Weekly Sermons from Spruce Creek Presbyterian Church - Port Orange, FL

Jesus here in this passage we are looking at this morning is continuing his ministry of kingdom inauguration. What do learn about His kingdom ministry through this particular narrative? First, we learn that it was prepared with prayer. Another way of putting it is Jesus’ own life was saturated with prayer. Isn’t it amazing that as Jesus becomes busier and more and more people are clamoring for His attention that He withdraws, basically in the middle of the night to go off alone and commune with His Heavenly Father? But we see then as we follow this narrative that as Simon and the others search for him he responds to them with his purpose of preaching, which is our second point. Jesus’ ministry is a ministry of the word, of gospel proclamation. But then we learn that Jesus’ ministry is not an either/or ministry of the Word or deed, but is a both/and ministry of both Word and deed. Our third point is the power of pity and follows the account of Jesus healing the leper. Moved with compassion Jesus meets our needs in every dimension of life, showing his care for the entirety of our human condition, and he calls us to minister as he did. How do we do that? To understand the significance of what Jesus did in this passage we need to understand a little background about the horrific nature of leprosy in the Old Testament. To be a leper, which marked a wide variety of skin diseases was to be a total outcast. It was not only physically painful but it also cut you off completely from the community. The Old Testament law in Leviticus described a leper as dwelling outside the camp (Lev. 13:45-46). But in Hebrews we read, “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured” (Hebrews 13:12-13). That means Jesus, on the cross, entered our condition of loneliness, exile and complete alienation, moved from compassion and love, in order to bring us in and meet our needs. And He cared for and ministered to the whole person. We will only embody the ministry of Jesus as we appropriate and apply the power of the gospel to our lives, both individually and corporately as a church.

How do you respond to authority? Our popular culture has its own opinions on the nature of authority. John Mellencamp in one of his songs sings, “I fight authority and authority always wins.” Or (so you don’t think I am just picking on rock music) Frank Sinatra famously sang, “My friend, I’ll say it clear, I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain. I’ve lived a life that’s full, I’ve traveled each and every highway. But more, much more than this, I did it my way.” So what is your attitude towards authority? Mark is presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Jesus comes proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. In other words, with Jesus the kingdom of God has arrived. And now He is demonstrating the authority of the kingdom through His ministry of teaching, healing over both the spiritual and physical world. In this passage Mark shows us three things about the authority of Jesus. First, the uniqueness of Jesus’ authority. The people were amazed because Jesus taught not as their scribes or teachers. Second, Jesus’ authority was comprehensive. We see here Jesus’ authority over the spiritual world in his exorcism of the demon possessed man and then his tender healing of Simon’s mother-in-law from her fever. Jesus exercises kingly authority over every realm of life. The final point is the challenge how do we respond? Is Jesus the Master and Lord and King over every area of our lives? We need to connect this demonstration of Jesus’ authority with the previous passage in which Jesus called His disciples to follow Him.

BJ Milgate serves as the pastor of UPC Lake Nona in Orlando and brings a wealth of experience in thinking for his community as he pastors and leads young and vibrant congregations.

After Jesus arrives on the scene and begins His public ministry with His proclamation of the gospel of the kingdom, He begins to form His new kingdom community. He does so by calling His first disciples, Simon (Peter) and his brother Andrew, and the sons of Zebedee, James and John. In calling them He gives them both an identity and a purpose or commission. And that will be the simple outline we will follow this morning as we dive into this text in Mark’s gospel. We will look at first the new kingdom community’s (1) Identity as Followers. Our fundamental identity is as followers of Jesus. That takes priority over everything else. Jesus is forming a new family around Himself. And second the new kingdom community’s (2) Purpose as Fishers of Men. Jesus promises that His new family will become fishers of men. It is so encouraging that this is not automatic but a process. Jesus promises that His people will become fishers of men. That is our purpose and Jesus promises that He will fulfill it.

Last week we learned from Jesus’ baptism and temptation in the wilderness in our study of the Gospel of Mark that we need to hear the right message. And hearing the right message involves listening to the right Person (the Triune God) and following the right path (the cross-centered path). This morning, we encounter Jesus’ entrance into the public ministry and our text from Mark 1:14-15 says that “After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe in the gospel’.” This morning we will learn that hearing the good news involves two things. First it means understanding the good news. To understand the good news we need to recognize that according to Jesus the gospel is the gospel of the kingdom. Jesus proclaimed the gospel of God and the text defines this is proclaiming the kingdom of God. Obviously the kingdom of God is at the heart of the gospel. He then says to repent and believe. Our second point is responding to the good news. Jesus says we are to repent and believe in the gospel. In other words, not just to believe, but to believe specifically in the gospel, which we just said is the gospel of the kingdom. So we are to believe in the gospel of the kingdom which is a challenge to our ultimate allegiance. Who and what are we living for? This is the challenge of Jesus’ initial proclamation. Jesus is proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and a kingdom implies a king. What kind of king is Jesus? Sticking to the gospel of Mark he will state later on in his gospel “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) Jesus is the King who came to serve His subjects and to serve them by giving His life for them. What an incredible King we live for.

We are bombarded with messages all the time. Messages from the world, from others and from ourselves. We are always, in a sense, speaking to ourselves. Are we good enough? Do we have enough? Can we make it in this situation? How do we know if we are hearing the right message? Jesus says in the Gospel of John, that the truth shall set us free (John 8:32). So one way to know whether we are hearing the right message is to look at our lives and see how free we really are. And, according to the Apostle Paul our freedom, purchased by Jesus Christ is for the purpose of serving one another through love (Gal. 5:13). After beginning his presentation of the gospel by showing us John the Baptist and his ministry of bearing witness to the coming Messiah, Mark now introduces us to Jesus. Jesus now appears on the scene. And he does so in his baptism and temptation in the wilderness. And through these accounts we learn of the importance of hearing the right message. How do we know we are hearing the right message? In this text we will see that this involves (1) Listening to the right person and (2) Following the right path. Under the first point we will explore the doctrine of the trinity and the implication of listening to the right Person, that Person being the triune God.

Mark begins his account of the gospel of Jesus Christ with John the Baptist, bearing witness to and preparing the way for Jesus. And Mark roots the gospel in the story of Israel by placing John’s ministry in the context of the wilderness. Our life is a wilderness life. The Christian life is a wilderness life. What do we learn here about life in the wilderness? This passage from Mark teaches us three things. First, life in the wilderness is communal. When Mark gives us John he does so by citing the prophet Isaiah. John is the voice crying in the wilderness to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. This roots our life in the story of Israel. We can’t make it in the wilderness by ourselves. And the Christian life roots us in a community and in a story. Second, the wilderness life is dependent. We may not like this too much, but life in the wilderness is a life where we can’t make it without God. The wilderness reminds us that our independence will not sustain us. We are totally dependent on God. The third and final point is that life in the wilderness is hopeful. And that is because of what Jesus Christ has done for us in going through the wilderness for us. He went through the ultimate wilderness and on the cross lost God so that we would never lose God. He took our punishment, our judgment, our death as our substitute on the cross. And that makes our wilderness life a hopeful life. We still have to go through the pain of the wilderness, but it is not a life without hope. The wilderness life is a hopeful life.

This morning we are beginning a new series of studies on the Gospel of Mark. Mark is considered to be the earliest of the accounts of the life of Jesus. It is a fast-paced, action-packed narrative revealing who Jesus is and what He came to do through His words, deeds, actions, miracles and climactically in His death and resurrection. This morning we are only introducing the series and our focus will be on the first verse, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” (Mark 1:1). We will ask two questions of this opening: (1) What Is Mark About? And (2) How Does He Go About It? In other words, we will be concentrating on Mark’s overall purpose and his strategy in accomplishing his purpose.