Beeson Podcast, Episode #550 Dr. Tom Fuller May 25, 2021 >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I’m your host, Doug Sweeney, here with my co-host, Kristen Padilla. If you listened to last week’s episode you heard me say that our podcast team will be taking June and July off to plan next season’s episodes. We won’t leave you in the lurch. Rather than conduct new interviews in June and July we’ll be digging into the archives and airing some of our favorite Beeson Podcast episodes from the past. If you want to drop us a line this summer, we would love it. Find our contact information on the Beeson website, www.BeesonDivinity.com. Today on the podcast you’re going to hear a sermon from our spring chapel series on the Sinews of Scripture, Leading Doctrines of the Bible. This sermon was preached by our colleague Tom Fuller, Beeson’s Associate Dean, on the doctrine of the Church, on Mark 16. His sermon entitled, “The Community of the Called,” was based on the first three chapters of the Gospel of Mark. Kristen, tell us briefly about this sermon and what our listeners can expect to hear. >>Kristen Padilla: I love this sermon, Dr. Sweeney. Dr. Fuller begins his sermon, actually, by acknowledging that it’s not often you hear a sermon on the doctrine of the Church that uses a gospel, much less the Gospel of Mark. So often when we talk about the Church we quickly run to one of the epistles, specifically the pastoral epistles, but Dr. Fuller chose a different approach. And I really appreciated it. He chose to focus on the calling of the disciples. Jesus calling his disciples. Dr. Fuller grounds his understanding of the Church in Jesus Christ. He says that the Church is those who have heard the good news of the Kingdom of God embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and who have answered that call, the call from the Lord, to repent and believe this good news. Dr. Fuller is just so pastoral. I was personally very encouraged by his sermon and I am glad that you all will be able to hear it today. >>Doug Sweeney: You can listen to all the sermons preached in our spring chapel series on our YouTube Channel, “Beeson Divinity.” For now, though, we take you to Hodges Chapel for a sermon preached by Dr. Tom Fuller, “The Community of the Called.” >>Reader: The reading is from Mark’s Gospel. “Now, after John was arrested Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom as at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.’ Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea for they were fisherman. Jesus said, to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. Going on a little farther he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who were in their boat mending their nets. Immediately he called them and they left their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. He went out beside the sea and all the crowd was coming to him. He was teaching them. As he passed by he saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the tax booth. He said to him, ‘Follow me.” And he arose and followed him.” And he went up on the mountain and called to him, those who he desired. They came to him. He appointed 12 whom he also named apostles so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast our demons. He appointed the 12: Simon, to whom he gave the name Peter, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, the brother of James, to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is “sons of thunder,” Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James, the son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. >>Tom Fuller: In this chapel series, “Sinews of Scripture,” we are looking to God’s Word for greater understanding and grounding in several of the key doctrines of our faith. Today it’s my task and privilege to expound on the doctrine of the Church. I chose for this sermon a trio of text that some may understandably find a little unconventional for addressing the doctrine of the church. Admittedly I even went so far as to look at the scripture index in several books on the Church, just to see if it might be listed anywhere there and saw none, including the parallels in Matthew and Luke, save some references occasionally to Jesus appointing the apostles in Mark 3:14 and following. So, I’m walking a not so well worn path for better or worse in addressing the doctrine of the Church by beginning in these texts. But I hope you will join me today in hearing the Word of the Lord, listening and receiving that Word for us concerning the Church. To the end that we might not just grow in our understanding of the doctrine and of what the Church is, but more importantly than that, that we would grow in our love for the Church, and that we would grow and be encouraged in our faithfulness to be the Church here and now and all the days hereafter until the bridegroom comes to receive the bride to himself. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we are indeed thankful that you have given us your Word and by it you are faithful to speak to us the words of life. May we receive them faithfully today by your Holy Spirit and may we respond in faith to the praise of your glory now and forever more. And all God’s people said, Amen. With his typical economy of words, Mark begins his Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God in the matter of just 13 verses Mark tells us of the forerunning ministry of John the Baptist, of Jesus’ baptism by John and then of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Then also with no elaboration he makes mention of John’s arrest and of Jesus’ subsequent relocation to Galilee where he began, we’re told, proclaiming the Gospel of God. Saying, “The time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is at-hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.” This is the word that frames all other words and all other actions that will follow in Jesus’ ministry. The time is fulfilled. It implies a plan that has been in place, that has been being worked out over generation after generation after generation that now has reached a climactic point and something new and significant is taking place. The Kingdom of God is at-hand. The reign of God is breaking in. His Kingdom has come in the birth of Jesus. It is coming in the hearts and lives of those who place their faith in King Jesus. And it will yet come to completion in the day of Jesus’ triumphant return. This is the proclamation and it’s followed then by a call. “Repent and believe in the gospel.” Jesus proclaimed the good news of God’s Kingdom and with that good news extends this call to repent and believe, to turn and follow. This is a model for preaching the gospel in any age. It’s announcing the good news of what God in Christ has done, is doing, and will do, and calling people to act in accordance with it. Jesus preached this message throughout Galilee to the crowds that gathered to hear him or to seek healing from him and to all within the sound of his voice, Jesus made this appeal to the masses. But Mark then shifts. He shifts his focus from wide angle to zoom. From the panoramic snapshot of Jesus’ preaching ministry to the Galilean crowds, he zooms in on a scene in which the Word of God comes to individuals. Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee he saw them. It was Simon and his brother Andrew. What did Jesus see? He saw fisherman. Fisherman doing what fisherman do, casting their nets into the sea. Jesus had surely seen others, whether fisherman or otherwise, on that same day, at that time. But on this day, at this time, in this place Jesus saw them. And he called out to them, “Follow me. And I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. They go on a little farther, Mark tells us, and Jesus again sees two other fishermen, doing what fishermen do. This time mending their net. It’s James and his brother John, but they’re not alone. They’re working with their father, Zebedee, and some hired servants. Once again, Jesus calls. Not to all of them, but to these two brothers. And they answer his call, leaving their work, and their family, to follow him. At this point we might get the impression Jesus is putting together a new fishing company. He’s hiring pairs of brothers to captain his fleet of boats. Indeed, he was, in a manner of speaking. It’s little coincidence that the fish and the boat or ship would later come to be important symbols of the Christian confession and of the Church, respectively. But Jesus breaks from this fisherman profile in the next call account in Chapter 2. He is again by the sea. He is again teaching the crowd. And there amidst all those people, Jesus sees one, his name is Levi. Levi is not a fisherman, but a tax collector. He’s not standing with the crowd or clamoring for Jesus’ attention, but sitting at his tax booth doing this job. A job for which he was roundly despised by his fellow Jews. “Follow me,” Jesus said to Levi. And Levi rose and he followed him. Not only did Levi answer the call to follow Jesus, but he welcomed Jesus and his disciples and included with them some of his ill regarded friends for a big dinner in his own home. Then lastly, in Chapter 3, Jesus comes calling again. Just as before, Mark juxtaposes in all three of these scenes the calling of the remaining disciples here with Jesus’ ministry to the crowd. The crowd and the disciples. The crowd and the disciples. The crowd is now growing larger. No longer is Jesus drawing people from Galilee only but they are coming to him in greater numbers from as far away as Judea and Idumea and the region around Tyre and Sidon. Hearing that all that Jesus was doing, they came to him in overwhelming numbers. But then the focus changes. He went up on the mountain. There he called to him those whom he desired and they came to him. There were 12 altogether, including the 5 whom he had already called. He appointed them as disciples that they might be with him. He also designated them apostles, his emissaries, his representatives, bearing his authority and endorsement to act on his behalf. Jesus calls these men to be with him and so that he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. We’re given their names. The only other names, thus far, in Mark’s Gospel beyond Jesus himself and John the Baptist. This is personal. Simon, we’re even given some of their nicknames, whom he called Peter. James, the son of Zebedee, and John, the brother of James, to whom he gave the affectionate nicknames, Boanerges, the sons of thunder. Wouldn’t you have loved to have known them? Andrew and Philip, Bartholomew and Matthew, Thomas, James, the son of Alpheus, Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who would betray him. These three scenes relate to us conventionally, superficially, the calling of Jesus’ first disciples. But they are more than that. They are instances of people heeding the call of God to repent and believe, to turn and follow. And in that they provide for us instructive snapshots of the ways in which God providentially calls and sets apart a community of faith for himself. A people with whom he will abide in covenant relationship and through whom he will accomplish his redemptive purposes. This is Christ, building his Church. You see, too often I think we regard the calling of the 12 as something extraordinary and exceptional, constituting in our minds a different or special category of Jesus’ evangelistic ministry. But that would be a mistake. In the same way that Jesus’ sinlessness would be emptied of its significance if he were not tempted in every respect as we are, Jesus’ call to repent and believe is made meaningless. If the 12 were somehow offered a fast pass to the Disney ride of salvation without making and walking that same path of repentance and faith as all other sinners. The extraordinary component, admittedly comes in the gracious providence of Jesus calling them to be with him in these days of his earthly ministry and his appointing them as apostles with authority to preach and cast out demons in his name. But in every other respect, fundamentally, these are 12 souls saved from God’s righteous condemnation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as they heard and responded to the call of God and the proclamation of the good news of the Kingdom. This is the means you see by which Christ builds his Church. The Greek word for Church in the New Testament with which you all are very well familiar I assume is ecclesia. At the heart of that word is that Greek verb, kaleo, “to call.” Hence, the Church is the community of those who have heard the good news of the Kingdom of God embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and who have answered the call, by faith, to repent and believe the good news. To turn and follow Jesus. The Church of Jesus Christ is the community of the called. You see, the first and last, the highest and greatest vocation of anyone who professes, Jesus is Lord, is simply this: follow me. Follow me. No other call ever exceeds or supersedes that one. Calling, you see, is and always has been God’s modus operandi for making a people for himself. It was by his Word that God created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is in them. It was by that same powerful Word that he called to Abram and made his descendants a great nation through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed. In Genesis 12 we read of that, the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you.” So, Abram went as the Lord had told him. By the way, doesn’t that sound eerily familiar in its simplicity to Jesus’ call of the disciples? God’s Word, you see, has the power to create something where there was nothing before. Or to change and transform one thing into something different and new for his purposes and for his glory. Once you were not a people, Peter writes, to the elect exiles of the dispersion, but now you are a people. God’s people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. And that, by the call of God, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, announced to you through those who preach the good news, by the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven. 1 Peter 1:12. The call of God in Christ Jesus by the empowering and leading of the Holy Spirit is first a call to hear and obey. The Church is first and foremost a community of those to whom the Word of God is come, and who have received and responded in obedience to that Word. And this is all a gift of God’s grace in every respect in hearing the Word and receiving the Word and obeying the Word. The Church is the community also of those who God has called to be with Jesus and with one another. We’re called to be with Jesus in the intimacy of personal relationship and holy communion. Disciples, you see, don’t just learn about their master and his way or even just learn from their master in some detached student/teacher kind of relationship, but they learn with him in life on life fellowship. Or in this case, life in life fellowship. “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” Galatians 3:27 says. Colossians 3:3, “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. The Church is Christ’s body. Christ being the head and we, though many, the members of his one body.” Our communion with Christ, however, is not just a me and Jesus thing. As the Church we are one with him and one thereby with each other. Jesus calls us into his community of loving mutuality and sacrificial service. Jesus vividly portrayed this truth when he washed the disciple’s feet in John 13, asking them, “Do you understand what I have done to you?” And answer, “If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought also to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.” This is a radical Word for the Church in any age. But something that we, as Christ’s Church in this day of deep divisions and consumer oriented religion need to hear and heed acutely. The Church does not exist to meet my needs or to satisfy my tastes. The Church exists for our Lord Jesus Christ, for the glory and honor of his name, for the building up of Saints in the faith, as a sign and witness to the world of the transforming power of the gospel and for the mission of making disciples of all nations. Which leads us to the final aspect of our calling. We are called to go and serve in Jesus’ name. This missional aspect of the Church’s identity is not a secondary matter, but fundamental to who we are as God’s chosen race, his royal priesthood, his holy nation. It’s in our DNA as children of Abraham, by faith. Abraham, to whom God said, “I will make of you a great nation and bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.” And to his people, Israel, the Lord through the prophet Isaiah said, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and bring back the preserved ones of Israel. I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Jesus called them to be with him as disciples and he named them apostles that he might send them, that they might go and preach and have authority to cast out demons. And to them he said, “As the father has sent me, so also send I you.” The apostolicity of the Church is granted first a matter of its integrity and trustworthiness of the faith, once delivered to the Saints. But it does not end there. It also signals our identity as those who are being, who are sent bearing the good news of Jesus Christ into all the world on the authority of our Lord’s great commission and by the power of his Holy Spirit. Many have, still are, and always will seek to reduce the Church of Jesus Christ to something less than what it truly is. Some would regard it simply as the human invention of a first century religious movement within Judaism. Some would make of it just a psychosocial phenomenon of people looking for hope and meaning in some transcendent reality. Some would pervert it and prostitute it as a divinely ordained system for their own self actualization, self help, and personal health and wealth. While others would seek to hijack it for cultural domination and oppression of others. Or reduce it to a vehicle solely for advancing causes of social justice and liberating the oppressed in this life, but no other. To all these and others, Jesus declares, “I will build my Church. And the gates of Hell and all other efforts short of that will not prevail against it.” The Church is the community of the called, who our Triune God calls into being by the power of his Word in and through the Gospel of Jesus Christ and makes alive by the indwelling of his Holy Spirit. We are those who by God’s grace have heard and obeyed his call. We are those who by God’s grace have called to be with Jesus and in him and with one another. We are those who are called to go and to serve in his name and for his sake. And one day, Lord have mercy, we are those who will see a new Heaven and a new Earth. “I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth,” John writes, “for the first Heaven and first Earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the Holy City New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues, and spoke to me saying, ‘Come, I will show you the bride. The wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the Holy City Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven from God, having the glory of God. And I saw no temple in the city. For its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and it’s lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk and the Kings of the Earth will bring their glory into it.” The Spirit and the bride say, “Come and let the one who hears,” let we who hear say, “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly.” Amen. >>Kristen Padilla: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.