige.
He's not looking
for perfect people
because there are none
he's calling you
right where you are
right there
in the ordinary.
Come and follow me.
Come enter
God's kingdom.
Come join
God's reign
and let the healing
begin.
Let's pray together.
Our Lord Jesus
as we pause
and take a moment
before you
we ask that you
would soften
our hearts
to you
and to your call.
God some of us here
have heeded this call
many years ago
and we continue
to heed it
and we thank you
that that is not
because of our own
wisdom or grace
or strength
but because of your
grace and Holy Spirit.
Lord renew in us
that sense
to let down
our nets
and to even
leave our family
and follow you.
Father for those
who are feeling
the tug of this call
but are perhaps
unsure
would you help them
to see in the face
of Jesus
one who can be trusted
and who has gone
to the very uttermost
to love them
and bring them home.
O Lord
we pray
that your kingdom
would come
in and through our church
for Jesus' sake
Father.
Amen.