Message 08-19-07
Series: Marks of a Christian
Scripture: Mark 1:14-22
Title: More than Words
After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. "The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"
As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." At once they left their nets and followed him.
When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. Mar 1:14-22
They’re all important. Every single person in the world is important. They’re all important.
It’s tough for me to get my head around that idea some days. When I look at all the people who are in front of my eyes, it’s tough some times to remind myself – they’re all important.
Sometimes it’s easy to think that way. Building the green houses with the young people in Fraijanes, Costa Rica, it’s easy to remember that the older people of the community are important because we were directly working for them. The greenhouses we built were giving them an agricultural answer to the question of how they were going to sustain themselves into old age. But it’s a little harder to remember the importance of that couple who were making out in the dark bus stop shelter that we all walked past one evening on our way back to the church. We might have been thinking about not being embarrassed rather than how important this couple was to God. It’s easier to remember the importance of the people back here at the church who were praying and supporting the trip and the youth, then it was to remember that the men and women behind the counter in the only restaurant available to us at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, who simply wouldn’t get Jill Griffin her food, were important to God also.
It’s difficult, some days, for me to get my head around the idea that everyone is important to God. No matter who they are, look like, believe or what they’re accomplishing today – everyone is important to God. Every single person is a person Jesus says is important.
When Jesus came preaching that the kingdom of God was at hand he was announcing that everyone is known, intimately enjoyed and cared about by God. Some people can’t hear that or won’t hear that or won’t accept that, but the truth is that when Jesus came proclaiming that all people should repent, turn around and believe he was announcing that God thought everyone is important.
Take just a moment and look around the room. I’m going to give you a good solid moment here to just look at the faces of the other people in this room and I want you to do this slowly. Take a look and as you look, even as you lock eyes for a moment, think to yourself, “You’re important to God.”
[Give them a moment].
You know what’s interesting in these moments. If you locked eyes with anyone, if you knew that they were thinking this about you at the same time that you were thinking it about them, or if you were simply realizing that other people were thinking “you’re important to God” as they saw you, even if you didn’t see them, you have been in a room full of people proclaiming that the kingdom of God is at hand. You’ve been telling them the Good News. “You’re important to God.”
They’re all important to God.
Jesus came into the area of Galilee. Hold up your right hand and look at your palm. Pretend that your palm is a map of the Sea of Galilee. Take the pointer finger of your left hand and move it about six inches out to the left of your palm. If you were looking at a map of Israel and your hand was the Sea of Galilee then you’d be pointing at Nazareth, up in the hill country. Now move your pointer finger to the top of your ring finger on the right hand. That’s where Capernaum is on the map. So Jesus came out of the hill country of Nazareth and down to the sea shore and finally he ended up in Capernaum.
And as he came into this area he was coming to the crossroads of the world. People from all over the world were crisscrossing on caravan and traveling routes from Europe down into Africa, from Asia up into Europe, from throughout what we call the Middle East people were traveling. Here came Jesus telling all the people moving through that area that they were important to God.
They’re all important to God.
We sometimes think that the people of this area were backwards, uneducated, simple people. Some of them obviously were, but only in the same sense that we have backwards, uneducated and simple people everywhere in the world. Reading and writing, it appears, were common to the society of that time. This is the area of the world where our alphabet began. We also sometimes think of all these people as poor and we miss the little word pictures that Mark throws into the gospel – that James and John, the sons of Zebedee left their father in the boat with the servants. You don’t have servants, or the ability to leave your home and family for that matter, without some way of taking care of the people you are responsible to.
They all important to God – the servants and the family.
And that actually should make us look at Jesus again. Why did he wait until he was 30 to set out on ministry? One suggestion is that he spent the first 30 years of his life, and particularly his adult life, making sure that his household was safe, and particularly that his mother was taken care of. It may be that Jesus worked as the head of the household until things were secure. There was no social security at that time except your children. They were responsible for you. When we see Jesus, in some of his last words before he died, making sure that someone was taking on the responsibility of caring for his mother, then it’s not hard to imagine that he was spending the earlier part of his life also handling the responsibility of being the eldest son of the family.
It’s also not a stretch to suggest that he was also studying during that time. It’s not hard to imagine Jesus studying and coming to clarity on what how the world worked. Teaching is not getting up in front of people and “yakking at them”. Teaching is studying. The teacher who stops studying is no longer teaching. They are just reciting.
But when I say studying do you think of reading? There’s probably no doubt that Jesus did a lot of reading, especially in the Bible. He quoted so much of it that it is clear that he had knowledge of all of it. So there’s no doubt that he read, but studying is not just reading. Studying is paying attention to life. Jesus taught us how life, how living as a human being, actually works.
I’m suggesting that Jesus didn’t just study in a book. You can’t discover God by reading a book, anymore than you can fall in love with the person you’re going to marry by reading their resume. You’ve got to spend time with the person. Lovers need to spend time learning the person they love. Parents need to learn their children in order to understand how they were created. Jesus needed to study God, personally, with conversation and observation and questions. Think of how much time the children of our society are taking lessons. They are learning sports and special skills, but are they learning God? You might bring them to church. You may bring them to Sunday School. But we all know that’s not how children really learn, not about life.
Children learn about life by participating in it.
They’re all important to God, aren’t they? Do they know that through the lives they live and the lives that are lived around them? They’re all important to God. They’re all important.
Jesus came to take on a role of leadership not in religion, not in church, but in living. Jesus came to live a life that showed how true human beings live. We don’t all have to do with Jesus did, but we are all called to become like Jesus where we live.
For the next few weeks we’re going to look at the marks of a Christian. In this first chapter of Mark we find that Jesus did five particular things as he began his ministry. The first two we’re talking about today are Preaching and Teaching. If his is the life that we are called to follow as Christians, then two of the things every Christian should be doing is preaching and teaching.
The first is the proclamation of the good news of God. Telling people that they are important to God is so much more than saying it. So, what is the good news as you understand it? Is the good news summed up in the words “You must be born again?” Jesus said that to only one man we know of. He told people the good news of the gospel in a lot of other ways. He brought food into people’s lives. He brought financial help into people’s lives. He brought healing into people’s lives. How do you proclaim the good news of God?
And what are you learning about God that is something you can’t wait to share with others. Every time someone opens their mouth to say “I just saw this great movie” or “I just read this great book” or “You know what I just noticed” or “I was thinking about something today”, every time they do that they are becoming a teacher. Teaching is all about learning new things and discovering how they fit into the lives of people who don’t know them yet. Teaching is all about learning new things and discovering how they fit into the lives of people who don’t know them yet. Teaching is conversation with the world about how life really works.
Christ followers are marked as people who proclaim good news and who share the new things they’ve learned about life, looking to share how they might benefit those around them.
This is calling people into the kingdom of God. All around people are struggling to survive. In some cases that is their whole purpose of being – to survive. They are living in fear that they won’t be able to make it through their days or lives in safety. That is because the world is a difficult, strange, tragic, hurtful place to a lot of people. Christ followers are marked as people who come from the kingdom of God and say, “Hey there’s something else going on here. The kingdom of God is right here, right at your fingertips. You don’t need to be afraid anymore. Relax. It’s all right. There’s something else going on beyond just what you can see and hear and touch.” You see, to God, they’re all important.
