The Good News of the Kingdom

Two weeks ago we started a study of the gospel of Mark. Last week we saw that after Jesus was baptized by John the Spirit drove him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Having won that confrontation and succeeded where Adam failed Jesus is now ready to begin his public ministry, and that’s exactly what we find beginning in verse 14.

1. Jesus proclaimed the good news of the kingdom

As I was thinking about Jesus’ first days of ministry, it made me think back to my own first days as a pastor (not that there is any similarity). 22 years ago my pastor shared with me that he felt a call to plant a church in GA and asked me to pray about becoming the senior pastor of Lamb’s Chapel. The Lord let Janice and I to accept and I remember that first Sunday when John and his family had left and I led the service as the senior pastor for the very first time. As I stood before the congregation of about 40 people, which had shrunk significantly because several families left to go with John to GA and two families just left because they had been very close to John and didn’t want to continue with the church with him gone, I felt that kind of nervousness and awkwardness that comes from stepping into something completely new – although I tried hard not to show it. If I remember correctly I preached my first message from Psalm 84 but I’m really not sure. If there’s anything I remember about that message it’s that it was extremely forgettable. In fact the whole service was forgettable – I think this is the first time I’ve remembered it in 22 years. No power of God falling from heaven, no lives changed by the dynamic preaching of God’s word, and no explosive sense of wonder and excitement about what God was doing. I had faith, but for these precious 40 people the only sense of wonder was “I wonder if we’ll exist a month from now?”

That’s not how Jesus’ ministry began. After John’s arrest Jesus moves back to the region of Galilee and with power and authority he begins to preach and there is explosive growth as the crowds hear him proclaim the gospel – the good news – of the kingdom of God. Now we’ve become familiar with the word “gospel” as a kind of churchy word cause the only place we ever hear it is in church but that’s not how it was in Jesus’ day. Jesus took a secular term that meant an announcement of history-making, life changing proportions. There is an inscription from Jesus’ day announcing the gospel of Caesar Augustus speaking of his birth and coronation. About 500 years earlier, when Greece was invaded by the Persians and fought them back, winning significant battles, the Greeks sent heralds to their cities announcing the gospel of their victories and the freedom those victories won the citizens. In those days, gospel didn’t mean “religious”, it meant the good news of something had been done in history that changed for the better the lives of those it affected forever. It was good news. It was news that brought joy.

Jesus proclaimed good news that eclipsed all other good news: the kingdom of God was at hand – drawing near. All that Israel had waited for and longed for, all that the prophets had prophesied for hundreds of years, all that this gloomy, darkened world had desperately needed even though it didn’t know it, had come. The kingdom of God was invading this sinful world, and that was good news.
But in what way had the kingdom of God drawn near to the world? When we think of kingdoms we usually think of a realm – a geographical border, a conquered territory. The word “kingdom” evokes images of castles and cities with high walls and draw bridges and things like that. The Bible tells us that one day the skies will roll back and the kingdom of God will slam into this world with a force that will make men wish they could be swallowed up by the earth to escape the kingdom of God’s terrible glory and escape the piercing gaze of the King of heaven. That day when the realm of heaven invades this earth is coming, but it’s not yet.

Jesus isn’t saying that the realm of God’s kingdom was drawing near, he was saying that the rule of God’s kingdom was drawing because he was drawing near. The King of heaven came to earth, and he came in a form that commanded no special attention or allegiance. John the Baptist knew that the one coming after him was so mighty and glorious that he was not worthy to stoop and unstrap his sandals, but when he came he didn’t come displaying that power and glory, he came disguised as a humble carpenter. For those not looking, he could easily be missed. For those who didn’t want him as their king, he could easily be rejected.

As we go through this gospel we will see the rule and power of the kingdom of God invade this dark world as demons are cast out of tormented people and sick or dead children are healed and restored to their parents, as lame walk and blind see, as poor and hungry people are fed miraculously, and as lost sinners find mercy and forgiveness at the hands of the King. The power of the kingdom will be amazing, but of a nature that can be easily shrugged off if not received with faith. Jesus didn’t come displaying the kind of might that destroys all enemies and commands respect and allegiance by force. No, he came with the kind of gentle power that healed the hurting, and restored the broken, and invited – not forced – enemies to become the king’s friends and willingly accept his rule over their lives. And Jesus is still working that way – inviting us to accept his rule, his kingship, over our lives.

This is very good news because every problem with this world, and every serious problem in our lives comes down to rulership. When the devil got Adam and Eve to disobey God’s one command, he effectively got them to join him in his rebellion against the rule of God. We all want to be our own God – which just means we all want to live the way we want to live (our rule) rather than the way God commands (God’s rule). And we live in a world filled with people who want to be their own gods too, so our selfishness is bouncing off each other. And then, to top it all off, because Satan rules the realm of rebellion he is in some sense the god of this world. Jesus calls him the “ruler of this world” and Paul calls him the “god of this age. It is Satan that fuels and rules the selfishness, greed, hatred, lust, prejudice, manipulation, self-righteousness and all other junk that comes from rebellion against the kingdom of God. That’s the source of all the heartache and brokenness and evil in the world. A journalist once published a question in a newspaper asking, what’s wrong with the world? GK Chesterton wrote back, I am. That’s what’s wrong with the world – I am. You are. We all are. And admitting that is the first step to the solution. See, you think that the problem in your marriage is that your wife isn’t doing what she should be doing, she isn’t thinking the way she should be thinking, she isn’t seeing things the way she should be seeing them – your way. And wives, you see the problem clearly too: it’s your husband, am I right? I mean, we want to be kind, but sometimes he’s such a lunkhead – am I right? (Don’t nod your head – he might see). If he would just do things and see things the way you see them, all would be well.

And we could apply that same thing to our relationships with our kids, our supervisor, that annoying neighbor, that person who once was a friend but now we’re not speaking. If they would see things and do things the way we think they should be, all would be well. The problem is we make lousy gods.
There’s an old song whose chorus said, “you can’t even run your own life, I’ll be darned if you’ll run mine.” You aren’t a good king and neither am I. What we need most, what we long for, is for our lives to come back under the rulership of God. To yield our total allegiance to the one true king, Jesus Christ.

Repent and believe

That’s what Jesus means when he ends his message with this call: repent and believe in the gospel. To repent and believe simply means to “turn back”, “to change the mind”, to “change direction”. Perhaps the best description is to have a change of heart. To repent doesn’t mean to get rid of all sin before we come to Christ – that would be like telling a starving man to get rid of all hunger before he is allowed to eat! Only Christ can free us from sin – we could never do that ourselves. Repentance means we turn around from chasing sin as our love, it means turning away from being our own kings and turn instead to Christ. Bowing our knee, bowing our heart in submission and allegiance to King Jesus.

And repentance isn’t always this heavy, guilt-filled thing either. I think sometimes we define repentance too narrowly when we define it only as deep identification and guilt over sin. Certainly it can include that, and for some it should include that, but repentance can take many forms, in one person causing them to feel deep sorrow over their sin, in another person convincing their heart that Jesus is the only true source of life, and in still another calling them to a radical discipleship in obedience to Christ. In other words, repentance doesn’t always evidence itself with great sorrow and guilt. Zachaeus repented but it was a joyful change of heart – he used to cheat but now he wants to give his life to follow Jesus and a part of that is restoring four-fold all that he had cheated people out of. But he wasn’t weeping and down-hearted about it. He was like an excited kid, Jesus, Jesus, look, anyone I’ve defrauded, I now resolve to restore it fourfold! Sorrowful repentance? Nope. Real repentance? Absolutely. Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house…” (Luke 19)

In other words, sometimes repentance has more of a forward thrust to it than an inward focus. Donald English makes this excellent point (and this is why it’s important) in his commentary on Mark: Not to recognize the larger meaning (of repentance) is to neglect both the meaning of the gospel and the variety of ways in which God enables people to respond to it.

See we can reduce the amazing ways the kingdom of God breaks into people’s lives if we narrow the meaning of repentance more than is biblically warranted. So in Jesus’ wake are thousands of people – sinners, poor, sick, oppressed, outcasts, lepers – and they are hearing and seeing this good news of the kingdom and they are having a change of heart – with joy they are believing in Jesus and following him. And in the next verses, by the Sea of Galilee, we see Jesus hand pick four ordinary, uneducated, weather-beaten men to be his apostles.

2. Jesus calls his first disciples Mark 1:16-20

I wish we had more time to spend on this section, but notice with me three important aspects to the call of Jesus on these four men – aspects that are still true of Jesus call on our lives today.
a. Jesus calls them (and us) to follow him

To be a disciple means to give up the rule over our own lives and allow the kingdom of God to break into our lives. Jesus isn’t following us in our lives, we are to be following him in everything we do.

ILL: there’s a story of a young girl who was filling out an application for college. When she came to one question her heart sank. It read, are you a leader? Being very honest, she wrote, “no”, finished filling out the application, and sent it in, expecting the worst.

A week later she received this response from the college: Dear Applicant: a study of the application forms reveals that this year our college will have 1452 new leaders. We are accepting you because we feel it is imperative that they have at least one follower.

When it comes to being a disciple of Jesus, we don’t lead, we follow. Leaders need not apply. I don’t mean that there aren’t those called by Jesus to lead under his leadership and direction, but really there is only one Leader and we are all followers of Jesus. Following Jesus means we have renounced our own rulership over our lives and given that rulership to Christ. He is our king and we follow him.

b. They immediately left everything to follow Jesus

Peter and Andrew left their nets, James and John left their father. Now, following Jesus doesn’t necessarily mean leaving your parents or your livelihood. Jesus’ call on them was specifically to be his apostles, to live with him and learn from him every day until he was taken up to heaven. For most of us, following Jesus will mean following Jesus in our lives, not out of them.

But there are things we need to leave out of obedience. I remember when I was a new Christian I loved music – and a lot of that music was not doing my soul any good. Some of it was pretty dark spiritually. And some of it just because of association and memories had a negative effect on me and my walk with the Lord and one day He challenged me to give it up. I did give it up and started listening to the only Christian music I had at the time and at first I thought it was pretty cheesy – but God used that time to draw my heart closer to Him with love and faith.

It might be something inherently sinful that following Jesus means you leave immediately– pornography, drunkenness, gossip, maybe certain friends that are pressuring you to make sinful choices. Or it might be, like me with the music, things that aren’t inherently sinful but are drawing your heart away from Jesus. The disciples left immediately – didn’t think about it, didn’t try to figure it all out – just obeyed. That’s what Jesus calls us to – a radical obedience.

c. Jesus tells them he will make them become fishers of men

There are some misconceptions we can have about this phrase. First of all, it might surprise you to hear that the idea of fishing for men is always a negative term in the OT. It has to do with God using fishers and hunters of people to exact His judgment on sinful Israel. But Jesus has taken a negative image and co-opted it to mean something good. And we’ll consider what that is in a minute.

But the second misconception we can have is to think of fishing the way we fish today. Last week I talked about lures and worms and such. So we might think that we’re to use the right bait to “catch people”.

One marketer rolled out a new “Christian perfume” with the promise that it makes an effective evangelistic tool because it’s enticing enough to make people ask “what’s that you’re wearing” and then the marketer says, take that opportunity to speak of your faith. They’ve opened the door, and now they’re going to get it.

Lure, bait, hook. Somehow it doesn’t seem like exactly what Jesus meant. The fishermen in those days used nets – they came in different styles, but the concept was similar – cast the net and draw in the fish. And that’s where fishers of men borrow from the OT concept of judgment, only we draw in men who were destined for judgment but can now be saved from judgment by the gospel – by believing what Jesus did on the cross for them.

Church, we have been given good news. Are we following Jesus as our king? Are our lives submitted to his Lordship? And we have been given the commission to proclaim that good news to others – to cast the gospel net out that others might come to know Jesus as their Lord, their King, their Savior, and their Friend.

As we close, let’s remember two things:

First of all, our salvation isn’t based on what we do or don’t do. The gospel isn’t good advice, its good news. Churches take a dangerous swerve towards legalism when they turn this news into advice: here’s the list of things you need to do and rules you need to keep if you want to earn God’s acceptance. If our Christian walk is more about what we do for Jesus than what he did for us, we’ve got it seriously wrong. If sermons are mostly telling us what we need to change, how we need to live, or slamming those who aren’t doing all that, then we’ve moved from Christianity into moralism (or legalism) or listism, whatever you want to call it! Christianity isn’t advice about what we need to do, its news about what Jesus has done: the good news is what has been done in history in order for us to connect with God and be accepted by Him. Jesus died on the cross and rose again in order to earn our acceptance with God.

If you aren’t a Christian, the message Jesus wants you to hear isn’t, “you’ve got to clean up your life and do a bunch of stuff in order to be acceptable to God.” It’s, Jesus died on the cross to save all who would turn from their sin and believe in him. Will you do that today?

Secondly, Jesus calls us to bow our knee to him. Following Jesus means yielding our lives to his Kingship and I believe the Lord is speaking to all of us about areas of our lives that aren’t submitted. Respond immediately – in faith and joy repent and follow.

Are there sins that are holding you back from wholeheartedly following Jesus? Leave them – immediately. Are there ways you know that your life isn’t radically following Jesus? I know there are ways in my life. Let’s go to the Savior and ask for fresh grace and faith to obey – not in order to earn his acceptance, but because we are accepted because of what he has done, and because we long for his good rulership in our lives, we long for our lives to count for his kingdom, and we want Jesus to be glorified through us.

Let’s pray.