Mark 1:14-15
Are You Ready for the King?
Woodlawn Baptist Church
September 30, 2007
Introduction
In Mark 1:14-15, the Bible says,
“Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.”
For four weeks now I have been preaching to you about things that matter. I said that preaching, church, giving and missions matters. During the next three weeks I intend to demonstrate that ministry, theology and Sunday School matter. But today – on this special 5th Sunday that we set aside every quarter to observe the Lord’s Supper – the pictorial ordinance we partake of to remind us of the sacrificial, atoning, redemptive death of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary for you and me…today I want to urge you to put your faith in Christ. Nothing I’m preaching in this two month span matters any if you die and go to hell.
I want you to be saved…to be born again; but more importantly God wants you to be saved. The Bible says that He is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance. It’s an amazing thing to me to consider the God of glory, sitting on His throne in heaven: the God of the universe who cannot be contained, who never had a beginning or end, who is holy and righteous and perfect in every way imaginable, wanting a relationship with the likes of you and me. What’s even more is that this God broke into time, broke into the depravity of our existence to live like us, yet above sin to die for our sins so you and I might have that relationship. It’s a great deal, the greatest deal on earth!
Every year when it’s time to sign up for girl’s softball I’m amazed that a city of 24,000 can’t field more than four or five girl’s softball teams. Assuming that half of the kids in town are girls, each division has about 600 girls to draw from. It can be expensive to play. Our first year in Denison we forked out over a $100 for one of our girls to play. The next year we found out that Denison offers a great deal. If your family is on reduced school lunches you don’t pay a dime. But they don’t tell anyone! They don’t advertise it – it’s as though they don’t want too many people taking them up on it!
That’s not how God presents the greatest news known to man. Mark 1:14 doesn’t say Jesus came writing it, blogging it, posting Myspace bulletins about it. He didn’t whisper it or just teach it. The Bible very pointedly says He came preaching, declaring, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom – He was shouting it out! And what exactly did we read that He was shouting out?
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe the gospel.”
Notice the key words and phrases Mark used.
The Time Is Fulfilled
There are at least two Greek words for time in the New Testament. One of them has to do with time as in an age. For instance, we live in a time of prosperity, or the times we live in are troubling. But that’s not the way time is used here. This Greek word for time means a fixed time, a point in time, a definite time, or the right time.
Fulfilled means to fill to the top, to make complete in every way, to accomplish or carry out. In other words, Jesus was preaching that the time was ripe – that specific, pointed, determined time at that point in history was ripe for something. Then He tells us what it was.
The Kingdom of God Is At Hand
I’ve said before that the kingdom of God means the rule and reign of God over all things. He is Lord of all Creation! God alone sits on the throne in heaven. God alone is Master and Ruler of the universe. His kingdom encompasses all of heaven and hell and earth and everyone in them.
The psalmist said in Psalm 145:13,
“Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.”
Psalm 103:19 says,
“The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, his kingdom rules over all.”
God is already King! He is the King of kings today! So what does He mean that the kingdom of God is at hand? He is saying that this will be an amazing time when He, Jesus Christ, will break in to the affairs of humanity powerfully and personally to defeat sin, his enemies, both hell and the grave. The kingdom of God is near means that Jesus Christ is making and unprecedented intrusion into, a breaking in if you will to the lives of men to make things right.
But it wasn’t going to be with armies or political reform. It wasn’t going to be by a great show of force. Jesus wasn’t about throwing off the shackles of Roman rule. This intrusion was about redemption – reconciling sinful man to a holy God and reminding us in the process that we are all accountable to the One who created us. This unprecedented move of God was a simultaneous demonstration of both the love of God and the justice of God: God breaking in to ransom humanity, to ransom you and me from the horrific bonds of sin with the very life of His Son!
If the Jews were going to be ready for this powerful and personal move of God they were going to have to change their minds about some things. God made His move on Calvary, and the Bible tells us He is coming again to intrude in our affairs once again, but this time it won’t be for redemption – it will be to rule – to set His foot on earth and reign as a visible, physical King!
Jesus’ audience had some getting ready to do, and so do we, so He told us how.
Repent, And Believe The Gospel
The Hebrew word for repent meant to pant, to sigh, to groan, to lament, to grieve. The word repent in the New Testament means to change one’s mind. It means to turn around – to do an about face if you will concerning God and Jesus and the approaching kingdom.
Repent means to have a change of mind about your sins. You no longer enjoy them, gloat over them, seek them, engage in them, and involve others in them. You see them for what they are: bleak, dark, detestable. You despise your sin and hate yourself for engaging in them.
Repent means to have a change of mind about yourself. You realize the depravity of your unsaved soul. You recognize the undone condition of your heart. You see that you are accountable to a holy God and see yourself mirrored in His reflection and know that you fall short.
Repent means to have a change of mind about your Savior. He becomes the source of your hopes and dreams and ambitions. He becomes the crown of your life, the goal of all you do. His will becomes yours. (adapted from Hyman Appleman)
Repent! Turn around! God has made an intrusion into your life to save you from sin and hell. He went the cross of Calvary and suffered and died to set you free from bondage, to bring light into darkness, to make the way possible for you to have eternal life and know the God of glory!
But not only must you repent, you must believe the gospel. How that “Jesus Christ died for your sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” to pay your sin debt.
The Bible says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But more than that, you have sinned. You fall short of God’s glory. He’s not measuring your worth by looking at me or your neighbor or the drunk down the street. He’s measuring you by the standard of Jesus Christ, and you don’t measure up. Your sin has offended God and He demands a payment for your sins.
The bad news is that you and I can’t offer a payment for those sins. We’re corrupt, dirty, defiled. But the good news is that Jesus Christ could and did die for our sins and has satisfied the demands of God. He has removed the animosity that existed between God and us. That’s why the Bible can say that “the wages of our sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The question today is whether you believe that or not and whether you will do anything with it, because the fact of the matter is that you can believe everything I’ve said today and go straight to hell. You must act on what you believe. Repentance means you turn to Christ, believing the gospel means that you exercise faith in His saving work to rescue your soul.
Let me assure you according to God’s Word that the King came some 2,000 years ago. In a powerful demonstration of love and mercy He gave up His life for you. The Bible tells us that He is coming again one day to set up His earthly kingdom. When He comes, will you be ready? If He were to come today, would you be ready? If you were to die today and go to Him, would you be ready to face Him?
Conclusion
I have told you before about the day I trusted Jesus Christ as my Savior. I want to tell you about it again today.
I was 21 years old and had just marred Kathy. I wasn’t a bad person, but I was most definitely lost. I was lost spiritually and I was lost in other ways too. I was a typical kid. Life was about friends, running around, having fun, getting a paycheck and waiting to see what life brought me. Sometimes I got in trouble, most of the time I didn’t. I certainly did some things I should have gotten in trouble for. If you had asked me if I was a sinner, I’d have probably told you no, and if you’d have gotten a yes out of me, I was no worse than everyone else I knew: even the church goers I knew.
Mom and dad took my brother and me to church when we were kids, but like so many families, things changed and we quit going. Other than an occasional drop in with a friend, I didn’t go to church or feel the need to be in church throughout my teenage years. I emphasize church because I associated church with being a Christian and had no recollection or understanding of a need for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
That changed when I married Kathy. Her parents were very upset with us for reasons unimportant to you, so they hounded me about getting their daughter back in church. Never mind that church hadn’t been important to Kathy anyway – they kept after me about us getting in church. This went on for weeks until I finally relented, hoping to get them off my back. I don’t remember having a Bible that I carried, I didn’t know anyone there and I didn’t go because I was looking for something. I went to get these irritants off my back.
But while I was there God began to speak to me. Not audibly, not with fireworks or miracles, but in that little whisper to my soul… “Kevin, I’m reaching out to you.” “Kevin, I want a relationship with you.” “Kevin, I have something for you.” Of course I didn’t tell anyone that the messages were getting to me, but they were: not the preacher, but the Holy Spirit was getting to me through the preaching. One Sunday as I was sitting in my pew, I don’t remember what the sermon was about, but God’s message to me was that if I were to die in my lost condition I would spend an eternity in a hot devil’s hell and I didn’t want to go there. So only a few weeks after starting to church, only a short while after marrying Kathy, I repented of my sin and put my faith in Jesus Christ as my personal Savior.
I’ve thought for years I made that decision a couple of weeks before my 21st birthday, so in preparation for this sermon I contacted the church where I was saved and baptized to find out the dates of my salvation and baptism and discovered something I am excited about today. The date was September 30th, 1990. Today is my spiritual birthday – today I have been saved 17 years and have all of eternity to celebrate it. On this day 17 years ago I gave my life to Jesus Christ, and though I couldn’t have articulated it then, was prepared for the Kingdom of God.
Do you have a spiritual birthday to celebrate? The specific date or even year really isn’t all that important, but you ought to have a place fixed in your mind, a memory of a time when you consciously and deliberately repented of your sin and put your faith in Jesus Christ to save you.
There’s a story I read about the student of a great philosopher. This student went to a whore house, a place of ill-repute. The teacher came to the door and asked him to come out. The student refused because he was ashamed. The teacher replied, "There is no shame in leaving the house of ill-repute, but there is great shame in staying."
You alone are responsible to take the needed action to move toward knowing Christ. Whether you have done some things you are ashamed of or not is irrelevant. Good life or bad, we’re all sinners in the sight of God. The real shame is in staying where you are. Today, would you repent and believe the gospel? Would you come to Christ today?
