What a treat it is to be here to see all of you in this new building and to worship with our old church family. Not that you're old. Many of you are younger than me, but you're dear to us and it's a treat to be here. We're going to look at God's Word together this morning in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 1. I've been preaching to the Gospel of Mark in my congregation in Roseburg, Oregon, and it's a little difficult, I know, to jump into a narrative in the middle of a story without the background, so I'm going to do what I can to help you get into the story. of Jesus Christ and the coming of the Kingdom of God from Mark's Gospel. To do that, I'd like to read from Daniel, chapter 7, just important prophecy, vision given to the prophet Daniel, telling us about the story of our Savior, Jesus Christ, who was to come. I'd like you to hear these words from Daniel, chapter 7, verses 1 through 15. In the first year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head while on his bed. Then he wrote down the dream, telling the main facts. Daniel spoke, saying, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, each different from the other. The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings. I watched till its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet like a man, and a man's heart was given to it. And suddenly another beast, a second, like a bear, was raised up on one side and had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth, and they said thus to it, Arise, devour much flesh. After this I looked, and there was another, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird. The beast also had four heads, and dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, exceedingly strong. It had huge iron teeth. It was devouring, breaking in pieces, and trampling the residue with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns. I was considering the horns, and there was another horn, a little one, coming up among them, before whom three of the first horns were plucked out by the roots. And there in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking pompous words. I watched till thrones were put in place, and the Ancient of Days was seated. His garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head was pure like wool. His throne was a fiery flame, its wheels a burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him. A thousand thousands ministered to him. Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court was seated and the books were opened. I watched them because of the sound of the pompous words which the horn was speaking. I watched till the beast was slain and its body destroyed and given to the burning flame. As for the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion taken away, yet their lives were prolonged for a season any time. I was watching in the night visions and behold, one like the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the ancient of days and they brought him near before him. Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away. In his kingdom, the one which shall not be destroyed." God's word. We'll turn now together to Mark chapter 1. We'll be looking together this morning at verses 14 through 20, but I'd like to read, picking up in verse 9, where Jesus comes after the ministry of John the Baptist and his preaching about the one who would come after him and him ministering a baptism. of repentance for the remission of sins. And we're told in verse 9, it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And immediately, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. Then a voice came from heaven, You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Immediately the Spirit drove him into the wilderness, and he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts. And the angels ministered to him." Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom 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 walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men. They immediately left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther from there, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who also were in the boat, mending their nets. And immediately he called them. And they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and they went after him. This is God's holy word. Let's pray together. Our great God and Savior, thank you for your word. And we confess as we read it and hear it that it is by this word that we have been born again. not an incorruptible seed, but the incorruptible seed, the living and abiding Word of God. And we ask that the same Spirit, Christ, who inspired this Word to be written and penned and preserved for us, would take it and deliver it to our hearts with power that we would see the glorious, unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus and what He has done what he began to do, what he is still doing even today. We ask and pray in Jesus' name, amen. Have you ever wondered something like this? What if Germany and Japan had actually won World War II? Or what if Britain had won the Revolutionary War? against the colonies of what is now the United States? Or what if Charles Martel had, he didn't stop the Muslim invasion into Europe in 732 at the Battle of Tours and all of Europe falls under the sword of Islam? What if William the Conqueror lost the Battle of Hastings to King Harold II? What if? What would it be like if these things had gone, if these conflicts had gone the other way We know that history, when we think about these things, history turns, history shifts in power that takes place after major battles and clashes between world powers. I was actually reading recently about this scholar, historian, who said that he would point to the Battle of Marathon from 490 BC, when the Greek nation first resisted and actually won a battle against Darius I in the mighty Persian Empire. He'd said that is the most significant victory in the history of Western civilization. the consequences of that battle. Indeed, they are significant. They are tremendous. They're immeasurable for the development of even our culture to this day. Think about it. If they had lost that battle at Marathon, the Persians would have rushed into Athens and Athens would have likely fallen to the Persian armies. Some 20 years before Socrates was born and the beginning of Western philosophy began. 130 years before Alexander the Great and the worldwide spread of Greek culture. Significant things. Significant things. So it's really impossible to say what erasing those types of influences from our history would mean for us and for our world. But on that day, Greece did win. They conquered at the Battle of Marathon, and that legendary messenger left the field of battle, ran the first marathon 25 miles away to Athens, and came into the city and proclaimed the victory, announcing that the day of the Greeks had come. And as it turned out, the great kingdom of Greece was born and propelled to their key place in history. Now, few of us probably have thought much about the Battle of Marathon and what it means for us today, but certainly it is not to be denied that it's one of the most important battles in our culture, in our history. But truly, it doesn't even come close in significance to the battle in the wilderness that Mark briefly describes for us here in chapter 1, verses 12 through 13, where we read that together. Jesus, the baptized Son of God, full of the Holy Spirit, goes out into the wilderness against Satan, the father and God of this world. the commander of the wild beasts, the nations and kingdoms of this earth. He goes out against him. And just as Daniel saw in his dream, the nations are these powerful forces in human history. But when the Son of Man comes, when the Son of Man comes, their dominion is taken away from them. They are destroyed. The one who has power over them is slain. The Son of Man, we are told there, will establish the everlasting Kingdom of God. Well, the first blow of that battle, that promised battle that we see and read together from Daniel's vision, the first blow of that battle took place out in the wilderness as Jesus goes out to be tempted. Now Greece didn't go from, another lesson from history, Greece didn't go from beating the Persians at Marathon to immediately ruling most of the known world. It began that day, however. It began that day, it took another 155 years of fighting. In a similar way, the son of man didn't crush the kingdom of darkness and spread his kingdom over the earth in one day or in 40 days in the wilderness. But he began to. He began to. And in Mark chapter 1 verses 14 through 20, we get a snapshot of how he is going to bring it to completion. How he is going to spread the kingdom of God from pole to pole. Jesus Christ is going to fill the earth with the kingdom of God. How? You ready for it? by preaching. By preaching and by making, calling and making disciples. By preaching and by calling and making disciples, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Son of Man, is going to take all the nations of the earth. So Jesus, the King, Marcus presented him to us here in chapter one as the king, as the Lord coming, and here he is preaching. In verse 14, his message is about the coming of the kingdom of God. The coming of the kingdom of God, and we see three things about the coming of the kingdom of God in the person of Jesus Christ. We see the proximity, the priority, and the process. the proximity, the priority, and the process. And this is what we're going to talk about from this passage here together, what we're going to see. So here comes Jesus into the public arena really for the first time. And nobody really knows who he is up to this point, although Everybody knows what John said. Everybody knows what John said. If we look at verse five of this chapter, we hear that Mark tells us that everybody, all of Judea, all of Jerusalem went out to John at the Jordan River to be baptized by him. And they heard his message. They heard what he said about the one who was to come after John, who was mightier than John, who was wonderfully exalted above John. See that in verse seven, that was his message. And well now, Mark starts off by telling us here in verse 14 that John is off the scene. John has been arrested. He's been literally handed over just as Jesus and his disciples at a later time would be handed over. John is handed over and that is when Jesus comes. So God started something with John, and now Mark is showing us everything is happening on schedule. Everything is happening according to God's plan. That is what Mark is showing us here. And you hear it in Jesus' first words where he says, the time is fulfilled. The time is fulfilled. What time? What time is he talking about? All of time, all of time, all of human history is now complete. The history that began with the first man, Adam, and his fall into sin, that time is fulfilled. Not that the history of man is over now that Jesus has come, not that it is over, but certainly with the coming of Jesus Christ, Mark is gonna show us, the futility and the hopelessness of that history is over. Adam and his sin-cursed children have had their way on the earth. They've had millennia on the face of the earth. And could the results have been any worse? Could it have been any worse? But remember, chapter 1, verse 1, as Mark begins the gospel, he says, this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The beginning. And as we see in Jesus' baptism, in verses 9 through 11, we can't go into much detail, we see there that He is the new man. He's the new man of the new creation. The Son of God. And with the coming of Jesus, history is now about to take a turn on a dime and head into a direction that it never ever could have gone without his coming. That is what Jesus comes proclaiming at first. It is the proximity. It is the immediacy. It is the nearness of something that is new. It's the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the perfect rule of God in and over a man who perfectly and joyfully and willingly submits to God in faith and obedience. Has God ever not been ruling? Has the kingdom of God not been, has God not been ruling over the earth? Has He ever stopped being the king of all that He has made, all that He has created? Well, really, no, He hasn't. But in His rule, in His governing of all things and all of His creatures and all of their actions, God has allowed, He has decreed the rebellion of His creatures, those who were created in His own image. Those who should have, without hesitation, loved and followed him with willing hearts. And as we read about that history, that first beginning in Genesis chapter 3 with Adam, we see that a created son of God turns on God. He turns on God. He wants God's position, in fact. He wants to be his own king. his own master, his own Lord. And Adam and all of us who come from him have become, just as Adam became, self-centered and self-absorbed. As one Reformed pastor has written about it, we each have set up the kingdom of me over and against the kingdom of God. Is there anything more miserable or destructive than that? Is there anything more miserable than us being absorbed with ourselves? It sows the seeds of destruction into every relationship that we have. It destroys me to be absorbed with myself, having all of my thoughts with me at the center of them. Do people really like me? How am I doing? Am I getting treated the way that I want to? Am I getting what I'm worth? Am I proving myself? Am I going forward? How can I get more for me? In all of that, there's nothing but paranoia and discontent and disease of the mind in being absorbed with ourselves. And isn't that the very reason that we have wars, strivings, disintegration of marriages, of families, of culture and civilization. Isn't that the reason? But when Jesus comes, when Jesus, the Son of God comes, he preached the gospel of God, Mark tells us here in verse 14. That is, he declared in the face of all the destruction, all of the self-absorption that man at his best has brought into this world, He declared that God is bringing an end to the kingdom of man, held under the sway of Satan and all of our self-absorption, all of our self-serving. And Jesus preached, as we see here, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near. But where, Jesus? Where's the kingdom? It's near. Where's the end of the destruction of human self-absorption, of mankind's tyranny on the earth and over one another? Where is the coming of the goodness, the blessedness, the fruitfulness of man being ruled and absorbed with God in fellowship and worship with Him? Where is it, Jesus? It's Him. It's in Him. It is Him. It is what He came to do. It is who He is and what it is that He is doing. He is, as Mark shows us here, the beloved Son of God who is completely enthralled and absorbed with God and God's good pleasure. He is a new man, a new creation man. And as you follow this new creation man around in the Gospel of Mark, as you work your way through it, you'll see real clearly what our sin and our self-absorption looks like. But you won't see it in Jesus. You won't see it in Jesus, you'll see it really for what it is in his disciples. And as the Gospel of Mark goes on, you'll see that again and again the disciples of Jesus Christ are seeking their own glory. They're still absorbed with themselves as they walk with the Savior, and they see the things that He does, and they are following Jesus. But just like us, they want what is good for them. They want the growth of their own individual kingdom, and yes, they will even use Jesus to get it. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. and to give his life as a ransom for many. That's what he says to his disciples. He says to his disciples throughout the book in various places, he shows them truly what greatness is. And he shows them that greatness is actually just what he is. It is being ruled by God so that we become as loving, humble, and servant-minded as God himself is towards us. You see the kingdom of God. You see the perfect rule of God in this new man, Jesus Christ. As we see him, as he is presented here to us, would we really like to go on believing that our way is the right way? Believing that heaven is serving ourselves and indulging the shallow pleasures that we get by on? Is that really, do we really want to do that? that our kingdom of one, our self-rule is somehow better than being ruled by God? And really, we see that we're on a fool's errand. We're on a fool's errand in serving ourselves. The end of it is self-destruction. And God will not, as we know, let this rebellion from his creatures go on forever and ever, and God has actually already begun judging. Paul talks about this in Romans chapter one, speaking about how God hands people over to the vicious effects of being self-absorbed. As we become more and more inwardly focused, we only find what? We only find more of our sinful selves in there. There is there no possibility for change or for growth. There is only the slow slide down into our most wretched potential. You wanna hear some good news? Jesus says the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the gospel. Come to terms with the reality that the self-made kingdom of your own mind is worthless. Look instead at the man who is ruled perfectly by God and how he is overcoming every temptation of being absorbed with himself and triumphantly being absorbed continually with God. and in the process reconciling all of his people to God. Believe in him. Believe in him, Jesus says. Believe in him and what God is doing through him. The time is fulfilled. Another way to look at this is more time won't do any good. You don't need more time. Man doesn't need more time to make something of ourselves. We need God to fulfill the time and to start something new in the Lord Jesus Christ. Only a new source of life, only a new power to make things whole again will do. Only new creation will do. And that is exactly what the Son of God is here to do as He begins His ministry, the work of new creation. The Kingdom of God is near. It's come with Jesus Christ, and He is spreading it, and it will cover all of the earth. And Jesus spreads it by proclaiming, first of all, the proximity of it, the proximity of it, the nearness of it in Himself as He shines the light on Himself and the beauty and the power and the glory of the Gospel that is in Him and what it is that He is doing. The age of man being ruled only by the rule of self-absorption and self-promotion is over. As Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come. The Son of God, the second Adam, is here. He's come. And now we see in verse 16 that Jesus is on the move. Jesus is on the move. And now he's perfectly positioned as the new creation man, the second Adam, to spread the kingdom of God across the face of the earth. And how is that? Well, he's gone to Galilee. He's been ministering in Galilee. And I know it's often said that Galilee was this backwater, nowhere place in relationship to Jerusalem, at least. And to some degree, yes, that's very much true. But Galilee was also a major hub of commerce. The fish that came from the Sea of Galilee, where these men are fishing, was widely traded and sent to other parts of the Roman Empire. It was traded to places as far away as Egypt. At the same time, there's all these traders that flow in to this area on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee from all over the Roman Empire to do business. So if you wanted to spread the message far and wide about the kingdom of God coming near, this is a great place to do it from. And Jesus is going to fill the earth with the Kingdom of God. First, by announcing the proximity of it in Himself, but then, secondly, we see here, by establishing a new priority for mankind. A new priority. He establishes a new, life-governing priority for men by calling disciples to Himself, as He does here in 16-20. We see in verse 16 that Mark tells us that Jesus, he walked along the sea of Galilee, where he sees a couple of fishermen. And what he actually sees, and the readers in the first century would have known this, is that he sees hundreds, maybe thousands of fishermen. There were probably hundreds, literally hundreds of boats on the Sea of Galilee fishing on those shores. This was a very, very busy place. A very busy place of commerce where men and women and sons and fathers and the young and the old were working together in the family business and this was their livelihood. This is where Jesus goes to call some people to spread the gospel of the kingdom. You notice that Jesus didn't go to some back alley behind a restaurant in Capernaum. He didn't go under an overpass somewhere and find some guys who were lounging around and were underemployed. He looked for men who were busy with the priorities that dominated their own lives. And we do see that Jesus does call the blind, he calls lepers, he calls those whose chief priority is simply to survive, simply to get by. But the point that I want to make here is that discipleship is not for those who have nothing better to do. discipleship, the call of Jesus Christ upon the lives of men and women is for the busy, the driven, the ambitious, all whom Jesus calls by the gospel to himself. So here are Simon and Andrew casting their nets into the sea. There is James and John with their father Zebedee in the boat getting their nets ready so that they can keep the family business going. We notice that Zebedee and his sons must have been doing pretty good, actually, because Mark tells us there in verse 20 that they have hired workers on their crew. It's to these men that Jesus calls, follow me. And this is unheard of in the Jewish or Gentile world. Neither rabbis, Jewish rabbis, or the Gentile philosophers went looking for followers, called followers to themselves to learn their moral principles and program. They didn't do that. Jesus. Jesus is the king and he conscripts people into his service. And the call is a life-transforming, life-re-centering call. That's what we see here. These men are going to leave and did leave their fathers and the family business behind, which in the first century Roman world was a radical idea, a life-transforming, life-re-centering kind of idea, because your father and the family business was to be your main, if not sole priority. you were to give yourself over to it. This is what was expected to you. In our culture, it's a bit different. In our culture, it is far less family-centered or father-centered than the first century. Our culture consistently teaches that we are to put our own individual pursuit of the American dream first. So in our culture, that means for the driven, for the ambitious, for those who have priorities, an education and then a career are the main pursuits of life, the main priorities. And what Jesus is demonstrating here in the call of these first disciples is that he spreads the kingdom of God by calling people out of being absorbed by their old priorities of living for the kingdom of man, living for the kingdom of me to be absorbed with him and the gospel of the kingdom of God. And you could say, well this is a pretty radical call. This new priority that is given to these fishermen. It must just be for some of his disciples. Some of his disciples are called to this new priority. He calls us to be disciples, but not to this radical abandoning of our old priorities. Jesus wants some commitment, but everything in moderation. actually says in another place, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Like, whoa, now the bar is way too high, way too high. Who wants to be a disciple now? Let me tell you who. Let me tell you who wants to hear this call to a new priority to follow Jesus Christ. It's those who hear and those who understand the good news about Jesus and the gospel of the kingdom. Now remember, it is and it was my commitment to the kingdom of me that was destroying me. It's the world's pride, the world's self-absorption that God is going to judge and bring to an end. It is the kingdom of this world that God has cursed. It is the kingdom of this world that will not last. And what you see in Jesus is true living. What you see in Jesus is true humanity. You see a man for the first time since the first Adam, living like a true human being with his life caught up in the life of God, living in his power and for God's glory. So now uniting and following Jesus by faith in his priority to love and serve his Heavenly Father above all else, that is what it means to live. That is what it means to truly be human. That is what it looks like to be free from the old priority of serving sin and the kingdom of me. That is what it looks like. And that is why the coming of Jesus Christ is the best news that has ever been announced. In Him, we see the only true heavenly alternative to putting all of our hope in what? Our career? Our families? Our retirement plan? And what it is that we will accomplish with our lives in that? The only proper response to a person who sees the glory of the kingdom of God in the person of Jesus Christ is to say, compared to my commitment to Jesus, I want my love for those old priorities to look like hate. That's what Jesus is calling us to, a new Godward priority. And it doesn't mean that we hate father and mother, we hate sister and brother, absolutely. But we must do that if we're gonna follow Jesus. We don't hate those old priorities, absolutely, but compared to Jesus and to his kingdom, it certainly should look that way. It should feel that way. He is the Savior. He is the King. He is the second Adam, the man of the new creation, and we must, we must, we must be united to Him. We must follow Him. This new priority Jesus calls us to then is good news. It's gospel. It's the gospel of the kingdom of God, Jesus, we're told here. It is Jesus freeing us from the burden and the bondage of self-absorption. To believe in and to follow the one who is radically absorbed with God and serving others. Serving us as his people. And Jesus' kingdom-spreading call for his people to follow him is first of all, as we've seen, and largely about believing in him and prioritizing our lives so we can learn about him. That's what a disciple is, a learner, right? We prioritize our lives around learning about Jesus so that we know about Jesus, so that we believe Jesus. We discover more and more about who our Savior is. A disciple's life is absorbed with learning about Jesus. That's what the gospel is. It's not what we do. It's not good advice for us. It is what Jesus Christ has come to do as the man of new creation. It's the news about what Jesus Christ has done to make us children of God. And being absorbed with Jesus in the gospel of the kingdom is the disciple's new priority. That's your new priority, as you are called by him in the gospel. And for most of us, it won't mean a new vocation, a shifting and turning to life in full-time Christian ministry. the vast majority of us, it will not mean that. To most disciples, Jesus says what he will go on to say in Mark chapter 5, verse 19, after he heals this demon-possessed man, and he wants to go with Jesus. He asks Jesus if he can go with him, and Jesus doesn't permit him to come. And what does he tell him? He tells him, he says, go home. Go home and tell your friends the great things that the Lord has done for you and how he has had compassion on you. The new priority of discipleship. The priority of being absorbed with Jesus, then, does not necessarily change your vocation, your calling in the world, but it does necessarily change every relationship that you have, and all of your priorities in all of those relationships. So the spread of the kingdom as Jesus brings it about by the proclamation of this message of the proximity, the nearness of the kingdom of God in Him and the priority of Jesus in that kingdom in our lives. That is what we see here, first of all. And when Jesus and the gospel of the kingdom become a person's priority, Now he or she is brought into a process. That's the third thing we see here. The process. A process central to the spread of the gospel of the kingdom. And in verse 17, as we look there, the New King James does a pretty good job translating this verse, better than some, where it reads, Jesus said to them, follow me. And I will make you to become fishers of men. I will make you to become fishers of men. And Jesus has to make you a fisher of men. Jesus had to make these men fishers of men. And these men here that he calls, they're the foundation, aren't they? He's calling here. There's a signal here that also something new is taking place. God through His Son, Jesus Christ, is calling men to fish for men from all the nations of the earth. That's the time that we live in. We live in the time where Jesus Christ, through men that He calls to Himself, through the ministry of the Word, are gathering fishes from all the nations of the earth to Himself. And here he calls these first fishermen, who also serve as a paradigm for our own lives as disciples as well. We can see that in other places in Mark's gospel, that many other people follow Jesus not just Simon and Andrew and James and John. And so we need to consider what Mark is showing us here through the words of Jesus Christ. And we first of all have to consider and know that fishermen in the first century didn't do what we often do when we fish, right? You get a fishing pole, you have a line, hook, bait, cast it. I've never caught two fish at one time, but most of the time you pull up one if you catch any at all. But as we see these men here, what they're doing here on the shore of this sea, they are drawing fish out of the water in nets. They're drawing fish out of the water in nets. And to get at the illustration that Jesus is using here, and right, fishers of men is an illustration. It's a way of describing the work, the call on these men. To get this illustration, you have to understand, we have to know something about how ancient Israelites, or ancient people in general, thought about the sea, the deep water that Jesus is standing next to as he's calling these men. They're next to a deep sea full of fish. The ancient people thought of the sea, as deep water, as a place of chaos. a place of danger, a place of death even. It is used throughout the scriptures, throughout the Old Testament to portray the kingdom of this world and its darkness. You see that? We read that together in Daniel chapter seven. Did you get that? These beasts rising up out of the sea, the nations of the earth rising up out of the sea. So Jesus is saying, I will make you a person who draws people out of the kingdom of darkness and towards the kingdom of God. And of course, it's the preaching of the gospel that is gonna bring people from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God, but all of us, even all of us who do not preach, can be fishers of men, who draw people away from the kingdom of darkness towards the kingdom of God. How does this work? Well, it's a process, we see this from what Jesus says here, it's a process that includes Jesus making each of us what we once were not. It's a process of Jesus making us something different than we are right now. He makes us to become fishers of men. How does this work? Well, let me ask you. Have you ever known someone who was selfish towards you? Have you ever known someone who used you? Exploited you? zapped you, drained you, wanted you, but only for their own selfish self-interests, for their own purposes. How about a person who, in their self-centeredness, wouldn't give you the time of day or kept you at arm's length? Felt like they were too good for you, too self-absorbed. Have you known people like that? And you're probably thinking, well, yeah, actually, to some degree, Isn't that us? Aren't we all like that? Isn't that everyone? Aren't most people, all people like that? Yes, right. Because as children of the first man, Adam, all people have their own little kingdom and they live for themselves. And so when they bump up against other people, those people are being sucked into their little black hole of selfishness. Let me ask you, have you ever met someone who was so self-deferring, so self-giving, so interested in others, so ready to serve the needs of those around them? Yeah? Man, that's rare. Really rare. In fact, it's so rare that there's only ever been one man who has wholly ever been like that, and it's the man that we're talking about here from Mark. Chapter one, it is Jesus Christ. Follow him around. Follow him around through Mark's gospel and you will see that everything that he does is to please his father and to serve others in love and in compassion. If you watch what Mark shows us from the life of Jesus, you'll see that people are drawn out of the kingdom of darkness, out of these dark waters of the kingdom of Satan, to see the glory of the kingdom of God, Jesus Christ. Jesus is taking those who follow him on a journey where he makes them more like himself. You know, when Jesus called these men to leave their homes, he calls these four men to leave their homes and their father to follow him, he was calling them to do what he had already done. Jesus Christ had left His heavenly home. He had left His Father's side to serve Him and to serve us. So we see that Jesus is the true fisher of men. Jesus is the true fisher of men. And a disciple of Jesus Christ sees the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ. So that he repents. He repents of this idea of serving the kingdom of me, and in faith then prioritizes his life around believing and knowing Jesus. A disciple follows Jesus, seeking to know more of what he has done to deliver us out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God. And Jesus knows what will happen to these men. Jesus knows what he's gonna do in these men as he calls them to follow him. What he does to us as he calls you to follow him. He will make you bow before Him with awe and wonder at the grace, the love, the humility, and the beauty that we see in the things that He has done to please His Father and to save us, to give His life as a ransom for us. That's what Jesus does. Jesus says, I will make you what I want you to be. Follow me. Jesus then makes you see him. Jesus causes you to believe in him. Jesus causes you to adore him. Jesus causes you to love him. And in that, he shows you the utter folly of serving the kingdom of me. And by doing that, he makes you a fisher of men. Trust him. Prioritize all of life around knowing Him, believing in Him, and trust Him to make you new. And may His kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Gracious God and Father, the Father of our Savior Jesus Christ, this man of the new creation, the second Adam, the one in whom we see and have all of our life. Father, we thank you for him and this new work that he has begun, the work that he is carrying out as he is exalted in heaven even right now. He is working in us by His Word and Spirit to be like Himself, to be conformed to His image. Father, give us a desire as disciples of Jesus Christ to be conformed to Him, see the greatness and glory of His Kingdom, Your Kingdom in Him. Father, may we marvel, worship, and serve Him with gladness. We ask and pray. In Jesus' name, amen.