The Message of the Kingdom (Mark 1.9-28)

Image courtesy of www.LumoProject.com

Introduction

As Scott said last Sunday, we’ve just started a series of talks on Mark’s Gospel. We are going to cover every word of it, finishing on Easter Sunday next year.

Mark’s is the shortest of the four Gospels; you can read it in one sitting as we did on Maundy Thursday a few years ago here. It took us about two and a half hours.

It’s also the liveliest; it is the Tigger of the four Gospels, jumping abruptly from scene to scene. It’s like a documentary filmed with a shaky hand-held camera. There’s no editing or airbrushing. It’s raw and unpolished.

It’s also the earliest of the four to be written. So this is the very first testimony about Jesus the world has. One first century source claims that Mark scribbled down some rough notes on Peter’s preaching, when he told the stories of what it was like following Jesus.

What was it like? Let me, with a little help from Mark Driscoll, sum this Gospel up for you in three minutes.

Chapter 1; Jesus starts off by telling four workers to walk out of their jobs without giving notice and orders a demon to shut up.

Chapter 2; Jesus picks an argument with some well-mannered clergy and hangs out with a crowd of crooks, rogues, and whores.

Chapter 3; Jesus’ family, including his own mother, try and take hold of him saying he has lost the plot. People conclude he is possessed.

Chapter 4; Jesus is so lax on health and safety that his exasperated disciples ask him if he even cares if they drown.

Chapter 5; Jesus kills about two thousand pigs.

Chapter 6; Jesus offends yet more people and sends his lads out on an exorcism mission with no qualifications or equipment.

Chapter 7; Jesus insults the local hardworking clergy, calling them ‘frauds’, and compares a woman with a sick child to a dog.

Chapter 8; Jesus spits on a disabled man, and publically scolds his most trusted follower, addressing him as ‘Satan’.

Chapter 9; Jesus advises people to cut off their hands and feet and to gouge out their eyes.

Chapter 10; Jesus upsets practically everyone by saying that remarriage after divorce is adultery. He then tells a millionaire to sell all his stuff and give the money away to beggars.

Chapter 11; Jesus tells his men to take someone’s donkey without asking, and then vandalises some small businesses in the temple.

Chapter 12; Jesus tells the highest theological authority in the land that they don’t know their Bibles and are going to hell.

Chapter 13; Jesus sets off alarm bells when he says he’s going to completely flatten the most iconic religious building in the Middle-East.

Chapter 14; Jesus reprimands his friends for taking a nap at night having run them all over the Middle-East for three years.

Chapter 15; the authorities kill him for all of the above, which seems perfectly fine to pretty well everyone.

And the story ends in chapter 16 with Jesus alive again and the trembling, amazed, and frightened disciples being told to speak in tongues, handle snakes and offend the whole world. 

It’s controversial. It’s provocative. It’s incendiary. Jesus scandalised and delighted people in equal measure.

This short section we’re looking at today hits you like a train. Jesus bursts onto the scene with barely any introduction. You have to catch your breath as Jesus – Action Man – hits the ground running, dashing from one scene to the next.

This is Mark’s breathless introduction of Jesus. These are the first impressions. Straightaway, he wants you to know five key things about him; his identity (v9-11), his tenacity (v12-13) his simplicity (v14-15), his community (v16-20), and his authority (v21-28).

1. Identity (v9-11)

Firstly, identity. People struggle more and more with identity. Who am I? Where do I come from? Am I male or female? What am I here for? Does my life have any purpose? Am I loved? The answers to all these questions for Jesus come in v9-11.

Jesus comes down to the Jordan from his home in Nazareth and is baptized. He didn’t need to because he didn’t need forgiveness. Unlike anyone who has ever lived before or since he led a flawless life.

It’s basically about obedience.  It’s about submitting to the Father’s plan. Just as Jesus will take all our sin onto himself at the end of his ministry, it was his Father’s plan for him to immerse himself into our sinful world at the start of it. It’s about saying, “Your will, not mine.”

Heaven is torn open and the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove. And he is anointed with power. If you want anointing, if you want to move in the power of the Holy Spirit, if you want to be mightily used by God, as with Jesus, it all starts here with simple obedience, living his way, not yours.

Jesus comes up out of the water and hears his Father’s voice. “You are my Son, whom I love. With you I am well pleased.” This is the Father’s affection, his approval, his esteem. It is there before Jesus works a single miracle, preaches a single word, calls a single disciple, or heals a single soul. The Father’s love is not performance-related. You cannot please God by earning.  It is from the beginning.

The Apostle Paul uses the expression “in Christ” over 80 times. If you are a Christian, that’s your address. You are in Christ. This means that everything that is true of Jesus is now true for you. You share in his authority, his anointing, and his righteousness.

What the Father says about Jesus is highly significant. It combines two Scriptures from the Old Testament that reveal who he is. “You are my Son” is an echo of Psalm 2, a royal psalm, a song for a king, but no ordinary king. “I will make the nations your inheritance and the ends of the earth your possession,” it says. It’s a prophetic psalm about the King of kings and Lord of lords, the anointed one, who will rule the nations.

“With you I am well pleased” is an echo of Isaiah 42. “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight.” And it goes on to speak of his humiliation, his sufferings, laying down his life for all.

This is a statement, right at the start of his ministry, about who Jesus is. He is king and servant. He is the highest who became the lowest. He is exalted and humbled. He is the King of kings and the servant of all.

2. Tenacity (v12-13)

Jesus is overwhelmed by this outpouring of affirmation and affection as the Father’s dearly loved only Son. He is in a good place.

Ever been in a spiritually good place before? Perhaps your conversion, your baptism, or witnessing an extraordinary healing, or receiving a prophetic word, maybe a special time at New Wine or Soul Survivor...

We love that! But life is not like this all the time. It isn’t for us - and it wasn’t for Jesus either.

Verse 13 says Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days. In the desert of Judea the temperature gets up to around 40° at midday and at night it drops to about 4°. “He was with the wild animals,” it says. These weren’t cute pets to keep him company! They kept him on edge day and night; scorpions, poisonous snakes, wolves, jackals and the now extinct species of lions, bears, and leopards. This is like Bear Grylls “Man v Wild” gone badly wrong.

Satan tends to attack when we are most vulnerable. He’ll bide his time and hold his fire, and when we least expect it, just after the excitement and elation of a spiritual high, or when you are tired and stressed, when you’re running on empty, he strikes.

Are you in a time of testing now? That doesn’t mean that God has stopped blessing you! The Lord is building up spiritual muscle and resilience in you. This is actually God’s gymnasium. Jesus is about to embark on the most fantastic three years this earth has ever seen. It was founded on this time of training.

 

3. Simplicity (v14-15)

In v15 Mark’s first recorded words of Jesus sum up his entire teaching. 17 simple words in English. None more than two syllables. 85 characters. This is the essence of everything he said, the message of the kingdom, in one tweet.

What’s the very first thing he says? “The time has come.” People were waiting for a great leader who would change the world. They were longing for an expected figure who would bring peace and prosperity. Jesus bursts onto the public scene and says’ “This is it! The moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived.”

“The kingdom of God has come near.” There are over 80 different instances in the gospels when Jesus talks about the kingdom of God. It means that God’s rule and reign are here. Something exceptional and new is breaking in. There’s a shift in the atmosphere, like two giant tectonic plates suddenly colliding and shaking the earth. With Jesus, you can get a foretaste of heaven.

But there are two things required of us. “Repent and believe the good news.” Jesus is saying that with this new reality, you cannot go on as before. You are going to have to (literally) change your thinking, change course. There needs to be a change of direction.

Maybe someone here today knows in their heart right now that today is the day things are going to change. I did this when I was 17. I abruptly changed the course I was on, turned my life around and started a new life. That was the best thing I ever did. Not once since that day have I regretted it.

4. Community (v16-20)

Identity, tenacity, simplicity, and then fourthly community.

If anyone was ever qualified to operate as a one-man band in ministry it was Jesus. He is the Son of God, perfect in every way. Anyone else added to his team is only going to make things worse.

But isn’t it great that Jesus made it clear right at the outset that church is not a spectator sport? You get to play. Everyone gets to be on the team!

So Jesus calls out to four guys, “Who wants to be on my team?” and without hesitation, they all leave everything behind – their jobs, their security, their homes and say, “We’ll come.”

Mark’s favourite word is “euthus” which is translated “immediately,” “at once”, “straightaway” or “without delay”. But it’s the same word in the original and it occurs 41 times in this Gospel. The point is “get on with it, do it today.”

And when you do that, everything changes. Jesus says “leave the nets, forget fishing. You join me in fishing for people instead.” So many new Christians say to me, “All my values have changed. Material things become much less important. And people have become much more important.”

5. Authority (v21-29)

Finally, authority. The message of the kingdom is powerful. It is weighty. It is striking. Twice here (v22 and v27) it says people were amazed by its authority. The message of the kingdom is not theoretical, propositional or merely academic. It turns heads. It is revolutionary because it is accompanied by works of power.

Last week, after the talk at 10.30am, Dave called for a decision, a response, to Scott's talk. One person gave her life to Christ, one said he wanted to baptized, and others encountered Jesus when they came forward for prayer.

On Thursday a man training for ordained ministry posted this on Facebook. “Just had a lecture on missiology which included a very broad and incisive view of church and mission... The orientation themes were placed in a new context. We looked at… a view of critical correlation and the questions we need to bring to Scriptures and the view we have of the world. Then time spent with a social cognitive discourse analysis and the wonder of the hybrid person. We even looked at epigenetics and how the church can suppress who we truly are (Jungian) yet in embracing our DNA we can be freed and bring that part of our humanity to the light.”

Who understood any of that? Why are we training our ordinands to empty our churches! I think that was his point in posting it. There is no authority and no amazement, in stuff like that; it’s just pretentious, pompous garbage. Evil spirits listen to hot air like that and just yawn.

In Mark 1.21-28, a man from the synagogue is delivered of an unclean spirit. That wouldn’t have happened after a lecture on social cognitive discourse analysis, the hybrid person and epigenetics would it?

The question I have is “How on earth did this man manage to spend years in the synagogue with all his darkness and shadows and spiritual anguish totally unaffected?”

I remember Alan Farish, my predecessor saying to me when I first arrived here that evil spirits are extremely comfortable in churchy, religious environments. It doesn’t bother them at all, they quite like it. But that is not what Jesus came to bring.

I’ve told you before about the church that started in Halifax in 2012 primarily for those who are homeless, recovering from addictions or are just out of prison and people who are marginalised.

One evening a few years ago, a Wiccan High Priestess visited. While standing at the back during Amazing Grace, she couldn’t move while waves of love and grace washed over her. She encountered the living God, renounced her life as a High Priestess and surrendered her life to Jesus. She’s now a key staff member there.

Another day during worship, phones were ringing, a group started chatting and it looked like a fight was about to break out. Prompted by the Holy Spirit they stopped mid-song and explained that they needed to pray against a spirit of distraction. Once that happened, a powerful time of worship followed. At the end, they discovered a visitor had given his life to Jesus and another man was healed of lung cancer which was later verified by doctors. 

Ending

This is what Jesus is like! This is his message of the kingdom. God’s rule and reign are here. Heaven is breaking in. People are amazed. People recognise the authority.

So as we end, do you want to encounter Christ today? Do you want to be anointed with power as Jesus was?

Does someone here want to hear from God about who they are in Christ, how much they are loved?

Is someone facing a battle in the wilderness? We will pray with you and you will leave this place with the devil where he belongs, under your feet.

Do you need to get up off the spectator seats and respond to Jesus’ call to serve his church and follow him?

Is there someone here who knows today is the day they stop, turn round and start living a new life?

Let’s stand to pray...



Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 18 June 2017