Scripture Reference: Mark 1:14-45
Authority is an unfashionable concept today. The whole idea that one person should have power over someone else is deeply unpopular. But, to put it bluntly, that’s what authority is, the right to be in control, to tell other people what they can or can’t do. So, in sport, a football referee can control the game by blowing the whistle, awarding free kicks, or sending players off. An umpire in baseball can determine the outcome by calling balls or strikes. If you take part in a sport, you have to acknowledge that authority. In the army, a commanding officer has every right to order his subordinates into action, whether they feel like it or not. In fact, someone once used that very illustration when speaking to Jesus.
If some law or contract, or, indeed, the rules of the game, gives you authority, then you have it, and it is up to you to wield it properly and sensibly. Jesus came into the world with authority from God, His Father, an authority that did not extend over a mere sporting arena, or an army, or even over a country, but over the entire world. Jesus came into this world with authority to rule, to establish what He called “the kingdom of God,” the space where God’s sovereign authority is recognized and accepted. At this point in Mark’s Gospel we see the first beginnings of that Kingdom, as Jesus launches His mission.
John the Baptizer has raised the spiritual temperature of the nation, ready for Jesus to step forward. In the opening verses of this study, we see that John has been imprisoned because his message about repenting of your sins has not gone down well with Herod, the local despot (though Mark does not give us this explanation until Mark 6:17-18). Now Jesus appears publicly, back in His home region of Galilee, and He comes proclaiming the “good news”, the gospel, which, we will come to know, means a big announcement of a world-changing event. “The time is fulfilled,” meaning it has been completed. It’s now that this is happening; “the kingdom of God is at hand.” The Jews knew what that meant. Their prophets had spoken about it centuries before; the arrival of the Kingdom of God means that God comes to assert His sovereign authority, publicly and openly, here on earth. At last God would break into history and establish His everlasting Kingdom. The Jews had many wrong ideas about the Kingdom and the kind of freedom it would bring, but they were right about that much. Jesus in essence is saying, “I am here to bring it in.” He’s saying, in effect, “It’s me! I am the good news! So repent; turn away from your past life and get ready for God to act.”
The Call You Can’t Resist
Please read Mark 1:16-28 for the background to this section.
In the following verses we will discuss three groups who come face to face with the authority of Jesus.
First we meet the fishermen. Jesus is walking beside the Sea of Galilee. “Sea” is rather a grand name for a freshwater lake that is only about six miles from side to side and less than twelve from end to end. But it had a very successful fishing industry and, as Jesus walks along, it is these very fishermen that He encounters. Now if we know this story well, we need to draw back a little in order to see these characters properly. As with the shepherds in the Christmas story, we tend to romanticize the Galilean fishermen, but these were the ordinary industrial workers of their day. Fishing was hard, physical work, extremely smelly work, carried out on a notoriously stormy lake.
To Be Continued
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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