Presbyterian & Reformed

The story so far:

1. Announced – John has proclaimed the coming Messiah.
2. Annointed – Jesus has undertaken the baptism of water and also that of the Spirit
3. Acknowledged – The voice has spoken from Heaven
4. Approved – through passing the test of temptation in the wilderness

In our pericope (or two) this morning we see two things:

1. The Message
2. The Method

That’s nice and tidy as an outline, but it is important to see why this structure matters to us. It is because:

1. We see the substance of the message we should proclaim
2. The method demonstrates the manner in which we should live this out.

In other words, we have here a model of evangelism and discipleship.

There is little doubt that Americans are comfortable. Tim Bascom writes in a book called ‘The Comfort Trap‘ words to the effect that:

We often feel we grow best in comfort but nothing is more difficult than to grow spiritually when we are comfortable

Solzhenitsyn’s exile to the Gulag became a blessing in his life, because it was there that he discovered

… the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.

The message and method shows us the foolishness of our obsession with comfort.

The Message

After John was arrested: A void existed after John was arrested that helped ‘catapult’ Christ into his ministry. Remember, Mark was not writing in a vacuum but in Rome at a time under Nero when Christians were being cruelly oppressed and it is not difficult to see a link between Mark speaking of the need for the message and method after John as being a parallel with the need for Christians to persevere in the message and method even as they herald Christ amongst the cultures of the world.

Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God: Do we have death, arrest, he seems to say, and we might add, cancer, hardships? Yes. But alwaus the truth of the Good News is there for those in Christ.

Christ comes to the poor and broken and to those he brings good news. euangellion in the Greek. In the LXX, this same word is used, and especially in II Sam, several times to refer to the report of victory from the battlefield. In Isaiah 61 it is used to refer to the fact that God is invading history to bring about his plan of redemption.

In Mark, too, it more than a formalized collection of beliefs and truths – but is the certainty that the Kingdom breaks into History in the flesh. Christ is the “Kingdom-Bringer” and now, he had arrived! He was here and he brought with him the Kingdom of God.

So what was this ‘good news’ about the Kingdom and the Kingdom Bringer?

saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

There is a sense of parallelism in this verse:

• The time is fulfilled
• The kingdom of God is at hand

are in the perfect tense in the Greek and tend to indicate a finality of completeness. Given that these things are ‘perfectly’ realized, then:

• repent
• believe

and these are imperatives. Not handy suggestions for living or ‘take it or leave it’ spiritual advice – but commands from God to all peoples everywhere and are predicated on the truths that precede them that here and now (fulfilled and at hand) is the time required for repentance and belief.

The Method

The inaugural event of the ministry of Christ was calling four fishermen to be his followers. We can observe three things as we, too, follow Christ.

1. These guys were called to follow by Jesus
   This seems kind of a ‘duh’ moment, but we should be aware in the ANE world, the rabbi, the spiritual leader never called people. Followers would get together a “resume” of why they should be allowed to be followers and would present it to the teacher. The teacher would consider this ‘application’ and either accept the new disciple or reject him. The teacher did not do the calling.
2. They were called into service
   By being made into fishers of men. These guys were no strangers to physical labor. They knew how to work. They were not called into comfortable seating on a bench somewhere being exalted by the unwashed masses. They were called back into fishing. Service is hard, but when we need to lift our eyes to another, it takes our gaze off of ourselves.
3. It changed what they valued
   These guys left everything to follow Christ. Our own doctrine of vocation calls us to minister where we are placed by God. We’re not called to throw everything away – and there is some evidence from the Gospels that these 4 guys retained access to their boats and nets etc. We have examples of them fishing with Christ, rowing about on the Galilee Lake and such as well – but the pre-eminent focus and relationship for them in their lives was now Jesus.

Jim Elliot:

He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose

The Kingdom is here.
The Good News has come.

Jesus calls us and leads us and shapes us into fishers of men and winners of souls. He gets us out of our ‘boats’ – our comfortable places. He calls us into fellowship and not as single disciples but one amongst many. Our vision of Christ should drive us from comfort to be ‘Kingdom Bringers” in our own spheres of influence.