WWUTT 2136 Jesus Teaches with Authority (Mark 1:16-28)

The Authority of Christ in Mark 1

At the beginning of Mark's gospel, we see Jesus issuing these commands. And whatever he commands a person to do, they do, so that we see the authority of Christ when we understand the text.

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Reading Mark 1:14-28 and Introducing the Passage

Here once again is Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky, and greetings everyone. In our study of the Gospel of Mark, we're still in Chapter 1, and we're going to pick up where we left off last week. So let me start reading here in verse 14, and I'll go through verse 28 in the Legacy Standard Bible.

Hear the word of the Lord. Now after John had been delivered up into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. And as he was going along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you 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 also in the boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went away to follow him.

And they went into Capernaum. And immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and began to teach. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes.

And immediately there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, saying, What do we have to do with you, Jesus the Nazarene? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.

And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Be quiet, and come out of him. And throwing him into convulsions, the unclean spirit cried out with a loud voice and came out of him. And they were all amazed, so that they were arguing among themselves, saying, What is this, a new teaching with authority?

He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him. And immediately the news about him spread everywhere, into all the surrounding district of Galilee. Now what we see here in this particular section are three occasions in which Jesus commands something, and what he commands happens.

He commands that Peter and Andrew would follow him, and they do. He commands that James and John would follow him, and they do. And the people are even amazed at his teaching as being one who teaches with authority.

Then he encounters those unclean spirits, commands them, and even they obey him, and the people continue to be astonished. So that's what we see here in this section, is Christ's authority. That's what Mark highlights.

Remember, we're still at the very beginning of the Gospel of Mark here. So Mark is introducing characters, he's introducing us to Jesus' ministry, and we are recognizing that from the very start of his ministry, what he says happens.

What he preaches is said with authority, because he speaks not as men speak, he speaks as God. Let's come back to the very start of this. Now these were a couple of verses that we looked at last week, verses 14 and 15.

But this still groups together with this section that we're looking at today, because we see it as the teaching of Jesus. There's not a whole lot of teaching that's given to us here. Remember, this is much more brief than what we had read in Matthew.

Matthew gave us huge swaths of Jesus' teaching. We have one of the largest blocks of Jesus' teaching in all of the Gospels in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7. Mark doesn't have anything like that.

Although we do get teaching in this book, it's just not surrounding those huge discourses like Matthew would compile. So here at the very start of Jesus' ministry, we just have this brief statement, this brief declaration to repent and believe the Gospel.

So after John had been delivered up into custody, Mark puts it around that timeline. So John's ministry has come to an end. That's basically what Mark is saying here. And we didn't have much of John's ministry in the beginning, if you'll notice that.

There's a lot more of John's ministry mentioned in Matthew, Luke, and John, but not so much in Mark. We just had a very brief section in verses 1 through 8. John is introduced as the precursor to Jesus, as the forerunner, as the one who is saying, prepare the way of the Lord, make ready the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

He is fulfilling the prophecy that was made in the book of Isaiah, that prior to the Messiah's coming, there would be one crying out in the wilderness, and that's John. Very brief section on his ministry.

In fact, my whole explaining his ministry here has been longer than what Mark even writes down about John's ministry. So we're coming to an understanding of how these events are laying out. And Mark says here that John's ministry is over.

He's even been delivered up into custody. So the way that Mark lays out the timeline of events, John has been arrested, and now here is Jesus who comes into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe the gospel. Now, understanding what this declaration means, the time is fulfilled. That means everything that was being said in the prophets about the kingdom of God that is coming, it's done.

It's been fulfilled. The Messiah is here. So this is Jesus declaring that the time has arrived. It's also a statement that what John was doing has been completed as well. So as John was in fulfillment of the Isaiah prophecy that one was going to come as a precursor to the Messiah, Jesus is declaring everything that was needed for the Messiah to appear has been accomplished.

So the time is fulfilled. Now is the time. All those things that you have been reading about in the prophets, here they are right here in the kingdom of God is at hand. So here it is. It is now coming in and it's being ushered in by the Messiah who has arrived.

And that's Jesus. John was preparing the people for the coming of the Messiah. And here he is. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, he says, and believe the gospel. And as I said last week, this is calling people to turn from something and to something else.

It's like two sides of the same coin. You're going to, as you turn the coin around, you'll turn heads one way and tails another way, right? So turn tail to sin and turn your head toward Christ and the kingdom of God.

Repent and believe the gospel. Turn from your unbelief, turn from your rebellion, turn to the message that Christ is declaring. And even as he proclaims it here, even as he gives this imperative in this command, there are people that obey it.

And we see that demonstrated in his calling of his first disciples. We have Peter and Andrew and then James and John. So verse 16, as he was going along by 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 fishers of men. And once again, this is not an invitation. It is not a suggestion. It's not some open door that Jesus is leaving to them. He commands them, follow me.

And they do. So we're seeing the authority of Jesus followed. We're seeing this command that is issued in verse 15. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Remember that John said about Jesus that there is one who is coming, who is mightier than I, John could have very well have been saying there that the words that he says are going to be much weightier than what it is that I say.

Of course, there's going to be miracles bound up in what Jesus is going to do. John the Baptist did not perform any miracles. The power of God is going to be demonstrated in Jesus miracles. But we also understand that as John spoke the words that he spoke.

They did not have the same kind of authority as the words that Jesus spoke. And we see that in the crowd's reaction because they say a new kind of teaching. He teaches with such authority. They weren't saying that about what John the Baptist preached, but they are saying that about what Jesus preached.

So when John makes this declaration that one is coming after me, who is mightier than I, and I am not even fit to stoop down and untie the strap of his sandals. This was also John making a statement about the authority by which Jesus would come with might and the power of God in his words and in his deeds.

So here Jesus says to his disciples, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And so we see in their reaction an obedience to the instruction that Christ had given the way that Mark kind of summarizes down the message that Jesus declared.

The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. Notice even here with the declaration of the gospel that this is not a suggestion. It's not an invitation. Even the declaration of the gospel is a command.

It is a command to be obeyed and followed. And it is only those who have been convicted of heart who recognize their sin and need for a savior and put their faith and trust in that savior. It's only them who will obey that command.

Their obedience to the command to repent and believe the gospel demonstrates that they have actually been changed by the gospel. And so this work here that is being done with Jesus instructing Peter and Andrew to follow him and they do it.

This is demonstrating that by God's providence that all these things would happen in the fulfillment of time in the fullness of time that God's providence is at work even in the hearts of these men to follow Jesus.

Now, this is a little outside of the context of what we're reading here in Mark 1. But remember in John 6 when Jesus is teaching the people to eat his flesh and drink his blood and the people are going this is a hard teaching who can understand it.

Jesus says in John 6 65. This is why I said to you no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. You can't understand this teaching. It's impossible for you to understand this teaching unless you are drawn by the father and taught of God.

That was said previously in in verse 45. So then the people unable to to understand what it was that Jesus was saying in verse 66. They left him and no longer followed him and then Jesus turns to the 12 and he says to them.

How about you? Are you going to leave me to Peter responds by saying Lord, where are we going to go? Where else shall we go for you have the words of eternal life. Now, this was another one of those Sunday school answers that Peter liked to give and was probably congratulating himself on being the teacher's pet.

You have the words of eternal life. We're going to follow you. And yet Jesus didn't congratulate him on that answer. He said, didn't I choose you the 12. So as much as Peter is kind of saying something that's self-congratulatory, we've left everything to follow you.

Where else are we going to go? Because you have the words of eternal life. Jesus reminds him and the rest of the disciples. I chose you. You follow me because I have chosen you. And then goes on to say, yet one of you has a devil.

And this was also in fulfillment of the scriptures. This was also by the providence and the decree of God that there would be this man Judas, who would not truly be a believer in Jesus, but an agent of Satan to betray the Christ into the hands of his enemies so that Christ would be delivered up and would suffer and die for our benefit on our behalf.

But all of this was designed by God. It was planned by him for ordained that these things would happen and all to our benefit and to his glory. So Jesus is the one who has chosen those disciples. They don't follow him because they have by their own free will decided I'm going to drop my nets and follow Jesus.

They certainly have made a decision. Jesus says, follow me, and they have obeyed. But ultimately, we know that the only the only reason they did follow him in the first place, this teacher that comes along and says, follow me, and they drop their livelihoods and follow him.

That is because God worked in their hearts, stirred their hearts to follow the Messiah. And that is the case with every single one of us who is a believer in Jesus Christ. You follow Jesus. You believe in him against all odds, against even your very nature, because we're all sinners by nature.

We're all naturally rebels. We rebel against God. We want to go our own way, as we read in Isaiah 53 a couple of weeks ago, that we are all like sheep. We have turned to go our own way. But the Lord has laid on him, on Christ, the iniquity of us all, all like sheep.

We have gone astray. We want to go against God. We don't want to go toward God. So against our very natures, we are now followers of Christ. And that because the Holy Spirit has changed our hearts, that instead of wanting to rebel against God, we want God.

We do want to follow Jesus. We have come to recognize our sin and that Christ is the savior who forgives us of our sin. This is by a work of the Holy Spirit that we've become followers of Jesus. And so the same is said here of Peter and Andrew.

They are followers of Jesus because God had worked in their lives, just as Jesus had said to Peter in Matthew chapter 16. When Peter makes the confession, you are the Christ, the son of the living God, Jesus responds, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.

And again, as much as Peter might want to pat himself on the back, the reason why he knows that answer is because it is revealed to him from God. So here the authority of Christ demonstrated in what Mark is laying out here in the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

He says, follow me, I will make you fishers of men, verse 18, and immediately they left their nets and followed him. They didn't think it through. They didn't go get counsel about it first. They didn't sell their business.

They dropped their nets and followed Jesus. Verse 19, going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee and John, his brother, who were also in the boat, mending the nets. And immediately he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and they went away to follow him.

Now, I remember years ago hearing Rob Bell teach on this passage, hold tight, don't turn me off just yet. Yeah, I was kind of schmoozed over by Rob Bell at one point, but I remember him talking about like the historicity of this and that these were Jewish men who desired to follow a rabbi.

They were looking forward to a rabbi choosing them and then they were willing to drop everything in order to follow their rabbi. That's not what's going on here. And then Zebedee with great pride going, yes, go sons, there's your rabbi, go and learn from him.

No, it is because Jesus is the Christ. It's because he's God and he's given this command to follow me and the brothers drop what they're doing and they follow Jesus. In verse 21, they went into Capernaum and immediately on the Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and began to teach and they were astonished at his teaching.

Now, this next section here is bookended by that statement that they are astonished at his teaching. Verse 22, and then after Jesus casts out the demon in verse 27, they were all amazed at his teaching.

They were all amazed at what it was that he did. So we have this amazement or this astonishment that is a bookend on this miracle that he's about to perform. So they're astonished at his teaching for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as the scribes.

We find the same statement in Matthew, but it's at the very end of the Sermon on the Mount. So again, Matthew presents us with a huge block of teaching, Matthew five, six and seven after Jesus finishes or wraps up the Sermon on the Mount.

There we have that statement at the end of chapter seven that they were amazed or astonished at his teaching for he was teaching them as one having authority and not as their scribes worded the same way in Matthew.

So in verse 23, and immediately there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit and he cried out saying, what do we have to do with you? Jesus, the Nazarene, have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the holy one of God.

So what we're getting here is a confession from demons that this is the son of God. Remember again, the very first statement that we have at the start of Mark's gospel. This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God, right up front.

Mark presents that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the one who was sent from God, the one who is God himself to declare himself. The son of God is every bit as much a claim of divinity as if Jesus were to say, I am God.

That's the way the Jews interpreted it. So that when we saw this in Matthew, when Jesus was questioned about this and he says that I am the high priest tears his garment because him making a statement about being the Christ, the son of God is a, is a claim of divinity.

There are people that will try to say, well, Jesus never claimed to be God to say that he is the son of God is to say that he is divine. He is of the Godhead, father, son, and holy spirit. And here we have a demon that is declaring him as the holy one of God.

So the demons are making a confession to the divinity of Christ and Jesus rebuked him saying, be quiet and come out of him. So remember the, uh, this was not yet time for Jesus to be known as the Messiah.

So we're still kind of in that phase, just as we had seen in Matthew's gospel of Jesus saying, don't tell people who I am, don't tell them what you've seen or so on and so forth. So here he's quieting the demons so that the demon is not blowing his cover.

He's not really blowing his cover, but you know, the time has not yet come for those things to be revealed that will eventually lead to Jesus being crucified for it is his very declaration of being the son of God that causes the high priest to rent his garments and then demand that this man be crucified.

It's not yet time for that. So he silences the demon and says, come out of him and then throwing him into convulsions. The unclean spirit cries out with a loud voice and came out of him. Here we have the authority of Christ demonstrated.

We have it demonstrated in those who will follow him and even in those who oppose him. So Jesus says to his followers, follow me. And they do. He says to those who oppose him, be quiet and be cast out.

And they even obey this command. And that the people in verse 27 are amazed so that they argue among themselves saying, what is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him.

The people recognize the authority by which Jesus teaches. And immediately the news about him spread everywhere into all the surrounding district of Galilee. And so my friends, as I said, when we did our introduction to the gospel of Mark, one of the things that Mark presents to us here in his gospel is that Jesus is one who demands a response.

This message that we're reading about the life of Jesus and what he accomplished. This is not just an historical account so that we've got it written down somewhere. But this is something that actually demands a response.

As you come to know Christ, what are you going to do? Are you going to follow him? And following him means that you obey him. Like I could say that. And you're probably listening to this podcast already because you believe in Jesus.

I don't know why you would turn this podcast on if you didn't believe in Jesus. So you're already saying, yeah, of course, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. I believe in God. I believe that Jesus is his son.

I believe he died on the cross and rose again from the dead. Wonderful. But do you also obey him? Do you obey what he has commanded and your obedience demonstrates that you truly believe in him, that you truly believe in who he is, that when you say you love him, you're telling the truth because you obey him.

Jesus said in John 14, 15, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments. So your obedience demonstrates that your faith is genuine. So when you say you believe in Jesus, do you prove it?

Do you show it by in your actions, desiring holiness, turning from sin and turning to Christ, just as we had in that declaration of the gospel, repent and believe the gospel you are turning from the ways of the world, you are turning from your own fleshly desires and you're turning to Christ and being shaped more and more to be like him.

That is the response that we should have when we encounter the person and work of Jesus Christ. Let me stop there and pray. We'll pick up here in Mark chapter one tomorrow. Heavenly father, we thank you for what we have been taught by you concerning your son in your word.

And if we are going to say that we are followers of Jesus, if we're going to say that we believe in him, may that belief be worked out in our hearts that we are convicted to obey and we demonstrate that our faith is genuine by obeying what Jesus has said for us to do.

May we turn from sin. May we desire holiness. May we worship God with all of our words and actions today. Lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.