Mark 2 - Tell The Good News

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. [15] "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"

[16] 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. [17] "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." [18] At once they left their nets and followed him.

[19] When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. [20] Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

I’ve heard a lot of good news in my life. There was the time when I learned I had been accepted into the advanced ROTC program at the University of Maryland, which opened the door for me to become an Air Force officer. Four years later I got the news that I had been accepted to Fuller Seminary, leading me into a career in the ministry. I was pretty sure of the answer before I asked the question, but when Barbie said “yes” to my request to marry me, that was one of the best pieces of news I ever heard. I remember waiting outside the delivery room of the Adventist hospital in Glendale, California, and getting the awesome news that Heather had been born! Three and a half years later, Todd was born. In 1978, I candidated at First Presbyterian Church here in Loveland. After I had preached, Jim and Heather Brown took me to the Heartland Café for something to drink while the congregation voted on whether to call me. What fantastic news it was when one of the men came down the street to say that they had voted unanimously to call me as their pastor. Barbie and I got good news—finally, after two long years of waiting—that our daughter and her husband had been successful in adopting Kasey, and they were on their way home. The news came in an email that said, “Clark, party of three, arriving in Los Angeles, at such and such a time.”

I’ve heard a lot of good news, but the best news I ever heard was that God loved me unconditionally and I could have a real relationship with Him. It is no accident that the word “gospel” means “good news”. This is God’s good news for the entire world. It’s the news that God is reconciled to us, that we can be friends of God, that we can live our lives in fellowship with our Maker and Savior, and that we can live with Him forever. When Jesus started His public ministry, Mark 1:14 tells us, “[He] went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. [15] ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’”

We use this term all the time; e.g. in the Lord’s prayer, we pray, “Thy Kingdom come.” What does it mean? The kingdom of God is not a geographical location, not a city or a country, but the sovereign rule and reign of God. It consists of all those people who have committed their lives to Jesus Christ as King, the people who have bowed their knee to King Jesus, who accept Him as their Lord and Savior. It is the people in whom the active rule and reign of Jesus is a reality. How can you be in the Kingdom if Jesus is not your King?

In Mark’s gospel, he records Jesus explaining some things about this kingdom; let’s look at a few of those briefly.

The kingdom of God is near, it is at hand, it has approached you, Jesus says, because I, the King, am here. In this diagram[1], the kingdom of God moves in a higher dimension than this age, in what the New Testament calls the spiritual realm. The kingdom was active in Old Testament times (dotted arrows), breaking into human history in events like the Exodus, and the prophets, and the destruction of Israel, which was the judgment of God. But the kingdom has come most fully (so far) in the person of the King, Jesus Christ. And now, we live sort of between the times in two different ways. We live chronologically between the first coming of Christ, and His return (the vertical solid lines). We don’t know how long this period will last, but we know we are to be ready for His return at any time. Secondly, we also live between This Age and the New Age, the Age to Come, that was brought to earth by Christ, as represented by the horizontal solid lines. The kingdom of God is here, now, and it is possible to be a part of it. But we still live in This Age, because the kingdom is not fully here. Sin and evil still exist (as we were reminded so painfully last week with the massacre at Virginia Tech[2]); many do not yet acknowledge Jesus as their King; we still have to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” One day, Jesus will return, and the two “ages” will be united into one under His sovereign rule.

In the meantime, Jesus has some words for us on how we can enter the kingdom of God now.

Mark 1:15, "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!" Repent means to change your mind, to come to that place where you realize you are not acceptable to God, that you are in deep trouble because of that, and you commit yourself to meaningful change. There is a line in the famous song, Amazing Grace, that says, “’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.” It takes God’s grace for us to realize the danger we are in because of our sin—that we are in danger of the wrath of God, of being condemned—damned, the word is—because of our rebellion against the King of the universe. When we feel the precariousness of our position, when we recognize the danger we are in, then we will truly repent of our sin. If Jesus were to come into northern Colorado preaching, like He did into Galilee, there is no doubt that He would call us to give up our materialism, to renounce our hedonistic search for pleasure, to repent of our lying and gossip and sensuality, to pay more attention to the plight of the poor among us. The gospel message always calls people to change their ways, as we saw in John the Baptist last week: he was preparing the way for Jesus by calling the people to repent and bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance.

The other side of that coin is that we have to believe the good news that Jesus has come to open the way into a real relationship with God, and trust what He did on the cross to make us acceptable to God. With repentance comes the realization that we will never be good enough for God on our own, and that leads us to the only other way—to put our trust in Christ alone.

In Mark 10:14-15 Jesus gives another image for how we can enter the kingdom of God: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. [15] I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." The kingdom of God is His rule, His reign, His authority in the lives of people. Therefore, to enter it, we must have the same simple trust in God that little children have with the adults in their lives. The great problem for most adults is that they think they know more than they do. They think they understand how the universe works, what God would and would not do or say, and they think that they are smarter than He is. As a result, they are often reluctant to submit their wills to Him, and follow His leadership, His Lordship in their lives. Little children, on the other hand, implicitly trust the adults in their lives to be wiser than they are, and they are therefore much more willing to do what they are told. That’s the attitude we have to have if we are to enter the kingdom (the rule, the reign) of God. He’s our heavenly Father, and we need to submit to Him, trust Him, and follow Him.

Jesus also said that it is hard for rich people to enter the kingdom of God. At the conclusion of His encounter with the rich young ruler, Jesus said, Mark 10:25, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” That’s because rich people tend to trust their wealth to get them through life, rather than trusting God. Again, we have to submit to King Jesus’ rule in our lives, and trust Him, rather than ourselves and our own resources.

So the kingdom has come in the person of Jesus, the King, and we are invited, called to enter it. But to do so, we have to trust Him, rather than ourselves, and when we are truly in the kingdom, we will change our ways to please our King.

So this was Jesus’ message as He started preaching in Galilee. But it wasn’t long before He called some others to help him.

Mark 1:16, “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. [17] ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’” Jesus came proclaiming the good news of God, and then He called His first disciples with the promise that He would make them fishers of men, i.e. they would continue His ministry of proclaiming the good news. The root word translated “proclaim” in the NIV (kerusso) means to announce, to declare, to herald something; so it is a verbal activity. You can’t proclaim the gospel without talking to people (unless you are a very skillful pantomime, like we train the teens to be on mission trips!)

But how many ways are there to tell the good news? Preaching a sermon may be the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the word “proclaim” or “preach”, and that certainly qualifies. But you can tell the good news over coffee, or as you ride to a business appointment with someone, or in between holes of golf. Another time I’ll talk about the importance of living a life that is consistent with the gospel, but here we see that it takes words; we are going to have to speak (or write).

The reason for that is that the proclamation of the good news is part of God’s plan for saving people. He’s the one who saves, and He could, if He chose, simply command people and they would suddenly turn to Christ. But He has chosen to use us in the process.

The story is told of how Jesus returned to heaven after the resurrection, and was welcomed by a tremendous victory celebration. When all the shouting and praising and singing died down, the archangel Gabriel asked Jesus, “Lord, what happens next?”

Jesus said, “I intend for people all over the world to hear the good news of what I have done, and turn to me in faith.”

“I have left the message in the hands of a dozen or so men. I am trusting them to spread it everywhere.”

Somewhat surprised, Gabriel exclaimed, “Twelve men!? What if they fail? What’s your backup plan?”

We might think that was risky on His part, but that’s how He has set it up. There are about 500 people in our church; what if we were the only believers on earth, and Jesus had left that responsibility in our hands?

Paul says in Romans 10:13-15, “‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ [14] How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? [15] And how can they preach unless they are sent? …17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word (about) Christ.” It is not enough to simply live a good life and hope people will catch on. There are plenty of good people in Loveland; what makes your life any different? We need to find ways to talk about what motivates us, about our love for the Lord, about the ways He has made a difference in our lives, about what He did on the cross, about His resurrection.

And we need to do that whenever God gives us an opportunity. 2 Tim. 4:2, “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season”—i.e. when it is convenient and when it is not. What do you think would be the result if you made this deal with the Lord: “Lord, I will speak up and talk about you every time I sense that you are opening the door for me to share something about you, whether it is convenient or not, whether I feel comfortable about it or not, but I won’t speak unless I sense that opportunity. And I will pray every day that you will open the doors and help me see them opening.” What do you think would happen? Do you think you would speak up more often, or less often, than you do now? I think we’d all speak up much more often, because I’m convinced we miss lots of opportunities simply because we are not looking for them. If we make this a matter of daily prayer, and go into our day looking for open doors, I think we’ll be amazed at the opportunities God gives us to speak.

But we have to be prepared. Be prepared in season and out of season. How do you do that? It starts with prayer, that God would show us the opportunities He is giving us. Then we need to be able to share very concisely, in 2 minutes or less, our own story of how Christ has made a difference in our life. Once we’ve written it out and practiced it a few times, it’s pretty easy to remember, because it’s our story. Then we need to learn the main points of the good news and practice saying them.

When I was much younger, I developed an explanation of the gospel that started in Genesis and took about an hour! Needless to say, I didn’t have many opportunities to share that with people. So here’s the shortest version of the gospel I know, from Bill Hybels: “Do v. Done.” Virtually every other religion in the world requires you to do something in order to get right with God, go to heaven/paradise/nirvana—whatever they call it. The good news of the gospel is that it has already been done for you by Jesus. He lived the perfect life you could not; and He died to take the punishment you deserve for your sins. There is nothing you have to do to get right with God; it’s all been done for you. Just trust Him.

There’s more to say about it, of course, but this is the heart of the gospel, and we need to tell people about it.

Because we associate mostly with other Christians, and because most of us have been in the church a long time, we underestimate what is involved in getting people to put their faith in Christ. We read about Jesus preaching the good news of the kingdom, and how large crowds followed Him everywhere, and we may be tempted to think that all of those people were converted the first time they heard Him. But consider the disciples, the people who were the closest to Him, and who heard Him preach certainly hundreds of times. They were committed to Him, but they still didn’t understand what kind of Messiah and Savior He was until after the resurrection. At the end of Jesus’ life there were at most 120 committed followers, out of thousands who had heard Him.

So we shouldn’t think that the first time someone hears the good news they are going to understand it all, and embrace it all, and give their lives to Christ on the spot. A secular person, who has little or no church background, whose only information about Christ and Christianity comes from movies and TV shows, is going to have to turn their world view around 180⁰. That is often harder than we think for folks, because they haven’t lived with these concepts all their lives like we have. It requires many times of hearing it, lots of explaining, lots of help in thinking it through. I had an opportunity to do that with a friend one time, who was interested in knowing more about Christianity. I explained the gospel to him; I shared illustrations; I quoted Scripture. We studied the entire gospel of John together, and we studied several other books of the New Testament before he could repeat back to me the message of the gospel; it was just that foreign to him. He had to unlearn a lot of what he thought he knew about the Bible, and get past a lot of misconceptions about Christianity.

We know from the science of marketing that people change their minds slowly. The marketer’s mantra is repetition, repetition, repetition. One source I found said to aim for presenting the same message to people six times before you can expect them to buy your product. And as you do that, you need to vary the medium with which you communicate the message.[3] The same thing is true when we are explaining the good news of the Kingdom of God. It takes a lot of different ways of saying the same thing before it will make sense to some people. They have formed their opinions of Christ and Christianity from popular culture, which almost never gets it right, and they have to unlearn all of that before they can embrace the truth.

How long it takes for someone to really understand and believe the good news from the time we start talking with them depends on where they are in the process, or maybe another way to say it is, where we are in the chain of people and events that God is bringing into their lives to lead them to Christ.

If we meet them at the end of the process, and others have been talking to them, and they’ve been thinking about this for some time, then they might be ready right now. But if we are one of the first to broach the subject with them, it’s likely they will need much more time to think it through.

We really do not want people to just make a snap decision. Gary and Kim Rickard (Kent and Debbie’s son and wife) work with CCC in Hungary, and we recently got a newsletter from them talking about their ministry with a Korean couple there. The wife of this couple announced to Kim one day that she had become a Christian. This seemed a bit sudden to Kim, so she asked her about it and learned that the woman had decided that since Hungary was a Christian country, she should become a Christian, so she just declared herself a Christian! That’s not what we want! We want well-understood, thought-out commitments, not just verbal professions of faith or a hand raised in an evangelistic meeting.

After some years of putting on crusades all over the country, the Billy Graham organization did a poll of people who had signed decision cards. They discovered that a very low percentage of them actually went on to live a Christian life. The vast majority of them were like the people Jesus described in the parable of the soils, who were like rocky soil, or soil that was choked with weeds, so the new plant of the gospel didn’t grow up to maturity in their lives. As a result of that discovery, the Graham organization changed their approach to focus much more on working through local churches and training local Christians to be able to disciple the people who made decisions. They said, the Great Commission is to make disciples, not decisions, so we have to work hard to that end.

That’s why follow up is so important, to give people a chance to ask questions they maybe hadn’t thought of before. If you raised your hand on Easter Sunday indicating that you were trusting Christ that day, we’re offering a small group or a SS class to help you understand what you did. Contact Chris Perciante for more info.

Mark 1:17, "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." Which would you rather do—fish for fish, or fish for men? Which will have the greater impact on people’s lives? Which will have the longest lasting impact? Which will be the most fulfilling for you? We might ask that same question about almost any vocation, from agriculture to zoology, and the answer will be the same: helping people into the kingdom of God is far more important than anything else we can do.

But here’s the good news: even though Jesus called these four men (and then another eight later) to leave their jobs in order to follow Him in His ministry, the vast majority of believers since then have not been called to do that. Certainly in the first century, when the gospel was spreading so quickly, most of the people who were fishing for men did that while they were at their regular jobs.

In fact, God has actually put you in particular fishing holes at work, and in your neighborhood, and in the organizations you belong to in town. That’s where He wants you to fish for men and women. You don’t have to go on a mission trip to some far away place. I’m excited about all the short term mission trips we take as a church, but we really need to focus more heavily than we do on our local mission field, Loveland, Colorado. We need to think about our city and county in the same way that we expect our missionaries to think about their part of the world: How can we make a difference here? How can we gain a hearing for the gospel? How can we catch men and women for God?

This week, let’s be praying that God will open the door for us to talk about Him with people. Pray that you will have many opportunities to share the best news in the world with folks. We want our lives to count for something more than just this world; we want to make a difference for eternity in the lives of people we care about.

[1] George Eldon Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1974), p.69.

[2] 32 were killed by a student who then killed himself, 4/16/07.

[3] www.d2dfund.org/downloads/NCTC-10-12_Prstn_Final.ppt