And good evening, ladies and gentlemen. That nice little background introduction. Do you know the song? Channels only? I think it's a New Age song, but I'm not real sure. It's called channels only. I'll have to look it up. I'm sure it's something like make me a Channel, a Blessing kind of words or something like that, but I don't know. Well, I'll have to look that up and see if it's worth learning. Linda, when you come back, maybe we can work it into the Tau's Tabernacle Choir repertoire. Good to see everybody tonight. And those of you online, welcome as well. If you're online, you missed supper. We celebrated Flag Day today and we had a delightful time, did we not? And with Flag Day, let's see, how do I do this? There, we had hamburgers. There's my meal right there. And I have long believed I haven't always carried it out, but I have long believed, especially at church, if you're going to eat, you just as well eat nice. Put a tablecloth and a place mat and a real plate and a mug that says the name of the church tumblr. Excuse me? Tumblr. And have a nice fresh hamburger cooked straight off the open fire grill. Okay? Anyway, it was a nice meal. Those of you online, sorry you missed it. But we pick up tonight in Mark, chapter one. We'll pick up in just a moment. Let's see. This is Sunday's. Father's Day got just a regular schedule on Father's Day, and three weeks from now is the second. Or does anybody do you know, Shelley? Is that two weeks from now? Two weeks from Sunday, maybe? I think it's probably two weeks from Sunday. So two weeks from Sunday, sometime in the afternoon, we will have our 4 July picnic at Gene and Jeannie Walkers on Sunday the second. So they'll be here when are they coming? Next week. The 20th. Next week? Yeah. And we'll be good, by the way, next week. That makes it the first day of summer, right? Maybe it'll quit being 30 degrees at night. Who knows? Well, let's have a word of prayer and get back into the Gospel. Mark. Heavenly Father, thanks for your blessings on us. Thanks for our little church that we get together in and the fellowship that is ours. Thanks for the word of God that never disappoints as we look into it, just always has more and more for us to look at and to understand. And in this we're blessed and know we will be tonight as well and pray that we're faithful to the Word. In Jesus name, amen. And now we come in our rightly, divided verse by verse. Mark, we had come up to verse twelve last week. We ended in verse 1212. And 13 are the temptation of Jesus. Just in case you ever say, well, he's going awfully slow through this. Be glad I'm not in Luke or Matthew, which are much longer here in the Gospel of Mark, we only have these two verses right here that tell about the temptation. I'm going to try to not give you all the information you would get from other gospels. Otherwise we would just do a study of all the other gospels. But there's some in which you have to go and fill in a few details. But immediately the Spirit driveth him in the wilderness. We talked last week about the present tense of driveth, sort of to give a feel of being right there at it and bringing it into the immediate moment. The Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. He was there in the wilderness 40 days. We didn't get to that. Verse 13 last time he was there in the wilderness 40 days tempted of Satan and was with the wild beast, and the angels ministered unto him. Let's put together what we can. There is a sense, of course, in which you could just take that and say it's descriptive, it is what it is, and there's certainly that truth, and it just sort of sets the setting and there it is. We know he was tempted. We know it was out in the wilderness. We know that he was there led by the Spirit, driven by the Spirit, and we know that he was there for 40 days. Now, obviously, as you look at that, inquiring minds want to know. And so you begin to ask a few questions, like you ask the question, is the number 40 significant? And if you've read the Bible very much, you know, hey, there's something behind all these numbers. And how come you keep having numbers like 40 years in the wilderness, 40 days and 40 nights, 400 years in sojourning in Egypt and 40 days in the wilderness. You got all these 40, 40, 40. A few years ago, of course, it became kind of popular in churches to have 40 day programs, right? 40 days of prayer, 40 days of fellowship, 40 days of you giving your money, whatever the emphasis was, 40 days of this and 40 days of that. I guess it was popular because it was marketable. There you go. I've always done 30 because I studied biblical numerology. I've done 30 for two reasons. Two reasons. One is because I have studied biblical numerology, and I know that the number four is very much not just in popular society, but in the Bible. It's very much attributed to the Earth, physical things instead of spiritual things. So if I were going to do so many days of prayer, I would choose 30 rather than 40 just because of the spiritual significance of the number. If you want to see, I have been in tasks a long time talking about spiritual significance of the number there. But for what? Is it earth? I don't know. Wind, fire, water. Thank you. Four elements, four directions. You get a lot of fours just in creation. It was on the fourth day that God began to sort of fill the earth and put stuff here. It's a very earthy number, we'll just leave it at that. Not necessarily bad, but every time you see it, it's kind of earthbound number. And so this 40 days, I suspect the Lord who doesn't let anything just happen haphazardly, it's been long enough, now let's stop it. I suspect 40 days is to remind us or give us a little picture of the wilderness experience of really being stuck on earth, so to speak. And that speaks of the temptation. But I think you could be a good Christian without ever passing your biblical numerology test and it's just kind of supplemental information to know. So he's 40 days in the wilderness. Sunday we looked at the wilderness. If you were in our virtual tour, we saw some pictures of that he was tempted of Satan. This is all that Mark says he doesn't tell about. The three temptations that Matthew does tell about gives some more specifics. But with this, we do wonder was he tempted the whole 40 days? Was he just tempted at the end of the 40 days? Those three temptations don't look like they would take 40 days to do so do you have one every 15 days or whatever that here's another temptation. How did that work out? I suspect, though, you could never prove this case. I suspect that we know about three of the temptations, but it was 40 days of temptation in the wilderness, not just 40 days of wilderness living. And then at the end, when you're tired and hungry, temptation though, that would be a good time, but that these are the temptations we know about. The only reason I suspect that is because here, that would be the natural reading of this he's in the wilderness 40 days and he was tempted of Satan. You wouldn't have to read it that way, but it would be kind of the natural reading. And second, there is that passage, is it Paul's letter to the Corinthians, one of them in which I think it's Corinthians. Paul says that Jesus was tempted in all ways as we are. Well, those three particular temptations, I've had a lot more than those. So 40 days of temptation possibly put in there and was with the wild beasts. Now, why does Mark go out of his way to tell us that he's with the wild beasts again? Maybe it's just putting the setting down. Hey, a little bit of information. It was Jesus and the wild bees, that's what you've got. But all of the gospels are really kind of set towards displaying Jesus as the Messiah and the Messiah is the one who is going to come according to Isaiah, especially Isaiah, chapter eleven, he's the one that's going to come and bring a new harmony with the wild beasts. Bring that out. So could he be saying, hey, he was out there with the wild beasts, they didn't tear him up, he never had to fight him off, any of that kind of stuff. Can that be packed in there? Who knows? It's there. We'll take it and speculate a little bit. Maybe there's some messianic overtones to that, that he was with the wild beast and the angels ministered unto him. That's another one. All through this, we would like to say, hey, could we just have maybe a 40 day series on that verse? Tell us more about y, 40. Tell us about the temptations of Satan. Tell us about the wild bees. Tell us about the angels ministering. How did they minister to you? What was their role? Was it visible? Was it physical? Did they bring you food and water, hamburgers, whatever? Tell me more about this. And the truth is we just don't know any more about it other than angels ministered unto him. By the way, I would not and we might stick this in one of the unlearn. It I haven't decided yet, but we might stick it in the unlearned. I would not go from here and come up with a theology of angels watching over me, the angels coming and ministering to me. All I know is the angels ministered unto him. If we had the sermon, we could put together several verses like, you know, entertaining angels unaware and whatnot some of those other things that are in there that would that would come in. But certainly you couldn't build it just on this particular verse. Now, again, that's all that Mark tells us. And so we're going to assume for now, that's all we have to know. And we've asked some questions of it and move forward into verses 14 through 20, which is the Galilean ministry of Jesus that begins, he's going to spend the better part of his ministry in Galilee. Remember that's the northern part of Israel. And he's especially going to spend most of that time right around the Sea of Galilee, Capernium especially. But he comes here, he's going to be at the Sea of Galilee here in just a moment and it says, if I can get there, we go. Verse 14. I was trying to get 14 and 15 on the same screen, and I accomplished it. Verse 14. Now, after that John was put in prison, jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God. A couple of things that I want to point out here. This one is can I say incidental, but I want to make sure you get your money's worth. Okay? You want your money's worth, right? Yeah. Or would you rather get out early after that? I'm going to try to say it carefully after that instead of after that. This one, you could kind of go either way. He was in the wilderness. And after that, John was put in prison, jesus came into Galilee. You kind of wonder why he just sort of almost bumped two sentences together. I don't really think he did. The way I read it a moment ago is the way I think it should be read. After that, John was put in prison. Jesus came into Galilee. He gives us it's a little bit of a hint of time, though not much. We know that John was put into prison. How long was it he was baptized? He had 40 days in the wilderness, tempted by Satan. The angels ministered to him, and somewhere along the way, John was put into prison. And after that, John was put into prison. Jesus came into Galilee. Was that a week? Was a week after the Temptation? Was it a year after the Temptation? It's really kind of hard for us to tell, although we know that we don't have too much time because from Luke's Gospel, I think it is, it tells us that when Jesus was baptized, he was, it says about to be 30. So to get everything in by the traditional age anyway, of 33, you can't have a year or two going on before John's put into prison. The chronology wouldn't work, but you might have a week, you might have a month, you might have several months before Jesus comes into Galilee. So he may be gone a long time. I mean, he's already gone. He was in Judea for how long? To get baptized when he was down there for his baptism. And then he spent 40 days and they were probably saying, he's not answering his cell phone. Where is he? And he spends 40 days in the wilderness. And then somewhere along the way, looks like, after the Temptation, John was put into prison. But I want to point out this little phrase. After that or after that, how did I put it? I put this in the box down here to let you know. It was supplemental material in the King James, and this is only a King James issue, but in the King James, you have an after that thing I'm about to tell you about. And you have an after that thing I just told you about. There's an anticipatory after that. I think that's what this is. And then there is a I don't know what you call not anticipatory, but the opposite of just speaking of that, which has happened. Now, we normally would say after that, talking about the thing that already happened, after that thing that already happened. But in the King James you can have after this thing, we might say after this, but after that thing that I'm about to tell you about, in this case, the John being put into prison. Now, you might of course, look at that and say, wow, do I really care? There is one place at least in which it matters, and that place in the King James. Well, it's going to be Ephesians, chapter one, verse 13. But let's look at it here. It can be after that. Previously mentioned thing. I have it on the outline, mark, chapter twelve, verse 34. And after that no man dared ask him any questions. That's referring to the thing that already happened. If you were to go to Mark chapter twelve, you would get the context there after that context. But here it is. After that John was put in prison. So when you read it, if you know that's what you got, you want to read it as after that John was put into prison. It doesn't flow off the tongue very well unless you practice that a little bit. After that John was put into prison. Jesus came into Galilee. So John went into prison is the first thing. Jesus came into Galilee is the next thing. Now let me show you why it matters and the only reason why we spend any time on it at all. Because here you could look at it and go either way and say, okay, it doesn't really matter. But that's very interesting, right? Ephesians. Ephesians ephesians. It wanted to change it to miles per hour. 113 in Whom ye also Trusted. After that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Now if you're not careful here you get things out of order. You trusted. After that you heard the word of truth. Well that's a little OD to our ears, isn't it? I trusted in Jesus Christ. And after that, I heard the gospel. That would seem to get things backwards, but do you know that some Calvinists take this and a few other things to say and it's built off their doctrine of total depravity? You are such a cockroach that you would never accept the gospel even if you heard it presented perfectly. And so they'll take verses like this and say you trusted. And after that you heard the word. You trusted because you were one of the appointed ones, one of the special ones that God loved. And he elected you from before the foundation of the earth, unlike those other people that God hated and damned for his own glory. But he loved you. And that's why you trusted in Him. Even before you heard the gospel, you trusted in Him. So this after that really does become important. In whom Ye also trusted. After that ye heard the Word of Truth. The first thing that happened is you heard the word of truth and then you trusted. So there are these times in which it all of a sudden begins to matter. I don't have the NIV up here but if you have an NIV you would look it up and it gives kind of an ambiguity. In this translation it says and you were also included in Christ when you heard the message of truth. Okay, you could go either way in that to say you were included in Christ when when you heard the message of truth, or when you heard the message of truth. You were included in christ, you woke up one day and say, my, I think I'm one of the elect, I'm included in this, and you came there. So it really does begin to matter. So on that, I tried to find a Greek pattern, underlying pattern or something like that, that showed us which way does this go? And there may be one, but I couldn't discern the pattern to figure out when did the King James translators use the I'll say the afterthought and when did they use the after? That I would just say in the King James, whenever you come to the words after and that together, try it both ways and see what you got. And if you're not sure, then go into the Greek and see if you can put it together. And often I think that you can, of course. And so that is Mark, chapter one, verse 14. So John was put into prison is the first thing. And then Jesus came into Galilee, okay, he came into Galilee, where again, I've already mentioned, he's going to spend a couple of years at least. And he comes preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. You know that I can't pass that one up, right? The gospel of the kingdom or the gospel of the kingdom of God? Gospel, of course, just means good news. So it can be any kind of good news, whatever it is. Good news, good news. Today's Mariana's birthday. She's buying us ice cream after church. What good news? So that could be a gospel of sorts. We probably wouldn't use that, but we do use the word gospel in a lot of different ways. I tell you, it's the gospel truth, but in the scripture it's any kind of good news. So preaching the good news of the kingdom of God. Now the rule of interpretation is you've got to say, what would the original hearers have understood when they got that? As Jesus comes later, he's going to use the words, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand. When those in Jesus's day are hearing him say this good news of the kingdom of God, what is it that they are hearing? I think that if you let the text speak for itself, and not only the text of Mark, but the text of everything up until this point, so don't backfill things that are going to be revealed later, but everything up until the beginning of Jesus's ministry. Anybody who hears the kingdom of God, what do they hear? What they hear is the messianic kingdom, the coming messianic age, the time in which Messiah is going to come rescue his people. As Zechariah, John the Baptist father said in Luke chapter one, I think it's verse 71 72, the Lord will come, he will save us from our enemies. That was the good news. Someday Messiah is going to come and save us from our enemies and reestablish the kingdom to Israel. The davidic kingdom, overthrow the Roman Empire, reestablish the Davidic kingdom. Now, there was more than that. That's the political aspect of the kingdom. But there certainly was, I'll say, a physical aspect of the kingdom in which, as we've already mentioned, the wolf would lie down with the lamb and all that. The peacefulness of the wild beasts would come together, so the mountains would drip with sweet wine. All of the restoration of all things, to use Peter's word in Acts chapter three. So there was the political side of it. There was the physical side of it. There was also the spiritual side of it in two ways. One, not only the spiritual side of it that God is going to come and tabernacle with us or dwell with us, that's a spiritual experience. But two, there was, I'll say, the inner spiritual reality of me going into this kingdom. I need to, as Jesus is going to say next, repent and believe the Gospel. There was this thing that the individual had to do spiritually in order to prepare for this. So when I say it's the physical future, fraternal kingdom, I probably need to add political, physical future, fraternal. And I need an F word that means preparing your heart for the coming king. We'll meditate on that. Fertile. There's the fertile part. Your heart must be fertile. There we go. Thank you. So Jesus comes, preaching the kingdom of God. They're not thinking, oh, he wants a lot of people to place their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior. They're not thinking, oh, there'll be a church on every corner. They're not thinking all the things that we sometimes, I think, because of bad theology, but we sometimes inject into the idea of the Kingdom of God. They're thinking the messianic reign, basically. So I think you could take kingdom of God substituted in your mind anytime, the messianic reign. So he came preaching the good news of the messianic reign. There it is. And saying and this just defines a little more what this good news of the kingdom is. And Verifies saying, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent you and believe the Gospel. So Jesus is in Galilee preaching the Kingdom of God, and he says, the time is fulfilled. What time? I don't think he's speaking generally, like now's as good a time as ever. Right. I think that here he seems to be speaking of a very specific time. The time is fulfilled. Kind of like at the end of his ministry, when he says to his apostles, the hour is at hand. The time of my departure has come. So something that is scheduled, I guess you would say, the time is here. Here we go. Mariana's been looking forward to her birthday for weeks on end, right? Finally, the time comes. We had a hamburger celebration, put out flags, everything we could do to think of. So the time, the time now. So you begin to say, I want to interpret this biblically, the time is fulfilled. You just ask some questions of the text and obviously you would say, what time? Again, you could say, he just means that very generally, I just think that would be hard to convince people. He's not talking about any specific time, he just happened to say this. It's just kind of a passing comment. I think that's hard to convince anybody. So then you begin to search the Scriptures for some sort of prophetic time that could now be fulfilled. We have reached the end of the clock now, we're here, the time is fulfilled. The only place in the Bible that I could find or think of or imagine is Daniel chapter, chapter nine, verses 24 through 27. That's the passage of scripture which says, 70 weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, god's speaking to Daniel, 70 weeks have been decreed. And I've given you again a little extra credit section there about the Daniel 924 through 27, which we won't really have time to dig into completely here. But that is a definite timeline that is given, and it's a timeline that was broken up really into three sections. You had seven weeks, you had 62 weeks, and you had one week. That all adds up to 70, if you're curious, 762 and one. And after the seven and 62, that adds up to 69. After the 69 weeks, there was a very clear requirement that Messiah be there. You could do the first 62 weeks, 69 weeks, excuse me, 1st 69 weeks, you could do that with no Messiah. But come the 70th week, you got to have Messiah there. So that's the only prophetic timeline that tells us anything. Now, by the way, just in case you're curious, on those weeks, that is a term that is used in the Hebrew mind, like we would use the term dozen. Dozen is twelve. I thought you all were that smart. A dozen is twelve. A dozen is twelve. What? Yeah, it's all contextual, isn't it? If you're in the dairy section and say, hey, pick up a dozen eggs. But if you're in the bakery and say, let's get a dozen, donuts, yeah, why not two? So again, it's very contextual in what you got. If you got to go to the florist and say, hey, I need a dozen, they're probably going to hand you roses. So, very contextual. Well, the particular word here that's translated weeks, of course. How many days in a week? Seven. And here so it's 70 sets of seven, just like if we said, give me 70 dozen, 70 dozen what? You got to have the context. Well, in Daniel nine, the only context for the seven, and the Hebrew mind thinks in terms of seven, not in terms of twelve. In Daniel chapter nine, the only thing in the context is years. So we have 70 weeks of years, which makes sense in a Hebrew kind of calendar and a Hebrew kind of thinking, 490 years, basically 70 times seven. So that I think that it would be really hard to argue that Jesus is talking about something other than Daniel's prophetic timeline. We are up to now the point at which we got a fish or cut bait. I think that means it's time to quit talking about it. And his whole Jewish audience, which had a great messianic expectation, they know that according to Daniel's prophetic timeline, they're getting close to the end. If if Messiah doesn't show up fairly soon, we're going to be in big trouble because we've been counting on this. All of our prophecy conferences said messiah is going to come here in this particular period. And so Jesus comes and he says, the time is fulfilled. I think they all knew, oh, Daniel's time, that's what it is. The time is fulfilled. And he says, the Kingdom of God is what at hand. At hand does not mean in the hand. By the way. It is the same Greek word that is used. I've given you a reference on your outline. The same Greek word that means approaching or near. It's at hand. And so the kingdom of God that's the messianic reign. It's within reach. We got the right time, we got everything we need. It is at hand, hasn't been inaugurated, hasn't started, but it's at hand. Incidentally, the Kingdom of God as the messianic reign. If you're not sure about that, if you want the short route, I've got several sermons on it defining the Kingdom of God. If you want the exhaustive route, a guy named George N. H. Peters george Peters george N. H. Peters wrote in the 18 hundreds, a three volume, each volume about this big, and so it's about that big. A stack of books in small font in two columns per page. He wrote a book called the Theocratic Kingdom. Theocratic means not like democratic, but God is the ruler, the Theocratic Kingdom. And and he argues every single passage of scripture that you could ever imagine to say, no, I think the kingdom is spiritual because of this verse. And he writes 35 pages on that and by the end you have to say, oh yeah, that's not what it means. It means theocratic. Okay, I get it now. It's a very exhaustive study. As a matter of fact, I should say, since I still have time, that if you want seminary on a budget, get you a King James Bible, a strong concordance, a set of the Theocratic Kingdom. Just trying to think if I wanted to have anything else set of the Theocratic Kingdom. If, if a guy had that and just studied the King James Bible using the strong skin accordance and when he got stuck on kingdom issues, checked Theocratic Kingdom, he would be well ahead of every seminary graduate at the end of if he. Did that for three years, then we could put him up, I would put him up against any seminary graduate and give them a test and he would do better because the Theocratic Kingdom is just exhaustive on about every theological subject you can think of, even though it's about the messianic reign. So this time this prophetic timeline is fulfilled. This reign of Messiah is right here within reach and therefore the response. This is the same thing that John the Baptist had said. What you are supposed to do is repent ye and believe the gospel. Okay? Repent the Greek word is metanoia. And you've probably heard that before. Meta means change, kind of like a change agent company named Meta, but it means change and noia or NAOS is thinking. It's related to gnostic, which is where we get our word knowledge. So how about meta knowledge? Change your knowledge, change what you know, your thinking, really change your thinking. It's not used in the sense of learning something and coming to know more. It's the sense of I reject this way of thinking and I adopt this way of thinking. That kind of change of thinking is the word. Now sometimes it's convenient, especially for those of us who believe in a grace gospel, to say he's not talking about a change of behavior, he's talking about a change of thinking. The reason we want to say that is because a change of behavior sounds like work and you're saved not of yourselves, not of works, lest anyone should boast. But anybody who has ever repented of anything knows that's a lot of work. So we sort of soften that a little bit and say, oh, metanoia is just a change of thinking, using the etymology of the word. But remember the etymological fallacy, the etymological fallacy is thinking that the etymology of the word is what the word means. Not necessarily. That's just where it came from. I think if you did a thorough study of the word repent, as you see it here, as you see with John the Baptist, as you see quite a few times in Scripture, you see it means quit doing what you're doing and do something different. No more of that. Make a 180, as it's often said. I think what Jesus, just like John the Baptist was telling them to do is hey, if the messianic reign is right here at hand, we better quit acting like this and start acting like this. We better change our behavior. And in addition to that, believe the gospel. The word believe right here is the verb pisteo. It is very much a mental word. You believe something because you have been convinced it's right. So believe the gospel. This is the same Gospel in the previous verse, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The good news about the messianic reign. So Jesus's message in Galilee is daniel's time has come. The messianic reign is right here within reach. It's time for us to change our behavior and to believe what God has said about the coming Messiah and the messianic reign. That's what it's time for. Every now and then by the way I hear, and I probably at one time in my evangelical days did it myself. You ever heard the sermon? Missing heaven by 18 inches. It says Evangelical. It's kind of cool to put it on the sign missing Heaven by 18 inches this Sunday by Dr. Randy White has to do with the distance from your heart to your head. And they'll say things like, there are some of you who believe in your head the gospel of Jesus Christ, but you don't believe it in your heart. If you believed it in your heart, you would be here on Wednesday night and you're not. So that's for those of you online watching the archives and you can kind of be guilted into thinking, oh yeah, I think you're right. I understand. Jesus died for us and all that. He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life. I have accepted all that. But yeah, the other day I hit my thumb with a hammer and I cussed. It must not be a heart thing. It's not deep seated inner all the way. I think we're just making stuff up there. Now the book of Romans does say believe in your heart, that God raised him from the dead, but I think it's an idiom. But believe in your heart means, you know, believe it all the way. Everything about you. Yeah, believe it. The, the problem with the whole missing heaven by 18 inches thing you did, you had it in your head but not in your heart or you had it in your heart and you're not in your head or whatever is you can't really believe anything separated from there. The belief is a thing of the mind that you hear. You become convinced, you say this is true. Now you may be more committed to it or less committed to it. There are things we believe that we haven't really done much about, obviously, but if to believe it in our heart, it always ends up being you better be on church on Wednesday night. If you believe it in your heart, you better step it up. You got to do more. Well, that becomes a works thing real quick. Which means, hey, if it's just by grace through faith, not of yourselves, then you're not going to make it. You're going to miss it by 18 inches. You got to have one extra reach. That's all you to get there. So Jesus just said believe the gospel. Now remember the gospel that he's talking about is the gospel of the kingdom of God, this messianic reign. He's not out teaching anybody. Jesus died for you. He was buried, he rose again or he's going to die for you, be buried and rise again. They didn't know that. They didn't know what was up there. And so this is the general introduction to all of his Galilee ministry. Let's call it the first two years of his ministry. He's teaching the messianic reign, just like John the Baptist. Then we have, believe it or not, four verses which I think we can cover in the next nine minutes and be done on time. That will be a record, especially for this study. But Jesus, it goes on, says now, as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea. For they were fishers. We'll stop right there. They've got to be good people because they were fishers fishermen. Obviously. That's what they do. They fish. Fishers fish right on the Sea of Galilee. Their job. This tells me it hints at this doesn't have to be right, but it hints at the fact that by the time Mark wrote his gospel, which probably is somewhere late fifty s of the first century, that Simon Peter as we know him now, simon Peter and his brother Andrew were already pretty famous because there's no introduction given here at all. It's just like Simon and Andrew. Again, it doesn't have to be that way because Mark is not obligated to introduce everybody in the story and give their background and their pedigree and all that kind of stuff. So maybe it's just like I don't have time to introduce him. You can go Google it, but it sort of reads like Simon and Andrew. So Simon, Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea. They were fishers. Fishers cast nets into the sea. And Jesus said unto them here verse 17. Jesus said unto them, come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. Of course, that's a very famous line there, and clearly Jesus is speaking would metaphorically be the right word there. He's showing his skill that he'll show later of saying something in a way that meets the situation at hand, that he's a good linguist. That's what it says. Come, I'll make you fishers of men, and calls them. Now, we're, of course, very used to this, but I cannot prove this. I think that this was a little bit of a shock when Jesus did it to the Jewish custom. It was not unusual for a rabbi to have disciples, people who would follow him. They might even and this is still true to this day. I've been reading a book very slowly on the history of Chabad, the Jewish organization across the street, which is an amazing organization, by the way. It's like the biggest Jewish organization in the world. And you can go anywhere, and there's a Chabad house almost anywhere. And one guy in the 50s started it. And it's literally a huge organization. So it's kind of interesting religious, socio group dynamic kind of history. If you're into that, I'll blow you the book. So you have rabbis and disciples, even to this day. I'm a follower of it's a pretty big Jewish thing. But it was always that the rabbi did his thing, put out the shingle. Rabbi Randy, at your service. And people who wanted to follow would come to them, and they would kind of investigate this. It's sort of natural. They investigated, okay, this rabbi is of the school of Gameliel, and this rabbi is of the school of the other guy. And they have these two different thinkings and thoughts, and where do I want to go? I'd like to go sit at someone's feet and learn from them. So here for Jesus the rabbi to come and say, Come follow me certainly is a note of confidence, if nothing else. I really don't know. Did the people there say, Wait, this is not what the rabbi does? You go sit in your office, and they'll come decide if they want to come to you? I don't know, but there's certainly that possibility. So Jesus comes with this air of authority, if you will come ye after me, and I will make you become fishers of men. And it says in verse 18, straightway we had that word when he came out of the water, right? Straightway. They forsook their nets and followed him. And that's the end of the story, which, if Mark was all you had, you would have to assume these people knew each other. You don't just instantly say, you come. I don't know who you are, but you're as good as any, right? And furthermore, you don't just drop your nets forsake your nets, leave it all there and go follow a guy. So that makes you assume, I think these people knew each other. They must have. Now, when we read John's gospel especially, we discover that Simon and Andrew were disciples of John, who now is in prison, and so they're no longer following him around. Andrew is the one who went and found Nathaniel, I think it is. And Nathaniel is the one who says, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Simon is the one. No, andrew goes and finds Simon. Excuse me. And then I think simon nathaniel But Andrew goes and finds Simon and says, we have found the one. We found the messiah. So by the time this has happened, they've already had the baptism. And they heard their rabbi say, behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. They were convinced of this already. And then they look, and there is Jesus. And Jesus looks, and there's Simon and Andrew that were down there with John the Baptist. And he knows they were followers of John the Baptist. And so he says, Come, follow me. And they say, we are ready. Right now, we're ready. We just been biden time throwing nets in here between the time that he was arrested. So there's certainly more into it. And I think that tells us because we know a little bit more from the Gospel of John here especially. But it tells us that all through the Gospel of Mark we're going to be able to look at it and say there's more to this story. And some of it we'll have to speculate on, some of it we'll have to look at through other gospels. And some of it we'll just have to say, okay, that's all we know and we're good with it. So then we have the last two verses. When he had gone a little further, thence he saw James, the son of Zebede and John's brother, who were in the ship, mending their nets, and straightway he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants and went after him. Now, after this, we have now four of the men who are, I will say, going to be appointed apostles. Right now they're just following him. We don't know that they're one of the twelve or anything like that. Mark's Gospel is only going to tell us about the calling of these four. When we get to chapter three, he's going to list all the rest of them. And he says that Jesus basically, of all his followers, he selected twelve and named them apostles. But at this point, they're not really named apostles. They're just, hey, come follow me, and they come. And that's the only four from Mark we're going to know anything about the calling. There's not much more than that. From John we know a little bit about nathaniel, I saw you sitting under the fig tree, that kind of thing. And from Matthew, we know a little bit about Matthew's call the tax collector, but that's about it. The rest of them, they came from somewhere. And Jesus eventually called them as his apostles. But here we have this. You kind of wonder why these four, other than three of these, peter, James and John became the inner circle, if you want to call it that, in the sailboat. Nobody kay. Got it? Peter, James and John in a sailboat. Peter, James, and John. That's all the song, all of it I can remember. But they are the epitome of the disciples, if you will, of the apostles peter, James and John. Maybe that's the reason he brings them up. Who knows? James and John are the only two that we know anything. I say that back. I think this might be wrong on your outline. The only two that we know anything about their family, and I'll tell you why. I have to take that back in just a moment. So we know the father is named Zebedee. Does that mean everybody knew Zebedee? That this is a big thing? That. Hey, he's Zebedee's son. Maybe. Or maybe Mark just happened to know Zebedee, so he put his name down. What does it mean? Are they rich? Because they have hired servants. Zebedee and the hired servants there maybe, but it could be if you've ever owned a business, everybody thinks you're rich because you own the business. He's got employees. What they don't know is you're skipping your salary so you can pay them. Is he rich? Is he not rich? I don't know. He seems to have a business, zebrity. And he's mentioned the mom comes up later, remember when she says, hey, how about you let my sons sit one at your right hand, one at your left hand. This sounds like a good idea. And we know that James and John are called the sons of Thunder. Is Zebedee Thunder or is Mama Thunder? Or is that just their demeanor? The sons of Thunder? Yeah, we don't know much other than, hey, here. We do know a little bit about their family. Now, I said, these are the only two. But then as I was standing here thinking, I thought, oh, wait, we know that Simon Peter's mother in law. We have that little reference when his mother in law is healed later and we see all of that. So straightway called them. Yeah, they left their ship. And next week we're going to be in Capernium here and we'll pick up later. And when we get to Mark, chapter three, we'll meet the rest of the men who are then going to be called the disciples in our continuing saga of Mark. Rightly. Divided and session four out of 127 is the guess. Okay, should we have an over under number? Let's just stop and have a word of prayer for now. How's that? Heavenly Father, thank you for the scriptures and the joy we have of getting in, digging and learning and coming to know these things. It is a blessing. Thanks for this place and the fellowship of this place and those who join us online as well. Whether they are part of our church family here locally or they're part of our church family spread around the world, we're grateful and ask your continued watch care as we go from this place. Bring us safely back here on Sunday and we ask it in Jesus name, amen. God bless you all. We shall see. You men will have breakfast in the morning.