Mark 1:1-15 "The Gospel Message of Christ"

           Mark’s Gospel begins unlike the other three Gospels—Matthew, Luke and John. John begins with a theological discourse about who Jesus is. Matthew and Luke both present narratives about Jesus’ pre-birth and birth and genealogies of the line of Jesus. However, Mark is concerned about naming Jesus as the suffering servant therefore he doesn’t take time to explain the birth or baptisms and temptations; he cuts right to the chase. Mark’s Gospel is often known as the “action” Gospel because of the constant movement; the repetition of the word “immediately” and how he just wants to get the cross of Christ presenting Jesus as the suffering servant. Therefore, as Jesus heads into Galilee to preach His first sermon; as these words come out of His mouth, He is a dead man. Everyone was expecting a Messiah, but no one was expecting Him in this way.

            Last week we learned from Paul about the content, the delivery and the purpose of his preaching while he was in Corinth. This was also the content, the delivery and purpose that we should have today in our preaching that we all do to all people.  

            However, the other aspects of the Gospel which we have been studying are included in this; just as others have seen overlap as well. Jesus’ message was God entering the world in a unique and glorious fashion to show His power and wisdom to all men. The message which Jesus preached was about converting to Christianity by repentance and believing. If you recall; there are only two responses to the preaching of the Gospel—either you can accept it or you can deny it. And when a person believes by faith he or she is receiving the righteousness and atonement of sin that God offered as a remedy for humanities universal need. And when people receive this remedy; they do so with repentance of their sin and placing their faith in God which brings them joy because ultimately it is displaying the power of God in their life. And lastly, Jesus preached this message to all He came into contact with—there was no discriminating.

            All of these aspects of the Gospel overlap and are included in one another; but we can specifically see them in this passage by the four things that Jesus preached. This also gives us insights in regards to our response to the Gospel message being preached.

            The first thing that Jesus preached to all He came into contact with was that “the time has come.” This means that the time is fulfilled. At the right time, the right date, the right year, everything was perfectly fulfilled for the time to be correct for Him to enter the world and begin His ministry on earth by preaching the good news of God.

It is now that prophecies have been fulfilled; it is now that the prophets were correct in their predictions; and it was now the time which all the Old Testament persons were waiting for; and Jesus said that this time was now.

            In the Old testament, people hoped for a day when God would not only be their sovereign King in heaven controlling the affairs of sinful men; but would stand forth in glory and save His people from sin and misery and defeat their enemies and establish righteousness and peace and set up a throne on earth to reign in more of an immediate way. 

            And that time is now Jesus as Jesus preached, “The time has come”.  The time has been fulfilled to the fullest that it could be. You see, Jesus Christ is the focal point of all of history. Everything that happened in the past pointed to Jesus Christ and every thing that has happened after Jesus or will happen comes from Jesus and through Jesus. Everything that has happened on the earth and everything that will happen is centered around Jesus Christ.

            The time had come for God to break into the world like never before to reveal His glory in a personal way to comfort His people and to defeat their enemies. And this is what Jesus Christ did—He revealed the glory of God in a personal way by comforting people and defeating their enemies.

            Jesus was showing the world that the time was now that many had been anticipating for the Messiah to come and save the world. Because everyone was expecting the Messiah; however, no one expected the Messiah to come in this way and do the things that Jesus did. Therefore, Jesus’ message was that the time was now, the time was correct and the time was fulfilled for this to happen.

            And the anticipation of this Messiah was that He would come and overthrow the government; therefore showing that He was only a political power ready to reign on the throne. Therefore the second part of what Jesus preached was, “the Kingdom of God is near.” And when talking about the Kingdom of God, this can be a very confusing concept to grasp. Questions arise such as: what is the Kingdom of God? Where is the Kingdom of God? Is it fully here yet? If it isn’t fully here, then when will it be?

            These are all great questions. And first, we can see through Jesus’ teachings on parables that the Kingdom of God refers to His saving reign, not to His total providence over all things. God is in control over the whole entire world; however the Kingdom is in the hearts of those who acknowledge Him as the only King.

            And the Kingdom of God is fulfilled partially now and will be fully here at the second coming of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we are in a period of what many call the “already but not yet”. Meaning, we have glimpses of the Kingdom now, but the full and glorious Kingdom is not fully here yet. However, it is coming!

            So if the Kingdom is partially here, then what does that mean? What part is here and what part isn’t here yet?

            Well, Jesus was the embodiment of the Kingdom and has ushered it in when He was born as a little baby in a manger. But this tension of having the Kingdom here, but not fully can be seen in many Scripture passages:

• In 1 Peter and Romans we are taught that we know that Christ has already purchased our healing, but we still groan with sickness

• In 1 John and 1 Corinthians we are taught that we have already passed from death to life, but we still die

• In Ephesians and Galatians we are taught that we already have the sanctifying Spirit as a down payment of our inheritance in heaven, but the war between flesh and Spirit goes on every day.

• In Romans and Matthew we are taught that we have already been forgiven all sin in Christ, but we must go on every day asking for the forgiveness of our sin

• In Philippians and Romans we learn that we already have our citizenship in the Kingdom of God, but for now we must submit in measure to the rulers of the world

You see, there is a tension here that we are living in. We have a taste of what the Kingdom of God is and the things that will happen in it; but we do not have the full fledged whole Kingdom of God yet. But it is coming.

And we can read in Scripture about Jesus’ ministry that the Kingdom overcomes certain things and brings us other things, such as:

·        The Kingdom overcomes physical misery and brings healing

·        The Kingdom overcomes death and brings resurrection

·        The Kingdom overcomes demonic oppression and brings deliverance

·        The Kingdom overcomes rebellion and brings conversion

·        The Kingdom overcomes condemnation and brings forgiveness

·        The Kingdom overcomes wrongdoing and brings righteousness

·        The Kingdom overcomes sadness and brings joy

·        The Kingdom overcomes aimless futility and brings purposeful ministry.

Jesus demonstrated that the Kingdom of God was here and would overcome certain things and bring better things in which He demonstrated this in however we should not assume that our demonstration of the Kingdom today and Jesus’ demonstration of the Kingdom in His ministry will be the same.

            So there is a tension; and now we eagerly wait the 2^nd coming of Jesus Christ with great confidence in the hope that we have of this to come true and faith that this will actually take place.

            The third and fourth aspects of Jesus’ preaching let us know how we can enter into this Kingdom of God which is by “repenting” and “believing”; which ultimately happens when a person is converted to Christianity. Conversion is the human action done in response to what God has done for us—namely; softening our heart to hear the Gospel. And in conversion, there are two necessary elements: they are repenting and believing. They both are needed if there is going to be any value to conversion at all. These go hand in hand with each other. They are like a coin. You see, a coin has two sides—the heads and the tails side—and these two sides are what gives it value. And if a coin doesn’t have one of these two sides, then it isn’t worth anything—there is no value to it. Therefore, when learning about repentance; one must also learn about believing and vice-versa. But this morning, we are going to separate the two and hopefully we will see just how important these are as individual pieces; however, more importantly as a whole to see the full value of them.

            So Jesus mentions the word “repent” as part of His preaching. You see, when we are “dead in our sins” the Holy Spirit softens our hearts so that we can hear the Gospel message being presented to us. When we hear the Gospel; we have already learned that there are two responses which we can do: either accept it through faith or deny it. And when we accept it through faith; we need to repent of our past sins. However, in that sense it appears to mean that repentance is a one time act that is never to be done again. But in the Greek; it stresses the importance of repenting by being an aspect of our daily life which we are commanded to do. Repentance is the removal of any obstacles in our life that hinder our reception of the Messiah and His Kingdom. Let me say that again; repentance is the removal of any obstacles in our life that hinder our reception of the Messiah and His Kingdom.

            And the Heidelberg catechism emphasizes three aspects of what is included in repentance in QA 89 saying that we must be genuinely sorry for sin; we must hate it more and more and then we must run away from it. In other words, we must have some knowledge of our sin, we must be convicted of our sin and we must trust in the forgiveness of sin.

            First, we must have knowledge of our sin. This helps us realize that we have changed from the past life of sin that we used to live into the new creation that we are in Christ Jesus. Our knowledge of our sin will help us admit the sin that we need to confess before God because when we admit our sins; we are acknowledging that what the Bible says is true. We are to acknowledge the sins which we commit, not because God doesn’t know how we sinned; rather it is beneficial for us to know the sins we commit and be open and honest before our holy God. This helps us be genuinely sorry for the sin which we have committed.

            Secondly, we must be convicted of our sin; we must hate it more and more. We must not only be sorry and feel sorrowful for our sins, but we must hate sin and the act of sinning. Our feelings change toward sin; we used to love it, but now that we are in Christ, we must hate it more and more. This conviction is done by the Holy Spirit working in us. This can be an awfully painful process; but people of God, we know that in the end, we will be better off because of it. And we can praise God because of this!

            Thirdly, we must trust that we are forgiven by God of our sins when we confess them to Him. This is a change in purpose of life for we never used to desire to be forgiven, however now it is different for us. We can have forgiveness and we must trust in this forgiveness and that it remains true for us—that when we ask for forgiveness; we can have complete trust that our sins will be forgiven. Therefore, we no longer want to sin; rather we turn and run away from sin. And we do this every day continually until we die. We must continually repent because we are continual sinners. But repentance won’t allow us to see Christ; seeing Christ drives us to our knees in repentance.

            And with these three elements of repentance, having knowledge of sin, conviction of our sin and trusting in forgiveness; we can see that this is only one aspect of conversion. Because before we were converted we loved sin and living in sin and doing everything sinful. However, we have now changed and have made a 180 degree turn from sin and to God.

            The fourth element that Jesus preached to all those who heard is also the second element of conversion which is the command to “believe the good news.” After repenting of our sins, we must believe. And believe is another way of saying to have faith. And faith, if you remember from the first sermon I preached here on James 2; I mentioned there are three aspects of faith as well—knowledge, conviction and trust.

            The first is that of knowledge. We must have some sort of knowledge about who or what we are placing our faith in. This knowledge doesn’t have to be much as we learn from the thief of the cross; but as we continue on with our Christian life; the more knowledge we have about God and who He is and what He has done for us; this surely deepens and strengthens our faith in Him. It doesn’t have to be a lot; but it does have to be enough. And people often look to books outside the Bible to strengthen their faith; however, many don’t know what authors to trust and many don’t know what authors are good and what ones are bad. But you see, when we turn to God’s Word and read it; God reveals Himself to us about who He is; and He is perfect; therefore the authorship of His Word is perfect. We can trust what we read in this book and the knowledge that we learn from it.

            The second aspect of faith is that of conviction. You see, it isn’t enough to have just knowledge. We must believe the knowledge that we learn about God is true. For when we believe that it is true; our heart moves in the direction toward God and we are convicted of the beliefs to be true!

            The third aspect of faith is that of a trust. We must have a full fledge commitment to God. Simply knowing it is not enough; even the demons know about God and when convicted they shudder. However, when we know about God and are convicted we must place all our trust and faith in Him for what He has done for us—namely providing a remedy for our need.

            Therefore, knowledge, conviction and trust are apart of both repentance and faith. And we must have both of these elements to make up our whole conversion; for if they don’t then certainly it isn’t worth anything—just like a coin needs two sides of it to have any value. Repentance and believing is not only suggested by Jesus, rather they are commands of Jesus for us to do daily—daily repenting of our sins and daily acknowledging Him as the Lord and Savior of our life.

And these two things—repenting and faith or believing—are things that we must do daily. We must daily repent and daily believe. We must daily have knowledge of our sin and of God. We must daily be convicted of our sin and of who God is. We must daily trust in God for the forgiveness of sins and daily trust in God for who He says He is.

And notice what Jesus says to believe in; He commands us to believe the good news. Well, what was the good news that He was talking about? This good news was that the “time has come, the kingdom of God is near.” This was the good news; and this still is the good news.

            For there will be a day when the Lord Jesus will usher in the full Kingdom when He comes back in all His glory; the dead will rise; the devil will be defeated once and for all; there will be no more pain, crying or death; there will be a new heaven and new earth; there will be eternity spent with our heavenly Father—only if we repent and believe in the good news.

            For if we only believe and don’t repent then we won’t enter into this Kingdom. And if we only repent and believe; then we won’t enter this Kingdom. Therefore, both are commanded to us as a daily practice as well as a necessary element for entering the Kingdom of God. And remember, repentance and believing are the human responses to God’s working in our hearts after we hear the Gospel presented to us. These are done in response to what God has done for us; we can only do these things because of what God has done for us.

You see, the Gospel is clearly for all of us and it demands a response from all of us. And the only logical response from us is through repenting of our sin and turning to God and placing our complete faith in God.