Ready to Stay on Mission

Ready for the Ride is the name of our sermon series in January. Good morning. My name is René, one of the TLC pastors. How's everybody doing this morning? Awesome! It is good to see you here today. I'm subtly wearing my red and gold Niner colors. Thank you. I thought it might be a little bit too much if I actually wore my Niner gear like pads and a helmet, but a subtle show of support I think is good.

Hey, something really cool. Our high schoolers, we normally have a bunch of high schoolers joining us in this service. We've got over three dozen of them right now at a weekend retreat. Kind of a spiritual retreat just designed for them. Isn't that cool? So pray for them. It's gonna be super good for them.

Listen, let's start with this. I want you to imagine something. I want you to imagine that you have just received a VIP invitation for a special tour of the White House. In fact, you are going to go in to meet the president. So you go through the gates and you go through security and you walk down the hallways of the West Wing and then you turn left into the working part and you're about to turn right through the doors of the Oval Office. When you stop and you notice a picture on the wall, it's an old engraving, this old engraving, and you look a little bit more closely at it and you see that it shows an interesting scene and you wonder what's behind it because what it shows is a white Union soldier and he's reading what looks almost like a newspaper by torchlight and he's surrounded by black women and men and children and as he reads the reactions to whatever it is that he's reading to them are astonishing because some people are shocked and some people are praying like this gentleman down here in the corner. Others, especially some of the older people, are in disbelief and one man is throwing his hat up into the air.

What are they reacting to? Well they have just discovered that their entire reality has been altered. Here's the story behind that engraving which was made in 1864 during the Civil War by Henry Herrick. Henry Herrick made his fame engraving plates for money, you know, to stamp out our money but he was so moved by this that he made this engraving which is hung for years next to the Oval Office. A previous occupant of the Oval Office, Abraham Lincoln, started the story when he put pen to paper and signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Now he signed it in 1862. Remember that? 1862. And legally this set all slaves in the Confederate States free. However, most slaves really actually, practically, in reality stayed slaves. Millions and millions of people stayed on the plantations, stayed in chains, stayed even after the war was over some for years. Why? Well the biggest reason was plantation owners kept the existence of this a secret.

And so Union soldiers were given a new job when they hadn't really trained for and for this one they needed not guns but simply paper. Copies of the Emancipation Proclamation. And they were told your job one is to go through the South one village at a time, one plantation at a time, one cabinet at a time, and proclaim the good news to every slave you find. And the very last soldier to do so, we know his name, it was Gordon Granger in Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1865. A quarter of a million slaves in Texas on that day learned they were free. That's right, I said 1865. They learned that they had been free since the end of 1862. But it hadn't really become reality for them more than two years, two and a half years after the proclamation is signed. The last slaves in America hear about this new regime. That they have new rights, that they live in a new reality.

Now put yourself in their position. Imagine hearing that kind of life-shaking history-altering news. You wake up one day and your whole reality has been altered. Well that is exactly what happens. Times infinity. In the text today, the Gospel of Mark chapter 1 verses 14 and 15, Jesus shows up with his own liberating, life-altering, reality-shaking liberation proclamation. And today what I want to do is something a little bit different. I want to just explore this one sentence because his emancipation proclamation wasn't a bunch of sheets of paper, it was a sentence. And I want to explore this with you. Look at it in historical context, literary context, and then very quickly give you just three takeaways that I really do think can change your reality, change your life, change the way you see the world.

Because in this one sentence is packed what Jesus Christ is all about. With this one sentence, he kicked it all off. This first recorded sentence spoken by Jesus in the entire Gospel of Mark. You know lots of people these days want to tell you what Jesus is all about. Why don't we let Jesus tell us? Here's the way he kicks it off. Mark 1:14–15. After the arrest of John, that's John the Baptist, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God and saying, here's the sentence, "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the Gospel." Let's explore that.

Grab your message notes. Ready for the ride is what we call this January series. We're getting ready for the big waves headed our year. There's gonna be anxiety. We got the national elections coming up. There's gonna be all kinds of unexpected things. How do we ride those waves and not just let them swamp us? We've been talking about getting ready for anxiety, getting ready for anger. Today, let's get ready to stay on mission.

Let me ask you this. Do you ever feel like Christians have sort of lost the plot these days? Kind of gotten distracted by all kinds of things. How do we get our focus back, our passion back, about what matters to Jesus Christ? We're gonna be doing a deeper dive on this Wednesday night with Ariana O'Day. She's gonna talk about how to restore our passion in an age of apathy. But today what I want to talk about is restoring your passion to what Jesus was passionate about.

You know, on New Year's Eve weekend here, I kind of ad-libbed a little line. I said, you know what? There's gonna be so many distractions in 2024. Let's, as a church, let's make this the year of living Jesusly. And people kind of picked up on that and, in fact, Steve Craig, our high school pastor, told me all the high schoolers that just was sticky for them. They're talking about, I want to live Jesusly this year. And that's gonna become our theme for the whole year. How can we live Jesusly? I want to live Jesusly.

Well, one of the most important questions we can ask when it comes to living Jesusly is, what did Jesus say he was all about? Well, in this one sentence that explains it, we can reduce it even further. There's three words in this one sentence that explain it. The three words Jesus Christ himself used most often to describe his own mission. And these are the three words that I want to zero in on for the next few minutes. Here they are. Gospel, kingdom, and repent. Say that out loud with me. Gospel, kingdom, and repent. That is my whole sermon outline today. Gospel, kingdom, repent.

Just to show you how much Jesus loved these words. These were like Jesus Christ's favorite words. And if you understand what Jesus meant by these words, I think you'll start to get what Jesus was all about. And I think it's gonna fire your imagination. So just to put into perspective with how much he used these words compared to other words that we often associate with Christianity, Jesus used the word salvation just ten times. The word church just three times. The word Taylor Swift zero times, remarkably. And the word kingdom one hundred times. He almost didn't start a parable without saying, "Kingdom of God, kingdom of him." This is what the kingdom of God is like. He's just, he was talking about it incessantly.

The gospel, he used it a lot. It appears 70 times in the New Testament. Gospel, gospel, gospel, and repent. Jesus used it 47 times. I mean these were the three big words for Jesus Christ. So if you want to know what Jesus is all about, you've got to understand kingdom, gospel, and repent. Pretty important words. One problem. Even though we look at these words, kingdom of heaven, gospel, repent. And if you're a Christian, you go, "Oh yeah, yeah, I hear those words a lot." In my observation, I don't think most Christians really understand what Jesus meant when he said these words. So let's look at them. Let's explore them.

First, gospel. What is the gospel? Now you might think, "Oh that's easy. The gospels are the first four books in the New Testament." Or it's accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Savior. Those are good answers. But when the author of Mark first used this word, it had zero religious meaning. The word gospel was used exclusively before this by pagan kings, pagan armies. So what did they mean by it? Well the Greek word is oiangelion, which means good news. But it means like really good news. Like life-changing history-making news. Here's some examples from just before Jesus, archaeologists discovered a couple of big inscriptions that are called the gospel of Caesar Augustus. This one starts in fact, the beginning of the gospel. The oiangelion is the word used. Of Caesar Augustus. And it talks about how Caesar's life changed history. And really, to be fair, it really did change history for people for a number of centuries. So that's like this is earth-shaking news. When he was born and he came to power, it really changed history.

Here's another example. When the Persians invaded Greece, they did so brutally. And in fact, they enslaved a lot of cities. But the Greeks fought back. And against incredible odds, they won. And they drove the far superior Persian army out. And when they won, the first thing they did was they appointed heralds, messengers. They got their fastest soldiers to run to all the enslaved cities and bear the oiangelion, the good news. Guess what? We defeated the Persians. The war has been won. You are now free. That was history-making reality-altering news for them. And by the way, guess what they called these messengers? Evangelists. That's the first time the word was ever used in history. So when people, when Mark is writing this, this is what people are thinking. They think this is amazing history-making news.

They don't think the gospel the way we tend to think of gospel, gospel music, the four gospels. They're thinking, "Oh, Jesus says the gospel, the gospel. It's some kind of reality-altering proclamation." And right there, you see the big difference between Jesus and can I, if I can be so bold, literally every other religious teacher in my view. Jesus came proclaiming good news. When you think about it, all the others gave good advice. This is what you have to do in order to be enlightened, in order to get to heaven, in order to get God to bless you, to get good luck or whatever. Jesus says not, "This is what you have to do. This is what has been done," just like those Union soldiers proclaiming the emancipation. Guess what? The war's over. You're free now. It has been done.

And can I offer this observation that comes from my own personal life and my observation as a pastor of a lot of people in church, so many Christians are weighed down because they have changed the gospel from good news to good advice. And they're not living in the good news that the war has been won, that Jesus Christ, by his grace that we're saved, and when they don't dwell in the good news, Christianity generates into just good advice and it becomes legalistic, it becomes all about do this, do that, and it's not joyful. Let me put it this way. Good, good news, that brings joy, right? That creates a feeling of lightness and like happiness. Yeah, right on. I can't believe it. Good advice. That often feels burdensome, right? If somebody comes up to you and says, "Hey buddy, let me just offer you some free advice." Did you feel lifted up when people say that? No, it's like, "Oh no! Thank you so much. The gospel isn't good advice, it's good news. Good news about what?"

Well, that's the second word, kingdom. Jesus comes proclaiming this. Here's some earth-shaking proclamation, headline news that's going to change everything. The kingdom of God is here. The time is fulfilled. When he says the time is fulfilled, he's saying all of the Jewish prophets up into this time have been prophesying that one day God's going to send a messiah, a king, and a warrior who's going to drive out the foreigners and we're going to have our own land again. And when people hear him say kingdom of God, they're thinking of those prophecies, but what they're thinking of is soldiers and swords and spears. Why? When Jesus says that for 90 years this has been their reality, the Roman army occupying their country.

And let me just share with you a little bit of what that was like. Last week I read a new academic paper by a Roman expert, Gabriel Baker. He says, "Yeah, here's what that was like for people. Mass killing, mass enslavement, and destruction of cities was vital to Roman military operations. Commanders in the field used mass violence and brutal strategies upon civilian populations to achieve their political goals as a matter of routine, atrocity, massacre. They were just fundamental modalities. That's just the way the Romans rolled." I mean, I could give you a list of what had been done to the Jewish people in Jesus's childhood. And so when people hear Jesus show up and say, 'I got an oiangelion, life-changing history-making news. The kingdom of God is here. That time is fulfilled. People are going right on. God said he was going to send him aside. This guy says it's him.' The way to get rid of the Romans is clearly by out-massacring them. So where's the army? This is what they thought of. This is what they expected. This is what they hoped for to out-muscle the Romans.

In fact, you're familiar with the Dead Sea Scrolls, right? So when the Dead Sea Scroll caves, archaeologists also found some written sermons from just before the time of Jesus Christ. And they talk about how when Messiah comes, he's going to just brutalize the Gentiles. And here's a line from one of the sermons. They're all like this. 'On the day when they fall the Romans, oh there shall be a battle and horrible carnage before the God of Israel. For that is a day appointed by him as a battle of annihilation.' Jesus says, 'Oi on, Gellion, everybody. Headline breaking news. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is here. This is what they think of. Then this is what Jesus says. Everybody, the kingdom of God is not like this. It does not come in such a way as to be seen.' What? What are you talking about? Like invisible soldiers? No one will say, 'Look, here it is or there it is because the kingdom of God is, it's within you. This kingdom's not going to have carnage and cavalry and castles.'

Oh, here's another one. What's the kingdom of God like? Well, it's like a bunch of soldiers. No, no. Let me finish. It's like a tiny mustard seed grows. If you go to Israel in the spring, and I've shown some of you this, there is just mustard flowers everywhere. And they're wild. Nobody tends these. Nobody plants them. But they absolutely carpet the countryside. They take over. Jesus says, 'Yeah, it's kind of like that. And it's kind of like you can't really see it.' And then he says, 'Here's another one. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into 60 pounds of flour until it worked all through the door.' It starts like an almost invisible, tiny little amount, but it influences everything. Or here's another one. Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. It's got an innocence about it.

So I just told you what they were expecting. And then in so many of his parables, Jesus goes, 'Okay, it's kind of like this, and not this. It's kind of like this, and not this.' And I feel like if there would have been political consultants in those days, they would have gone up to Jesus and said, 'Jesus, listen. You're alienating your key demographic here. You're not speaking to like the diffs affected soldiers and the fishermen and the zealots right by talking about baking and little kids. Let's talk more about cavalry and swords. You're losing people, Jesus.'

You know what's interesting? In Mark this happens right before something else. John goes to prison, but right before that, Jesus is baptized by John. Now, do you remember the Holy Spirit comes down on Jesus in the form of what? A dove. A dove is the manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit of God. A dove. What does that imply to you? You know, I was thinking a lot of football teams. I kind of got football on my mind today, but a lot of football teams use birds as mascots, but think about the kinds of birds they use. Birds of prey, right? Like falcons and eagles and Seahawks and even ducks. Because ducks can be scary. Anyone here ever been scared by a duck? One time I was feeding a duck down here in a park in Santa Cruz and I stopped feeding it and it came after me. I was screaming like a child, just running away from this duck. Geese are even worse. But nobody has ever named a football team or any other kind of a team the mighty doves.

But Jesus doubles down on this later. He says to believers, 'You are all supposed to be harmless as doves.' You know, you could say that the kingdoms of this world teach survival of the fittest, right? Kind of social Darwinianism. But Jesus taught survival of the humblest. You could say the kingdoms of this world, they all value things like pride, right? And threats to stay in power and self-promotion to kind of get your brand, get your name out there. Me, me, me. Elbow your way to the top. The kingdom of God, instead of pride, there's humility. Instead of threats, there's blessing. Instead of self-promotion, there's self-sacrifice. And these all, this is, it's not just ideology, this is Jesus, right? This is exactly the kind of king we have. Jesus was all these things. This isn't just a philosophy, it's following a king who was these things. That's the really good news, right?

You know, Tim Keller said something like this once. He said, "Most revolutions aren't really revolutions. All they do is put a different set of people into power, but they end up often operating in the same exact way as the people they replaced, right? Some revolution puts a new people, set of people, into power. The next one, a new set of people. But they, they're still all the kind of usual manipulations to stay in power. Jesus' revolution is a true revolution because he doesn't just put a new set of people into power, he puts a whole new way of being a kingdom, a community, being human, into power. Jesus keeps saying, 'This is what I mean when I say the kingdom of God.' And, and he says, 'It has been done. The war's been won, kind of like the Emancipation Proclamation. You're not warriors winning it. You are poppers receiving it, and then you get to be ambassadors spreading it.'

Now, what does that mean to be an ambassador of the kingdom of heaven, which the Bible talks a lot about? Well, let me put it this way. Some of you know I have dual citizenship. I'm a Swiss citizen, and I'm also an American citizen, and so I've had some occasion to go by the Swiss consulate in San Francisco. And it is like a little piece of Switzerland transported to the San Francisco Bay, except that there's no mountains, you know, snow-capped in the distance. I mean, the signage looks like it's right from Switzerland. It's even got a classic Swiss railway clock, and when you go inside, it's even accentuated. Everything's got these clean lines and minimalist color, this total European Swiss aesthetic, right? There's, there's Nespresso pods everywhere, and little pieces of chocolate, and Jesus is fantastic.

So I heard the ambassadors say this. He says, "We want people to feel," in fact, I'll say this in the Swiss way, "vivant people to see and feel Swissness, to feel the Swiss touch," right? It's, everything's ultra tidy, everything's ultra clean and chill, all right? That's, that's the, this is what embassies and consulates do. They want to radiate Swissness or Peruness or Japanese-ness to the people from other cultures who are coming in, and this is what we are called to do as Christians, to radiate that kind of thing.

Now, here's the problem. Honestly, what do people in America right now think of when they hear the word Christian? Generally, in America at large, do they think Jesus-ness? Do they think, "Oh yeah, you go to the Christians," you'll feel the Jesus touch. Sometimes, too many times, Christians, especially kind of the blowhards who grab the microphone, have looked exactly like the kingdoms of this world, right? You know, I really don't think most people who've walked away from church think Jesus was a fraud, or think the gospel is even a fraud. They think we're frauds. They think that, and I'm not talking about being flawed, everybody knows people are human, people are people, people have to make mistakes. I mean, they look at us and they see people who don't actually really follow our gospel, because whether they believe it or not, most people know what Jesus was about. Most people know Jesus was about these things. Most people know Jesus said, "Love one another, and don't judge one another, and to shine like a light in the world would through your good deeds." Most people know that, even if they're not Christians. And so sometimes they look at Christians, especially sometimes the Christians on the national stage, and they go, "Well, you're not radiating Jesus-ness."

So here's the good news for you and for me. When you think of like politics right now, are you tired of the kingdoms of this world? Honestly. Are you tired of the way they operate? Are you tired of the way it can be cut through it? It doesn't have to be, but it can be. Are you tired of the brutality, tired of the division, tired of the polarization, tired of the infighting, tired of the insults, tired of the power plays, the lies, the manipulations, the preening, self-satisfied rulers? I am. Well, Jesus says, "Well, then do I have an invitation for you because there is an alternative, and it's not just withdrawal and cynicism. There's something exciting for you." And that's wrapped up in the third word, "repent."

Now, when you hear the word "repent," you might think of some half-crazed street preacher carrying a sign about the end of the world, right? It can sound so judgmental. "Repent!" But have you considered what a gift repentance is to hear this from God? "Repent" doesn't mean God hates you. "Repent" means God loves you and thinks your life can be so much more than it is right now. "Repent" is a word of hope. "Repent" is a word of possibility. "Repent" in the original Greek, it's metanoia, which means change of mind. In Hebrew, which might be what Jesus actually used, or Aramaic, it's "shuv," which means to come back or turn around. What a gift to hear this from God. "Come on back!" "Repent" means you are never too far down the road to turn around. Sometimes we get this idea, "Man, I've made too many mistakes. I've gone too far. If I turn back to God right now, I'm just being a hypocrite." The good news is it's never too late to run to your father. You can repent because he wants you back. Amen?

Now, in the context of this verse, think about this now. What is Jesus specifically calling us to repent away from and toward? Of course, we all must continually repent of sin. But specifically, this is a call to turn from the ways of the kingdoms of the world and turn to Jesus as our true king, to let this idea of a new way of doing kingdom, to capture your imagination and your allegiance. As Jesus says, "Repent and believe in the gospel." There is something that happens when you believe. Believe it. Believe in the proclamation. Believe that something new has started. Believe that Jesus is the king of kings. Believe that by his death and resurrection, he has won the war that set us free. Something happens inside of you when you really believe Jesus is the true king.

Let me give you one example. Are you dreading the presidential elections this fall? Let me just be blunt. I kind of am. Guess what? If you really believe Jesus is the true king, you don't have to really dread those things. You know why? Because while the president here may change every four years, King Jesus does not change every four years. King Jesus doesn't change every 400 years. King Jesus doesn't change every 4,000 years. King Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And if we lose sight of that, then fear and division and polarization poison the church. You know what the world needs most from us Christians is for us to repent of doing life in the ways of the kingdoms of this world and turning back to the kingdom of God.

Now this doesn't mean we abandon politics or our political convictions. Of course not, but it means we hold our convictions with humility. Now maybe you look at these three words and you think, "Oh yeah, okay, this is so theoretical. It's not practical, René. Such big ideas. I don't quite get it. Kingdom, repent, gospel." Guess what? You're not alone because a lot of Jesus' followers didn't get it either. In fact, after three years his own disciples didn't quite get it. Many were puzzled, but Jesus didn't come explaining. Jesus came proclaiming. And he just left these big concepts out there kind of intriguingly mysterious at first. But people were intrigued enough to follow and listen as he goes on to slowly unwrap through riddles and stories and on hikes and travels. The meaning behind these concepts is kind of like a mystery novel where the plot is slowly revealed and we're going to reveal more nuances to this. And now it applies to practical life all this year long.

But before he does explaining, he does proclaiming. He first casts a vision, a dream, God's dream of a different kind of sermon, a different kind of kingdom. This isn't a how-to sermon today. This is an oh wow sermon. Jesus is inviting you into his revolution. So how do I do that? I'm going to close with three quick suggestions. Start every day not with bad news but with God's good news. Because to radiate Jesusness you need to soak in Jesus. The grace of Jesus, the love of Jesus, his sacrifice for you.

Second, stay astonished at his grace. I mean think of the expressions on the faces of those people in that engraving. Never let the good news get old. You are free. Retain that sense of wonder and astonishment. And then see yourself as an ambassador of a new kind of kingdom with a whole different set of values. See your house as an outpost of the kingdom of God in your neighborhood. See your workspace as an outpost of the kingdom of God at work. See your car as an outpost of the values of the kingdom of God on the road. That's definitely the hardest one. What I'm saying is parent with Jesusness. Befriend with Jesusness. Work with Jesusness. Manage with Jesusness. And the beauty of this is you can do this if you're 90 or if you're nine. And you can do this if you're wealthy or poor. And you can do this if you're healthy or sick. Nothing can stop you from that.

So let me close with this. Here's what it looks like to have your imagination captured by this. Ludmilla Ayoroba is an amazing 82-year-old widow from the Czech Republic. After decades of Nazi and communist rule, the Czech Republic is the most atheist country in Europe. So what's Ludmilla doing about it? Watch this. My name is Ludmilla Ayoroba. I'm 82 years old. Next to the door of my house there is a bronze sign that says "The Embassy of the Kingdom of Heaven." My home is an extension of Christ's kingdom. It's a place where people can come and look for help if they're in trouble or have a need. The Bible says the kingdom of heaven is joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. That is the atmosphere I want here at the Embassy.

The visitors that I get, some of them have called ahead to let me know they're coming and some just come. The ones that haven't called are usually the best ones because I'm not prepared for them. Everything that happens is dependent on the Lord. Today a dear friend came by. She's a widow and her family really are struggling financially. Whenever people enter this house I just lay everything else aside and spend time with them. It's an honor for me to be an instrument of God's love and his wisdom every day. We often don't realize that all believers are called to be representatives of the kingdom of heaven. We are all ambassadors. The Lord Jesus didn't choose to do it any other way. He simply entrusted us. Isn't that beautiful?

So Jesus' Emancipation Proclamation has been read to you and now if you'll receive it he says you are like those union soldiers. Go spread the good news. How will you respond? Let's pray together. Heavenly Father we want to be that kind of kingdom. We don't want to just be like the kingdoms of this world. We want to live Jesusly. We want people to feel the Jesus touch from us. So help us to receive the Jesus touch to soak in Jesus so that we radiate Jesus. Help us to be good ambassadors for that kingdom. And Lord something that I may want to say for the first time, Jesus you are my king and my savior. I want to follow you. Change me like a yeast and bread, like a seed and soil. And then help me to radiate that to the whole world. It's in your name we pray. The name of our king and savior, Lord Jesus. Amen.