A. The kingdom of God is like a man who wanted to build a carousel and began to build a team and find the supplies he needed.
1. In 2008, a man named Gale Joh wanted to do something special for Kingsport, Tennesse, the place that had become his home.
2. He had grown up in Binghamton, NY, the “carousel capital of the world,” where he had spent his youth riding the city’s half-dozen carousels.
3. Gale thought the kids of Kingsport should know the same joy, and so he proposed the pipe dream of building a carousel to a city alderman who scoffed at the cost, declaring, “Kingsport will have a carousel when pigs fly!”
a. That city alderman happened to be his wife.
4. Undeterred, Gale turned to his local Kiwanis club and four of his Kiwanis friends adopted his enthusiasm for the project and Gale called them his “Four Horsemen.”
a. They were not the carpenters and mechanics he needed, but they were problem solvers.
b. Gale and his Horsemen attended woodcarving classes 3 ½ hours away in Chattanooga to learn how to carve carousel statues.
c. Gale and the Horsemen returned from Chattanooga as adept carvers, and the city gifted a facility to use as a workshop.
d. The carousel project had found it hooves!
5. Then, tragically and suddenly, Gale Joh passed away from Lewy body dementia in 2010, just two years into the project.
a. Would Gale Joh’s dream die with him?
b. The Four Horsemen and the community wouldn’t allow it.
6. The Horsemen taught volunteers to sculpt (each statue took about a year) and local artists taught them to paint.
a. The sculptures took on the characteristics of their carvers.
b. Valerie Joh (widow of Gale Joh) carved several sculptures, including a pig with wings.
7. When the group needed a frame, floor, poles, gears and an electric motor, they made their needs known to their community and to the virtual community.
a. Every need or obstacle was somehow taken care of.
b. The Connecticut zoo just happened to have an old carousel frame sitting in storage that they donated and a Kingsport shipping company gave it a free ride to Kingsport.
c. Mechanics emerged to reassemble the frame, and a local man who was a chemist by trade built the flooring for the entire platform.
8. In 2015, after seven years, with the help of 300 volunteers and 700 sponsors, the Kingsport Carousel was ready to ride.
a. It has become a treasured part of the community and a go-to for date nights, proposals and a great family activity on sunny afternoons.
b. The lilting, whirling work of art stands as a symbol of vision and cooperation, and fun for fun’s sake.
B. Why would I begin with a long, feel-good story? I do so because I believe it is an excellent illustration of the task that faced Jesus at the beginning of His mission and ministry.
1. It was incumbent on Him to cast the vision of building the kingdom of God, and to gather a team to train who would carry on the mission after His sudden, but not unexpected death.
2. Today in our study, we will see the Master call His first four followers – we might call them “The Four Horsemen,” of course, Jesus would later call eight more to complete His 12 apostles.
4. Let’s jump into our study for today and let’s seek to understand how we also should respond when the Master calls.
C. Today, we begin our exploration with Mark 1:14-15.
1. Mark wrote: 14 After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God: 15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
2. Notice that Mark gave a specific time stamp in his opening phrase of verse 14: “After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee…”
3. It would be easy to miss the fact that Mark skipped about 6 to 12 months of the ministry of Jesus that took place in Judea following His baptism (much of it is recorded in John).
4. During that period, John the Baptizer and Jesus were both ministering and baptizing people in Judea as their ministries overlapped.
5. You might recall the incident in John 3 when John the Baptizer’s disciples came to him concerned and complaining, “That man you baptized and testified about (Jesus) is baptizing people on the other side of the Jordon River and everyone is going to him.”
a. John the Baptizer answered them, “He must become greater; I must become less important.”
6. John the Baptizer’s job was done, and so God used King Herod’s arrest of John to move him into the background so that Jesus’s ministry could have all the attention.
7. Perhaps for safety sake or just for timing sake, Jesus left Judea and went up to Galilee to continue His ministry.
D. Mark tells us that Jesus was proclaiming the good news of God.
1. We spent time last week discussing the fact that the word Gospel means “good news” or “glad tidings,” but we learned that this was no ordinary, daily news, but was the greatest news of all because it is the good news “of God,” meaning that it belongs to God and comes from God.
2. Now notice the good news that Jesus was proclaiming: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
3. These are the first words that we hear from Jesus in the Gospel of Mark!
E. Jesus began with an amazing statement: “The time is fulfilled.”
1. Paul echoed this in Galatians 4:4 when he wrote: “But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law.”
2. The prophesies of Daniel chapter 2 and chapter 9 communicated an exactness concerning the time of the Messiah’s coming to set up a kingdom that would never end.
3. The “70 weeks” prophesy is understood by most commentators as “70 weeks of years” or a period of 490 years.
4. That time sequence began with King Artaxerxes of Persia giving the command to “restore and rebuild Jerusalem” in 444 BC (Neh. 2:1-8).
5. The rest of the years of the prophesy result in the Messiah and His kingdom showing up around 30 AD and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
6. The Jewish people of Jesus’s day were aware of that general time for those prophesies to be fulfilled, which explains the great anticipation and expectation that surrounded the arrival of John the Baptizer and Jesus.
F. So, Jesus came declaring that “the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near.” (some translations say “the kingdom of God is at hand”)
1. The kingdom of God, in a general sense, is the rule of God, the kingship, dominion, and sovereignty of God which is always a present reality.
2. In what we call “The Lord’s Prayer,” Jesus taught us to pray: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
a. By praying that way, we recognize that God is the sovereign ruler over all in the general sense, but His rule and will have to be carried out in a specific sense through each of us.
3. But finally, and ultimately, in the coming of Jesus and the creation of the church there was a new aspect of God’s rule and plan that were coming to fruition.
4. Therefore, Jesus could announce that the beginning of God’s kingdom, the church, was at hand – it was about to happen.
G. The final part of Jesus’ preaching statement was “repent and believe the good news.”
1. By saying this, Jesus was calling for a response – if the time is fulfilled and the kingdom is at hand, then the way to be ready is to repent and believe the good news.
2. What is repentance? Some people think repentance is mostly about feeling sorry for your sins.
a. While it is good for us to feel sorry about our sins, repentance isn’t about feelings, but is about doing.
b. Repentance is about changing our mind and direction that results in a change in our behavior.
c. The good news of forgiveness of sins and salvation of our souls, isn’t the news that we can keep on living for ourselves and doing whatever we want to do.
d. The good news is that God sets us free from the consequences of our sins and gives us the power to no longer be slaves of sin.
e. But in repentance we turn our whole selves over to God, and make a commitment to live the way God wants us to live.
3. But in addition to the command to repent, Jesus also commanded the people to believe.
a. I believe that belief and repentance go hand in hand; they are inseparable.
b. A person can’t truly repent unless they believe, and true belief results in repentance.
4. Because Jesus had not yet died on the cross for the salvation of the world, and because the church had not yet been instituted, this repentance and belief in the good news was just a preparatory thing.
5. It was a believing in the fact that God was doing something new through the Messiah who had arrived, and it was the expression of a desire to be a part of what God was doing.
H. Mark then moved very quickly from the message Jesus was proclaiming to the calling of His first disciples.
1. Mark wrote: 16 As he passed alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, Simon’s brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17 “Follow me,” Jesus told them, “and I will make you fish for people.” 18 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 Going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat putting their nets in order. 20 Immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him. (Mk. 1:16-20)
2. Through the other Gospels, we know that this wasn’t the first time these men had met Jesus.
a. According to the Gospel of John, Andrew was with John the Baptizer when John pointed to Jesus and declared that He was the Lamb of God.
b. And after spending the day with Jesus, Andrew went and found his brother, Peter, and told him that he had found the Messiah, and Andrew brought Peter to see Jesus. (Jn. 1:35-42)
3. Because John and James were fishing partners with Andrew and Peter, surely they had spent much time discussing who Jesus was.
a. So, these men have had time to think about Jesus and gather more information about Him prior to this encounter beside the Sea of Galilee.
b. They had likely stood in the crowd and listened to Jesus teach.
c. No doubt they had felt the magic of His presence and the power He possessed.
I. As we investigate the calling of these first disciples, let’s first take notice of the men themselves.
1. Those four men (Peter and Andrew; James and John) were fisherman on the Sea of Galilee.
a. The Sea of Galilee was more like a lake, for it was only 12 miles long and 7 miles wide.
b. It was similar in size to Oneida Lake just to our north which is 20 miles long and 5 wide.
2. As fisherman, we can imagine what they must have been like.
a. We can imagine that they were rough and hard-working men.
b. They were blue collar and were likely not highly educated.
c. To put it simply, they were ordinary men – not from wealthy or aristocratic families.
3. And if there is a good lesson for us to learn right here it is that God loves ordinary people.
a. Abraham Lincoln once said, “God must love ordinary people – he made so many of them.”
b. By choosing these 4 ordinary fisherman, it is as if Jesus was saying, “Give me ordinary men who will give themselves to following me, and I will change the world.”
c. The thing that matters most is not what we make of ourselves, but what Jesus can make of us.
d. Praise God that He cares about us ordinary folks and wants to use us to do extra-ordinary things!
J. Second, let’s take notice of the call these ordinary men received.
1. The first thing we notice about the call is that it is a personal invitation.
a. Jesus walked up to these men and personally invited them to follow Him.
b. This was actually the opposite of the traditional way of rabbis and their students.
c. In that world, rabbis never recruited students, rather students applied to study with rabbis.
1. Those who wished to learn would seek out a rabbi and say, “I want to study with you,” and the rabbi would either accept the invitation or reject it.
d. Mark wanted us to know that Jesus’s way was different as He handpicked His students.
1. Jesus preached to the crowds, and He healed the masses, but He invited men to follow Him by personal invitation.
e. I think we can learn an important lesson from this.
1. There is certainly a place for churches to do different kinds of advertising and mailouts, but the most powerful kinds of invitations are personal ones.
2. Studies show that most people are brought to Christ not because of TV shows or advertising, or beautiful church buildings or helpful church ministries, but by a friend or family member who shared their faith and invited them to come to know Christ.
2. The second thing we notice about the call is that it was a call to follow Jesus.
a. Jesus didn’t say to those men: “I have a theological system that I would like you to investigate, or I have certain theories I want you to think about, or I have an ethical system I want you to embrace.”
b. Rather, Jesus said to them, “Come follow me.”
c. In so doing, Jesus was inviting them to become His close companions, to travel with Him and live with Him as His full-time disciples.
d. They would later graduate to the role of His apostles, but for now, their call was to be with Jesus so that they could come to know Him, and love Him, and learn to be like Him.
e. I think there is an important lesson for us about our mission of bringing people to Christ.
1. Jesus must be the focus of everything and ultimately we must be following Him and calling others to do the same.
2. We are not encouraging people to join an organization, rather we are challenging them to follow Jesus.
3. Jesus is the greatest person who has ever lived and we are called to follow Him and become like Him.
4. Unfortunately, rather than encouraging people to focus on Jesus, we often encourage them to focus on the church, or focus on Christian duties and rules.
5. When that happens, we have converted the person to churchianity rather than to Christ.
6. If you convert a person to baptism, weekly worship and the Lord Supper, and to doing good deeds, then that’s all you get, someone who does Christian kinds of things.
7. But if, on the other hand, we convert a person to following Jesus, and loving Jesus, and trying to be like Jesus, then we get true and more complete followers of Jesus.
3. The third thing we notice about the call was that it was a call to fish.
a. Jesus did not call them to become great religious leaders, or to study to become great spiritual teachers, rather He called them to become great fisherman.
1. They had been fishers of fish, but now Jesus would make them fishers of people.
b. We can certainly learn a lot about fishing for people from fishing for fish, but that’s for another sermon someday.
c. Becoming fishers of people is what the Great Commission is all about. (Mt. 28:19-20)
1. Jesus’s final command to His disciples at the end of Matthews Gospel was: 19 “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
d. If we are not careful, it is easy for us to be distracted from our primary mission.
1. Dr. Kermit Long said, “With all our education; our fine buildings, our image of the church, we are doing less to win people to Christ than our unschooled forefathers did. We’re no longer fishers of men, but keepers of the aquarium, and we spend most of our time swiping fish from each others’ bowl.”
2. I pray that we won’t be just keepers of the aquarium or just swiping fish from each others’ bowls, but that we would be busy fishing for people in our lost world.
3. And there are certainly a lot of lost people in the sea of our dark world.
a. Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.”
b. To put it a different way: Jesus could have said, “The fish are plentiful, but the fisherman are few.”
e. The promise of Jesus is that if we will follow Him, He will make us fishers of people.
1. Jesus will equip us to do His work.
2. Our job is to follow, believe, become, and then go fishing.
K. The final thing that I want us to notice from today’s section is their response.
1. What was the response of these four men who received the Master’s call?
a. Both sets of brothers responded the same way: “Immediately…they followed Him.”
b. Hey parents, isn’t that exactly what your children do when you give them a command?
2. When the Master called, they immediately followed.
a. They believed that Jesus was the Messiah and they wanted to be part of His mission.
b. Previously, I had thought that James and John’s father, Zebedee was likely angry that they left him and the fishing business to follow Jesus.
c. But the makers of the Chosen TV program put the whole scene in a different light.
1. They showed Zebedee and his wife’s reactions, and Peter’s wife’s reaction, to be one of great pride and honor.
2. They had been waiting for the Messiah to come for their whole lives, and when the Messiah arrived and invited their family members to be part of His mission, declining the invitation was out of the question.
3. Nevertheless, accepting the invitation to follow Jesus came at a great cost.
a. It meant leaving their occupation behind.
b. It meant leaving their possessions behind.
c. And it meant leaving their families behind.
4. All of us who chose the follow Jesus also follow Him at a great cost.
a. In Mark 8:34-35, Jesus said: “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me and the gospel will save it.”
b. When we choose to follow Jesus, it is not just a little something we are adding to our lives.
c. Like, oh by the way, I joined the Y, or I got a membership in AARP.
d. Rather it’s more like, changing our citizenship – with all of its rights and responsibilities.
e. We are citizens of the kingdom of God, and Jesus is our Servant King.
f. To become citizens of His kingdom, we must give our lives over to Him in allegiance and obedience, and in return we receive His forgiveness and we receive His hope, purpose and power for abundant and eternal life.
L. And just like those first followers who answered the Master’s call, we are privileged to continue the mission of Jesus in the world.
1. It is a mission far greater than making a carousel for fun and amusement.
2. It is the mission of building the kingdom of God by helping people become followers of Jesus and citizens of God’s kingdom.
3. There is no more important or no more lasting and rewarding work than kingdom work.
4. So, I declare to you the same thing Jesus declared: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news.”
5. If you haven’t already done so, then answer the Master’s call today – leave your nets and boats and follow Jesus.
6. To answer the Master’s call today, some people need to declare their faith, repent and be baptized into Christ.
7. But for others who have already been baptized into Christ, they may need to answer the Master’s call today by returning to Christ and renewing their commitment to follow Him.
Resources:
• Truth for Today Commentary: Mark 1-8 and 9-16, Martel Pace, Resources Communications.
• Jesus the King, Timothy Keller, Riverhead Books
• An Important Call, Sermon by Nate Shinn, ashlandbiblechurch.com
• The Master Calls, Sermon by David Owens