Mark 1:14-15

Mark 1:14–15 (ESV)

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

What happened to John? If you read this for the first time or were hearing it for the first time you would be wondering what in the world happened to John? The last we heard of him, which was only a few verse ago, this guy had such a successful ministry. People were coming to him in the the desert in droves after nearly 400 years of silence.

So what happened that lead John to get arrested? The word Mark used is the word literally meaning, to be “delivered up.”

It means to become subject to detention by an authority figure.

Detention. (do they still do detention in school?) He got himself in “trouble” with “the man” so to speak. The powers that be in John’s day didn’t like what he was doing or what he did or what he was willing to say and so they detain him and when you get to chapter 6 you will see what they did with him once he was detained.

This little detail that Mark throws in there gives evidence to his story telling ability. He hooks you.

It makes you begin to wonder. If John got himself in trouble and was arrested, then what is going to happen to the one that is “mightier than him?” If they did what they did to John, what might they be willing to the one who comes after him, whose sandals John was not worthy to stoop down and untie?

What happens to John foreshadows in a mysterious, cryptic way what will happen to Jesus.

We know the “rest of the story” so to speak, but if I was telling you this story for the first time, when I mentioned that John was arrested, the hair on the back of your neck would have stood up and a chill would have went down your spine.

Incidentally, do you know the next time you see this word used in my Mark? It comes from the mouth of the protagonist in the story. In chapter 9, Jesus teaches those who were gathered around Him and who were commited to Him and His Messianic role, to them He says,

Mark 9:31 (ESV)

31 ...“The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him.

Whoa. We will get there eventually, but before we do Mark gives us this massive cliffhanger moment in this first chapter by saying, “Now after John was arrested...”

Mark 1:14–15 (ESV)

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Now Galilee is going to prove itself to be a very important place in this Gospel narrative. We will talk more about Galilee in a few weeks, but for now Jesus comes to Galilee and begins announcing the “Gospel of God.” The Good News of God’s victory that has come about.

This is is interesting because the forerunner, John the Baptist says, get ready, get set, God is coming and then Jesus shows up and says, “It is here.” John speaks of it as coming. Jesus says the time is fulfilled.

Mark 1:14–15 (ESV)

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

God’s decisive action to have an encounter with His people is unfolding before all these Galilean’s eyes. The critical moment of God’s work in the world was happening now! The promise of an ultimate redemption had reached the time of fulfillment. The Kingdom of God was “at hand.”

The Unfolding Kingdom of God.

This, Kingdom of God concept, is the concept of the entire bible. So you can imagine my dilema when I saw this phrase,

Mark 1:15 (NA27 w/GRAMCORD)

ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ

in the passage this past week. How am I going to teach the entire bible in one sermon?

Here is my, readers digest version of this concept.

The long and short of this over arching theme is this: When Scripture talks about the Kingdom of God, what it is referring to is God, the Creator/King exercising His kingly rule over His creation through the efforts of obedient humans made in His image in order to bring the creation to a state of future glory.

That is a packed sentence that really takes 757,439 words to unpack. That is how many words are in the ESV translation! Usually a 30 minute sermon is about 4000 words. How long do we have today?

Here we go.

God is depicted in Genesis 1 and 2 as the Creator King who, by His omnipotence and through HIs Word, in 6 days creates all things out of nothing. At the end of that 6th day, God says, that what He had brought about out of the formless, chaotic void of was “very good.”

God set up boundaries for light and dark, land from the waters so on and so forth and He named those realities. He said you will be day. You will be night. You will be called the Earth and you will be known as Sea. We see God possessing the capacity to create and to call things what they are as He starts naming things.

He sets up a creation with order and dominion. For instance on Day 4 of creation we read...

Genesis 1:16–18 (ESV)

16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.

If you step outside you look up and you see the sun. Even though sometimes here in the Pacific Northwest we can’t see it, it is there prevailing. It rules over the day time hours. From our vantage point it is high and above us. It parades across our skies every single day. There isn’t a day that it has called in sick (clouds might hide it from us…but it is there.) (Ever flown above the clouds? It’s there). The reason it is there is because God put it there to rule. The words we see here are “ruling” language.

The words used is měm·šā·lā(h) and ma-shal. Ruling language.

God gives that type of Dominion (rulership) to Adam to rule over the creation.

Genesis 1:26 (ESV)

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

God, makes man in His image and He hands over dominion to them to reflect His royal rule over all the creation. This mission for Adam is to reflect God’s image in the creation by exercising dominion over it and bringing order out of chaos.

The Psalmist later on in Biblical history knew this, that is what he said.

Psalm 115:16 (ESV)

16 The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man.

Just like God created entities and then named them, “let there be light, you are called “day.” Our first parents were blessed by God and commissioned by God to...

Genesis 1:28 (ESV)

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God hands over dominion and commissions them to subdue the creation. The word used here is the word (Kav-ash). Ever heard someone say; “put the kab-ash” on something. What do they mean by that? It means take control of the situation. Humans were to put the (Kabash) on the land and the animals and every living thing and in the next chapter we see Adam even naming the animals, much like God the Creator King did in chapter 1.

So we see ruling language given to King Adam and Queen Eve and they are to subdue and have dominion over “every living thing” and then expand the “kingdom” by being “fruitful and multiplying.”

So far so good..not good, “very good.” The rest of chapter 2 is the amazing, zoomed in look at the intimate creation of Adam and Eve and Paradise that they were to rule over. It truly was heaven on earth in the Garden.

Creation. Order and Dominion.

But chaos in God’s ordered creation makes it’s brutal entrance when a serpent in the garden comes in deceit and messes with Eve and Adam’s discernment by calling into question God’s character. He tricks the humans into thinking that God was somehow holding out on them, because of one solitary prohibition he placed on them.

I don’t think there was some magic ingredient in the fruit on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The purpose of the tree was to provide the humans with a choice: will they love and serve God willingly or will they rebel against him and reject the one prohibition that their Creator King had given them?

Sadly, instead of subduing the serpent, the serpent exercises authority and dominion and subjugation over them. Instead of the humans putting the serpent under their feet and putting the kabash on him, they allow him to call the shots and in doing so they were saying, God we don’t think you are qualified to be the Rightful Creator King anymore, we know better than you.

The fruit on the tree is food after all. Who is God to say we can’t eat it. The fruit on the tree after all is a “delight to our eyes,” so why not eat it?

So Adam and Eve, by the disobedience, forfeited their right to govern and rule over the creation. They handed their scepter so to speak to Satan. And ever since you can see the rulership of Satan in this world evidenced in all the pain, heartache, brokenness and chaos that we see in our own hearts in our daily actions and in the daily news.

The counterfeit kingdom of Satan had arrived and was and is in full swing. This is something that Jesus, Paul, and other NT authors plainly identify in the writings of the NT.

Paul tells the Ephesians that they used to be actively...

Ephesians 2:2 (ESV)

2 ...following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—

He told the Corinthians that...

2 Corinthians 4:4 (ESV)

4 ...the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

Jesus Himself said right after He was betrayed,

Luke 22:53 (ESV)

53 But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”

That word is “ἐξουσία” which is ruling language. (dominion of darkness, the hour when darkness reigns).

So the first humans who were set up as royalty, royally messed up and handed the ruling reigns over to Satan. This is not good…actually it is very not good. How very not good is it? Well we see it when we turn to chapter 4 of Genesis where we are told a story about a brother killing his own brother. Talk about chaos.

Instead of Cain ruling over his sinful desires, Cain is being ruled by his jealous desires so much that he killed his brother Abel.

Chaos and disorder. Sounds a lot like what Satan likes to do.

Cain was even warned specifically by God about this.

God warned Cain that this would be the outcome if he didn’t “rule” over his own passions. God says,

Genesis 4:7 (ESV)

7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”

But he doesn’t. He lets sin rule him. The word here is the same word we see in Genesis 1:18 for the sun that “ruled” over the day. Sin is ruling over him. This give evidence to the reality that the human race was fallen and that we had forfeited our right to reign. We are actual enslaved in the counterfeit kingdom of Satan.

This is a sad state of affairs. In just a few chapters we see the depths of our depravity when we read Gen. 6:5

Genesis 6:5 (ESV)

5 The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

But even then, God was not done with us. He expressed every intention to restore our kingly status as He preserves humanity through Noah and eventually chooses a man named Abraham out of a pagan nation. He says to him,

Genesis 17:6 (ESV)

6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.

It is an amazing promise because if we read further in Genesis, we would see that his wife Sarah was barren. Humanly speaking, It is impossible to bring a baby out of a barren womb. Almost as impossible as bringing a baby out of a womb of a virgin! But God, doubles down on His promise to Abraham and says,

Genesis 17:16 (ESV)

16 I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

Through this promise it becomes clear that God would bring about His saving reign through humanity, our kingly status would be restored, but how? Hmm?

Well, God repeated this promise to Abraham’s grandson Jacob.

Genesis 35:10–11 (ESV)

10 And God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.” So he called his name Israel. 11 And God said to him, “I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body.

So Jacob is renamed “Israel” and is commissioned with same commission as Adam and Eve in the Garden. Now this will blow your mind. The Hebrew word here for “company” can be translated as “assembly or congregation.” Think of the NT words “συναγωγή or ἐκκλησία” that mean gathering, assembly or “church.”

This means that the promise to Jacob can be translated as an “assembly / congregation or a church of nations.”

What this means is, the promise is not just for ethnic Israel, this promise is extending to some sort of multi-ethnic gathering of people under one corporate head? Hmm?

Let’s keep going and briefly skip across a few OT sightings of a future human King who would come, who would keep the completely keep the requirements establish by God to rule rightly. They are spelled out for us in Deuteronomy. The King was to write his own personalize copy of the law so that he might keep it perfectly.

Deuteronomy 17:19–20 (ESV)

19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, 20 that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.

The king was to keep the law perfectly. Hmmm?

Sound difficult because no human had done that so far, but Balaam, the Son of Beor, the non-Israelite seer whom the Moabites hired to curse the Israelites as they travel from Egypt to the promised land said...

Numbers 24:17 (ESV)

17 I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab...

The people of Moab were God’s enemies and Balaam says, there will come a king who will mow them all down. There will be a king that will come that will exercise an ultimate type of reign over the enemies of God’s people. Hmm?

What about Joshua as he began the conquest of the land. Joshua, a ruler who leads a kingdom of people into a promised land. Hmm?

What about the time of the Judges as it becomes increasingly clear 7 times over that Israel is in desperate need of a wise human king to govern them and lead them into battles because left on their own they turn into crooked and perverted people. Hmm?

Judges 21:25 (ESV)

25 In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Basically, the humans here are craving the forbidden fruit everywhere and prefer it over obeying what the Creator/King has said.

And Israel recognizes this and begs Samuel to anoint a king, but King Saul leaves a lot to be desired because he also does what seemed right in His own eyes as he foolishly disobeyed a direct command of God.

1 Samuel 13:13–14 (ESV)

13 And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God, with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. 14 But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”

This is a very sad time for the nation and Samuel is grieving and God comes to him and says,

1 Samuel 16:1 (ESV)

1 The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.”

So everyone, “Hail King David, who was a Shepherd from...Bethlehem?” Hmm?

It interesting because David was anointed twice to be king, first in a private way…in the “midst of his brothers.”

1 Samuel 16:13 (ESV)

13 Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers.

and then publically by the nation as a whole in 2 Samuel 5.

And get this, the first thing he does as King of God’s people is complete the Canaanite Conquest by driving out the Philistines and Jebusites from Jerusalem, the city of God...and...

2 Samuel 7:1 (ESV)

1 ...the king lived in his house and the Lord had given him rest from all his surrounding enemies,

Hmm. Here we have a picture of a King, resting and and exercising dominion over His kingdom after a winning an epic battle. Echos of Eden and a forecast of the future. Hmm.

And in this season of life David writes,

Psalm 8:4–6 (ESV)

4 what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? 5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. 6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet,

So here, we have a Son of A-dam, crowned with glory and honor, exercising (ma-shal) (same word from Genesis 1), (dominion, rulership) after he had “put his enemies under His feet.” Hmm?

This twice anointed king of Israel resting and reigning over His Kingdom foreshadows a Great Son of Adam, Son of David who would one day be “anointed privately” on a cross on a hill “amidst his brothers,” and then publically when He returns to bring His Kingdom in its fullness as “every knee bows and every tongue confess that He truly is the Messiah of God, who will bring an ultimate Sabbath rest to the people of God, to the glory of God. Hmm?

And we have to stop here. There is so much more that I wish we could trace out in the OT, but we have to put the Kabash on this message.

Why share all this?

The people in Jesus day knew all of this history and theology much more thoroughly than what I was just able to describe in a short thumb nailed sketch of the OT. They lived and breathed this stuff. They had their hopes stimulated often, time and time again, longing, yearning and waiting for the Kingdom of God to arrive so that they could experience freedom from their oppression by the Roman nation.

And Jesus shows up saying...

Mark 1:15 (ESV)

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

They are all on board with this. But the Kingdom that Jesus was bringing will far surpass their limited, short sighted expectations of being liberated from the Romans.

What Jesus was bringing was a more complete liberation to free us and them from our real enslavement to the counterfeit Kingdom that we all have willingly become a part of. He came to liberate us and restore our kingly status so that we might image our Creator/King rightly.

That which the first Adam forfeited, the Last Adam was reclaiming and restoring.

So the question of the OT is this:

Who is this King that can undo the chaos of sins curse and restore us to our initial royal status?

Well, it will be a king who will bring about a redemptive reign that will progressively breaks into history one redeemed soul at a time to overthrow the reign of sin, death, and Satan, so that creation can advance to its reclaimed and redeemed, perfected state.

This King will inaugurate His kingdom in Galilee and demonstrates His Kingdoms power by His obedient life, substitutionary sacrificial death, remarkable resurrection, and triumphant ascension into heaven itself. And His Kingdom will be ultimately consummated by His Second Coming to usher all of it’s fulness any day now. Hmm?

Well, Who might fit that description? (Jesus).

Mark says Jesus, of Nazareth of all places marched into Galilee, and said,

Mark 1:15 (ESV)

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

Through our repentance and belief in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we can have our kingly status restored to us as reclaimed and redeemed human who can exercise the Kingdom powers now as we refuse to allow sin to “reign in our mortal bodies” because...

Romans 6:6 (ESV)

6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

Through our union with King Jesus, we now have the capacity to rule over the sin that used to so easily rule over and enslave us. In Matthew 17:26 Jesus said, “the sons are free” and exempt from this worlds systems.

We are free.

Romans 6:11–12 (ESV)

11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.

We now, by the Spirit indwelling within us must...

Romans 8:13 (ESV)

13 ...put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Titus 2:11–12 (ESV)

11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,

The grace of God has appeared and our powers of discernment between “good and evil” are progressively being restored to us. They had been lost by Adam, but have reclaimed by the Second Adam.

Paul told the Romans,

Romans 16:19 (ESV)

19 ...I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil.

The first Adam, failed to subdue the serpent and exercise authority over Him.

The Second Adam, didn’t and through our union with King Jesus,

Romans 16:20 (ESV)

20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your (our) feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. (us)

Amen? God has...

Colossians 1:13–14 (ESV)

13 ...has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

And finally Paul tells Timothy that

Timothy 2:12 (ESV)

12 if we endure, we will also reign (συμβασιλεύω) with him...

The King of Kings has restore our kingly status as image bearers of the Creator/King and through our works of subduing the serpents schemes under our feet, all of His enemies are being made into footstools upon which we will one day sit back to enjoy a 7th Day Sabbath Rest as we ready ourselves for a wedding feast that no eye has ever seen nor ear has ever heard, as Jesus brings His kingdom in its fullness to restore Heaven and Earth.

Song: Overcame

Benediction

1 Corinthians 15:23–26 (ESV)

23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Have you ever had a detention?

How would you describe the “Kingdom of God?”

Jesus, as a Son of Adam, imaged God perfectly and obeyed fully to the degree that He overcame the curse that ruled and enslaved humans. He now restores the image of God for those who repent and believe in His Gospel so that we too can have power to reign over the sin of your flesh and the schemes of Satan. How are you doing at putting those pesky, powerless things under your feet?