Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Repent and Believe in Jesus | Mark | Mark 1.15

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

Repentance and belief aren't just the first steps to becoming a Christian. They're continual commitments to be renewed daily throughout the Christian walk. Learn what the mean from https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastor Keith Simon) as he begins our new Mark series with https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1.15&version=ESV (Mark 1.15). Interested in more content like this? Check out https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/what-it-means-to-pledge-allegiance-to-king-jesus-a-guest-interview-with-matthew-bates/ (I Pledge Allegiance to King Jesus) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-the-gospel-preached-treason-learning-to-follow-jesus-luke-4-43/ (How the Gospel Preached Treason) from our earlier series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/how-to-follow-jesus/ (Learning How to Follow Jesus). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10 Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Hey, welcome to Mark on 10 Minute Bible Talks. We are going to go through the gospel of Mark here on the podcast, and to be frank, I'm pretty pumped about it. I love to go through books of the Bible and doing this together, I think, is really going to help our faith. Now, if you're used to just listening to the podcast and that's what you have time for, then perfect. keep doing that. For those of you who can add something else and you can read along the Gospel of Mark

with us, then that's, I think, even better. But you just do what you have time for. It doesn't matter what everybody else is doing. You do whatever the best step is for you and your faith with Jesus. Sometimes I think we see the Bible as kind of a software agreement. You've opened up a new piece of software or maybe current software you're running updates and you have to close. click an agree button in order to be able to use the program. Do you ever read those agreements? No, I didn't think so, right? What do you do? You just go to the bottom and click the agree button. I think we treat the Bible the same way. We agree with it, but we haven't really read it. Now, I get why we don't read software agreements. They are incredibly boring. We don't understand

them, at least I don't. And except in very rare circumstances, they are absolutely irrelevant to our life. The Bible, on the other hand, I don't get why we don't read it because when you do read it, you find that it's interesting, it's challenging, and it is the ultimate guide to your life. There is a reason the Bible is the world's all-time bestseller. It's in and through the Bible that we get to know Jesus. So Mark I begins with the phrase, good news. That Greek word that's translated good news can also be translated gospel. So in Mark 1-1, Jesus is the good news, and then in verses 14 and 15, we see that Jesus preached the good news. It's interesting because unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark doesn't tell us about Jesus's birth. It just starts in by saying that Jesus is the

Messiah, or the anointed king that the Old Testament story has told us about. Then Mark jumps right to Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist and only spends two verses explaining how Satan tempted Jesus in the desert. When you start reading Mark, you realize that in this gospel, it's almost as if Jesus is in a hurry. And what he's hurrying to do is to tell everyone the good news that he is the king who is bringing God's kingdom to earth. When we hear the message of the good news, or remember the gospel, the right response Jesus says in verse 15 is to repent and believe. Those words probably sound familiar to us. They are Bible words, church words.

But even though we've heard them a lot, I'm not sure we really know what they mean. To repent is to turn away or change direction. And when talking about a king, the word believe means to give our loyalty or our allegiance to the king. So Jesus is the king, and we should turn away or repent from self-rule and believe or give him our loyal allegiance. Let me give you a picture of this by telling you a true story that happened not long before Jesus' birth. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar is murdered by a group of Roman senators. His friend Mark Antony and Julius Caesar's nephew Octavian, who, by the way, he had adopted. as the heir of his kingdom and his family. Well, Mark Antony and Octavian worked together to avenge

Julius Caesar's death. But after Mark Antony and Octavian defeat their enemies, they eventually square off against each other. This is a civil war, and the people in the Roman Empire were forced to choose sides. Were you for Octavian or Mark Antony? Well, Octavian defeats Mark Antony's army, Antony flees to Egypt where he and Cleopatra commit suicide rather than be killed by Octavian's armies. When the news of Octavian's victory was proclaimed in the Roman Empire, was that good news to you? Well, it all depends on which king you had supported, which king you had given your allegiance to. If you had supported Octavian, then the news about his victory was good news. But if you had supported Mark Antony, then the news about Octavian's victory was bad news.

Well, Herod the Great, and yes, that's the same Herod the Great mentioned in the Gospels. Herod the Great had sided with Mark Antony. So when Mark Antony was defeated, Herod sailed directly to Octavian, where he repented and believed the good news that Octavian was the new emperor of Rome. What do I mean that Herod repented and believed? Well, Herod said to Octavian, look, don't pay attention to who I supported, which was Mark Antony, but how loyal I was to him, because I'll be even more loyal to you. So Octavian accepted Herod's conversion and allowed him to remain king. So what's all this have to do with us?

Well, everything. You see, the Gospel of Mark presents Jesus as a king who is coming to reestablish his rule over the world. That's Jesus's mission. For sinners who are built on self-rule, that's not good news. It's not good news that there is another king in town. So when Jesus calls us to repent and believe the good news, he's calling us to turn away from self-rule and to give our loyal allegiance to him. This is more than an emotional feeling or intellectual assent to a set of truths about who Jesus is or what he's done. Now look, we can't pledge our allegiance to Jesus. We can't give him our loyalty without using our mind and our heart. We have to understand

who Jesus is, and our hearts will undoubtedly be moved by his love for us. But to repent and believe, that's more than just knowing and feeling. It's surrendering to his rule as king in our life, repent and believe, turn from self-rule and surrender our life, give King Jesus our loyal allegiance. That's not just a one-time decision, is it? No, that's something that I wrestle with every day. Every day, I want to repent from self-rule and surrender my life to King Jesus. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with.

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