Mark 1:14-20; 1 Corinthians 7:17-24

January 24, 2021

Gospel                                                                             Mark 1:14-20

¹⁴ 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 has come 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 send you out to fish for people.” 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.

Title: The Glory of Jesus Changes Us

As we continue our series through Epiphany which focused on the glory of God revealed through Jesus Christ, we see in today’s passage that you can’t come face to face with the glory of God and remain unchanged. When people encounter God they are changed in one of two ways: First, those who reject God will have their hearts hardened, and second, those who believe God will follow Him. In our Gospel passage today, we see Jesus calling some of His first disciples. And we see they responded immediately to leave behind their old life and to follow the leading of Jesus.

1. He Called His Disciples to Follow Him

When Jesus calls these disciples, He tells them that the first thing He is going to change about them is their focus. No longer will they be focused on catching fish, but He was going to teach them to be focused on catching people. But you must first learn to follow me. Do things my way, and learn to put into practice my concerns above your own. In order to follow Jesus, we need to be willing to leave behind our old ways of life and to learn how to be concerned about the things of God.

And the first thing we need to do is to believe the message of Jesus to, “repent and believe the Good News.” The glory of Jesus leads us to repentance and leads us to faith. The disciples, in their time with Jesus and afterwards, would come face-to-face with their sin. Time and time again, Jesus would rebuke them when they became wrapped up in human concerns instead of being focused on the concerns of God. Certainly, seeing the glory of Jesus would lead them to see their own self-centeredness and repent. But they would also see the glory of the Good News of Jesus. They would come to believe that Jesus really was the one who could forgive their sin and bring them into a relationship with God the Father.

Perhaps the best example of both repentance and faith was the betrayal of our Lord by Peter and Peter’s subsequent restoration. For Peter wept in repentance over his betrayal of Jesus, but he would soon be restored by the risen Jesus. Now contrast this with another disciple, Judas. For Judas would also “be filled with remorse” (Matthew 27:3) over his betrayal of Jesus, yet, he was lost. Why, what was the difference between Peter & Judas? Both repented, but only one also believed the Good News. Only one had his heart changed by the glory of Jesus. For Judas did not repent to God, but repented only to himself. To truly repent, we must not only turn away from our sin, but we must also turn, in faith, to God.

1. Jesus Calls Us to Repentance and Faith

But Jesus did not just call His disciples to follow Him, He calls us as well. And for us, it is also not enough to admit you aren’t good enough. It isn’t enough to acknowledge that we aren’t perfect, but we must also confess that Jesus is. That Jesus’ good is enough. So to repent, we must also believe the good news of Jesus Christ.

For you cannot believe the Good News if you are not willing to repent. This has always been a danger in the Church, the idea that if I believe the Good News, that I don’t have to change my life. That I can live the way I want, I can do and say the things I like and do not have to concern myself with God’s desires. But that is not true faith. True faith, yes, confesses faith in Christ, but also turns away from sin.

But it is also true that you cannot repent if you are not willing to believe the Good News. Repentance is not simply being sorrowful or sorry for your sins, for repentance is not self-loathing. For that type of repentance doesn’t lead to forgiveness it only leads to despair. This is what we saw in Judas. He felt sorry for his sin, but it only lead him to hate himself and turn to suicide. That is why true repentance also must embrace the Good News. Yes, we admit our sin; we admit that apart from Christ, there is nothing in us but sin and death, from which we cannot set ourselves free. But we also confess that we are not apart from Christ. Christ has delivered us from the bondage of sin. We are no longer filled with sin and death but with the Spirit of God and life! This true repentance does not lead us to loathe ourselves, but instead it drives us to love God, and to thank Him for what He has made us to be in Christ. It leads us not to despair our badness, but to celebrate and rejoice in His goodness!

The reality is everyone needs to repent. And God wants everyone to come to repentance and faith. In our Old Testament lesson, we see that God even gave Nineveh, the destroyer of Israel, that opportunity. We often would rather see those who oppose us destroyed, but God wants to save them also. And notice Nineveh’s reaction? They admitted their sin, but they also knew that their salvation was only dependent on God’s mercy and compassion. In Jonah 3:9 the king of Nineveh says, “Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” Notice he does not say that if they repent God must forgive them, but he is simply appealing to God’s grace and mercy. Being sorry doesn’t earn your forgiveness – only Christ’s actions earn forgiveness, and when we repent, we do so out of faith in God’s promise. The promise that in Christ, God has promised to give us His forgiveness freely, as a gift. Since it is a gift, we must always acknowledge that repentance doesn’t earn forgiveness. We repent because we believe the promise of God.

III. He Calls Us into His Freedom

This final point comes from our Epistle lesson from 1 Corinthians 7.  Paul tells people not to focus on their earthly position; focus, instead, on the calling of Christ on your life. Don’t let your position in the world define you; don’t let the world pull you into its fight. Don’t let this world dictate to you what is important. Yes, Paul says, if you are a slave and can win your freedom, do so, but don’t fixate on it. For it is better to be spiritually free in Christ and to be a slave on earth than to be the ruler of the world, yet lost in slavery to sin.

And to those free, he warns them not to become slaves to human beings. This is true for us spiritually. For if we are following Christ, we must not give our primary allegiance to another. Again, this goes back to the issue of focus – with what are we most concerned?

Today this is a warning to us that we need to make sure we are most concerned with the One who sits eternally on the Throne of Heaven than the one who sits for a short period of time in the oval office. We must remember that God has called us to fish for people and to not be concerned with catching fish. Now this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned at all with the affairs of this world, but they can’t be allowed to let us lose focus on the greater things. And don’t let your anger distract you from the goal either. Our goal, like the people of Nineveh, is not to see those who oppose us in their spiritual blindness destroyed, but to bring them to repentance. Our hope is that the Lord would open their eyes and that they would see. In Ephesians 6:12 Paul reminds us, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

This reminds us that every human being that does evil is a slave to evil. And every slave can be set free by Christ. We must never forget or lose sight of that. For Jesus has not called us to be destroyers of men, but fishers of men. And what is our bait? Our bait is the message to “repent and believe the Good News.” We hold out the Gospel of Jesus Christ to give all a chance to hear the Good News and believe.

But yes, we still should fight the good fight. We are to wrestle and wage war against the enemies of God, but we need to make sure we are seeking to defeat the true enemy, not their hostages – even if those hostages are comfortable in their captivity. For even though human beings are still responsible for the evil they do, they are still captives all the same. And, yes, we are to speak out against the darkness, in fact, we are commanded to warn people to turn from their evil ways. We need to be clear on issues of sin and righteousness, right and wrong, but we need to do so with a heart to set the captives free.

But to do this, we need to genuinely repent. The only way to be gracious to others is to recognize the grace and the mercy of God that has been extended to us. To truly repent and to believe the Good News, we need to encounter the glory of God in Jesus Christ. Have you seen His glory? Has that glory transformed your own heart? Are you willing to forsake the ways of the world that you might truly be taught by Jesus? For during their time with Christ, what the disciples unlearned was just as important as what they learned. They had to learn how to forsake the ways of the world. We, too, in following Christ, need to also learn to not follow the ways of the world. We are called to be different. We are called to be changed. We are called to be disciples, followers, of Jesus Christ. Amen.