“Tag -- You’re It!" Mark 1:14-35
Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- January 15, 2006
Once, when a stubborn disputer seemed unconvinced with his arguments, Abraham Lincoln said, "Well, let's see how many legs has a cow?" "Four, of course," came the reply disgustedly. "That's right," agreed Lincoln. "Now suppose you call the cow's tail a leg; how many legs would the cow have?" "Why, five, of course," was the confident reply.
"Now, that's where you're wrong," said Lincoln. "Calling a cow's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg."
Mark 1:14-35
14Later on, after John was arrested by Herod Antipas, Jesus went to Galilee to preach God’s Good News. 15“At last the time has come!” he announced. “The Kingdom of God is near! Turn from your sins and believe this Good News!”
16One day as Jesus was walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simonand his brother, Andrew, fishing with a net, for they were commercial fishermen. 17Jesus called out to them, “Come, be my disciples, and I will show you how to fish for people!” 18And they left their nets at once and went with him.
19A little farther up the shore Jesus saw Zebedee’s sons, James and John, in a boat mending their nets. 20He called them, too, and immediately they left their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired men and went with him.
21Jesus and his companions went to the town of Capernaum, and every Sabbath day he went into the synagogue and taught the people. 22They were amazed at his teaching, for he taught as one who had real authority—quite unlike the teachers of religious law.
23A man possessed by an evil spirit was in the synagogue, 24and he began shouting, “Why are you bothering us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One sent from God!”
25Jesus cut him short. “Be silent! Come out of the man.” 26At that, the evil spirit screamed and threw the man into a convulsion, but then he left him.
27Amazement gripped the audience, and they began to discuss what had happened. “What sort of new teaching is this?” they asked excitedly. “It has such authority! Even evil spirits obey his orders!” 28The news of what he had done spread quickly through that entire area of Galilee.
29After Jesus and his disciples left the synagogue, they went over to Simon and Andrew’s home, and James and John were with them. 30Simon’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with a high fever. They told Jesus about her right away. 31He went to her bedside, and as he took her by the hand and helped her to sit up, the fever suddenly left, and she got up and prepared a meal for them.
32That evening at sunset, many sick and demon-possessed people were brought to Jesus. 33And a huge crowd of people from all over Capernaum gathered outside the door to watch. 34So Jesus healed great numbers of sick people who had many different kinds of diseases, and he ordered many demons to come out of their victims. But because they knew who he was, he refused to allow the demons to speak.
35The next morning Jesus awoke long before daybreak and went out alone into the wilderness to pray. 36Later Simon and the others went out to find him. 37They said, “Everyone is asking for you.”
45But as the man went on his way, he spread the news, telling everyone what had happened to him. As a result, such crowds soon surrounded Jesus that he couldn’t enter a town anywhere publicly. He had to stay out in the secluded places, and people from everywhere came to him there.
A woman's red station wagon was crushed by an elephant at a circus. The owners of the animal apologized, explaining that the animal, for some reason, simply liked to sit on red cars. In spite of the damage, the woman's car was still drivable. But on the way to the garage she was stopped short by an accident involving two other cars just ahead of her. When the ambulance arrived a few minutes later the attendants took one look at her car, then ran over to assist her.
"Oh, I wasn't involved in this accident," she explained. "An elephant sat on my car." The ambulance attendants quickly bundled her off to the hospital for possible shock and head injuries, despite the lady's vehement protests. Sometimes what we see is not reality. Truth sometimes escapes us.
Amy Carter brought an assignment home one Friday night while her father was still President. Stumped by a question on the Industrial Revolution, Amy sought help from her mother. Rosalynn was also fogged by the question and, in turn, asked an aide to seek clarification from the Labor Department. A "rush" was placed on the request since the assignment was due Monday. Thinking the question was a serious request from the Prez himself, a Labor Department official immediately cranked up the government computer and kept a full team of technicians and programmers working overtime all weekend...at a reported cost of several hundred thousand dollars. The massive computer printout was finally delivered by truck to the White House on Sunday afternoon and Amy showed up in class with the official answer the following day. But her history teacher was not impressed. When Amy's paper was returned, it was marked with a big red "C." As John the Baptist was arrested and imprisoned, Jesus moved from Judea into Galilee, the district of Herod. Herod was the one who had imprisoned John. So it is that Jesus moves into the danger zone proclaiming the Gospel of God and calling men to repent.
That tells us something important: men can silence the voice of a prophet, but they cannot hinder the Word of God.
Jesus did not come to accuse men before God. He said, “Think not that I will accuse you. There is one that accuseth you, even Moses.” God did not send him into the world to condemn the world. He came that the world might be saved through him.
He came preaching good news. The good news of God was his message., he came calling men to repentance.
Notice if you will, Like John, the Baptist he came preaching that men should repent. We have already seen that John the Baptist came preaching repentance. What did we decide that it meant to repent? We often describe repentance as a 180 degree turn around. If you are going this way, turn completely around and go the opposite way. Let me add a dimension to your thinking of repentance. Literally, the word repent means “Think again!” Change your mind!” What is in view here is a change of your conceptions. Our conceptions are what determine our conduct. And Conduct issues in character. Therefore, think things over again. Think again about the Good News God has given you. Think again about the Kingdom of God.
Repentance is essential in the establishment of the Kingdom of God. People must rethink things if they are to enter the Kingdom of God. That is the first message of our text today.
The second thing we must note is that Jesus also preached: “Believe in the Gospel”.
Jesus’ message was not to believe the gospel. No, it was to believe in the gospel. There are a great many people who believe the gospel but do not believe in it. His appeal to us is that we will accept the gospel as an intellectually accurate statement, and to rest in it. His call is for us to let our hearts find rest, or ease in the gospel. He will tell the people: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except by me.”
His message is that the Kingdom of God is at hand. It is available to men and women. And so we must repent…think again of the Kingdom of God, readjust our lives by setting them in true relationship with that Kingdom and then to rest in the gospel. What we choose to become is possible for us because of Jesus Christ and all he has done for us.
This is the groundwork we must lay as we prepare to consider the life of Jesus, and the ministry of this anointed Servant of God.
While Mark makes no reference to it, we find that almost a year previous to this time Jesus went into Galilee to Nazareth. This is his home town. This is the place where he is known, after a fashion. People know him as Jesus, the carpenter. They know his family and as we noted last week, he is just an ordinary, working man. He went to worship in the synagogue there on the Sabbath. Jews who could not be in Jerusalem on the Sabbath would go to the synagogue and essentially worship in the same manner that they would have in Jerusalem. He took up the scroll on that day and read from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He anointed me.” He spoke words of grace and truth and is such a manner that they were filled with wonder. And yet leading him to the top of a hill, they tried to murder him. Truth is not always acceptable!
As our text for today begins, Jesus makes his way to Capernaum, passing by the seashore. As he passes the boats of the fisher-folk, he calls four men to be his followers, disciples: Simon and Andrew, James and John. As there has been a passage of approximately a year that has gone unrecorded in our text, Jesus had already met these men almost a year earlier. They had traveled with him for a while and then had gone back to their fishing. Now he calls them again “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.” And they went with him to Capernaum.
On their first Sabbath in Capernaum, Jesus went to the synagogue (1:21-25) in the morning. Imagine if you will how they would have worshipped there: The liturgy, the reading of the Benedictions, the chanting of the hallelujahs, the reading of the Torah or Law appointed for the day and then the reading from the Prophets.
Finally, Jesus taught them. While we don’t have a record of what he said, we do know that he was preaching the gospel of God and repentance wherever he went. The Kingdom is near and because of that they needed to believe in the Gospel.
Suddenly, the service in the synagogue was interrupted by a man who was demon possessed. The man cried out: “What is there to us and to Thee? Have you come to destroy us?” Jesus turned to the man and literally said, “Be muzzled, and come out of him.” And the evil spirit came out of the man.
The men in the synagogue were amazed and wondered if this were a new teaching. This is new in the sense of a superior advancement, as something new and different than the old.
In the afternoon, Jesus entered the house of Peter to find his mother-in-law sick with a fever. He went to her, took her hand and raised her up and the fever left her.
Word of the events of the morning and afternoon spread like wild fire through out Capernaum and multitudes of people gathered carrying their sick to him and bringing people there who were demon possessed. Jesus went out and healed many,
Early the next morning, he went out alone to pray.
These are the incidents spoken of in our text today.
As he comes into Capernaum, we see him facing his work. And we see him calling his disciples. He had come to his own people in Nazareth and his own people rejected him. They would have nothing to do with him. We know his response to that was that a prophet is without honor in his own country. And yet Jesus desires the company of men in the work God has given him. So he says to Simon and Andrew, James and John, Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men. The master passion of his heart is the establishment of the Kingdom of God and nothing interfered with it except men. But if the Kingdom is to be established, man must not be destroyed. Jesus came to save men not to destroy them. He needed help and he called these men to be his disciples.
Here we have Simon, a man who is impulsive, wayward, lacking in the principle that masters passion and makes it strong.
Andrew was his first Judean disciple and brother to Simon.
James and John were brothers, but quite different. One was a dreamer and the other was quiet and retiring.
He told them they would become fishers of men. Obviously, Jesus used the expression with them because they were actually fishermen. To others he spoke of them as laborers, needed because the harvest fields were ripe unto harvest.
The point of this is that He called men to follow him and to use the capacities they had for service and ministry.
Jesus is seen asking for comradeship and when men are willing he is able to fit them for the very service to which he calls them.
You and I are suited for some kind of ministry because of the spiritual gifts the Holy Spirit has given us. Jesus continues to call us to follow him, to use what we have been given for the sake of the Gospel and the Kingdom of God.
An interesting fact is true about synagogues. When they were built they usually faced west not east. This was to symbolically teach the people of Israel that when they worshipped they were not looking back to the place where their religion came from. They were looking toward the places their religion was supposed to reach. Judaism was always intended by God to be missionary in attitude.
What interests us when we consider the fact that Jesus went into the synagogues to worship, he also took the opportunity to preach about the Gospel and the Kingdom of God.
In Capernaum, after he had taught them and had performed the miracle of healing, the people were astonished by his authority. He taught with authority and not as the scribes did. Now, the scribes were the authoritative teachers among the Jews. They had the authority to teach the Law and to interpret it; to explain the Kingdom, to emphasize and insist upon the rule of God over Israel and how that rule was to be applied.
Now the contrast here is not between what He taught and what they taught. The contrast is between the effects or results of what he taught and what they taught.
When he taught them what He had to say is essentially found in the Old Testament Scriptures. So in what lay his authority? As he spoke to the people, he brought conviction that what he had to say was true. And stripped of all the things that hid the truth, the truth gripped men. This is the force of the absolute, unvarnished truth.
Think about it for a moment. What is the central criticism leveled at the words of Jesus? It is that they are impractical…His teaching is viewed as impractical. But there is no question as to their accuracy or their truth. And the hearts of men always respond to the truth. We may not like it but we know it when we hear it. Some of the things we hear Jesus say search our hearts and scorch us, and we may want to escape, but we know He is right.
His authority is in the actual words he spoke which have been miraculously preserved for us in our New Testament Scriptures. His authority arrests us even today, because it is the authority of absolute truth. And no matter how sinful or jaded men become, humanity hears and knows the Voice of the Word of God and recognizes its authority even today.
And then Jesus goes out early in the morning to pray. What is signified by this word for praying is not just an asking of something from God. No, it is a word that speaks of far more than asking. It suggests a going forward in desire to God, not for God’s gifts, but for God Himself. It is the word for true worship, the word that describes the soul’s moving out toward God, desiring Him and all He has to give.
And now we come to what I like to call the “So What?” part of our message:
1. Jesus still calls on people to “think again” about the Good News and the Kingdom of God. Think again about God’s offer of salvation, forgiveness and restoration to righteousness. The Kingdom of God is nearer now than it was then! And the kingdoms of this world offer nothing but death and destruction.
2. Jesus still needs help in reaching the world with the Good News. He continues to call men and women to be fishers of men, or laborers in the harvest field.
a. Why? Because the harvest fields are riper than ever and ready to be harvested
b. Will we help him?
c. Will we be his disciples?
A fable is told of Jesus being met in Heaven by the angels when he ascended to the Father. In this story they were all excited about what had happened and the fact that Jesus had come back. They asked him to tell them about the little band of followers left on earth and how they were to reach the world with the gospel. After he had explained it to them, one of the angels asked Jesus: “But, what if they fail?” Jesus answered: “I have no other plan.” He still needs help. He has no other Plan. And Tag You Are It!
--Dennis Gleason
