Mark 1:14-20 - Repent, and Believe in the Gospel - January 24, 2021

“What’s the problem in this text?” That’s one of the first questions our seminary trains us to ask when we approach a portion of Scripture as we begin the sermon-writing process. Technically speaking, it’s called the malady of the text. You find the malady and then you can look for the solution to the malady the text provides. So, what’s the problem or the malady in this text? Is it that John the Baptist was put in prison? Is it that today there are too few people who respond to Jesus’ call to discipleship like Simon, Andrew, James and John did? Is it that we don’t have enough “fishers of men” to evangelize those who need to hear the Gospel? While all of those are problems, they aren’t THE problem – at least not in this text. No, the problem in this text – and its solution – is revealed in just one phrase repent, and believe in the gospel.

Repent, Jesus commands. What’s the problem with repentance? It’s that we are often too specific when we should be general. We think our problem is limited to a specific sin or sins. We’ve failed to do this good thing or we’ve done this bad thing. Our problem with others is that we have a short temper or that we are quick to speak instead of quick to listen. Our problem with our spouse is that we don’t love them the way we should. Our problem with our kids is that we don’t have enough time for them. Our problem with our government is that we could do it better than those in authority. Our problem with life is that we drink too much or give in to lust or rage or greed or that we read our Bibles too little.

If that were true, if it were just a case of failing to do the right thing or actively doing the wrong thing, then the solution would be easy: just do the opposite: start doing what is right and stop doing what is wrong. If my temper is short, I’ll just count to ten; if don’t love my spouse enough, I’ll just start loving more; if don’t have enough time for my kids, I’ll make more time; if I’m filled with lust, I’ll stop visiting those websites; if I can’t say anything nice about the government, I won’t say anything at all. If only it were that easy! If only we could become better people, God-pleasing people, just by changing our behavior. If we only had a couple of superficial flaws, it would be so easy to find the solutions. And that’s the real problem. The real problem is that we delude ourselves into thinking that it is that easy. We think that our problem is so specific, so limited – that if we just change a few specific attitudes or behaviors we’ll have solved the problem. But our real problem is so much bigger than that.

Where is this in our text? In one word: repent. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say: “Repent of your bad language or your lustful thoughts or your loveless actions.” By not mentioning any specific sin, he’s teaching us that our problem is much bigger than what we do, think or say; Jesus is showing that the problem is us, our fallen, sinful nature.

Then why are we so prone to thinking that we only need limited, specific repentance? Because by nature, we can’t possibly comprehend the depth of our sinfulness. We’re like a person suffering from stage 4 lung cancer who thinks that giving up cigarettes will solve the problem. We’re so sick we can’t see how sick we are. God must reveal it to us. And he does it through passages like Jeremiah 17:9 the heart is more deceitful than anything. It is beyond cure. Who can understand it? And Romans 3: there is no one who is righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who searches for God. They all turned away; together they became useless. There is no one who does what is good; there is not even one (Romans 3:10-12). Without the Word of God, we can delude ourselves into thinking that we’re basically good people who only have a few flaws here and there. But God’s Word reveals the truth: we aren’t inherently good; we are evil and unrighteous and godless to the core.

To put it another way – we’re not sinful because we sin; we sin because we’re sinful. Jesus uses the illustration of a tree and its fruit in Matthew 7: every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce good fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit (Matthew 7:17-18). Our fallen, natural thinking reverses it. We think that a basically good person kills someone and becomes a murderer; a mostly faithful person has an affair and becomes unfaithful; an honest person steals something and becomes a thief. But that’s not how it works in God’s eyes. The problem is much bigger and much deeper. The problem is the heart. It’s not that we’re basically good, moral and honest until we do something wrong – no, there’s a murderer, a thief, an adulterer living inside each one of us – and sometimes it comes out. When Jesus calls on us to repent, he is leading us to a blanket, general confession like Paul’s: I know that good does not live in me, that is, in my sinful flesh (Romans 7:18).

Do you see how big the problem is? It’s way too big for us to handle. We can modify our behavior all we want – coming up with all sorts of routines and techniques to try to adjust the way we live – but until we admit that our real problem is our rotten, rebellious sinful hearts we have not really repented and none of our marriage, family or personal problems will be solved. And, to make matters worse, there is nothing we can do, no strategy we can employ, no vaccine we can take to change our hearts.

By now, you’ve probably already guessed that the solution is found in the words believe in the gospel. Which is true – the only way we can be saved is through faith (Mark 16:16) – but even here we have a problem – the opposite problem. With repentance, our problem is that we’re specific when we should be general. With faith, the problem is that we’re general when we should be specific.

We can be led to think that a general, generic faith is the answer. We might look at Simon and Andrew and James and John and think “Wow, what great faith they had to leave everything behind to follow Jesus. If I had faith that strong, I could do that too!” Beware of this trap. If you fall into thinking that generic faith is the answer – all you’ll do is beat yourself up because you don’t have enough faith. You’ll start telling yourself: “If I had more faith, my marriage would work, my job would be better, my children would behave. If I had more faith, then I wouldn’t commit this or that sin. I would be able to change my behavior.” Do you see the problem? When you focus on faith as the answer to your problem, you always come back to changing your behavior, to something you must do as the solution. And, as we proved before, that’s no solution.

Our problem isn’t that our faith isn’t strong enough; it’s that it’s not specific enough. Everyone believes in something and often their faith is strong. But generic “faith” can’t save anyone. I’ll give you a couple examples. For months now we’ve been told to believe that social distancing and wearing masks can solve the pandemic – and yet, according to the numbers provided by the very same people who told us that, it’s as bad as it’s ever been right now – faith in masks has not saved anyone. If blind faith saved, then Muslims who blow themselves up for Allah would be saved; then Mormons who have so much faith that they spend two years of their lives on mission trips would be saved; then the Bears would be headed to the Super bowl because their fans have believed for decades. Faith can excite, motivate and even comfort – but no one has ever or will ever be saved just because they had faith in something. Faith that saves has a very specific object.

Jesus teaches this. After commanding us to repent generally he commands us to believe, specifically to believe in the gospel. So the question is: what is this specific gospel we’re supposed to believe? The word “gospel” was not originally a Christian word. It was instead the “good news” of a military victory. Picture it. An enemy army is bearing down on your city. You’re huddled in your home with your family in your barely defensible city. Your army is outside the walls – as a last line of defense. If they are defeated, the enemy will easily charge through the gates and you’ll be killed and your family will be sold into slavery. There’s no CNN, no nightly news or daily papers – and, mercifully, no Twitter. Everyone in that city is waiting on edge for word from the front. The watchmen at the gates would see him first and then turn to announce his arrival to the entire city. The entire city would gather at the gates. The runner, exhausted, if there was victory to announce, would gasp: “I have gospel / good news (εὐαγγελίῳ)!”

The gospel is not just any good news, but the good news of victory. Specifically Jesus’ victory over sin, death and the devil. This is a victory that only Jesus could win. Being conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, he was not born with a sinful nature like we are and therefore he was able to keep all of God’s laws perfectly. He picked up all Ten Commandments and was a perfect father, mother, husband, wife, child and citizen in your place. Then he picked up your sins and suffered God’s wrath to pay for them on the cross. He rose again to declare you justified, “not guilty” before God (Romans 4:25). And he delivers his victorious life and death to you through the Gospel in Word and Sacrament. And the result is that through faith in this very specific Gospel, Jesus cures you from the inside out. As Paul said in our second lesson: if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. The new has come! (2 Corinthians 5:17) And he didn’t do all of that just to turn around and tell you that all he did was make it possible for you to save yourself; that his life is nothing more than an example for you to follow; to show you how a tweak here or there can solve your problems. That wouldn’t be good news. Anyone who thinks that Christianity is about behavior modification doesn’t really understand the gospel. The gospel is not about us, it’s about Jesus living a perfect life and dying an innocent death for us. That’s the gospel. That’s the solution to all of your problems – especially your biggest problem: you. That’s the very specific thing that you are to believe, the only specific thing that saves.

What’s amazing then is that once you have this cure, your life, your behavior, your attitudes do change as a result. (Remember: make the tree good and it will bear good fruit!) Did you notice how it changed the people in our text? Jesus came to everyday, ordinary people – fishermen who were just like us: struggling with sinfulness, with difficult jobs and complicated lives. And he announces to them that things are different now. No longer is God or his kingdom far away from them because of their sinfulness. He doesn’t say that the kingdom of God is near – he says the kingdom of God has [already] come near. It has arrived! In other words, Jesus is telling them to repent of thinking that they can reach God by being better, by sinning less, or by doing more good works – and to instead believe the good news that Jesus has come to win the victory and bring the kingdom of God to us.

And this message changes these men instantly. Jesus says, come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they go…immediately. Simon and Andrew instantly leave their livelihoods behind to follow Jesus. James and John leave their father standing in his boat to become fishers of men. This gospel, this good news, had an instant and dramatic impact on their lives. By first changing their hearts, by creating saving faith – it also changed their behavior, it changed their lives for the better. This is the power of the gospel.

During the season of Epiphany, we get to peek behind the curtain to see who Jesus really is. Today, we see him as one who brings a message so profound and so powerful that it could only come from one who is the Son of God in human flesh. Repent, he says – not just of the things you do but of who you are: a natural born sinner. And then: believe in the gospel – don’t believe just anything, believe that in his person Jesus has brought the kingdom of heaven to earth; that he has come to win the victory over sin and sinfulness once and for all by his death and resurrection. For a problem as big as ours – nothing less will do. Amen.