Never-Ending Adventure Sermon I: Jesus Calls Us Series

THE CHRISTIAN’S NEVER-ENDING ADVENTURE

Jesus Calls Us - Mark 1:14-20

During your lifetime and mine on this earth, few and far between have been those adventures we wished would never end . . .

And yet, as disciples of Christ our everlasting Lord, we have been loved with an everlasting love, and called to an everlasting joy because we have been saved with an everlasting salvation - gifted to us by God our Father who is from everlasting to everlasting!

A never-ending adventure is what Jesus Christ promised to all who accept his invitation, “Come, follow me”; and by his death and resurrection, the Son of God guaranteed fulfillment of that promise.

A never-ending adventure – one which begins in the here and now, and continues in the hereafter – is our Lord’s promise to “whosoever believeth in him”. And the great thing about the Good News is: Whosoever means me!

“I am happy today, the sun shines bright, the clouds have been rolled away, for my Savior said, ‘whosoever will’ may come with Him to stay.”

Our never-ending adventure with Christ begins with each of us in the same way it began with each of those disciples who encountered him in the flesh. Jesus “called” them . . . Jesus calls you and me . . . Jesus calls anyone who is willing to give his life for the Cause of Christ. “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it.”

Jesus called you and me out of sin into salvation. We responded to his call when we repented of sin, accepted him as Savior, and confessed him as Lord. In responding to his call, we were “born again” (spiritually).

By virtue of our second birth, we “lost” our “bent” toward sinning . . . and we gained a second nature – a new “bent” toward living a Christ-centered life in a self-centered world. “The love of Christ constrains us!”

We were baptized to symbolize death to ‘our old nature” bent toward sinning, and resurrection to “our new nature” bent toward Christ-centered living.

Today, knowing whom we have believed and where we are headed, none of us would exchange our never-ending adventure with Christ for anything this world has to offer. Why? Jesus changed everything!

No one I know (or know of) questions the influence of Jesus on culture and history. Yet, for the disciple of Christ, he is so much more. He is God’s supreme revelation of himself - Son of God sent to bring God’s “good news to all people”.

To tell His story was the purpose of the Apostle Peter’s “son in the faith” Mark in writing the Gospel According to Mark: “This is the story of how Jesus Christ, the Son of God, brought the good news to men” (Mark 1:1).

Mark picks up the gospel story 30 years after the birth of Christ – telling us how John the Baptist set the stage for Jesus’ ministry by going around the country preaching repentance, and baptizing those who repented (Mark 1:2-8).

Mark was such an astute writer – having sat at the feet of Peter . . . spent a lot of time with his uncle Barnabas . . . personal friend Timothy . . . served with the Apostle Paul and spoken of by him as “a most useful servant to me”.

Why did Mark begin his gospel with the preaching of John the Baptist? He wanted folks to understand that prophecy was being fulfilled before their very eyes, that they were witnessing history in the making - the transition of preaching power from the one who prepared the way to the one who is the Way.

Having told briefly about the events that paved the way for Jesus to launch his ministry on earth, Mark then tells how Jesus set it in motion – Mark 1:14-15 . . .

How significant that Jesus began his ministry after John’s imprisonment but away from Jerusalem - in the farming and fishing regions of Galilee!

Jesus took up where cousin John left off – going into out-of-the-way places, preaching repentance as the first step in establishing God’s kingdom . . . recruiting the repentant from among ordinary folks engaged in their ordinary tasks to become his extraordinary disciples.

Don’t you know that our Lord’s strategy of striking out on his own without the advice and consent of the Jerusalem hierarchy rubbed them the wrong way!

Those “powers that be” were still seething with anger from John preaching that one mightier than they was on the way, but now they were besides themselves; how dare this nobody from Nazareth proclaim a new kingdom to be established by farmers and fishermen!

Did Jesus not realize that, for that very reason, his cousin John had been arrested and imprisoned, later to be executed!