Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Mark 1:9-15.
Mark
1:14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into
Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the
kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
The beginning
of our Lord’s public ministry followed his baptism (Mark 1:9-11) and his
wilderness temptation (1:12-13).
It was initiated or triggered by the arrest of
John the forerunner: “Now after that John was put in prison….” (v. 14a; cf.
6:14-29). It was an act of manly courage for our Lord to begin his public
ministry at this time.
Mark
continued, “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching [proclaiming] the gospel of the kingdom of God” (v. 14b).
Christ’s public ministry did not begin with miracles, feeding the
masses, opening blinded eyes, raising the dead, or telling parables, but Christ
came first as a Preacher.
The apostle Paul would later write, in 1 Corinthians 1:21, “it
pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”
The premier practitioner of this means of grace was Christ
himself. Christ is the Prototypical Preacher. We merely human and very fallible
preachers stumble and stammer and preach imperfectly. Christ is the Perfect
Preacher.
What did he proclaim? The gospel [good news] of victory. Mark
began by noting this book records, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). It will
end in Mark 16:15 with the risen Lord telling his disciples, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel
to every creature.”
In v.
14 Mark the Evangelist describes Christ as preaching “the gospel of the kingdom
of God.” This means the rule or reign of God on earth. Christ did not, in his
first advent, come to establish a political kingdom. He told Pilate at his
trial, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). Here is the gaping
difference between the Lord Jesus Christ and Muhammad. One conquers by the
cross, and the other attempts to conquer by the sword.
In v.
15 we have Christ’s own words recorded by the evangelist. Christ said, “The
time is fulfilled.” The word for time here is kairos. It refers to special
time, the right moment, and not mere chronological time, chronos.
Christ
recognized that in his coming and in his initiation of his public ministry he
was fulfilling the plan of God that would lead to the bloody cross and the
glorious resurrection, a shameful defeat and a stunning victory.
Christ declared, “the kingdom of God is at hand.” The rule and
reign of God is present in Christ Himself. This happens even before the end of
history. Christ comes into history and into time, and his kingdom is
established, though it is not yet fully realized till he comes again with power
and great glory.
He ends with two commands: “repent ye [experience a change of mind
and a change of heart] and believe the gospel [the good news which is centered
in the person of Christ himself].
There is a debate about the order of these two things in what is
called “the order of salvation.” Do I first repent and then believe, or do I
believe and then repent? Here, repent comes first in order, but it may well be
that they come as contemporaneous events.
Christ has come. The time is fulfilled. Let us turn from sin in
disgust and turn to Christ in faith.
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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