“Power over sinners”
Or
“Selectivity of Succors”
Mark 1:16-20
“16 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. 17 And Jesus said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men." 18 Immediately they left their nets and followed Him. 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. 20 Immediately He called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went away to follow Him.”
Jesus knew all of these men from His time in Judah, we see this in John chapter one, but now Jesus is calling them to follow Him, to be His disciples, to be apostles, and we see that they immediately follow Him. Jesus said in John 15:16a, “"You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit.’”
We have seen in the last to messages from Mark that Jesus went out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and we saw that He overcame those temptations and Satan, and then we saw that Jesus (the Servant) has power over sin with the message of the Gospel of God, and now we see here that Jesus has power of sinners, He can call sinners to be saved and in the case of these men He also called them to be His disciples and His apostles so that when Jesus would be gone from the earth that they would be the ones who would carry the message of salvation to the lost world. Why were these men chosen by Him? We see in John 17 that the Father had given them to His Son. 6 ¶ "I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.” “Out of the world” means that these men used to belong to the worlds system, and we who are now believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, who have been washed clean by His blood were once in the world system, for all people were born into the worlds system and the only way to get out of it is to be born from above, to be born again. John 3:36 are words the John the Baptist said and they tell us that there are two kinds of people in this world, only two: “"He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.’”
Paul writes the important words to his son in the Lord, Timothy, “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” We see here that Paul wants Timothy to pass on the things that he had been taught by the Lord to Timothy, so that he can pass them on to others who in turn can pass them on to more faithful men and so it goes on from Jesus to the Apostles to men like Timothy to others and now it is passed on to believers in the 21st century in the same way.
Now just think if you had to get a message out to the whole world. Would you choose the twelve men that Jesus chose to accomplish this task? Well that was the plan of Jesus Christ and it is still working today. Why is it working? Jesus took these men out of the world and taught them for three years, but the difference really came on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was given to them, not in the same measure that it was given to Jesus, but when He was given to them their lives changed dramatically in a way where what they were doing was done through the power of the Holy Spirit, and when this was done it brought glory to the Lord for It was being done the way He wanted it done because He was doing it through them through the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to look at a verse that helps me to understand how all of this works, that is doing the work of God while we are here on earth: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10) We are all pretty much familiar with Ephesians 2:8-9, but we see here in verse ten that before the world was created that God chose works for us to do, and those works will be done through us through the power of the Holy Spirit, and then when we all get to heaven we will receive rewards for doing the works that God called us to do and so we will throw our rewards at the feet of Jesus because He is the One who deserves them because of what He has done for us.
Now we see that these men were fishermen and Jesus tells them that they will now be fishing for men. We know that these men were well off, for we see that James and John’s father had servants and we will see that Peter had a house near the Sea of Galilee where Jesus will come and He probably stayed there many times while ministering in this area of Israel. It is possible that James and John’s father was married to a sister of Mary.
Jesus demonstrates in this section His power over sinful men as He calls them and we also see that Jesus was preparing these men to continue the ministry when He would go back to heaven.
12/30/2011 9:55:25 AM
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