If you would turn with me to the gospel of Mark, Mark chapter 1; page 836 in the pew Bibles. Last week we saw the beginning of this gospel. It begins with the Gospel – this good news about Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God. Today we’ll see something of Jesus’ authority in these verses that we read tonight. Two things for us to see from this passage. Number one, the demonstration of Jesus’ authority, and two, the dilemma of Jesus’ authority. The demonstration and the dilemma of Jesus’ authority. So with that in mind, let’s pray and ask for God’s help and blessing.
Father, we bow before Your authority as we open the Word tonight. We come as those under authority, that You would speak and we would listen. Speak Lord, for Your servants listen. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Mark chapter 1, beginning in verse 14:
“Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’
Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.
And they went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes. And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.’ But Jesus rebuked him, saying, ‘Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him. And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, ‘What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.
And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
First, the demonstration of Jesus’ authority. Jesus’ authority here is demonstrated in two ways – in His teaching and in His signs. So His ministry is one of Word and deed. And the first thing we find Jesus doing is preaching. Verse 14 says, “He came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God.” And His message is really simple. It’s just a few words as we have it in these verses. He says, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” It’s straightforward, isn’t it? It’s right to the point. And it is not difficult to understand what Jesus is saying.
I had someone come to me recently and shared an old book they had come across, and it was called The Pilgrim’s Progress in Words of One Syllable. And apparently there was a whole series of books, classic books back in the 19th century that were rewritten so that every word was a one-syllable word. Even longer names of places and people, they were hyphenated into individual syllables so that the first sentence of The Pilgrim’s Progress, which usually goes, “As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted on a certain place,” well it was changed to, “As I went through the wild waste of this world I came to a place.” Not a big change, but it was adapted in slight ways, made simpler for beginning readers in mind in order to make it plain, in order to make it clear.
Well the message of Jesus is plain and it is clear. In fact, in these verses it’s given in short, one-word directions – repent, believe. They’re commands. They’re simple imperative statements. And even when he calls Simon and Andrew to follow Him in verse 17, He says, “Follow Me,” it’s actually more of an interjection where He’s saying, “Come! Repent! Believe! Come!” These are not suggestions. Jesus is not giving us subtle hints or nudges. No, there is an urgency to what Jesus is saying, isn’t there? Why is that? It’s because He is speaking from a place of authority. And when He went into Capernaum to teach in the synagogue, it says, “They were astonished.” They were astonished at His teaching. Why were they astonished? Because “He taught as one who had authority.” They were astonished because He did not teach like their scribes.
Well how did their scribes teach? Well the scribes, they did what you would expect scribes to do? What do scribes do? They are ones who copy. They copy and preserve the past. In fact, in the earliest written text of rabbinic literature, it is called the Mishnah.” And “Mishnah” literally means “to study by repetition.” And so in the Mishnah, there are all these different legal opinions on Jewish, oral traditions so that you have things like, for example, on how to recite the Shammah – “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” That’s the Shammah. How are you to recite that? Well, what the Mishnah says is that Rabbi Shammai teaches that in the evening, one should lie down on his side to recite the Shemmah, but in the morning he should stand up and recite it because that is what it literally says in those verses. But that’s not what Rabbi Hillel says. And Rabbi Hillel says that every person should recite Shammah however he is, in whatever position is most comfortable for him because that is the meaning of the text. Well it goes on like that in one episode after the other, one occasion after the other of these ceremonial matters. Rabbi Judah, Rabbi Eleazar, Rabbit Meyer, Rabbi Shemon – they all say this. And see, the authority of the Mishnah is based on the authority of past rabbis. Well that’s the way that the scribes taught. Theirs was a derived authority. It came from those who came before them.
But not Jesus. Jesus spoke as one who had an authority all His own. It wasn’t that He was teaching something new or innovative necessarily because He was teaching in the synagogue and He was teaching from the law and the prophets and the writings. But what He was saying was that the time of their fulfillment had come. It had arrived in Him, actually. And what He declared to them was something definitive; it was binding on them. And no one taught them like that. No one taught them as one who had authority. And so they were astonished. They were astonished.
Now we’ll come back to this, but let’s just note it right here that what Mark wants to tell us about Jesus’ authority, He wants to tell us about His teaching, that that authority begins with His teaching. At this point, Jesus hadn’t done anything yet. It wasn’t the eye-popping, it wasn’t the spectacular or the miraculous that gets top-billing in the gospel of Mark. No, it was the Word, and it was the Word coming with power from the lips and the life of Jesus. Jesus’ authority was recognized by His teaching and by His preaching – good news, Gospel, first and foremost. “Faith comes from hearing,” after all, “and hearing through the Word of Christ,” as Paul says in Romans 10.
But that’s not all that Jesus does because it was preaching, it was teaching that was also accompanied with signs and wonders. In verse 23, we find that He healed a man with an unclean spirit. Verses 30 and 31, He restored Simon’s mother-in-law who was sick with a fever. Verse 34 says that Jesus “healed many who were sick with various diseases, and He cast out many demons.” Now what are we to make of all of this?
I saw a story a few weeks ago about a string of injuries that have hit the San Francisco 49ers over the last few years to players like Nick Bosa, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle. And there’s a viral conspiracy theory that has been out there that suggests that perhaps the high, electromagnetic field that comes from a power station near their stadium and practice facility, well maybe that is the cause of some of these soft tissue injuries. What? That football injuries would be caused by EMF, that sounds pretty unlikely!
Well we come to passages like this in the gospel of Jesus healing and casting out demons, and it sounds strange to our ears, doesn’t it? When we read about Him cleaning people with unclean spirits and casting out demons, and yet maybe, maybe that is just saying something about our naivety and our unawareness of things that we cannot see or may be different to our experience. I was reminded in our Japanese vision trip report the other night of a line that I read some years ago in a book on missions. And it said something like, “The experience of missionaries in Japan after WWII would have looked significantly different if the church had taken more seriously the reality of demonic opposition in that country.” And that gave me pause. And I went back, I couldn’t find the exact quote, but I ended up reading some other things about witchcraft in Tanzania and Animism in Korea, magic practices in places like West Africa and other types of practices in other places too. And this is the world that Jesus came into. And He came to make things right. He came to set people free. And He did so. He did so by His teaching and in His healing and ultimately by His death and resurrection.
And the people said, verse 27, “What is this? What is this? A new teaching with authority!” “The prince of darkness grime, we tremble not for him. His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure. One little Word shall fell him.” That’s what we see here. Jesus came teaching and healing and He came demonstrating His authority. This is what Mark wants us to see from the very beginning – the authority of Jesus. That’s what he wants you to see. And whether it’s in your weakness, in temptation, in doubt, in fear, in grief, to see that there is one that is greater than all these things and He has authority. It is perhaps unexpected authority, but it is unparalleled and it is even unsettling authority. And we see in these verses the impact of Jesus’ authority. And in three separate responses to Him.
We see here not only the demonstration of Jesus’ authority but we also see the dilemma of Jesus’ authority. There was a recent book on Tim Keller’s teaching on the Christian life, and there’s a chapter in it on grace and it’s called, “Three Ways to Live.” Three ways. There’s one way to embrace Christ, and there’s two ways to avoid Him. So in the book of Romans, there’s faith – “The just shall live by faith” – but there are two ways to reject the Gospel. There’s idolatry and there’s hypocrisy. Perhaps idolatry of the Gentiles and the hypocrisy of the Jews. One way to receive; two ways to reject. Or in the parable of the prodigal son, there is one way to live and there are two ways to go astray. There’s the younger brother and the older brother; the prodigal and the perfectionist; the unrighteous and the self-righteous. There’s the licentious and the legalist; the rebel and the religious; the sinner and the Pharisee. But they’re both lost and they both need God’s grace.
Well there are three ways in this passage as well. There’s one that follows Jesus and there are two that do not. Now you know the ones that follow Jesus. There’s really no question about it, is there? It’s decisive, it’s costly, it’s immediate. Jesus says, “Follow Me,” and “Immediately they left their nets and followed Him,” verse 18 says. They left their nets. They left their jobs. They left even their families to follow Jesus. We read these verses, verse 14 – it almost hangs like a cloud over this whole passage. It says that “Now after John was arrested.” All of this happens after John was arrested. Now how much Simon and Andrew and James and John, how much they knew of John the Baptist we don’t know for sure, do we, but we do know that all of this took place after John was arrested. And so here were these men who were following the one whom John had prepared the way for, and John was in prison.
Now what is that going to mean for them? There is at least in the calling of these first disciples a lurking threat of danger for them. And Jesus is not calling them to a life of ease. He’s not calling them to a life of monasticism. He’s not calling them to withdraw from conflict and effort. No, Jesus is calling them and giving them, presenting to them a new call and challenge. He says, “I will make you become fishers of men.” And we know their names. There’s Simon and Andrew; there’s James and his brother, John, the sons of Zebedee. This is a personal calling, a personal calling in which Jesus has taken the initiative. And I think it’s at least suggestive if not intentional of the gospel writer that he situates their calling and their response as coming before anything miraculous.
And see what that’s doing? Simon and Andrew and James and John, they hear the voice of Jesus and come to Him and follow Him. Why is that? It’s because His call on their life is authoritative and they obey. Let’s never forget that. That at its most basic level, that the call of Jesus’ authority is the call to follow Him. That’s really simple. If you follow Jesus, He is your authority. You listen, you pay attention to His Word, you obey, you do what He says, you do as He does, you care about the things that He cares about, even, even if it’s costly, even if it leads to opposition, even if it’s different from what the crowd is doing or where the crowd is going. A disciple of Jesus simply recognizes His authority and follows Him.
So I’ll ask you, would people know that about you? Would they know that you follow Jesus? Does your life show that you live according to His authority? Not your own authority, not making up your own rules, not making it up as you go, not the authority of peer pressure or of some other influence in your life, but Jesus Christ – Savior and Lord. That’s the call of the Gospel. That’s the call of the Gospel that we find in Mark chapter 1. And we find that there are these men who leave and follow Him.
But not everyone sees it that way, do they? And there are two responses to Jesus that do not truly recognize His authority. Two groups on display in this passage. There’s one that knows Jesus and wants nothing to do with Him, and there’s another that wants something from Jesus but doesn’t seem to know Him. And first, there are the demons. There are these unclean spirits that are opposed to Jesus. Verse 24, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” And see, right from the start, the forces of evil are on a collision course with Jesus, and Jesus is taking up the offensive against them. He “rebukes the unclean spirit,” verse 25. He “casts out the demons,” verse 34. Verse 26 says about the man with an unclean spirit, there’s a violent interaction in the synagogue and “the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him.” You see, the demons know that Jesus means destruction. They know that Jesus means defeat for them because they know Jesus. They recognize who Jesus truly is. They recognize with fear, His authority. Verse 24 says, “I know who you are – the Holy One of God.” And we find here in these verses that sort of like with the fishermen where Jesus says, “Follow Me,” and they followed Him, here with this unclean spirit, “Come out,” and it came out. It responds.
And then in verse 34 it says that “Jesus cast out many demons and he would not permit the demons to speak.” Why? “Because they knew Him.” They knew Him. They knew He was the Holy one of God. They knew that the kingdom of God was at hand in His arrival and they hated Him. James 2:19, “Even the demons believe and shutter.” So there’s one response.
And then there are the crowds. And the crowds are for Jesus. It tells us that they were astonished at His teaching. They were amazed that He had power over unclean spirits. Verse 28 says that, “At once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.” Word began to spread about what Jesus was doing, about how He could lift up one who had been laid low with fever and she could immediately begin to serve Him. Everyone wanted to see. Everyone wanted what Jesus had to offer. And verse 33 says the whole city was gathered together at the door. You see, the reaction of the crowd, it was overwhelmingly positive. Wasn’t it? But did they know Him? Did they know the implications of His authority? Did they know the Gospel? For one thing, the only thing we ever hear from the crowd in these verses is a question. Verse 27, they say, “What is this?” They don’t have a category for who Jesus is and what He was doing. And there’s something impersonal about the crowd, isn’t there? We don’t get names like we do with Simon and Andrew and James and John. There’s no sense in these verses of them leaving and cleaving to Jesus like there was with those first disciples. And they seem to respond more to the signs than to Jesus’ teaching. In fact, I think that’s what we find throughout the gospel of Mark – that the crowd almost always seems to press on Jesus and to crush against Jesus. But the crowd always seems to serve as a contrast to those who demonstrate a personal faith and belief in the person of Jesus.
And of course what do we find later in the gospel? It’s the crowd that demands Jesus’ crucifixion. Mark 15:11, “The chief priests stirred up the crowd and they cried out, ‘Crucify Him!’” The crowd seems to come to Jesus out of curiosity, because of what He could do for them. But is that really coming in obedience and submission to His authority? Is that really submitting to Him in faith? Don’t be like the crowds. Jesus is not someone we approach like a consumer, to get something out of Him. He’s not a lifecoach. He’s not a social club. He’s not a lifestyle choice. He’s not a brand. Jesus is Lord. And it can be tempting to associate ourselves with all kinds of Jesus-like talk and commotion, but it’s a whole other thing to bow the knee to Him. It’s a whole other thing to follow Him.
In Arnold Dallimore’s biography of the evangelist, George Whitefield, there’s a chapter on Whitefield’s friendship with Benjamin Franklin. And we’re told that Franklin would go to hear Whitefield preach. He wrote that Whitefield was a “grand and masterly orator,” that he preached a “most excellent sermon.” And Franklin gave money to support Whitefield’s ministry. When Whitefield made plans for an orphanage to be set up in Georgia, Franklin made a personal contribution of 75 pounds. He would sign his letters to Whitefield as, “Your very affectionate friend and most obliged humble servant, Benjamin Franklin.” And he would even say, years later, about Whitefield, about a friendship that lasted over thirty years, he would say, “His integrity and zeal in prosecuting every good work I have never seen equaled; I shall never see excelled.” You see, Benjamin Franklin, he was much acquainted with Whitefield. He was, you could even say, much acquainted with the Gospel, much acquainted even with Jesus. And yet he would also write later, sadly, “Mr. Whitefield used to pray for my conversion, but never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard.”
You can be acquainted, you can be associated with Jesus, but do you know Him? You can admire Jesus with a comfortable familiarity, but will you follow Him? I was talking to a student recently and he was telling me a very encouraging story of his own life and faith. But he said he grew up around the church, in and out of the church his whole life, even left home to attend a Christian college, but he realized in that first year that he never really knew and trusted Jesus. And by some circumstances and by some friends who were showing him the way, pointing him in the way of being a disciple of Jesus, he said, “I’m not ready. I’m not prepared yet.” And he was hesitant. And yet in the wisdom of those friends, they told him that didn’t matter because Jesus is ready and He is worthy. And this young man turned and followed Jesus.
And that could be you today. Right now. Jesus calling in His Word, “Repent. Turn. Believe. Believe in the good news.” The same thing He said to Simon and Andrew and James and John he says to you if you have not – “Follow Me.” If you would just turn and follow Him. And maybe you have more questions about how to do that and what it means and the implications of that for your life. Well there will be a pastor at the foot of the pulpit to meet with you and would love to answer that question. I’m sure there are many others throughout this congregation in these pews who would love to answer those same questions. But don’t let this message of Jesus’ authority and His call of grace and His authority over life and death, His victory and His resurrection, don’t let that pass you by when this opportunity is before you to turn and follow Him.
Let’s pray.
Father, we bow before You. We come humbly at Your call. We thank You for Your goodness, that You would call those like us who are not worthy and are not ready and may not even know all that it means to submit to Your authority, and yet we pray that You would move in our hearts by Your Spirit, that in all things, if it’s for the first time or it’s for the thousandth time, that as we go out from here for this week that we would do so as those under authority and that we would magnify the name of Jesus in all we do. We pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.