The Personal Call to the Kingdom

Well, again, thanks for being here. Those of you who don't know me, my name is Brian, lead pastor here, and excited to jump into week three of the Gospel of Mark, or also known as John, Mark, a disciple, interpreter of the Apostle Peter, and are really excited to jump into this week. I'm going to introduce you to somebody, most likely William Borden. Anyone ever heard of this guy before? No, probably not. I don't know why you would. So let me introduce you to him. He was born in 1887 in Illinois, and his father owned a large silver mining business in Colorado. And they were extremely wealthy millionaires in the 1800s. Right. That was just a wild concept to think about. And so extremely, extremely wealthy as a young man. He went to Yale and graduated in two years, went to Princeton Theological Seminary, then after that and graduated in two years. He then went on to become a board member of the National Bible Institute in New York City, and at one point, even temporarily took charge of the whole ministry, including office management, oversight of student practical training, and operations for four rescue missions, whatever that means. He also then became the director of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. And then at age 22, okay, like, when I was reading this guy's biography, it was like, what? What do you mean? He did all that when he was 20, 22. I worked at Joe's Crab Shack when I was 22. All right, so what are we talking about? He then became a member of the North American Council of the China Inland Mission. And his intention was to dedicate his life to missions, specifically to Muslims that are in northwestern China. And before he made his way over into China, though, he went to Egypt to study Islam and Arabic in Cairo. However, unfortunately, when he was 25, he contracted cerebral meningitis and died just three weeks later. 25 years old. It's wild. This is what was interesting. One of his professors, though, said this and then had this inscribed on his tombstone. Apart from faith in Christ, there is no explanation of such a life. It said that following Borden's death, his mother found in his Bible the words no reserve and a date suggests that it had been written shortly after he had renounced his fortune in favor of missions. Later, he was said to have written no Retreat after his father supposedly told him that he would never hold a position in the family business. And finally, shortly before he died in Egypt, he supposed he had have added the phrase no regrets. The problem with stories like this guy is you go, oh, I feel like a piece of garbage. You know what I mean? Like, you just. I don't add up to that. I can't live up to that. Oh. Actually, I'm almost double this guy's age when he died. Right. And I don't think it's not going to happen. I've already missed my opportunity to live like William Borden to have that phrase. Apart from faith in Christ, there's no explanation for such a life. Is. Is that. What am I? Am I wasting my life? Well, hopefully the text this morning and what Christ has for us hopefully will speak into maybe a little bit of that, of how. At least I know how I feel when I read about stories like that. Today's sermon is the personal call of the kingdom. We're looking at Mark, chapter 1, 14, 20. This was one of these texts this week as I was sitting in it, that when I first read it, my first thought was, how in the world am I gonna preach on this for 30 minutes? And then it quickly became, how in the world am I only gonna preach in this for 30 minutes? Cause this is. There's. There's so much going on here. That's what Mark does. He moves so fast that each of his words just have a lot wrapped up in it. So let's just go back. So Mark, chapter one, he starts off the book in the beginning of the good news, the gospel about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, Jesus, this Promised one, the Anointed one, the Son of God. Again, this is the gospel according to Mark. It's not the Gospel of Mark. It's. All the gospels are talking about the same gospel of Jesus, just from a different perspective. So I actually meant to delete these slides because I just don't want to take the time to do it. You can figure out what I'm doing in my sermon. Happy hunting. All right, okay. So here. The first point here is. Hand it over. All right, as we get into this verse here. So we're starting to write in our text now verse 14. Now, after John was arrested, this is John the Baptist. He was introduced in week one. Spent a lot of time talking about who John the Baptist was, who were the baptizers and all of that. And how is Jesus then going to kind of change and modify what they believe to say, this is. I'm actually the fulfillment of these things. And so we did a. And we even did a brief character study on John the Baptist in the summer. But let's get into it. Why was he arrested? Okay, We. That's just what we need to know. He's a cousin of Jesus and he was arrested. Why Was he arrested? Well, this is kind of the integration, kind of skipping forward in the book in Mark. We read this about it. So we'll be here next year. You'll have forgotten all about this. Okay, so it's okay to skip forward a little bit. Says for it was Herod who had sent him and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, because he had married her. Okay, so Herod marries Herodias, his brother's wife. Okay, so John's like, you can't do that. For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death, but she could not. So what I want to point out here is that in that verse in Mark, chapter one, that word that John was arrested, depending on the translation you're looking at, it might say that he was thrown in prison. That's accurate, but it doesn't carry the weight that I think, as I've read and studied this week, that Mark is trying to get that he has this phrase that he was arrested or he was handed over, right? Is more the language that is used, that it can be translated that way and is translated the majority of time. The Gospel of Mark that he's handed over. And that word plays a very special part for someone who. Who's about to die. Their end is coming, but they have remained faithful. He uses it here for John the Baptist. He uses it 10 times for Jesus in his trials and in his execution. And he even uses it three times for Christian believers that when they're about to meet their end and they have remained faithful, that language, that word is handed over, significant. And so we gotta be careful when we do Bible studies like this, because what tends to happen is we get so bogged down in a single word, right? Just like when you're learning to ride a bike or if you're a parent, you've been doing that with your kids. What do you. You got to keep pedaling, right? You got to keep pedal. As soon as you stop, you, you, you tip over. It's just called gravity. Gravity kicks in at some point, right? And so you. When you. When you slow down too much, you can hurt yourself, so you gotta keep pedaling. So it'll be my job as we slowly go through the Book of Mark to remind us where we've been and to kind of bring back some of these themes and words. Second point here is the Gospel of God. As we look again at our verse now, after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God. It's a different phrase that he uses here because in verse one, he says that the God, it's the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But now here he says that Jesus Christ is proclaiming the Gospel of God. Why is Mark adding, if you will, that Jesus is about to teach or is about to say the Gospel of God? Why didn't he just say Jesus was about to proclaim the gospel? Why does he say it's the Gospel of God as we looked at in week one? And I don't want to get into all the minutiae of it. I probably spent way too much time doing that in week one. But this falls under the genre of historical biography, and we nerded out on that for a long time. It is a historical biography and it checks all the boxes with that. That's true. But the difference with the Gospels compared to other contemporary historical biographies of the first century is that these are also theological. They're also making comments and commentary about who Jesus is. And so when you read them in their context with other historical biographies, they're actually trying to get you to drink the Jesus Kool Aid. That's a weird phrase to say, but you know what I'm trying to say. They want you to really believe this, right? They want you to grasp it. They want you to not just read about a historical figure named Jesus Christ of Nazareth. They want you to believe and love and trust, not just the words and his moral teaching and moral conformity and just a different way to read the law. They're saying, hey, we want you to believe who he is and his message and, and transform your life. That is the gospel. And he gives us. Now in his words, he gives us the good news of God. And what we can say about what Jesus is about to do, not just by his words that come out of his mouth, but how he lives and how he sacrifices himself, is that Jesus didn't simply proclaim the gospel. He was the gospel. He is the good news. He is the embodiment of. Of the good news of God. He is the gospel. He doesn't just proclaim it. He is it. Let me quote here a commentary. James R. Edwards. We're on a first name basis. Not sure. I've never met him. He could be dead, I don't know. But he wrote a really, really good biography. All right. Really good biography. Sorry. Really good commentary on the Gospel of Mark. So get used to this. Guy. Cause you're going to be seeing him a lot. So let me just read this. Since Mark has already introduced the gospel. All right, that's that Greek word euangelion. And that's where we get our English word of evangelical. It's the same kind of one for word there. The good news with reference to Jesus in 1:1. It's probable that by the good news of God he does not mean the good news about God, but rather the good news from God that is made known in Jesus Christ. The good news of God is thus the sum of Jesus teaching and proclamation and will be further elaborated by the kingdom of God, which Jesus spends a long time and a lot of time in text teaching about. So moving on, in our text we have the Gospel of God and then we have this phrase that Jesus is going to say the time has been fulfilled. It reminded me of Galatians, chapter 4, verse 4, that it says in the fullness of time that Jesus was born, the Christ was born of a virgin under the law to fulfill the law. That there's something significant about the time that Jesus is talking about. There's the time is fulfilled. And as I was digging in and trying to think, well, what is being fulfilled? What is significant about it? Then there could be these Old Testament prophecies, that is the fullness of time, that that has been fulfilled in his birth right. Just, just from being alive Jesus. We know that being born of a virgin, being born in Bethlehem, being of the line of David fleeing to Egypt as a child, et cetera, we're not even to his life yet. We're not even to the things that he did as an adult. And not even about his death and resurrection and ascension. We haven't talked about him to that part yet. He's saying the time is fulfilled now. Made me think to go back all the way back to Genesis, chapter 15. This might be a little obscure, but if you this is the Abrahamic covenant. God is making a covenant with Abraham, the father of the Hebrews. And so he says this. He says, the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs. And they will be servants there. And they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on that nation they serve. He's talking about Egypt and their slavery in Egypt. And afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, Abraham, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age, and they shall come back here. Where they're at right there at that moment in the fourth generation. What is it? Here's the whole point of what I'm talking about. For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. The iniquity of the Amorites has not yet been fulfilled. What's that mean? Nobody knows. But here's what we can infer from that phrase is that, that God does things with other nations, not just Israel. We, we can see that in multiple places with Melchizedek, multiple different people and, and nations that we can see God moving. Not specific. He does. Israel is our people. Those are the Israelites. Right? That's, that's, that's his nation. But he's doing something. There's something about the Amorites that they have. There's like some national sin threshold that hasn't yet been reached yet. And I think that we can look at this and maybe infer that it's now time. The time has been fulfilled. It's go time. Maybe another aspect of the time being fulfilled. Maybe just as a historical guy is like loving history, is you got to go all the way back to Alexander the Great and this is his nation from Greece all the way over into, over into India and down into Egypt there. And you can, you can see where it was. But he didn't just conquer that area, but he brought. Right, he Hellenized it. That's the whole thing that he did. And he brings his culture and he brings the Greek language to all of that region as he conquers it and as he goes. And then that carries over into the Romans, who just expanded upon what Alexander the Great had. And they're speaking Greek and that then goes all over the known world. And so when you look at how in the world do these churches and get planted, how did people from Jerusalem go all over that known world area and plant churches in Asia and Asia Minor and in Europe and in Africa? How did this happen? It's because they were all speaking the same language. They all understood one another. It's very significant. All right, I think I made my point. The third or second aspect here of the Gospel of God. We see Jesus saying that the time has been fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus says the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Which obviously begs the question, we have to ask, what is the kingdom? What is a kingdom? I think we all have preconceived notions of what a kingdom is. It makes sense. You know, you think medieval times, ish era, right, where you've got a king and you've got a castle and you've got knights. And it's this kingdom thing, right? That's what it is. When I think of a movie or the book of the kingdom of God, what does it mean? We know what king means, right? King we get. We know what that means. But what is dom, right? Does the dom of that mean, Right? And obviously, maybe not obvious, but it means dominion or domain, and it is a root of that in Latin. So you have the domain of the king and we have other words like this, like freedom and boredom, right? It's the same thing. I am under thee and in a state of being, under the rule of being bored. Okay? That's what boredom is. That's what freedom is, and that's what a kingdom is. It is not, however, what we might typically think. Like I said, kind of like this area, right, of a king and the region that he's kind of in charge of, and he's got his peasants that are working the fields. We think of a lot of times, we think kingdom, we think a physical location than boundary. It's not what the kingdom of God is. It's not even the root definition of a kingdom, right? But that's what we think of when we think kingdom, and that's not what it is. It's not physical land in the Bible. It's a condition. It is a state of activity, a state of being under someone's rule. So if you bring in someone's kingdom, you are simultaneously bringing in that king's rule. So Jesus is saying that the rule, the reign of God has arrived. Or as one New Testament scholar, N.T. wright, he paraphrases this. As one who is running the show, very scholarly. I feel like, what does it mean when Jesus says the time of God running the show is near? Right? Because that's very different in my mind when I hear that, to say, well, the kingdom of God is near, and then the time of God running the show is near. Didn't God always run the show? Isn't he always running the show? What's going on? Well, good question. We got to go all the way back. Genesis, chapter one, first page of your Bible. Let's go back to that. It says this. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. There is this creator king, God, who creates beings in his image. A lot of times that phrase of in the image of God has been attributed to our consciousness or our ability to create, which I think that that's part of it. But I think that you need to root it in the text. And what does the text say the image of God is? Well, when you go back into the text, it says, let us make man in our image after our likeness. The. There should not be a period there. Almost every English translation has a period there. So let's just. Even the next phrase is a conjunction. Is that what that's called? And what is and. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. All right, I got one amen out of that. All right, let us make. So let's read it without the period. Let us make man in our image after our likeness. And let him have dominion, rule over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. You have domain, you have a kingdom over the creatures of the earth, as I, your creator, God has rule over you. You are made in my image. And part of your imageness and bearingness of me is to rule and to reign. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created him male and female. He created them. And God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and rule over it, subdue it, have dominion over it. Again, don't make. It's one of the ten Commandments. Don't make graven images. Don't make images of me. Why? Because you are my image. You make other image bearers, you make other rulers, other human beings. And there's no. This isn't just for the elite, right? This isn't just for the high class or the kings that were born into some royal bloodline. This is all humanity across the blanket. Everyone is an image bearer of God. That changes drastically how we think about other people. And we are created in this idea of rule and reign. We can skip forward in the storyline a lot to Psalm chapter 8, but this is a poetic reflection of Genesis chapter 1. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moons of the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man, that you care for him. You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings or the angels. And here it is. And you have crowned him with glory and honor, kingship. You have given him dominion, rule over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet as creator God. Creator King speaks. And he makes people who live under his reign and rule as image bearers and gives them then the ability to also rule. And the rest of the Old Testament, or most of the Old Testament, shows how we as human beings and rulers of our kingdom royally screwed it up. We did not do what the Creator God asked us to do. We went way offline. We made it a physical kingdom. We made it about borders and boundaries and kings and rulers, just like all the nations around us. And we took the king out of the kingdom and we took the king out of his right to reign over this people. And so now the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus is saying, I'm here. I'm back the the way that I ruled and reigned in the garden and I walked with you. I'm here. I'm here to put God back into the kingdom. I'm here. The royal king has come. This is good news that God himself became a human. And only through him can we become true humans that we were created to be. And how do we do this as followers of him and of his rule? Again, let me just quote here. This theologian Edwards. He says Jesus, he rarely and never in Mark, never in Mark speaks of God as king, or of his sovereignty over Israel or of the world. Rather, he speaks of entering the kingdom as entering a new state of being. The kingdom of God is not a result of human effort, nor does it evolve toward its completion, nor is it identical with the religious outlook or affiliation. There is something here. I have the great exchange, as Martin Luther, Martin Luther calls it. I have taken my sin off and it's this exchange where it's gone and I've now moved over to the. Receive the righteousness in his robe and this new life. It's a new state of being. It's a change of mind, it's a change of direction. But it doesn't just happen once and I'm done. It does. There's a moment where I'm indwelt by the Spirit of God and I believe. But this is something that is ongoing in the life of the believer. Let me continue with this quote. It says as a mystery that cannot be deciphered and calculated. It is best spoken of in analogies or parables. That is this kingdom of God that Jesus is going to do his best to try to unearth and unhide and expose. This is what the kingdom of God looks like. This is what it is at present. The kingdom is hidden, although it awaits future manifestation of unprecedented proportions, including power and glory. Even in its hiddenness, people must make a decision to receive it, the gospel, or reject it. And its future manifestation makes the present choice a manner of urgency. So how do we do that? How do we accept it? How do we how do we believe this? Jesus says, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. Repent of your way of thinking and living. And believe in me. Repent means a change of mind, a change of direction, a turning away from. And belief is a turning to. To make it simple, we're turning away from our old way of thinking, our own autonomy and our own kingdoms, our own rule, and turning towards God's rule and his reign in our life. What's interesting, though, is that these words here, repent and believe are imperatives, right? They're meant to be living in a condition of repentance and belief, not just as opposed to some momentary act, meaning, I believe Jesus, I believe in you. I believe in you. Like, we're good. You died for my sins. I know that you really want me to get control over this addiction. I know that you really want me to get control of my finances. I know you really want me to work on my marriage. That's different. I believe in you, but you don't have domain over that. That's my place. That's my domain. I know that you claim domain. I know that you have rule and you do. I mean, Jesus, I believe in you. I trust you. But that thing, I just have that thing. And, yeah, I can't. I can't trust you with that. I can't. I can't have you rule that part. This is what I mean by It's a condition. Living in a condition of repentance and belief as opposed to momentary acts. And we see this right here in the text. Fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. Let's get into this now. In Mark, chapter 16. Let me just read this. Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon, who's Peter, who John, Mark is working with here, and Andrew, the brother of Peter, casting a net into the sea. Maybe just a quick aside. You'll see when you read the different Gospels, the different writers will highlight different disciples differently because the friend groups are different. And so Peter is going to have his friends that he remembers, and he's going to highlight them. And so just, you know, so he says, his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea. And they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, follow me. There's why I asked the question. And I will make you become fishers of men. And immediately, again, Mark loves that word. Second time we've seen that word. And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going a little further, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother. Who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately, here's number three, he called them. And they left their father Zebedee in the boat with their hired servants and followed him. This is radically different from the rabbis of his day, the teachers of Jesus's day. What would happen in a Jewish school of thought, right in those different schools of Judaism that we looked at in week one, that someone, and we know this from Josephus, Josephus wrote a lot about this, that he joined the baptizer movement and they didn't like it, so he left and became and joined the Pharisee. There's something about a student saying, I want to be taught by that one. I want to go to that school. And then the student shows initiative and there's a test that happens. How well do you know the Torah? How well do you know the scripture? And if you pass that test, then you can get into my presence and be taught by me. Jesus doesn't do that. Jesus goes out and it is a personal invitation. You follow me based on something I did? No. Based on my knowledge of the Bible. No. Based on who I am. And I'm telling you to follow me. That's different. And I'm pretty sure we can make a one for one with us. He has this personal invitation to follow. He's saying, I just want you to be uninhibited. I want you to leave. Everything that's not based on merit or aspiration or how well they know the scripture. It's just unbridled commitment to know Jesus. So why does this matter now? This matters now because he will rule. He will rule someday. Revelation 21 second integration. Here we see. Then I saw in a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven. The first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw a holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven. And God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice coming from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. The place where God rules freely. This is the prayer of Jesus. God would your kingdom come and your will be done. Your kingdom, your rule be done here on earth, just as it rains freely in heaven. And now that place, the dwelling place of God will be joined with earth with man. And he will dwell, he will rule with them. They will be his people. And he will be with him as their God. And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. And death shall be no more. Maranatha come Lord Jesus and oh how got me. Neither shall there be Said that there won't be any more of. That's garbage nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. This matters because God is going to rule someday. And to quote again, Edwards, that I just read, people must make a decision to receive the gospel, reject it, and its future manifestation makes the present choice a matter of urgency. In conclusion, let me just wrap it up in this way. Have you made the ongoing decision to let God rule? I mean, total domain of your life? Listen, I know I say this a lot. I'm preaching to myself. It's one thing that I've learned over the years of being a pastor, that in order to really be able to preach a text, I've gotta let it really sink into my own life. And this is one of the texts this week. As I got into and I started studying, a lot of questions started coming to my head. Man, I don't know if I give God total domain over everything. I'd like to think I do. I mean, I do, right? But I struggle. I need to give this to Christ. I need to give this to God. The disciples didn't just add the Jesus to their life. I don't need to just live my life and then just kind of add Jesus to it. Mark is trying to make that very apparent, that they reoriented everything around who Jesus is and was to go back to that guy that we started talking about, that, that William Bardon, Remember, he had. Apart from Christ, there's no explanation for such a life. Statistically speaking, you probably will not have that phrase inscribed on your tombstone. Probably not. You can put it in your will, and then you will. Then you just beat the stats. I can do that. The good news, the gospel, is this. That the Gospel himself. Jesus will say this about every fully devoted follower of the gospel of God. Remember? Why? Why will Jesus say something? What is he about to say? What is Jesus gonna say? Because it's got nothing to do with you. It's got nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with his calling and his righteousness. Not who you are, who you think you are, or what you're gonna do. It's got everything to do with him and Jesus. The gospel will look you in your eye and he will say, well done, my good and faithful servant. And if I happen to be standing next to you, then I'm going to say, apart from Christ, there's no other answer. There's. I will gladly look you in the face and say that after Jesus says that to you. Because the truth is, we might have the Night. I have that etched in our tombstone. But we're going to have it, I don't know, etched in our crown of glory. Probably not. But you know what I'm trying to say. This is something that's got nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with Christ. And that's what Mark wants us to see. That he wants to have total domain over my life in every single area. You say, ah, but I struggle with this. Yeah, you do. Why? I'm human. You're human. You're sinful. But he's good and he's great. And he will look us in the eye someday because of what he has done and what he has accomplished. And he will say, well done, my good and faithful servant. And that motivates me. That motivates me to love him back. That motivates me to want to obey and live under his rule, not my own authority and kingship. We're going to have a time of communion like we do every week here at Hope Lowertown. And so we had the elements up here. There's a gluten free option on the left. If that's a requirement, dietary requirement for you. And all we do is we take these little wafers, these little oyster crackers that represents the body of Christ that was broken for us. We take the grape juice that represents the blood of Christ that was shed for our sin. And we remember. And this morning we get to take those elements together communally, and we get to remember that Jesus, he is the author and the finisher of our faith. He is the beginner and the ender of our faith. He is the one who allows us and makes us to persevere so that when that day comes, when we are handed over at the end of our life, that we will stand in his presence and he will say, well done, my good and faithful servant. And apart from me, there's no explanation. Let me pray. And the worship team's gonna come and they're gonna play two songs. Feel free to grab these elements. You don't need to be a member of this church or any church, but if you're just a follower of Jesus, if you say, yes, I'm working on it. I am a work in progress. And you will be your entire life. You say I'm a work in progress, but I love Jesus. He is king of my heart and my soul and my life of all domain. Then I would love for you to take these elements with us this morning. Let's pray. Father, thank you for our time this morning. Thank you for the Gospel of Mark or the Gospel according to Mark. And thank you for the Gospel of Jesus. And not just the Gospel that Jesus tells us about, but the gospel that is from you, the Gospel that is you, it is fulfilled in Christ. Thank you for that. That apart from you, we can do nothing. I pray now that as we take these elements, that you would just receive the honor and glory as we remember the finished work of Christ. I cannot add to it. I can't take anything away from it. It is finished. It has been fulfilled in the fullness of time. Thank you. It's in the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.