Mark 1:16-20

Jesus Begins His Ministry

[14] Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, [15] and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
[Jesus Calls the First Disciples]
[16] Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. [17] And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” [18] And immediately they left their nets and followed him. [19] And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. [20] And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

(Mark 1:14-20 ESV)

Asking what this meant to the original audience is a surprisingly difficult question.  If you read Mark straight though, there doesn't seem to be a problem, here.  But if you read Mark in parallel with Matthew, Luke, and John, and start asking questions about the timeline, then the importance becomes clearer.  

What we don't realize at first blush is that this scene happens many months into Jesus' Galilean ministry.  The clue is in 1:14, which indicates that Mark skips over everything that happened before John the Baptist was arrested, which doesn't happen until after the first few chapters of John.  Mark skips over the Judean ministry of Jesus, including Jesus' first meeting with Peter and Andrew in John 1,  the cleansing of the Temple, the night-time conversation with Nicodemus, the meeting with the woman at the well, and the gathering to Himself of all of John the Baptists' disciples, whom John was gladly giving Him.  

If I remember correctly from listening to Doug Bookman talk about this timeline, Jesus returned to Galilee through Samaria (John 4) and sent the disciples to go and call all they knew from their home town who had been baptized by John.  While they waited for Jesus to meet up with them, they went back to fishing with their families.  When Jesus shows up to claim them, He speaks the words of Mark 1:17.  And of course they leave their nets immediately; they already know this man, this is what they want!  (Side note: they probably don't sell their boats, since their father and hired servants still need them to make a living, and because they are using them again in John 21).  

So what's the point talking about an obscure point like the timeline of the Gospels?  Because it makes a substantially different point.  Reading Mark 1:16-20 in a vaccuum makes it seem like a strange man calls Jesus shows up, calls out to some strangers "Follow me," and they immediately do, without knowing anything about Him.  Preachers who don't know any better might be tempted to teach about faith at this point, trusting Jesus even if we can't see the future.  But this is not a call to blind faith!  The disciples do not follow Jesus out of some spiritual notion of blind trust; they don't follow Him because He glows or has a halo; they don't follow Him because He looks magical; they don't follow Him because He mystically draws them and they have no control over themselves.

They come to Jesus because they know Him, and they want to be with Him.

By this point in the story, He has already cleansed the Temple, which instantly made Him famous throughout all of Israel.  He has already been baptized by John, where John's disciples met Him for the first time, including Peter and Andrew.  Jesus has already turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana.  He has already talked with Nicodemus and said the famous line of John 3:16.  Jesus has already read from Isaiah in Nazareth, fulfilling the text and angering the townspeople up to a murderous rampage.  Jesus has already demonstrated who He is.  They know Him.

Jesus is calling each of us.  So why should we respond to His calling?  Hopefully, because we know Him.

Some of God's commands may seem harsh, or difficult to implement.  Give 10% of ALL my money?  etc.  But the more we know Jesus, the more we see who He really is, the easier it is to obey Him.  The more we realize how much He loves us, how gloriously captivating He is, how wise He is, how powerful He is, the more we are willing to lay down our all for Him.  And not begrudgingly, but delightfully.  If you get to know Jesus well, then you'll be eager to get to be with Him, like the disciples are here.  

But this isn't supposed to make you feel guilty.  It's to invite you in.  Take this time to study Jesus, to really get to know Him deeply.  The more you do, the more you fill find yourself captivated by Him.

So what glory of Jesus does this passage reveal?  That He is worthy of being followed, that when people see who He really is, they can't help but follow.  And further, that He doens't expect blind devotion.  He proves who He is to the disciples, after which they gladly follow.  This is why we have four Gospels.  We can get to know Jesus very well in these pages, and as we do, we can gladly follow.

Why does Mark record this incident without mentioning the earlier Judean ministries?  Hard to say for sure, but my guess is that this is the moment that was most prominent to Peter.  It was this moment, with the words "fishers of men," that really stuck with Peter and defined his calling.  It summarizes so perfectly the life of a disciple.  First, Jesus calls - it's His initiative.  Second, we follow Him - we are responsible to follow, to obey, to submit, to change.  Third, He makes us fishers of men - by His Spirit He equips us with everything we need to do the work He has called us to do.  [I'm pretty sure I took these three stages from someone, but I can't remember exactly who.]

Also realize from Luke that by this point Jesus has already healed Peter's mother-in-law from her sickness.  So perhaps Peter and Andrew met Jesus with John the Baptizer, who gladly gave his disciples over to Jesus.  They followed Jesus around to the Judean ministry.  But when did the Temptation in the Wilderness happen?  If immediately after Jesus' baptism by John, then it doesn't much play into this timeline, but if it was after the Judean ministry, then it could explain why the disciples go back to fishing.  If Jesus takes off for 40 days alone, the disciples needed to do something, so they went back fishing.  Maybe they never expected to be full-blown talmidim (full-time disciples belonging to a specific rabbi); maybe they were only following Jesus like the crowds.  Maybe they never thought they could be talmidim, because they lacked the academic requirements.  It's only here, when Jesus specifically calls them to follow Him, that they become truly committed as talmidim. Now they finally leave their nets, and don't return to them until the end of John, after the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Mark 1:1-8

Mark 1:1-8: John the Baptizer Prepares the Way


[1:1] The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.


[2] As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way, [3] the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” 


[4] John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. [5] And all the country of Judea and all Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. [6] Now John was clothed with camel's hair and wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. [7] And he preached, saying, “After me comes he who is mightier than I, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. [8] I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” 


(Mark 1:1-8 ESV)




What did it mean to the original audience?


v1 - Anyone seeking information about Jesus can find it here.  And just to clarify: this Jesus is the Son of God.


v2-3 - This is the fulfillment to the ancient prophecies.  This is the Messiah the Jews were waiting for, the Lord.  And John is the messenger, the one preparing the way.  For the Jews, this will perk the ears up, one way or the other.  For Romans or other Gentiles, it means that some ancient prophecies are being fulfilled, which should grab your attention, even if you haven't believed these ancient things up until now.


v4 - Jews needed to kill animals to be forgiven of sins.  Now John comes offering baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  That's got to be attractive!  Instead of buying and killing animals, you just get dunked?  Of course, baptism for Jews meant initiation into a way of life, so it was a life change (after all, it was a baptism of repentance; you get baptized because you are changing the course of your life).  But still, being washed with water to forgive sins?  Sweet!


the Jordan River has great meanings for Israel.  They crossed the Jordan to enter Israel, to enter into God's rest and promise.  So now they are entering into the Jordan to enter a time of peace, forgiveness of sins, rest, healing.  God was calling people back to Himself, and they were coming.


v7 - John is humble, the coming Messiah worthy of extreme honor.  John is baptizing the entire nation in repentance, yet he is not worthy to do the task of the lowliest servant to Jesus.  This is highly exalting Jesus, even before He has been revealed to the people.  He must increase, John must decrease.


v8 - Baptize with the Holy Spirit - fulfillment of OT prophecies.  This is Yahweh coming to be with His people!  Great news for Jews.  What would Gentiles have thought?  Clearly a divine blessing, a good thing. 



What does it mean for us, today? 


This same Gospel message calls us to repentance, to the forgiveness of sins.  It's not just a historical story about a guy who lived 2,000 years ago.  It calls us to repent of our sins, be baptized into new life in Him, and be baptized with the Holy Spirit, filled with divine power.  This is about life transformation. 


And we can have confidence in this message because it was prophesied from ancient times.  Jesus came in complete fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.  Even in today's world of technology and skepticism, that has to make us take notice.  Jesus fulfilled prophecies that were hundreds and thousands of years old, and we can verify them historically.  If we're going to verify historical claims, this is the best way to do them.  Not just verifying that something happened, but verifying that it was predicted from ancient times and happened exactly to the letter. That makes this unique out of all history.  Thus we should believe it.


If we are baptized by the Holy Spirit, we should be living like it.  We should be living in the power of the Spirit, exercising the gifts of the Spirit, demonstrating the fruits of the Spirit, praying with the Spirit (Romans 8), worshiping God in spirit and in truth. 


Yet to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, we need to repent of our sins and be baptized (commit our lives to Jesus, responding to the call to initiate a new life in Him).  (This doesn't mean we have to be physically dunked in water before the Holy Spirit can descend; baptism is the outward sign of what's happened inside.  The inside piece needs to happen before the Holy Spirit fills us). 


This passage also should motivate us to model John in lessening ourselves and glorifying Jesus.  It's all about Jesus, and we should live like it is.  He is always mightier than us, always God, while we are always mortal humans.  We should be humble before God.  We are not worthy of Him, yet He loves us and has always loved us, and so He comes to us and gives us new life with Him.  This is why we love Him!


So this passage announces to us the arrival of a Messiah predicted from ancient times, who calls us to repent of our sins, be baptized into new life, recognize that we are humble before Him, and live in the power of the Holy Spirit.  This is intense!




What does it call us to do? 


Renounce anything keeping us from doing what's above.  Repent of any sins we cling to.  Die to the old life and live in the new.  Truly live in the power of the Spirit, carrying out the mission of the Spirit, to preach the Gospel and bring the loving, fulfilling worship of Jesus to the entire world. 


If you haven't already, trust in Jesus!  Be baptized into new life in Him!  Repent of your sins, and open yourself up to this amazing new life!


For me, to realize that the power I have isn't mine, it isn't limited to my abilities.  I have the Spirit in me.  I can do anything through Him!  I am a vessel, a channel for His power.  The dead will rise, the sick be healed, the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the oppressed will be liberated, the lost will be found, the dying will be saved.  All by the Spirit's power!  This is all about Jesus! 




What does this teach us about ourselves? 


John is weird.  Most of us aren't like this, devoting our lives exclusively to the Gospel.  Most of us cling to our own special little things, keeping parts of our lives back from God.  Our nature is to be "normal," not to be the fundamentalist freak but to try to retain some aspect of a life that our culture deems as "normal."  I won't say this is entirely bad, but it does mean that few of us are operating at the level John did, baptizing entire nations in repentance for sins. 


"Christianity is not a system that will be tried and found insufficient, but it will be a system that is left untried."  Something like that.  Few of us are willing to be this radical.  Is it any wonder, then, that few of us are operating in this power?  We give God only small pieces of our lives, so we shouldn't be surprised when God only does small things through us.


This passage also tells us that people want to be healed and forgiven.  They want this.  No one wants to live life feeling guilty or ashamed of all they have done.  They want to be clean, to be free, to be forgiven.  Many people recognize they are messing up their lives, and they want a new way.  They eagerly cling to a baptism into a new way of life, if it is preached clearly to them.  We don't have to wrestle people into wanting this; the desire is there.  They are made to worship Jesus.  But there is a lot we have to clear away, including misconceptions, lies, ignorance, the desire to be gods ourselves, emotional attachments to sinful things, etc.  That's where the battle lies.  When people see God truly, they want Him (providing that their sins aren't killing them, like Isaiah 6). 




What glory of God is this passage revealing? 


He really knows all of time, to be able to prophesy all these things through prophets centuries and millennia ahead of time.  This is a God who speaks, who lets us know what He is doing, and who announces His coming clearly, so that we cannot have any excuse for missing Him.


God really does care about our lives, both about us individually and about how we live our lives.  Otherwise He would never ask us to repent, to live life as He intended it to be lived.


It also means that God designed our lives for a purpose, for glory.  There are things God designed us to do, purposes for which He created us, and He calls us to repent of the things that are holding us back from them.  He calls us to give up everything that's keeping us back from Him, from the enjoying the life of pure love and joy that He offers freely.  This is a tremendously good God!


And God is coming to us.  Jesus doesn't leave us alone, trying to struggle our way to Him, having no choice but to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  He comes to us and does the work for us.  He meets us where we are and gives us new life in Him, empowering us with His Spirit.  He doesn't leave us to puzzle and philosophize and guess at who He is; instead, He reveals Himself to us through Scripture, through Old Testament prophecy and New Testament fulfillment.  Ultimately, He reveals Himself through coming down from Heaven and living as a flesh-and-blood human, who lives the perfect life, fulfilling the Law, and then attributing that life to us through His death and bodily Resurrection.  How awesome is that?

F1|25t P057!!! (That's "First Post," for those of you who don't read l33t).

Greetings!  


So this is a blog.  It's called The Imperfect Church Blog.  There's a reason for that.


But I'm not quite ready to reveal what that reason is just yet.  I assure you, when I talk about it, it will be filled with great wonder and glory, and will surely become one of the most talked-about blog posts since some guy named Steve incorrectly used a punctuation mark in a blog post and all the grammar sticklers descended on him in a rage of perfectly-typed English.


Still, I'll let you in on a little bit of what this blog will be about.  I'll post on a lot of theological topics, but for the most part, I'll approach it all exegetically.  Meaning that I'll post up a passage from Scripture and just talk about it, verse-by-verse.  Generally, I'll do this by asking five questions of each passage:


1)  What did this passage mean to its original audience?  (This can include both the people in the narratives/letters/etc., and the audience the author wrote the piece of literature to.  For example, in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 1, this question could talk about John the Baptist and the people he baptized, as well as the audience who read the first draft of the Gospel after Mark penned it around 60 A.D.)


2)  What does this passage mean for us, today?  (Sometimes it means exactly the same thing; sometimes we have to account for all the cultural and temporal distance.  For example, how does "do not steal" apply to a world of digital content, where downloading is simply making a copy, instead of removing the original item from someone's possession?)


3)  What does this passage call us to do?  (Despite some people insisting that church is only a matter of the heart, Scripture actually does call us to do things, from time to time).


4)  What does this passage tell us about ourselves?  (Scripture is the only perfect book that has ever been written.  As such, it perfectly and accurately describes the human condition in its many books.  So what is it telling us about ourselves in each passage?)


5)  What glory of God is this passage revealing?  (Every page of Scripture is about Jesus.  It is written to His glory; He is the main character.  So what is this passage uniquely contributing to this revelation?)


I'll post later today on Mark 1:1-8, where I simply ask these five questions and wrestle with the text until it gives me the answers.  


For the boring purposes of copyright issues: everything I write in these posts are my own thoughts, unless I indicate otherwise.  Given that I've attended Wheaton College for a major in Bible in Theology, then Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for a Master of Divinity degree, I've got a lot of sources pouring ideas into my head.  As such, it's possible I may unintentionally refer to someone else's ideas.  I will endeavor my hardest to avoid this, and I'll cite whenever I take a thought or quote from someone else.  But for the most part, the content of these posts is coming just from little ol' me.  Which is to say, it's all the result of the gifts God gave me, so all glory should go to Him for anything good that I write.  And as for anything wrong... well, I'm still an imperfect person, and this is an imperfect blog.  So if you see anything imperfect, just let it spark a longing in your heart for the New Heavens and New Earth, when all imperfection fades away and we are left with the perfect beauty of God dwelling with us.