Mark 1:14-20

Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 28th Edition Chapter 1

*14 ⸂Μετὰ δὲ⸃ τὸ παραδοθῆναι τὸν Ἰωάννην ἦλθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν* ✽ κηρύσσων τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ⸆ τοῦ θεοῦ *15 ⸂καὶ λέγων⸃ ὅτι ⸄πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς⸅ καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ· μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ.*

16 Καὶ παράγων παρὰ τὴν θάλασσαν τῆς Γαλιλαίας εἶδεν Σίμωνα καὶ Ἀνδρέαν τὸν ἀδελφὸν ⸀Σίμωνος ⸁ἀμφιβάλλοντας ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ·* ἦσαν γὰρ ἁλιεῖς. *17 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς·* δεῦτε ὀπίσω μου, καὶ ποιήσω ὑμᾶς γενέσθαι ἁλιεῖς ἀνθρώπων.* 18 καὶ εὐθὺς ἀφέντες ⸂τὰ δίκτυα⸃ ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ. *19 Καὶ προβὰς ὀλίγον εἶδεν Ἰάκωβον τὸν τοῦ Ζεβεδαίου καὶ Ἰωάννην τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ αὐτοὺς ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ καταρτίζοντας τὰ δίκτυα,* 20 καὶ εὐθὺς ἐκάλεσεν αὐτούς.* καὶ ἀφέντες τὸν πατέρα αὐτῶν Ζεβεδαῖον ἐν τῷ πλοίῳ μετὰ τῶν μισθωτῶν ⸂ἀπῆλθον ὀπίσω αὐτοῦ⸃.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

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.”

Jesus Calls the First Disciples

16 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. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

OPENING REMARKS

Today as we turn our attention to these 6 verses in the first chapter of Mark’s gospel we’re looking at two of the biggest moments in history; 1) the beginning of the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ and 2) The foundation of the Church.

AFTER JOHN WAS HANDED OVER

Mark notes that Jesus’s ministry began after John the Baptist was handed over to Herod Antipas, John had challenged Herod for taking his brothers wife. Mark’s record of The Lord’s ministry begins with him arriving in Galilee.

Geographically, Galilee is situated around 70 miles north of Jerusalem and includes the area around the sea of Galilea; also called the Lake of Gennesaret or the sea of Tiberias in the Bible.

The hills of galilee are green in contrast with the rugged, barren crags of Judea. The sea of Galilee is a deep blue colour and from ancient times it had been a centre for trade. The staple diet of the ancient graeco-roman world wasn’t meat but rather fish, and fish from the sea of Galilee was prized and traded up into Syria and down as far as the borders of Egypt.

Just as the contrast in the landscape is stark between Judea and Galilee so too was the contrast in their reputation. Jerusalem in Judea was the blazing pinnacle of Jewish religious practice and indeed culture; that was where you went if you were going to make something of yourself. Reiligious scholars of the time looked down their noses at Galilee, a distant backwater somewhat bastardised by Graeco-Roman culture.

John 7:52, NIV: "They replied, 'Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.'"

While every Jewish eye looked towards Jerusalem, Galilee, the nothern outpost looked outward to the world of the Gentiles. And interestingly it was here where Jesus’s early ministry took place. Something of a hint about what was to come; that the promises of God, which had hitherto been the preserve of the Jewish nation centred at Jerusalem were about to become the inheritance of the gentiles too.

PREACHING THE GOSPEL OF GOD

Jesus entered into Galilee preaching. The Lord came preaching. Later in this same chapter the Lord says; "Let us go somewhere else--to the nearby villages--so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." (1:38).

To preach you must have a message, and you must believe that the message you have is true. Jesus didn’t come into Galilee and pull a committee together; some Jewish leaders, some pagan leaders, some atheistic sophists to ‘hear others perspectives’ on the nature of God and what He might want to communicate to mankind. Jesus came preaching!

You can’t make Jesus into some kind of stoic philosopher or a mystic; Jesus came preaching, preaching a very definite and clear message; the Gospel of God.

This is why His ministers today are called likewise to preach; not to shrink back into vaguery, never being clear or certain about anything, trying to get along with everyone and not upset the apple cart. Our Lord preached and so must we.

Declaring without apology the Gospel; the good news of God. The genetive case in the Greek tells us that the good news isn’t simply from God it belongs to God; it is God’s gospel!

Jesus didn’t come preaching His own ideas about God, postulating and prevaricating like a sage, He came preaching God’s gospel; God’s good news; God’s revelation. Again, this is the job of a Christian preacher today; to preach God’s gospel, God’s own self-revelation as we have it in the scriptures.

If it’s God’s gospel, then it’s not our own. And we are not at liberty to vandalise God’s property.

THE TIME IS FULFILLED

Just as we must take care to pay attention to the content of the gospel which Jesus preached, we also have to understand the historical context into which he entered.

What do I mean by that? Well, Jesus was a Jew according to the flesh, He thought like a Jew, He spoke like a man steeped in Jewish culture and tradition. We don’t use phrases like ‘The time is fulfilled’, pretty much no one in real life these days says things like that! So sometimes when we see Jesus saying things like that it’s unfamiliar to us and so we don’t really have anywhere to put it so we just think, ‘oooh that’s poetic!’ Or, ‘wow, how profound!’ But how would that have sounded to 1st century Jewish ears?! Well, it would have been loaded with prophetic content!

It’s often said that The Lord’s favourite books of the Bible were Isaiah and Daniel; because he quotes from them often and uses prophetic terminology derived from those two books. For example, his self-identification as the Son of Man from Daniel chapter 7.

Saying ‘the time is fulfilled’ would have instantly had His listeners associating Him with the prophetic revelations of Daniel as the one who has come to usher in the eschaton.

We must understand that Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah arrived at the precise time which God foreordained He would arrive. His arrival was heralded hundreds of years before by the prophets; Kings and devout Jews had looked forward to His coming for an age and now here He was.

You see, the scriptures reveal a God who is absolutely in control. He is like a conductor, bringing the symphony of time to His desired crescendo. Unless you have a God who is absolutely sovereign over all that occurs in time, then you cannot have prophecy. Prophecy, or forthtelling, of necessity assumes that there is a fixed future which God has foreordained which is then revealed to His prophets.

Amos 3:7 - “For the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.

Acts 4:27-28 - for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD HAS COME NEAR

So what was His proclamation? That the Kingdom of God had come near. The NIV is has perhaps the closest rendering of these words from the original greek.

The Kingdom of God was what Jesus preached. Time and time again in the parables we find Him unpacking this concept; the Kingdom of God.

What’s amazing is that Jesus, having already put the prophet Daniel in the minds of His hearers, they would now begin to understand what He meant by the Kingdom of God through the book of Daniel:

Daniel 2:44 - And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever,

Daniel 4:3 - How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion endures from generation to generation.

Daniel 7:13-14 - “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Daniel 7:27 - And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; his kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.’

Even more incredibly, the Greek verb translated ‘has come near’ is a verb which is most often used to describe spatial distance rather than temporal distance. So the Lord was effectively saying ‘Listen, this Kingdom of God about which Daniel spoke, it has drawn near to you, I am THAT son of Man!’

This Kingdom of God is the reign of God which is coming through Christ. Wherever He reigns the Kingdom of God has come! It is an ever expanding Kingdom, taking new hearts every day. The impact of the Kingdom of God is felt by the whole world. Entire nations are impacted by the power of the Kingdom. Wherever we as Christians gather and pray His Kingdom come and His will be done we see His Kingdom advance.

Welsh revival stories

We, the church are an outpost of heaven on earth. God is building His Kingdom on earth today through His Church; salvation, healing, forgiveness, peace, joy, life.

Though the final and ultimate victory of God’s Kingdom will come when Jesus returns, it is a reality that we can see here on earth. I don’t know about you but I want to see the Kingdom of God come in power in this nation.

Isn’t it incredible how much more we understand of God’s word when we understand both the scriptural and the historical context!

REPENT AND BELIEVE IN THE GOSPEL

the gospel which Christ preached was, very plainly, a command. “Repent ye, and believe the gospel.” - Spurgeon

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find it a little awkward telling people what to do. Especially concerning their own conduct! I’m often all too aware of my own failings and therefore don’t feel it would be proper for me to tell them about theirs! And yet this is exactly what Jesus preached.

To command someone to repent is to presuppose that they have something they need to repent of; sin. To call someone to repent is to call them a sinner! Well, I suppose we might say that if anyone had the right to call people sinners and demand repentance it was Jesus; He had a clean slate!

The thing we need to remind ourselves of again is that this Gospel is God’s Gospel, it is His message of which we are messangers. Our job is simply to take God’s message and tell it to the world; we don’t need to be morally perfect to do that, we’re simply God’s messengers.

there can be no repentance if we do not agree with God’s statement of our condition or his promise of forgiveness. Hence, repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin: we repent believingly, and we believe repentantly. - Dr Tan Kim Huat

To repent is to accept God’s pronouncement over your condition; that you are a sinner, helplessly stuck in cycle of destruction.

Eph 2:1-2 - And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—

It’s not ‘repent and do’ but ‘repent and believe’. The type of repentance wrought in your heart must be a repentance that reaches out in faith. It’s not simply a repentance that says; I’m sorry I’ll try harder, but a repentance that says; I have reached the end of myself, God, I believe you, I need you!

J.C Ryle the victorian preacher noted that the two imperatives REPENT and BELIEVE aren’t in the aorist tense but are in fact in the present tense. Which in the Greek language can often convey a continuous action; repent and go on repenting, believe and keep on believing. Following Jesus is a daily walk of repenting and believing!

Repentance and faith were the foundation stones of Christ’s ministry.—Repentance and faith must always be the main subjects of every faithful minister’s instruction. - JC Ryle

Wherever you are, whoever you are the message stays the same; Repent and Believe.

JESUS CALLS THE DISCIPLES

I love so much about this passage where Jesus calls His first four disciples.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the seeds of the Christian church originated in the first act of Jesus’ public ministry in which he called four fishermen into community with himself. - James Edwards

Brothers and sisters we are looking right here at the seed of the Church, the same ancient and universal Church to which we belong today. And note the manner of it’s humble beginnings. The first members of the Church of Our Lord were not men of means, high brow intellectuals or religious scholars; they were people like you and I. People who worked with their hands for a living, people who would have looked out of place in the corridors of power.

1 Corinthians 1:26 -27 - For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;

Moreover they didn’t apply for the position, but they were chosen by Jesus. They were handpicked by Him! This is unlike any known rabbinic practice at the time; it was the disciple who chose the Rabbi, not so with Jesus. It is He who initiates the call according to Mark, and when He called those fisherman literally jumped up from what they were doing and followed Him! His call was powerful, it was effective. Just like when He called Lazarus out from the tomb and He came; the ability to come out was not within Lazarus it was conferred by the Command of Christ. Is Christ calling you today? Answer the call and follow Him, leave whatever you are doing behind, however inconvenient that might be and make Him your Lord today.

Romans 8:29-30 - For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

the call of the four fishermen indicates that the essential work of Jesus consists in forming a fellowship, and that only within fellowship is the call of Jesus heard and obeyed. - James Edwards

I WILL MAKE YOU TO BECOME FISHERS OF MEN

Jesus makes each one of His disciples to become a fisher of men.

A Christian is someone who is concerned about the lost. They aren’t content to let them jump haplessly to their destruction like a salmon into the open mouth of a grizzly, they intervene.

They pray, they tell them about Jesus. They keep trying even when they don’t see any sign that they’re being listened to.

One of the strongest ‘fishers of men’ recorded in church history was arguably Augustine’s mother; Monica. She was a humble, north african convert who never gave up on Augustine. She prayed for him constantly, badgering him about becoming a Christian whenever he would lend her his ear. For all the world it seemed like her efforts were in vain, Augustine drifted further and further away into vice and immorality through his twenties, but Monica didn’t give up. Eventually her efforts were rewarded when Augustine finally reached the end of himself and turned to the Lord at the age of 31. He went on to become arguably one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church.

“If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.” - Spurgeon

Lead people in a prayer of repentance and faith in Christ.