Mark 1V14-20 - Dougal Burrowes (21st June 2026)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Gracious Gods, you have loved us and cared for us, and one of the great expressions of that is you have given us your word that we may know you better, that we may understand ourselves more clearly and accurately, and that we would understand and see the Lord Jesus as our Saviour. And so we ask, please, as we look at these verses together, you would help us. Please help us in the warmth to be attentive. And please, would you cause our hearts to be soft and responsive to the words that you have for us this morning? And this we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. It was the day that changed his life forever. Every day after this day was completely different. But it started like any other day. The sun shines through the window and he is up. He is awake, but he wishes he wasn't. He's tired, his back hurts, his hands are calloused and sore. He looks on the floor and sees his slightly dirty work clothes from the day before, but he's got to put them on because he's got no alternative. They still stink, but he puts them on. And he is a fisherman. And he doesn't really have many options for not turning up to work that day. No, if he doesn't turn up to work, there is no money. And if there is no money, there is no food. This is hand-to-mouth living. He is a fisherman. And he's called Simon. And Simon, he walks, he leaves his house and he walks the streets as the early morning sunrise beckons his coming. As he leaves, he sees his brother Andrew and two friends, other local fishermen called James and John, as they leave, and together they walk the sandy, dusty, cobbled streets of Galilee together. They remark as they walk along the road, it's no, everybody else up at this time of the morning is like us. You know, no, the rich, the powerful, they've still got another couple of hours in bed, haven't they? They don't need to be up like us. 2,000 years later, and there you sit on the weaver line leaving Turkey Street Station. As you are also finding yourself in the same old rhythms of everyday life. You're on the train, and so you're doing what everyone does, which is sit down and try and not make eye contact with the person sitting opposite you. So you can put headphones on you, tune in into the abyss. You're half asleep, half awake, dreading what might be coming. You're tired. And the train is saturated with a silence of nobody speaking to one another. Silence. Men and women sit staring into the abyss. Some in paint stayed overalls, some with hard hats buckled to backpacks, some in suits, some in trainers. As everyone goes on their usual morning commute, knowing that elsewhere, other people are heading to the same old doctor's appointments, the same old school runs, the same old, the same old, the same world. Humans wake up every Monday morning on the hamster wheel of life. Simon, Andrew, James, John, ye living on this endless cycle. And into the mundane of an everyday work life, a voice pierces the noise. Verse 17. Come, follow me, Jesus said. Now this is unusual. See, back in those days, you would have rabbis, teachers, who would accept applications from essentially the wannabe religious leaders. The up and coming religious bright starts would apply to join this rabbi. It's like the Oxbridge route, think university application. That's how it works. But here we see the hottest preacher in town, Jesus of Nazareth, start calling these guys. These stinky, dirty, ordinary fishermen. Jesus takes the initiative. He goes to call the least, the last, the lost, the unlikely. And what do they do? What would you do if you heard that voice? See, the most fundamental fact about being a disciple is they are someone who responds to Jesus' call. That is what we read in our passage. Look, look at verse 18, right? Jesus says, Come follow me. Verse 18, at once they left their nets and followed him. Now I get calls all the time on my phone. From spam callers, all the time. To the point now, actually. I'm starting to wonder if I'm on like the yellow pages for spammers. They just they just call me. Maybe somewhere there's like an a Reddit post and my numbers on there for all of them to call. But I'm grateful for my phone, which has started to glow bright red to tell me it's a suspected scam call. Does anybody else's phone do that? So now if it comes up, I don't risk it, I just reject it immediately. So sorry if you've tried calling me and blame the phone, blame the phone. But you you you look at it, it glows red, and essentially it's trying to tell you that this is not a call you want to respond to. It's not worth it. It's not gonna give you any, it might sound good, but this is not something you want to respond to. Now, some of you have jobs that are all about responding to calls. Um, maybe some of you are working in a nurse in a hospital or something, and it's all about hearing something and responding to it. Maybe some of you have managers that call you quite a lot and you hear it and you respond to it. Maybe you're a parent, and essentially it's the continual call of responding to the call of your child. It's the call and response. And discipleship is about a call and response. Now, who is Jesus, right, who could command this? Who is Jesus that he could command people to leave their ordinary life and follow him? I mean, imagine Zebedee, right? Great name. Verse 20. Without delay, he calls James and John, and they just leave their dad in the boat. Imagine his face. I find that quite a comedic scene. James is like, Zebedee's like, this is the family business. Who is Jesus? That he could elicit that response. Well, we get the answer in verse 14, right at the beginning. This is why. Jesus is coming, he's in Galilee, and he is proclaiming the good news of God. In other words, this is shorthand for saying Jesus has come with divine authority. In many ways, you could say, Simon, Andrew, James, and John are just responding as we might expect, if God were to call their name. So he elicits this sudden response. And I love this detail, verse 20, right? Look back down, and Zebodies in the boat, but look at the beginning. We skipped past it, but it's wonderful. Without delay, he, that's Jesus, calls them. Jesus, without delay, sees James and John and calls them. There's no hesitation, right? This isn't sports day, right? When the best get called first and Jesus just goes, Well, I guess you'll have to do. This isn't, ah, I'll have to settle for you. No, no, no. This is Jesus carefully, intentionally selecting these fishermen. These fishermen. Now that's quite remarkable if you know anything about these guys and how they'll end up deserting him. This is not well, I guess you will do, it is I want you. Now that is the case for anyone Jesus calls. Anyone. If you are following Jesus in the morning, then Jesus didn't this morning, he didn't settle on you. He chose you. How affirming is that? And not affirming because you're brilliant, then that would be to misunderstand the fact that Jesus chose fishermen, right? He didn't choose public speakers, clever folk. No, no. He doesn't choose people because they're brilliant, but because he loves them. And he doesn't just settle for you, he chose you. So nobody in this room, by the way, if you if you're not a follower of the Lord Jesus yet, no one in this room is too unlikely to far off, too messed up, too dirty, too outcast to respond to hear and respond to the call of the Lord Jesus. But what is it a call to do, right? Neither a call or one of those spam emails that says, Oh, you've got a lost fortune, and I'm gonna give it to you. You just need to send me your bank details. What is the call that what is Jesus calling his people to do? Well, the first thing is it's a response to turn. We see that in verse 15. Look at Jesus' message. He says, The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news. Now, repent's a Bible word, it gets a bad rep. You see it on placards, don't you? In protests. It's kind of it feels harsh, doesn't it? The word just means to turn around, make a U-turn, pull on the handbrake, to reach round, turn around, like I had to do when I went along the 80 past this building, and you know you have to come back to get back to it. That's repenting. If that makes sense. That is what it means, it's to turn around. And why should we? Well, verse 15 tells us the kingdom of God has come near. Now it doesn't mean that an army has rocked up. No, no, no. The kingdom of God is Jesus' shorthand way of saying, I am bringing close, bringing to your mind, gonna let you see what life is like when God's on the throne. When see what life is like when the creator comes close and shows you what life is meant to be like. And that's what happens when Jesus comes, he brings the kingdom of God close. No surprise then that after this, you just read time after time after time of Jesus dispelling the darkness, death, disconnection in our world. Straight after this, what does he do? You can see the NIV heading. Jesus drives out an impure spirit, Jesus heals many, Jesus heals a man with leprosy, Jesus forgives and heals a paralyzed man. Jesus is saying, I'm gonna give you a taste, just a taste of what life is meant to be like. That's what he's saying. Life as it's designed to be. And before that, he says, verse 15, the time has come. In other words, this was promised a long, long time ago. All of those promises in the Old Testament, there's a lot of them because you can see how thick your Bible is before then. All of that is coming now. This is the moment when God is going to be seen to be great and you're gonna see what life is going to be like. But we need to repent. Why? Because if that kingdom has come, then we need to stop building our counterfeit kingdoms. See, most of our lives, we spend most of our time building little kingdoms. Building little kingdoms where we sit on the throne, where it's all about us. We do what we want, we decide what's best, we squeeze God out of the picture and we make our little empires. We sit on the throne. And to repent, then, is to take off our fake plastic counterfeit crowns and say, no, no, no, Jesus, you're king. You're king. I'm gonna live with you as king. To take off, to give up on the work of trying to build an empire for yourself, acquiring stuff and reputation and things and thinking that they're the solution. That's to crown Christ. It's a very question uh practical question this morning is have you done that? Have you realized that actually Jesus is the king as we sung? And if you've taken off, as it were, the counterfeit crown that you've been sticking together with fragments of things you've been trying to do in your life. Repentance, by the way, is then uh wonderfully illustrated, like Jesus, the best of preacher, he states, and now he's going to illustrate. Look at what happens next. He calls his disciples, and they both leave, all four of them leave something behind. So when he calls Simon and Andrew, they leave their nets, verse 18. It says, they left their nets. Verse 20, James and John, they left their father Zebedee, the family business. So in other words, they're leaving behind something, they're throwing down the things that they were using to build their little counterfeit kingdoms, their empires, turning away from them. You see, our world tells us that all is well, the only solution is more stuff, or whether it's the grades that you really need, or the relationship that you really need, or the figure that you must work hard to look like, or it's the kids that are successful, or the job that will give you status or money or power, the house, whatever it is, insert it here. The world says these are the things you need in your empire. That's success. The question is, how's that going for you? How's it going? Do we find ourselves satisfied by those things? Do we find ourselves fulfilled? Are our counterfeit kings? I mean, do we even find ourselves to be good counterfeit kings and queens? Or do we find ourselves messing up again and again and again? The thing is, our counterfeit kingdoms don't deliver and they cannot deliver. Jesus says we need to turn around. Leave behind the things that we've been using to construct our little empires. But that's just one side of the coin. See, Jesus, he doesn't just say repent, the good news. That doesn't make sense. No, he has another word in there repent and believe the good news. What's Jesus saying? He's saying that the call of the disciple is not to turn and to tr and to try. I think many of us think Christianity is like that. Turn from sin, try to be good. Turn and try. Put your all of your effort into pleasing God, leave your kingdoms, try and please Christ. Is that what discipleship is about? Or instead, is Jesus saying, verse 15, that the call of the Lord Jesus is to turn and to trust? Notice that verse 15. Repent and believe, the good news. Believe means trust. All of you are believing right now, you're believing in your chair to hold you up. We believe in things all the time. Turn and trust to rely upon something. Now, what is the basis of your trust as someone just living everyday life? What is the basis of your assurance? We're always seeking it, right? So I do this thing, I don't know if any of you do this. I'm I'm informed reliably that it's not just me, but let's test this. When I buy something, I just watch endless amounts of YouTube videos before I buy it. I'm just like right, fine. I've landed on the right thing to buy, and then I order it, and then when it's on the way, I still watch the videos. Why am I doing that? Because I want reassurance. I want assurance. I'm seeking something to just let me know that I'm doing the right thing. I'm seeking something to help me know that I can trust what I've done. What is the basis of your assurance? What is it that what is the thing that you are relying upon? Do you have anything? Do you have anyone? Jesus says disciples must believe, must trust the good news. Verse 15. The good news. What is the good news? Why? It's Jesus Himself. Look at verse 1 of chapter Mark. We didn't read it. The beginning of the good news about, in other words, what is the content of the good news? Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. It's not a worldview, it's not kind of a way to just try and do what is right. No, no, no, no, no. The good news is the gospel about Jesus. Who Jesus is. Jesus is the good news. Why? Because we are sinners, aren't we? We build counterfeit kingdoms. We do loads of things. We squeeze God out of the frame. We deserve God's judgment. This debt of sin that we owe because of God's being just, that we must pay. But none of us can pay it because all of us are debtors. Make sense? If I'm in debt, I can't cancel your debt. That's just a we know that. So what are we going to do? We need someone to fix this problem we found ourselves in. When Jesus came, the Bible tells us as God in the flesh, the Son of God. And he lived that perfect life. He never built a counterfeit crown. No, he lived as the king of God's kingdom. And he lives an obedient life that we could not. And yet the remarkable thing is the person who wears the crown dies for those who build their own. The creator dies for his creation. The one who is the one who created all things, he is killed by his creation in order to save his creation. How extraordinary is that. That's what the Bible says. Jesus stooped to the cross because we scrambled for his crown. He took the punishment that we deserve and he broke the power of sin that we're under. And so a disciple is not someone to turn and try. A disciple is someone who turns and trusts what Jesus has done for us. No more I carry the weight of sin, for he has brought me from death to life. I stand in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Are you trusting Jesus? This is the litmus test, and whether or not you're a disciple. Are you someone who's turned from your sins, turned from your counterfeit kingdom building, and trusted Jesus? Now, this is not just the way into the kingdom. It is the way into the kingdom, but it is also the way of the kingdom. The Christian life starts by turning and trusting and continues through turning and trusting. We don't graduate from this life, constant life of seeing the areas of my life where I've been building a counterfeit kingdom and going, no, no, no, no, no. I need to turn from that. I need to trust in Christ. We don't move on from this. It's a constant cycle. Here's one. A couple of days ago, someone sent me a right move link to a 45 million pound house. Now, they weren't sending it to me because there was any chance of me buying it. It wasn't like here's an investment opportunity. No, no, no, no. They were sending it to me purely so I could see that just the way the other world lives. Have you ever done that, gone on right move, and just flipped through the bonds that you could never afford? That's what I did. If you want to know, it includes three farms. There you go. Three farms, massive house, Downton Abbey style, crazy. Well I started playing with the mortgage calculator. I thought, right, so if we were to put a deposit of, I would I don't own this money by the way, but I thought if we were to put a deposit of one million pounds, right? Just to say, what would the mortgage be? It would just be a small case, 30-year mortgage, £220,000 a month. Um, and you've already put so it's crazy, right? Anyway, I was just playing around with this, but it didn't take long for my heart to start going, oh man, and just imagine having that much money. Oh, wouldn't it be easy? But I wouldn't buy that house because it was actually grim. But what would I do? What would I do with it? Oh, wouldn't it be good? Wouldn't I have to think about paying those bills or or that or somehow funding my kid to university? Oh let my heart started longing for some counterfeit kingdom building. And what do I need to do? I needed to turn from it. I need to trust that in Christ is all I need. That's the cycle of a disciple. A disciple is constantly going, no, no, no. I've started to walk around and build another brick in the kingdom of Dougle, and now I need to realize that's not what I want. That's not what I need. I need to turn, I need to trust. When I say something I shouldn't have, think something I shouldn't have, do something I shouldn't have. I need to turn and I need to trust. Maybe you come to church today, and maybe you already feel pretty rubbish about your Christian life. Maybe you what you're hearing right now is just another person telling you to leave your sin and you feel like you are just enslaved by it. In fact, for you, what you feel is that you're most likely to become a discarded disciple. Jesus tried like a one of those properties you walk past and always have scaffolding on. Maybe you just feel like you're one of those, and sooner or later the developer will give up. Maybe you think that that's what your Christian life is like. What do we need to do in that thing? Situation, we need to turn and we need to trust again. Yes, we need to turn from whatever sin we've been doing, but we need to trust that Jesus' work is sufficient to save me. See how turning and trusting just saturates the whole Christian life? Turn and trust, turn and trust. But there is actually one more thing that is integral to the life of a disciple. One more thing that I'll go as far as to say most people detach and put in the optional category of discipleship. It is a call to turn, to trust, and to tell. Notice that that is exactly what Jesus calls his disciples to do. Verse 17, come follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people. In other words, these fishermen who know what it means to fish are going to change their occupation from catching fish to catching people for the kingdom of God. Friends, there is more to life than catching fish. There is more to life than the hamster wheel we find ourselves on. There is something more going on in our world. There is something bigger and better that God is doing. There's something more glorious to be involved in. Now, to be clear, God is not against careers. Don't hear me wrong, God is not against careers. He is against counterfeit kingdoms. He's not against careers. He often gives careers, but too often we turn careers into crowns. That is what God is against. To be a disciple is to use the gifts that God has given you and to use them to fish for people. Whether it's your time, your money, your job, your family, your relational connections. We'll come more to that actually in a moment. God calls you to use them to fish for people. Now, do you share that priority? Do you see fishing for other people, in other words, telling other people about Jesus as an optional add-on? Like the winter package of a car? You can get it if you like, or do you see it as part of the thing, part of the engine of being a disciple? Now, to let must test this again to test it. I wonder what you make of Eric Lidl. Let me tell you about Eric Little. Eric Liddle was a disciple of the Lord Jesus, and in the 1924 Olympics, he ran the 400 meters. Because his favourite distance, the 200 meters, he'd always vowed that he would never race on a Sunday, and the 200 meter race was on the Sunday, so he thought I'll just upgrade to the 400. Little won gold and broke the world record. It's the first time he'd ever competitively run the 400 meters. That's insane, by the way. He's the Olympic champion now. He's the greatest 400-meter runner of all time, and he's done it in the first race. It wasn't even his distance, right? Wonderfully, by the way, he said his race strategy was to run the 200 meters all out, get everything he got, and then run the final 200 meters with God's help. That's what that was his race strategy. I love that. But anyway, just imagine, imagine the scene, right? Eric Little stands on top of a podium with the weighty gold medal around his neck. Stands above, and people can hear little, little, little not the that's what my stomach cries on a Monday afternoon to go and get something from the bakery. But just Eric Little Little Little. Imagine what he thinks. Imagine. What could I do? What could I think of the kingdom I could build myself with this? What could I do? I could be the greatest, I could just be so great. Two years later, no, actually a year later, 1925, Liddell would go to China, he would stop running, he'd go to China to make disciples of the Lord Jesus in a place where most people had never heard of him. And 20 years later in China, he would die in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in 1945 during World War II. Now, question. Was Liddell's life a tragedy or a triumph? Was Lidl a bit of a what a talent. What a talent. But he just he decided to move on from it. Or was the best thing Liddell did going to China to speak of Jesus and make disciples? Most people know Little as the runner. It's what Chariots of Fire is all about. The film's all about his running career. He would hate that. He'd much rather people spend a bit more time speaking about the Lord Jesus. Liddle understood the call of being a disciple. Now, I'm not saying, by the way, that all of you should just send in your resignations tomorrow and move to China. Gareth would be very annoyed if you all did. But Jesus is calling people to build his kingdom, not their own. And for Lidl, that meant leaving his kingdom to build Jesus's. He calls people to fish for people, verse 17. By the way, when we hear fish for people, we think of most of us, if I say fishing, you think someone on the edge of a lake with a rod by themselves trying to catch a carp. And then if they do, they'll take a picture and put it on Facebook. It's always Facebook, anyway. But that's what we picture when we think fishing. That's not the picture that would have been through these fishermen's head. Notice that all of them are with someone else in the boat. This is not a lonely job. Fishing for people was teamwork. And it was hard. Don't picture a person with a rod sitting by themselves. Picture strong men in a boat hauling in nets together. That's fishing. And so when Jesus says fish for people, that's the image he wants people to go. Toilsome teamwork that shapes everything, right? For these fishermen, their day was a success or not based on whether or not they caught any fish. For these fishermen, the fishing was what sets the alarm in the morning. It's the thing that shapes their life. Depending on what the weather conditions were and when they could catch most fish would determine where they would go in their boat. This is the thing that shapes everything. It is toilsome, it is teamwork and it shapes everything. And so when Jesus says fish for people, he wants the exact same understanding of what outreach is. Toilsome, it's hard work, teamwork. You do it with others and it shapes everything. This is the thing that sets the alarm. Friends, most of us think outreach is something that we just do as we do our lives. We dictate the path, and if it happens to be the case that someone comes up to us and says, What must I do to be saved? We might say something. Is it? Is that fishing for people? I don't think it is. I think fishing for people is toilsome teamwork that shapes everything. Are you involved in the work of making Jesus known where you are? Is it shaping everything? The basic desire of a disciple, by the way, is to not enter heaven alone. But to bring friends and family with you. Now here are some tips, right? How to do that? Here are some tips. I I did some stats research, and here we go. Number one, tip number one, get up. Reason being, 42% of people in our country do not know a practicing Christian. Now, some of us hear that and go, isn't that nice? 48% know a practicing. No, no, no. We should hear the alarm bell of a 42% that do not know a practicing Christian. That is not that is not good enough. We need to get up. We need to realize that there are people out there who are living their eternal lives in a destination to destruction and they do not know about it. We need to hear that. Could you join a sports club, a book club, could you spend more time at your school gate? You name it. We need to get up. But secondly, we need to speak up. Reason being, out of the 42% that do know a Christian, hear this, half of them say they have never spoken to their friend about Jesus. Now, that actually probably makes sense, right? If you were to think in your head right now, all of the non-Christians you know, what percentage of them have you spoken to about Jesus? Probably quite low. Probably quite low. But this is the encouraging thing. When you do, here's the stats, when we do speak of Jesus, 73% of non-Christians feel like they're missing out by not being a Christian. 73%. 60% want to find out more about Jesus. So let's get up, friends. Let's speak up, shall we? Shouldn't we? If you this also means, by the way, if you have a non-Christian in your life, they are in a privileged position to know you. Because you are the one who has life given to you by Jesus that you can share. And statistically speaking, if you speak to them, they will want to know more. Most of the time. Let's do it. Could you get involved with Turkish Streets Go ministry? Could you? Give a Saturday where you can. And it's not always easy. I'm not saying that that is the thing, but maybe it could be. One way that you could set the alarm to make sure that this is something that dictates your life. Could you give to the work of making Jesus known? Friends, we must be telling others about Jesus. He really is good news. Transport yourself back as we draw to a close. Transport yourself back to those cobbled sandy streets of Galilee and into the mundane rhythms of everyday life. The call of Jesus goes out to four ordinary fishermen. All of them, except one, history tells us, would die for proclaiming that Jesus is the best thing in the world. Isn't that crazy from where these guys were? That same call to follow Jesus still goes out in our world today. And in this room, there are many, many, many people who have heard and responded to that call. Are you one of them? Are you one of them? Are you someone who today has and is living the life of turning, trusting, and telling? Let me pray. And then Gary's gonna come up. Gracious God, we thank you so much for the Lord Jesus. Although we are ordinary, unimpressive, undeserving, counterfeit kingdom-building, sinful people, the Lord Jesus calls exactly those type of people to be his disciples. Thank you that Jesus is good news that he paid the debts that we owe as he died for us on the cross. And we ask please that you would help us by your spirit to live lives of constantly turning from our kingdom building, our counterfeit kingdom building, trusting in the finished work of Jesus for us, and telling others that they too may taste the goodness of Jesus and the salvation He offers. We ask this, please, in Jesus' name. Amen.