Jesus: His Message and His Mission

I invite you to turn with me to the Gospel of Mark and chapter 1. As we continue our studies in Mark’s Gospel, we’ve reached verse 14, and we’re going to read the section that begins at 14 and through to the end of verse 20. Mark 1:14:

“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’

“As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’ At once they left their nets and followed him.

“When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.”

Amen.

Well, we just pray before we look to the Bible together:

Father, we thank you for the privilege of being able to turn to the Bible. We thank you for the work of the Holy Spirit to illumine the printed page to us and help us understand, and we pray that you will help us both to understand who Jesus is and what he’s done, in order that we, like these men of whom we have now read, may become his disciples and his followers. For we pray in his precious name. Amen.

The most successful manager of an English soccer team ever is a Scot by the name of Sir Alex Ferguson. He is the manager of Manchester United, which will be of interest to about 1 percent of those listening to me, but he has actually written himself into the record books as the most successful manager of all time. Therefore, it is no surprise when, in reading his autobiography, you come on these two sentences. He writes, “I have devoted my life to football. Everything has been thrown overboard for it.” “I have devoted my life to football. Everything has been thrown overboard for it.”

Well, that is absolutely unequivocal. It’s clear: it’s his focus, and everything else is subservient to it. And here in this little section that we’ve read, we are introduced to four men who are able to say in similar terms, “We have devoted our lives to Jesus. Everything has been thrown overboard for him.” And in “The Calling of the First Disciples,” as you have it if you are using the New International Version, we are confronted by, challenged by, the way in which these men respond to the lordship of Jesus.

As we look at this this morning, we want to recall where we’ve been. We want to remind ourselves that when we saw Jesus last time in the water, he was there identified by both the Father and the Spirit as the long-awaited Messiah. We then considered him in the wilderness as he was confronted by the powers of darkness, the conflict that rages between the serpent and the seed of woman, and he emerges from that absolutely unscathed. And now Mark tells us that it is after John has been “put in prison,” verse 14—in the wake of John’s imprisonment—that Jesus comes into Galilee, and he comes speaking with clarity and with authority.

Now, this little section is fairly familiar to many. It will be new territory for some. And I think the best way we can handle it is just to consider two aspects: first of all, the message that Jesus proclaims, and then the mission on which Jesus embarks. Jesus’ message and then Jesus’ mission.

Jesus’ Message

The message is recorded for us in a somewhat summary form there in verses 14 and 15. Along the shoreline of Galilee, among the people whose lives were lived within the framework of the fishing industry, Jesus came “proclaiming the good news” that comes from God. The message that he brought is the message of Mark’s Gospel; indeed, it is the gospel message. Mark 1:1: “The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus now comes to preach in Galilee, and his message is the same message: he’s proclaiming the good news of God.

The clarity of this, I think, is helpful. Because people want to make Jesus into all kinds of things, don’t they? They want him to be the proponent of this and of that, and it’s good for us just to look at our Bibles and see how Jesus is introduced to us. In other words, we should allow Jesus to identify himself—to speak, if you like, on his own terms—thereby saving us from flights of fancy whereby we create a Jesus of our own design, a sort of designer Christianity that fits whatever our predilection may be.

Instead, when we come to the Bible, we discover that Jesus introduces us to a standard of righteousness to which he calls us to conform. His teaching is no new teaching, although it had a freshness to it, which is probably why the people in verse 27 were saying, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority!” It’s presumably just the contrast between the boring old sermons of the Pharisees, going on about the same thing over and over again—the length of the tassels on the prayer shawls, the washing of cups, the utensils, and all these different things—and the people were just frankly falling asleep and bowing down under the weight of it all. And now comes Jesus, this carpenter from Nazareth, steps up on the stage, and he speaks with such freshness that people listen to him.

It is interesting, just in passing, is it not, that having arrived on the stage of human history, his methodology is preaching—that he speaks God’s word. He comes as a preacher. Yes, he heals. Yes, people’s lives are changed. But he actually is the one who is “proclaiming,” preaching, declaring, “the good news of God.”

Now, what is involved in this “good news of God”? Well, in verse 15, you really have a summary. It’s almost like a title to the first eight chapters or so of this Gospel. If you go through the eight chapters of the Gospel and then you say to yourself, “Now, what is it that Jesus has been saying in each of these encounters, broadly speaking?” you will find yourself coming back to 1:15 and saying, “Here we have it. This makes perfect sense.” “‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’”

Well, let’s just take a moment or two and look at each of these phrases.

First of all, “The time has come,” or “The time is fulfilled.”[1]

It is important for us to recognize that Jesus does not simply stand out in the context of Galilee without the background of all of God’s purposes, indeed, from eternity. And one of the people who’s helped me most recently to see this is an Australian theologian by the name of Graeme Goldsworthy. And I have been touting his book everywhere I go. Every so often someone buys one, but most of the time they just ignore me. And I want to give you just a little touch of this in light of the phrase “The time is [now] fulfilled,” or “The time has [now] come.”

And this is what Goldsworthy writes. He says, “God’s acts in history are never an afterthought in response to the contingent.” In other words, something’s happened, and then God does something in response.

The notion that what God did in Jesus is the fulfilment of time … and the fulfilment of prophecy implies the sovereignty of God over all history. The gospel shows that the movement from creation to new creation is inevitable. The incarnation as historical event is the focus of God’s rule in world history. Furthermore, all world history is defined by salvation history, so that all the peoples of the world are implicated one way or another in the saving events.

Then he goes on to say that the history of the Bible “begins with the word of God calling all things into being … setting humanity on its historical course” and eventually will end when God brings “the history of [the] present order” to its finality. And then, in just one sentence, he says, “History cannot be understood without God’s word to interpret it.”[2] “History cannot be understood without God’s word to interpret it.” So, where are we in the world and what is happening in the world is not divorced from the statement made by Jesus here as he enters into Galilee: “The time has come.” “The time is fulfilled.”

Now, many of his readers would have been familiar with the words of the prophet. They told of how the sovereign Lord would come in power. John the Baptist had picked up the words of the Old Testament prophet in the opening verses we have here, if your Bible is open in front of you, and all that was anticipated in the prophecy of John now finds its fulfillment in the person of Jesus. The people who have been walking in darkness now have seen a great light.[3] Those who were living in the land of the shadow have encountered the light of the Lord Jesus.[4] Those who have experienced the silence of four hundred years since Malachi, since the end of the Old Testament prophets, now are listening as the news of the Word of God dawns upon them from the lips of Jesus.

And in his baptism, Jesus has been identified and installed as the King, and now, of course, there is no surprise that he says, secondly, “The kingdom of God is near.” “The kingdom of God is near.” In other words, God’s rule over people’s hearts and lives is being established. And when we think of the proximity of the kingdom of God, we ought to think of it in terms of Jesus. The kingdom of God is close to people in the person of Jesus. And this, of course, will be worked out throughout the rest of Mark’s Gospel, but for now, you should note just this: that essentially, the kingdom of God is God’s rule.

In fact, when we studied the overview of the Bible, we used the language, I think, of Goldsworthy that was picked up by Vaughan Roberts when he spoke about “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule”[5] and authority; that that was expressive of his kingdom; that his rule is in the hearts of people, and one day, his rule will be so clearly established that there will be, in terms of Revelation 21, “a new heaven and a new earth,”[6] in which dwells righteousness. There will be no tears. There will be no more sorrow or sighing.[7] There will be no more cancer. There will be no more need for trips to the emergency room. There will be no seminars on divorce recovery. There will be none of that necessary when the kingdom of God is established in its fullness. And in an encounter with Jesus, he comes to rule and reign in the lives and hearts of individuals, anticipating the day when his rule will be established in its finality.

And I don’t think that the picture is so much the idea of a partial reign moving to a completed reign as it is being a reign or a rule that is veiled that will eventually just become apparent to everyone. Right now, Jesus just appears to be a Galilean carpenter who lived two thousand years ago. The Bible actually says that he is the King of the universe; that he is the sovereign Lord of creation; that he has ascended to the right hand of the Father on high, and from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

But again, our friends and neighbors just go on their merry way. They’ve no concept of that at all. If they’re going to encounter his kingly rule, it’s going to have to be in your life or in mine. They’re going to have to say, “Well, why is it that you are so interested in Jesus? Why is it that you pay so much attention to his book? Why is it that you spend time with others who love Jesus, and so on?” And the answer is going to be: “Well, because he is the King, and he has come to rule and to reign. I got out of the driver’s seat some time ago,” we might say, “and Jesus has been driving the car of my life ever since.” As opposed to a notion of Christianity whereby Jesus of Nazareth is added into a little seat somewhere in the rear of the automobile just so that we can have him as an insurance policy in case anything goes wrong, but we don’t want him fiddling around with the steering wheel. We don’t want him—in the words of the song that was played by the strings—we don’t want him taking our lives and letting it be “consecrated, Lord, to thee.” We don’t want him interfering with our moments and our days. We don’t want them flowing “in ceaseless praise.”[8] No, we’d like to keep all of that for ourselves, but we’ll just have Jesus over here in case anything goes horribly wrong or just in case we will need him if push comes to shove.

Nobody could ever misunderstand that as being loyalty to a king. No, the kingly rule of Christ in the hearts and lives of his followers will be seen in a far more dramatic way. And that is why you will notice that he says, “Repent and believe the good news!” “The time is fulfilled. That which the prophet said has now arrived. The kingdom of God is near, in me, and so I want you to repent and believe the good news.”

This is a phraseology that you find frequently throughout the New Testament. The apostles pick it up quickly. Remember on the day of Pentecost, when at the end of his sermon the people cry out to Peter, “What should we do?” he says, “Repent and believe the gospel. Repent and be baptized.”[9] And Jesus says the same thing. Peter had learned it well.

To repent means to have a change of heart, a change of mind, and a change of direction. To repent does not mean to feel sorry. There may be sorrow in repentance, but sorrow doesn’t equal repentance. To repent does not mean to feel sorry because I got found out, and if I hadn’t been found out, I wouldn’t be sorry. To repent means to so be encountered by the kingly rule of Jesus that the control center of our lives is turned over entirely to him, so that all of our hopes, all of our dreams, our mind, our emotions, our business life, our family life, our sex life, our financial life—all of it under his kingly rule. By nature, it is not. Therefore, if that is to become the case, then this repentance is something that needs to happen in our lives.

To repent means to so be encountered by the kingly rule of Jesus that the control center of our lives is turned over entirely to him.

And the question, of course, that is inevitable when we read verses like this, when we personalize them in the silence of our own minds as you’re listening to me speak, we find ourselves inevitably saying, “Has there come a point in my life, ever, where there has been this radical change of heart and mind and direction?”

Well, it’ll never happen on its own. It will never happen absent faith—at least not life-changing repentance. Don’t misunderstand repentance as being simply a desire to get religion, to turn over a new leaf, to fix up my life. There are plenty of opportunities to do all of that, and there are plenty of books that are written that will tell you how.

You can change your statistics physically. I noticed yesterday in the Wall Street, there is an opportunity now to go to the mental gym. Did you see all that stuff yesterday on the gym for your mind? And you can go there and play little games so that you can help yourself not lose your car keys in the future. It makes perfect sense to me. But there’s another opportunity to change something.

And I think people often come to Parkside, as they do to other churches, and what they hear is something like this: “Now, it’s time for you to go out and get yourself changed, so I’d like you to change yourself, and do it as quickly as you possibly can. Please.” And so you think, “Well, that’s what religion is, and I just have to fix something up and change something around, and I might as well do it at church as do it anywhere else. So, let’s get going.” That’s not what Jesus is saying. No, you see, because the repentance that involves a change of heart and mind and direction is posited, is built upon, is grounded in, is related to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Why would I change anything about myself in relationship to Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean carpenter who lived two thousand years ago? Why? Why should I? He’s not around.” Well, no, you see, but when I understand who Jesus is and when I understand what Jesus accomplished when he died on the cross—that he died a death that I deserved to die, because I was the one in the wrong and he wasn’t; that he showed the kindness of God towards those who’d rebelled against him—when I am encountered by that, when I understand that, when I realize that he gave his all for me, then it only makes perfect sense that, invaded by that transforming power in faith, that I would turn away from everything that represents my own selfish agenda; that I would no longer find myself saying, “Well, I can do what I want. I can live with whoever I want. I can choose whatever I want.”

Well, of course, you can. But not if you’re a disciple of Jesus. Because the disciple of Jesus has no legitimacy in believing anything other than what Jesus taught. And the disciple of Jesus has no basis upon which to behave in any other way than what Jesus demands. And that’s why Jesus says, “Here I am. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is near. The King is present. Now I want you to repent and to believe the good news.” And when we do, the promise of God is that we enter into life that is truly life. We make sense of life. We make sense of death. We make sense of human frailty. We just make sense of things.

And that, of course, is what people are trying to do, one way or another—just trying to make sense of life: “Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going? And does it matter? What should I do as all these bits and pieces start to fall off of me, as I begin to disintegrate with age? What shall I do? How can I fix this?”

And if you were reading the Wall Street this week, you would have noticed that very interesting article on these architects, Mr. Arakawa and Madeline Ginz, who are involved with an organization or a belief system called transhumanism. I must confess, I’d never heard of it till this week. I’ve been fascinated by it ever since. And this was an article about this couple who “design homes to prolong life,” and they “lost their life savings” by giving them to Mr. Madoff. And they’re going to need their life savings, ’cause apparently, they’re going to be living forever. And so they’re really ticked off about this. And the reason they’re going to be living forever is that transhumanism is posited “on the idea that people degenerate and die in part because they live in spaces that are too comfortable.” So that’s why people die. So, if we can just get them in uncomfortable spaces, these architects have decided, then they’ll be able to live forever. There’s a possibility of immortality. It’s a fascinating idea, isn’t it? And so, according to this article, “they build buildings with no doors inside. They place rooms far apart. They put windows near the ceiling or near the floor,” and “between rooms are sloping, bumpy moonscape-like floors designed to throw occupants off balance. These features, they argue, stimulate the body and [the] mind, [and] thus [they prolong] life.”[10]

It’s great, isn’t it? So you’re just trying to find a way to open a window in the middle of the night, but it’s so high up: “Where’s that clasp, honey?” “Don’t worry, don’t worry. You’ll get it. Go ahead.” Bam! He comes down. “Oh!” “Hang on, I’m coming, honey. I’ll get you.” She falls over and breaks her hip, he’s lying down all crashed, and while there’s a whee, and then now they’re going “Hmm,” and they look at each other, going, “Hey, but this is good. We’re going to live forever. This is fantastic!”

But how could they even make it in the newspaper? Because the fact of the matter is, death is the great fear. Death is the fear of all fears. That is what everyone is afraid of. And the question is: Is there anybody who has conquered death and made a way for me to conquer it? And Jesus stands on the stage of human history, and he says, “Listen: The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is near. I want you to repent and believe the good news.” John summarizes it in memorable words: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believe[s] in him should not perish, but have” exactly what these architects are looking for: “everlasting life.”[11]

Death is the fear of all fears. That is what everyone is afraid of. And the question is: Is there anybody who has conquered death and made a way for me to conquer it?’

But not as a result of putting the windows beyond arm’s length, but as a result of bowing down and acknowledging that “my life is a disintegrating shambles, that my best endeavors to put it back together are frankly hopeless, and I can’t believe this amazing story. Are you telling me that Jesus has done for me what I cannot do for myself?”

“Yes.”

“Now, what do I have to pay for this?”

“Oh, you don’t pay. It’s free.”

“Oh, but it can’t possibly be a gift.”

“Yes, it is.”

That’s Jesus’ message.

Jesus’ Mission

Then, in verse 16 and following, we have Jesus’ mission. What’s his mission? Well, his mission is to take forward his message and to see the message, then, established in the lives of people. If the kingdom of God is near, as he proclaims, then what are the people to expect?

Well, in Old Testament terms, they knew what they should expect. Because they knew that when the kingdom of God dawned, everything would be different for them. So they might anticipate the overthrow of the Roman authority—the idea of the establishing of one who will sit on David’s throne and reign forever and ever.[12] They might anticipate that all the promised blessings that were attached to Abraham would now be showered upon them.

And if that is in any sense the expectation, then frankly, by that standard, verse 16 has got to come across as somewhat anticlimactic, hasn’t it? Here’s the message of Jesus: “The kingdom of God is [here]. Repent and believe the good news!” Well then, how is this going to work? And then we read: “[And] Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee.” Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, “he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.” Cue the violins! It’s just a kind of sleepy little story, it would appear, isn’t it? “Aw, isn’t that nice, you know. Jesus and the fishermen.”

It’s actually not nice at all. It’s frankly outrageous. Who is this person who disturbs men like this? Who is this person who thinks he can walk down the street and say to people who are gainfully employed, “I’d like you to stop that and just start following me right now”? And after he could put the two behind him, he went down a little further, and he saw some other fellows in the boat with their dad and a few of the hired workers, and he said, “And the two of you, let’s have you right along here.”

“Who’s this? Who do you think you are? Do you think you’re the king or something? Have you got a kingdom? Do you have a throne? Where’s your throne?”

“Oh, I have a throne. It’s your heart, Simon. It’s your heart, James, John, Andrew.”

Now, what Mark is telling us here, it would seem, is that the kingdom of God, as it comes, is going to be established in a most unexpected way. There’s no fanfare. There’s no pomp. There’s no pageantry. We might anticipate that. If it was a religion that was invented, if we had created this kind of thing, if we’d written the Bible, if we’d made it all up, then after the great announcement—“The time has come, the kingdom is near,” and so on—it would have been something really dramatic, you know. Maybe the building of the big palace. Maybe a big display of something. But no: “And then he walked along the seashore and saw a couple of guys fishing and said, ‘Hey, let’s go.’”

I love it when people tell me that the New Testament is an invention. Who would invent this story? You’re not going to invent this story. This speaks of eyewitness accounts, doesn’t it? This doesn’t read like a legend. This doesn’t read like a myth. If you’re here saying, “Oh, I never want to read the New Testament. I don’t read the Bible. It’s a legend. I know it is. I read it in Newsweek magazine”—listen, don’t worry about Newsweek. Read the Bible and tell me. You’re sensible; figure it out. Read it. You’ll find that it doesn’t read like myth. It doesn’t read like legend. It reads exactly as it is: like history.

And indeed, the little description here is so compelling, isn’t it? “He saw Simon and Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.” Why are they “casting a net into the lake”? Were they trying to get rid of it? Had somebody thrown a net in their back garden, and they decided they don’t want that in here, so they threw it in the lake? No! He says they were “casting a net [in] the lake, for they were fishermen.” And he said to them, “I want you to follow me, and I’ll make you fishers of men.”

And look at verse 18: “At once,” immediately, “they left their nets and followed him.” It’s amazing! “And when he had gone a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and his brother” was in the boat, and they were “preparing their nets”—folding them, fixing them, getting them ready for another voyage—and “without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men.” So it was obviously a pretty good business. They had enough to employ others. And they “followed him.”

Now, the call that Jesus issues is a clear call. “Fall in behind me,” he says. “Become what I intend for you to be: fishers of men. Be totally committed to my cause.” Do you see what he’s asking them to do? He’s asking them to make their commitment to him take precedence over their livelihood and over their family relationships—take precedence over their livelihood and over their family relationships.

The average approach to Christianity at the end of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first is “Why don’t you come to Jesus? He’ll help you with your livelihood and your family relationships.” Huh! That’s the compelling motive. “You know, if you really want to get your business going, you ought to come to Jesus. If you really want to get your family going, you ought to really, you know, come to Jesus.” Jesus says, “I want you to come to me. It’s going to make a severe dent in your income, and it’s going to change your family relationships. Let’s go!”

How does that play? It doesn’t play in a narcissistic culture. It doesn’t play in a world where I am the center of my universe, where Jesus exists for me, where the gospel is something that adds to the sum of my total happiness. It is completely counterintuitive. It is completely upside down. But it’s the Jesus call to discipleship.

Oh, sure, Jesus will have an impact on our business. He will have an impact on our family. But that’s not the issue. No, Jesus says, “I want you to face the cost that’s involved in repenting and believing the good news and in following me.” And the abandonment of their nets represent a radical change in lifestyle. There was going to be an immediate change in all of their circumstances.

Now, we’ve only a moment or two to go, so let’s just try and wrap it up with a couple of observations. His message is clear, and his mission is equally clear. The danger for some of us is our familiarity with this story. We’ve known it for a very long time. Some of us grew up singing, “I will make you fishers of men if you[’ll] [only] follow me.”[13] Right? At least some of us did. And so we’ve cast this in a way that actually blunts the outrageous nature of what is happening, because we’re so familiar with it we don’t see how outrageous it is. We miss the audacity of Christ’s command, and we miss the immediacy of the response of these four men. And the only explanation for his outrageous call and for their equally unbelievable response is the authority of Jesus, is the identity of Jesus, is the personhood of Jesus—that Jesus is not like any other person; that Jesus is not any other person; that this is not a religious guru who’s trying to put a group together; that this is not somebody who is starting a religion; that this is not a guy with a bunch of bright ideas about how he’s going to transform the region of Galilee.

This is the incarnate Son of God. This is the one about whom the Bible has been speaking. This is the one who comes in fulfillment of prophecy. This is the King who comes to subdue all of the rebellions. And when he speaks, there is divine authority in his word. How else do you explain what happens in the next section, when “the people were amazed at his teaching”? “He taught … as one who had authority.” And “then a man in [the] synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, ‘What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.’” You see, the demons know what others miss. The demons realize what they’re up against in this great supernatural conflict. “‘Be quiet!’ said Jesus sternly. ‘Come out of him!’ The evil spirit shook the man violently and [he] came out of him with a shriek.”[14]

Now, people read their Bibles and they say, “What is that about?” What it is about is about the one who is King and Lord of creation giving indications of his kingly authority. If he is sovereign over all of the earth, if he is the Lord of creation, if he is the King of Kings, then do you think he’s going to be unsettled in his mission by a man with a violent demonic spirit? No, he’ll deal with it.

When the winds and the waves threatened to capsize the boat—at least from the disciples’ perspective—a few chapters on in Mark chapter [4], he stands up, and he tells the winds and the waves to be quiet.[15] People say, “Well, what is that about? I mean, you don’t believe that, do you?” Well, of course you do! If he is the Lord of creation, if he created H₂O, then what’s the deal about telling it to sit down and be quiet? And on that occasion, the men in the boat looked at one another and said, “Who is this, that even the winds and the waves obey him?”[16] And one of them might have said, “He’s the one who, when we were having a nice time in the fishing business, came down the street and looked at you, Simon, and said, ‘Simon, fall in behind me. We’re going on a mission.’ And Simon, you followed in behind him. Why did you do that?”

Wasn’t that audacious? I mean, go home this afternoon and wait for somebody to come down your street. If you’re out in your yard somewhere, and some chap comes down the road and says, “Hey, hey, let’s go, follow me right now,” you’re like, “Hey, sure! Yeah! Like fun I’ll follow you! I won’t follow you anywhere. Who are you?” How do you explain this?

You see, his authority is related to his identity. That’s why C. S. Lewis was so clear. When he finally bowed the knee to God, he figured it out: a man who was merely a man and said the things that Jesus said would either be a lunatic on the level of someone claiming to be a poached egg, or he would be a demon, or he would be exactly who he claimed to be. But we cannot come to him with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great moral teacher.[17] He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.

But I don’t think that that’s the most staggering aspect of it. I think—and with this I will conclude—I think the most staggering aspect of it, beyond the divine disturbance created in the minds of these four men, is the fact that the mission of the incarnate God is launched in such a strange place.

Now, you get that, don’t you, in Superstar, in that song, you know, “Why did you come now? Why’d you come to this place? It ain’t got no mass communication.”[18] You know, “Why don’t you come at a sensible time, Jesus? What are you doing coming to a socially insignificant bunch of people in an unnoticed corner of provincial Galilee? I mean, Jesus, are you trying to start a worldwide movement here or what? I mean, come on, man! You did ‘The time is fulfilled. The kingdom is near. Repent and believe.’ And then you start with a bunch of fisher guys! I mean, they’re good fellows, there’s no question. They’ve got their own business. They know how to make a buck, you know. But goodness gracious, is this it, Jesus?”

“Oh, we’ll be adding others along the way. I’ve got my eye on a tax collector called Matthew. I think he’s good for the group. I got him. I got another guy, Philip. He asks a lot of questions, but I think he’s probably all right. Thomas… There’s a fellow… Nah, yeah, this is pretty well it.”

“Well, Jesus, you better know what you’re doing.”

“Oh, believe me, I know what I’m doing.”

“Can any good thing come out of Galilee?”[19] Can any good thing come out of Green? Can any good thing come out of Bainbridge?

You see how so upside down evangelicalism has had it for almost fifty years in this country? And it is a complete, total, moribund failure. It is the attempt to take on the world by letting the world know that “contrary to all perceptions, we really are the brightest, most powerful, attractive, politically strong group of people that has ever dawned on the face of the earth—and when you realize just how wonderful we all are, you will want just to get on our side of the equation.”

How’s it working? Oh. Well, because it’s not the Jesus way. If that had been Jesus’ way, then when Paul preached to the Corinthians, he would have said, “I’m so glad to be dealing only with intellectuals here at Corinth. I’ve been some other places, and the people are really quite facile. They’re really not very smart at all. But you are such a wonderful group, you Corinthians—so articulate, so bright, so handsome, so athletic, so wonderful. I’m just so excited about Corinth. I really am.”

No, what does he say? He says, “Think about it, brothers and sisters: when you were called to be a disciple of Jesus, not many of you were noble, not many of you were high born, not many of you were profoundly influential.”[20] He doesn’t say “not any”; he just says “not many.” No, by and large, the movement in Corinth, as the movement in Ephesus, as the movement today in South America, as the movement today in Indonesia and sub-Saharan Africa, as the movement in the eighteenth-century Awakening, was not a movement that happened at the level of the cultural influencers. It was a movement that happened in an unlikely way with an unlikely group of people so that the very unlikelihood of it would cause people to say, “They could never pull this off on their own. There must be somebody behind this.” But as long as the church continues to do stuff that people look at and say, “Well, they can obviously pull this off on their own,” there is no reason to look beyond us.

We don’t have to go out and tell people how powerful we are, how clever we are, how much authority we have. They know that’s not true anyway. We just have to go out, back into the equivalent of our own fishing community, and tell everyone the news that the kingdom of God has come.

That’s why he did what he did. Think about it: Why start with fishermen? Why start your whole deal as a Galilean carpenter with a bunch of guys from the fisherfolk? Why? Well, he puts his treasure in earthen vessels, or old clay pots, so that the transcendent power might be seen to belong to God and not to us.[21]

So we don’t have to go out and tell people how powerful we are, how clever we are, how much authority we have. They know that’s not true anyway. We just have to go out, back into the equivalent of our own fishing community, and tell everyone the news that the kingdom of God has come. Just go tell everyone the news that God’s kingdom has come. And this King, who reigns from a cross and wears a crown that is made of thorns, will come and subdue their rebellion, forgive their sins, and make sense of their lives. Easter would be a good time to begin that kind of invitation.

Father, thank you for the Bible. Thank you for your Word. Thank you for the clarity that pervades it. We confess that when it gets murky and cloudy, it’s due to our ineffectiveness, or the fact that we are obtuse, disobedient, uncaring.

Look upon us, we pray, so that those of us who as yet have never repented and believed the good news might come to do so, and that those of us who have may, in the place of your appointing—in the arts, science, home, medicine, banking, carpentry, flower arranging, car repair—in whatever place you put us, that we might live to the praise of your glory,[22] so that unbelieving people may become the committed followers of Jesus Christ.

And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with all who believe, today and forevermore. Amen.

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[1] Mark 1:15 (KJV).

[2] Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 222.

[3] See Matthew 4:16.

[4] See Isaiah 9:2.

[5] Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Kingdom: A Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament (Exeter, UK: Paternoster, 1981), 47, 57, 59, 100, quoted in Vaughan Roberts, God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 22.

[6] Revelation 21:1 (NIV 1984).

[7] See Revelation 21:4.

[8] Frances Ridley Havergal, “Take My Life, and Let It Be” (1874).

[9] Acts 2:37–38 (paraphrased).

[10] Amir Efrati, “Couple’s Dreams of Immortality at Death’s Door, Thanks to Madoff,” Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2009, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123785033607519075.

[11] John 3:16 (KJV).

[12] See 2 Samuel 7:16.

[13] Harry D. Clarke, “Fishers of Men” (1927).

[14] Mark 1:22–26 (NIV 1984).

[15] See Mark 4:36–39.

[16] Mark 4:41 (paraphrased).

[17] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1952), bk. 2, chap. 3.

[18] Tim Rice, “Superstar” (1970). Lyrics lightly altered.

[19] John 1:46 (paraphrased).

[20] 1 Corinthians 1:26 (paraphrased).

[21] See 2 Corinthians 4:7.

[22] See Ephesians 1:12.