Fishers of Men

Listen here.

Mark 1:14-20

Loads of good stuff today.  This is one of the most important parts of the Bible.  After all, it gives Jesus’ first public sermon.  A very short one.  You wish I would preach that way!  Yeah, right!  Oh well, it is what it is.  Let’s get started. 

John the Baptist must decrease.  Jesus must increase.  John gets out of the way.  For Jesus!  Jesus is the Savior.  Not John.  So, after John is arrested, incarcerated and made shorter by a head all attention now is on Jesus.  John, who prepared the way for Jesus now stands down for Jesus who is the Way!  John will soon be made shorter by a head.  John must decrease.  Jesus must increase.  After all, John’s martyrdom doesn’t save anyone but Jesus’ death saves everyone!    

According to the text Jesus begins His Salvation-Of-The-World- Ministry in a location that throws us for a loop.  Shouldn’t Jesus be in the capital city of Jerusalem?  In Judea?  Deep in the midst of His own people?  No. Instead, He kicks off His Going-To-Do-A-Good-Friday-Salvation-Job way up north.  He makes a run for the border that divides Hebrews from Gentiles:  Galilee!  The point?  Well, it’s so Captain Obvious for anyone who knows the Bible or has the biblical worldview.  Jesus is the Savior of not just Jews but the Gentiles as well.  He’s come to die for all.  Because if He dies for all, He dies FOR YOU too!

That’s some serious salvific good news!  The best news any miserable sinner could hear.  He’s is Savior FOR ALL SINNERS!  AND FOR YOU TOO!  So, Jesus let’s folks know this loudly, clearly and categorically.  Check out what He preaches:  “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God has drawn near; repent and believe in the gospel.”

Who would have ever imagined?  His sermon means that all the OT promises are fulfilled.  God has rolled up His sleeves and He reigns.  He rules.  He has a kingdom. 

When?  Right now! 

Where?  On the earth. 

Why?  TO BE AND ACT AS GOD FOR SINNERS AND FOR THEIR SALVATION. 

In whom?  In the body and person of Jesus His Beloved Son!  Jesus is THE King!  Servant Salvation King. Come to give His life as a ransom for many.  Such a salvation for sinners must be preached.  Otherwise you’d never be able to believe it.  “Faith comes by hearing,” (Rom 10:17).

When the King and His Kingdom of God reign arrives He wants a response.  For what did King Savior Jesus preach?  Repentance and faith. “Repent and believe in the gospel.”

Repent.  Confess the truth that you’re a sinner.  That it’s time to turn from your sin.  Die to it.  Turn from unbelief and idolatry to the highest worship of Jesus:  faith.  Faith that trusts the good news, the gospel, that Jesus is the Savior King of sinners.  That He is King Savior FOR YOU and for your salvation.  Now that Savior King Jesus has arrived, your sin, all of it, no longer belongs to you.  Your sin belongs to Him – atoned totally by His Good Friday Blood.  So, turn from sin to Jesus’ righteousness.  Turn from hellacious death to the gift of heavenly, eternal life!    

However, and this is huge – you don’t repent and faith yourself.  Seriously!  Sinners do not do the repenting and faithing of themselves.  King Savior Jesus does!  He does the repenting and faithing of sinners like you and me.  When He calls for repentance and faith, His calling, His preaching, and His speaking does and gives what it says and calls for. 

Let’s not forget how powerful His words are.  They are the words of God Himself.  In the beginning He said, “Let there be light.”  At the tomb of His good friend He said, “Lazarus, come out!” At this altar He says:  “This bread is my body and this wine is my blood.” When He wants disciples He simply declares, “Follow me.” 

In the beginning His speaking brought forth the light.  His speaking raised Lazarus’ rotting corpse from the grave. His speaking gives us His body and blood with the bread and wine. His speaking makes disciples out of weathered and rough fishermen named Simon, Andrew, James and John.  So too, when He wants stubborn turned-in-on-themselves-sinners to be repented and faithed, He does it through His preaching, “Repent and believe in the gospel.”   Jesus says “repent” and “believe” and He does the repenting and faithing when and where it pleases Him through His Word proclaimed and preached.  It pleased Him to use Jonah’s preaching of repentance to repent and faith the entire city of Nineveh!    

The “good news” of the “Gospel” is that Jesus alone does the saving of sinners and that His Good Friday forgiveness is all yours.  That’s why He preached then in Galilee and it’s why He wants the gospel preached until the end of time. This is precisely why Jesus has a church in the world, why this congregation here at Trinity, Murdock exists, and why Jesus puts men into the office of the Holy Ministry or why Jesus sent a prophet like Jonah to Nineveh in the OT.  Jesus wants His salvational Kingdom of God reign proclaimed and applied so that sinners would be repented from their sin and idolatry and then faithed in Him alone as Lord and Savior.   

This gets clinched all the more in what follows.  Check it out. “Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee,”  (as if He’s just mindlessly rambling – not hardly) Jesus purposely observes and intentionally bellies right up to two sets of brother fishermen.  Simon, Andrew, James and John.  Jesus dares to interrupt their occupation, source of lucrative income and their identity. “Follow me,” He commands, “and I will make you fishers of men.”  

His Word, His preaching, does and gives what it says.  “And immediately,” the text says, “they left their nets and followed Him.” Incredible!  The four fishermen have been fished.  Netted.  Caught.  Reeled in by the Great Fish Jesus Himself!   Yes, it pleased the Great-Fisherman-King-Savior-Jesus to net these fishermen for His service. The King is doing His kingdom of God stuff.  He chooses them. They DO NOT CHOOSE Him. He seeks them. They DO NOT SEARCH for Him.  He finds them.  They DO NOT DISCOVER Him! 

“Follow me.” It’s just like when He says: “Let there be light,” “Lazarus come forth,” “This is my body,” “This is my blood,” as well as when He says, “repent” and “believe.”

“Follow me,” “repent,” and “believe” are His divine enlivening, powerful words. His words do and give what they say. Mark emphasizes this point with one his favorite words in his gospel:  the adverb “immediately.”  Everything is “immediately” in Mark’s gospel! 

And so, the men who throw nets for a living “immediately” abandon the nets, vocation and families!  The “follow me” words of Jesus have their way with these hardened fishermen. They drop everything and “immediately” they are followers/disciples of Kingdom of God King Savior Jesus!  Nothing and no one matters more than Jesus!  Their lives are never the same.  And that’s not an exaggeration.  They had been netted by Big Fisherman Jesus.  But why?  Well, He would have good use of them.     

“I will make you fishers of men.”  The Bible is so delicious!  Former fisherman now followers of Jesus will be spend the rest of their lives fishing … FOR MEN! They were experts when it came to catching Sea of Galilee fish. They knew which were the best nets, the best boats, the best time of the day, the season and the prime water temperatures.  But men? How do you catch men? Literally with nets?  Booby traps?  Will these “fishers of men” need to hire NY City 5^th Avenue advertising firms, Silicon Valley product marketing wonks, or angling greats like Roland Martin, Bill Dance or Jeremy Wade to fish for men?     

Well …. No.  Just leave the “fishers of men” thing to Jesus.  Let’s not forget that in Luke 24  and Matthew 28 give them the blueprint to follow. In Luke 24 they are to preach “repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  I.E. call sinners to repentance and when they are repented and ask for forgiveness forgive them.  Categorically!  Apply His Good Friday forgiveness to the repentant.  Tell them:  “Jesus died for you.  All your sin is forgiven for His sake.  Believe it.  Take it to the bank!”

In Matthew 28, the fishers of men pattern is this: “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And lo I am with you always to the very end of the age.”  Baptizing and teaching how they will fish, net and catch men for the salvational kingdom of God!  As the netting of holy baptism is cast all throughout the world, Jesus Himself, who’s the FISHERMAN behind the scenes, will be hauling in the net and having a huge catch of disciples after disciples that stains the net to the breaking point! 

You’re baptized!  You’ve been taught all your life.  You’ve been discipled!  To use the language of Mark 1, Jesus has fished you and has netted you.  Brought you into His boat, the holy Christian Church! 

Let me joyously put it to you this way to emphasize the point all the more.  You, who are baptized, have been caught in the net of Jesus’ Good Friday death. You, the baptized, have been captured by Jesus’ death that alone atones for the sin of the world and for your sin. You, the baptized, have been netted and yet kept alive in Christ’s church in which you swim in the oxygenated Word of forgiveness that you breathe, the Body of Jesus you eat and the Blood of Jesus that you drink.

Happy living in and from your baptism by daily being repented and faithed by the Lord Jesus Himself through His Word.  What joy! 

In the name of Jesus.