Jesus is Lord

Well, the Bible reader from just a second ago, who also happens to be my wife, and I were away last week, I took a week off, which doesn't happen very often.

But sounds like I missed possibly one of the most epic church services ever.

So that's the Lord's timing.

Congratulations to Hamish, Locke, Joel, Pat, Sammy, and Abby on your baptism.

I wasn't here last week, but praise God.

It makes me think, is God moving among us?

We know God is always moving, but I think God is actually especially maybe doing something at the start of this year, as He's stirring people to declare that jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior.

And that's what baptism is.

Baptism is the declaration of faith.

jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.

And I think it's actually the Lord's timing that we would come to tonight's passage in the year after the week that we've had, because it's a passage all about the Lordship of jesus.

And that's what baptism is about.

So the question I want to ask you at the start of this message is, who is the Lord of your life?

Or lady.

Who's in charge of your life?

Who gets to tell you how to speak, how to act, the things to watch?

Who is the Lord of your life?

Does anyone apart from yourself lay claim to that title?

I think we live in a cultural moment that places a supremely high emphasis on the autonomous self as the ruler of our own lives.

We think that freedom is defined by not being limited by anyone else's rules.

And yet, when I read the Bible, I see that it is fundamental to the life of following jesus to call him Lord.

Becoming a Christian means coming under the lordship of jesus.

And not only calling him the Lord, but doing something about it.

Following in his way and doing what he invites us to do.

That's what it is to be a Christian.

I know that I'm talking to at least six people who have declared jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

And many more, I'm sure.

Many of us have made that declaration at some point in the past that jesus is my Lord.

But whether that was a long time ago for you last week, or hasn't yet happened, I think there's something in this passage for all of us as we think about the Lordship of jesus.

Let me pray.

Father, we thank you for your word that we have in front of us.

I pray that the Holy Spirit of Truth would illuminate His meaning from the passage, that we would hear your word clearly to us.

I pray for all of our hearts as we receive it, that we would be like that good soil that jesus talked about.

We would receive the word, put it into practice, and bear fruit for your glory.

We pray this in jesus' name.

So this is sermon number five of our Gospel of New Beginnings series.

As Stephen said before, we have different sermons in the morning and night.

So if you only ever come at night, you're getting half of the picture.

So you do need to listen to the podcast to catch up on all of the morning sermons to get the full picture.

But tonight we're in Mark chapter 1 and verse 21, if you've got your Bibles.

While you're getting them out, if you don't already have them out, I'll tell you a quick story.

A couple of years ago, I studied a subject at Bible College called Principles of Hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is a fancy Bible word that means the art and science of how we interpret the Bible.

And I remember vividly the first lecture of my Hermeneutics subject.

The lecturer said, the most important thing you need to know about Hermeneutics, meaning the most important thing about how to read the Bible and interpret it.

The first rules of Hermeneutics are context, context, and rule number three is context.

Context is really important to understand what the Bible is saying.

So we're going to take my lecturer's advice.

And before we jump into tonight's passage, step back a little bit and get the sweep of what's happened in the Gospel of Mark so far.

The first paragraph, the first section of the Gospel of Mark was the story of John the Baptist, who came before jesus to prepare the way for his coming.

The second section of Mark, which was last Sunday morning, was the baptism and testing of jesus in the wilderness.

You guys were all here last Sunday night, and I wasn't.

I'm told that you looked at the announcement that jesus gave that the time has come, the kingdom of God has come near.

This morning, we looked at the passage of jesus calling his first disciples, who left everything to follow him, which brings us to tonight in a passage which my Bible has the paragraph title, jesus drives out an impure spirit.

I'm struck by how quickly Mark gets into things.

He doesn't spend three chapters on the birth story of jesus or an 18-verse prologue like John does.

He gets straight into the story, and he puts it up in our face.

Mark is a Gospel of New Beginnings.

That's sort of the title of the series that we're looking at.

Mark is a Gospel not so much about the words of jesus, the teachings, the parables, but it's about the actions of jesus, and especially the way that people respond to him.

So I think part of why Mark gets into things so fast is he wants to put jesus before us in a striking way and see how we respond to him.

And that's what our passage does.

This is our passage on the screen, Mark 1, 21-28.

When I have been looking at this, I'm struck by how much Mark fits into such a short passage.

I mean, it's not that short, but it's got a lot in it.

There's so many threads or ideas or ways that you could take this passage, but what I'm grateful for is the discovery from a few commentaries that Mark as the author and compiler of this short narrative has chosen to structure the passage in a particular way that helps point to the central idea that he wants to raise.

He uses a literary device called a chiasmus.

You might remember what a chiasmus is from high school English.

It comes from the Greek letter chi or chai, to be correct.

Chi is the letter X.

It's a big X.

And so a chiasmus as a literary device is sort of an X-shaped passage, meaning you would have line A, line B, line C, line D, line C, line B, line A.

It works in and then back out again as an X shape.

And the reason that a person like Mark would use a chiasmus is to direct our attention to what is in the middle of the X.

That is the central point of the passage.

So Mark 1, 21 to 28, we're going to work through it and see if it follows a chiasmus pattern.

But it does, because I wouldn't waste our time.

The first verse is Mark 1, verse 21.

It says, They, which is jesus and his first followers, they went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach.

If it is a chiasmus, we should find that the first and last verses have something in common.

So we'll go to the last verse, which is Mark 1, verse 28.

News about jesus spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.

Do you notice any common themes, repetitions between the two?

It's a location.

It's setting jesus within a location, firstly in Capernaum and then within Galilee.

It's jesus plus location is sort of the bookend of this passage.

Mark is intentionally pairing these two verses together.

Now we move inward from the top and from the bottom.

The next verse would be Mark 1, verse 22.

The people were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.

Corresponding verse would be verse 27.

The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, what is this?

A new teaching and with authority.

He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.

What's the common theme?

Authority amazement.

That's probably an easy one.

The people were amazed.

We can mark that as line B.

So the B's correspond with each other.

Moving on, again, moving inward to Mark 1 verse 23, it says, just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an impure spirit cried out.

Corresponding verse is verse 26.

The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek.

We see the introduction of the impure spirit and the departure of the impure spirit in these verses.

That would be line C.

Moving on to line D, 24.

What do you want with us, jesus of Nazareth?

The demon possessed man said.

Have you come to destroy us?

The next one would be Mark 1, 25.

Be quiet, said jesus sternly.

Come out of him.

The common factor here is it's a pair of dialogues.

The demon possessed man speaks and then jesus speaks.

And now, if you are still tracking with me, we have one verse left.

And if it is a chiasmus, then this verse will be what Mark's whole passage is pointing us to.

The middle of the chiasmus is verse 24B.

There's a fly on my iPad.

It's gone.

Verse 24B, the demon possessed man said, I know who you are, the Holy One of God.

It's a statement of the identity of jesus that Mark draws us to.

That's the crux of the passage.

The Holy One of God is who jesus is.

Holy as a word means other, means set apart, different, anointed or dedicated to God.

All throughout the Bible we see people referred to as a man of God or a woman of God.

But the demon possessed man is not saying jesus is a man of God, another in a long line of men or women of God.

He is saying jesus is different.

He is the holy one of God.

That's what it means that the demon is saying.

jesus is the holy one of God.

And having pointed us by the use of the chiasm to this truth, Mark, the cool thing about a chiasmus is you can then work back out again from the X.

You work inwardly and then you work outwardly.

So starting from the middle, jesus is the holy one of God.

We move out and we see that because jesus is the holy one of God, the set apart, different than us, one of God, when jesus says, be quiet, come out of him, it happens because he is the holy one of God.

People are amazed because he is the holy one of God.

And then the last verse at the edge, news spread about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee because jesus is the holy one of God.

Mark is pointing our attention to what is most important in this passage, that jesus is the holy one of God.

You ever thrown a rock into a pool or a pond or a lake?

Like the bigger the rock, the better.

You throw that rock and then you see the...

and then the ripples come out.

I think Mark is doing a similar thing in that he throws like a stone this revelation of the identity of jesus.

He throws that into the water and as it hits, ripples flow out from the identity of jesus as people respond to who he is.

And what are the ripples?

How do the people respond?

It says, they're amazed.

They're amazed by who jesus is, by what he says.

At the start of the passage, toward the start and towards the end, we have this picture of the people being amazed by the things that jesus does and the words that he says.

Mark 1.22 says, the people were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority and not as the teachers of the law.

Mark 1.27, the corresponding verse, the people were all so amazed that they asked each other, what is this?

A new teaching and with authority.

He even gives orders to impure spirits and they obey him.

The people were amazed.

I think to be amazed is one of at least three responses that we can have to jesus.

The first one is to be amazed.

I imagine as the people were going home after this incident, I imagine the crowds would be saying, Wow, jesus, that was amazing.

He's got something else.

Did you see the things he was saying?

Did you see what he did?

He's amazing.

I'm amazed.

But the problem is that in the limited description of the passage that Mark gives us, it seems like the amazement of the crowd does not go any further than that.

They were amazed and that's it.

And I think we can be a bit like that.

Maybe you are sitting here tonight and at the particular place that you're at in the journey of faith, you could say, jesus is amazing.

Yeah, I've heard what he says.

He's great.

He does cool things.

But like the crowds, it doesn't go any further than that.

A couple of years ago, I was working in a co-working space in this big room and there was probably 10 plus people in the room.

And most of them were working for themselves or in different companies.

And there were two women, sort of middle-aged women in the corner, who I overheard an interesting conversation one day.

One of them was telling the other the kind of school that she wanted to send her kids to.

And it was a Christian school, so my ears sort of perk up.

And she was saying, oh yeah, jesus had good values.

He was a nice guy.

He talked about love and forgiveness and good things.

So, I want my kids to be good people.

So, I'm going to send them to a Christian school.

You could say that the woman was amazed by jesus.

She was saying, in a way, jesus is amazing.

He does amazing things.

He says things which are helpful for the world.

But for that woman, I know, because I sat in a room with her for a long time, I don't think she's a follower of jesus.

Her amazement never went any further past that point.

And that is so less than the life that jesus invites us to.

He invites us to more than just being amazed by the things that he says.

jesus is worth far more than our amazement.

The second response we could have to jesus is to be amused by him.

To be amused is to find something funny, to find entertainment in it, to not take it seriously.

On Instagram, I am a follower of...

I mean, I'm a follower of jesus, right?

I'm also a follower of numerous accounts that make me laugh.

I follow them specifically because they amuse me.

And that's good, like I'm talking memes and videos of people falling over and stuff.

But when it comes to following jesus, I don't think there's room to be amused by his life and death and resurrection.

He took himself very seriously.

I mean, he was, without a doubt, the most joyful person who's ever lived in the history of the world.

I know jesus laughed.

He made jokes.

He didn't take himself seriously or the situation all of the time.

But I was reading this week the story of jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26.

And jesus is praying that the cup might be taken from him.

And in a different gospel that tells the same story, jesus has blood pressure so high that he's sweating blood.

In that moment, as jesus was walking toward the cross, he was taking our sin seriously.

jesus is worth far more than our amusement at him.

The third response that we could have is not to be amazed at jesus or amused by jesus, but to be moved.

The text says in Mark 1 here that the crowds were amazed at jesus, but it didn't go any further than that.

And it says in other parts of the gospel that people scoffed at jesus.

They were amused at him.

They didn't take him seriously.

And so their relationship with him never went any further than that.

But as Mark uses this chiasmus to point us to the central point of the passage, it says, jesus is the holy one of God.

And that rightly requires that we are not amused or amazed, but moved, moved to submission, to worship, to adoration, to apprenticeship, because jesus did not live and die and rise again in order that we may stay where we are, amazed and amused.

He died to move us to submission to his good lordship.

That's what the invitation of the Gospels is.

It's an invitation to call jesus Lord and to live the life that he invites us to live.

A memory verse that Stephen led us in for the month of January around our value, jesus is worth it, is Philippians 2, 5 to 11.

And it says in that second half, after it says jesus was humiliated and crucified, it says, Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every other name, that at the name of jesus, every knee should bow, actually be moved before the name of jesus.

And every tongue acknowledged that jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

We are supposed to be in view of the identity of jesus, the Holy One of God.

We're supposed to be moved to our knees in submission to his Lordship.

That's the right thing to do when we come before the Holy One of God.

So what is your response to jesus?

Are you amazed by him?

That's good, if it goes further.

Are you amused by him?

That's probably not good.

You should maybe stop that.

But most importantly, have you been or are you now being moved by him?

Moved by his identity as the Holy One of God.

And I don't mean moved to emotion necessarily, although that may accomplish it, may accompany the movement of God.

I mean moved in this sense.

Moved to your knees before the Lord, and declaring that he is Lord and Saviour.

Six people, at least, have made that movement.

Six people last week said, jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour, and many more, I know, in this room, and two in the morning as well last week.

But that is exactly the response that jesus is worthy of, is to be moved, to call him Lord, and to come under his Lordship.

What's your response to jesus?

God is at work among us.

As I said, that's always true, all the time.

But specifically, God is sort of moving in us, compelling people, driving them to declare jesus is Lord and Saviour.

Maybe not for the first time, but in a new way.

So I'm opening these doors again.

And Stephen kind of preempted this.

I think you knew this was coming.

If you want to get baptized, you can.

Tonight.

You actually know the drill better than I do because you were here last week.

If you would like to be baptized tonight, we have all of the clothes that you need and towels out there.

In a minute, I'm going to pray.

And if you would like to be baptized tonight, get up.

As soon as I start praying, walk over there and we'll sort you out and you can be baptized.

And if you do that, you are being moved by the Lordship of jesus to do something about it.

Many of us have been baptized before and that's awesome.

And many of us have already declared jesus as Lord and baptism is at the moment maybe not the right thing.

But I know that there's at least one person here who will be baptized because I've spoken to them.

But there might be more.

How is the Lord moving you tonight?

Moving you to come under his Lordship.

To be baptized is not to say I finally figured it out.

I understand all of faith and I'm perfect now.

I've completed the journey.

It's actually the exact opposite.

It is a line in the sand to say I want to associate myself with Christ because just as he went into the grave for three days, I go under the water.

And as he came back to life, resurrected in power, I mime the same thing.

It's a line in the sand to say I believe jesus Christ is my Lord and Saviour.

So how is the Lord moving you tonight?

Maybe he's moving you to want to be baptized or to respond in different ways to declare him Lord.

And so I returned to that question that I opened the message with.

Who is the Lord of your life?

Who is the one who gets to tell you how to live, how to speak, how to think, how to behave, how to dress, the things to watch and not to watch, to read?

Who is the Lord of your life?

I pray that you will discover, as I have and many have in this room, there is no better life on this earth than to live under the Lordship of a good and gracious and humble and loving and merciful King, jesus.

There is no better life.

And in this process of coming under the Lordship, being moved by the identity of jesus as the Holy One of God, it will involve saying yes to things and saying no to things as the Spirit shapes us and convicts us.

It will involve starting some things and stopping other things because jesus says so.

because you have said, He is my Lord, and He gets to be Lord of my life, and He gets to guide my life.

There are things to say no to and things to say yes to when we live under the Lordship of jesus.

So, I'm going to pray now and submit myself and you if you are following me to the Lordship of jesus.

And as I pray, if you want to be baptized and take that step, please just head out as soon as I start praying.

And then we'll worship together.

Let's pray.

Lord jesus, we come before you with a sense of your absolute holiness.

You are the name above every other name, and we can't do anything but come before you and bend our knees and remind ourselves that you are worthy, the lamb slain before the creation of the world, who we will worship for all eternity.

And in this room, there's many who would call you Lord.

I pray for us that your Holy Spirit would call us deeper into the life of following you and coming under your Lordship.

Would you speak to us this week, Holy Spirit, about the things that you would have us say yes to, say no to, to start and to stop?

We want to be a people, a community, and individuals who are shaped by the Lordship of jesus.

And for those here who maybe have not come under the Lordship of jesus, would you move them by your spirit?

Compel them even now to acknowledge that jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

And as we worship now, we glorify you and we lift up your name, and we say you are worthy, King jesus.

So would you receive our praise?

In the name of jesus, we pray.

Amen.

‍