Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Mark 1:14-15 | Date: April 19, 2026 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Introduction

Mark chapter 1, verses 14 and 15: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.'”

Let’s bow together. Our Father, we are so grateful for this book that tells us, that is given to tell us about Jesus. We pray that you will open our understanding today that we may learn more of him, that we may come to see more than ever the value of Jesus Christ and bring us each then through this to trust him more firmly. We pray in his name. Amen.

We have said in this series that Christianity is given to address humanity’s fundamental need, humanity’s fundamental problem, and that fundamental problem is sin. That’s something of a giggle word today, a snicker word. People don’t take that word seriously much anymore. The Bible takes it very seriously, and the reality is we have offended God, and as a result of our offending God and violating his law, we have been left alienated from God, and in fact, under his condemnation.

And Christianity is given to announce good news. And the good news is that God has provided an answer to that problem for us. And that answer focuses on Jesus Christ. And so we might say then that the gospel revolves around these twin issues of sin and Jesus. On the one hand, there’s human sin, that is our fundamental need, and that is what Christianity has come to address. The answer to that problem is Jesus Christ, and that’s what we’ve been exploring then in this series.

We thought that Jesus, as Mark introduces him here in verse 1, Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the one who is promised for long centuries to come. He’s the Son of God, he has unique authority, he is the Lord from heaven, uniquely qualified to stand in for sinners, and in fact, that is what he did. That is the meaning of his death. That was our second message in this series, that Christ died. The meaning of that is not just in a historical sense that he died, but in that historical event, Jesus died for sinners. As he said, he gave himself a ransom to pay the price to set us free from our sin and bring us to God. And then we saw that in his resurrection, God demonstrated for all to see that his death was in fact for sinners and acceptable on their behalf.

Then last week we took up the question: all right, Jesus has come, he has died in place of sinners, he’s established and accomplished salvation for them, God has vindicated him in raising him from the dead, so now the next question is, how does that all apply to me? He accomplished salvation; how does that salvation that he accomplished come to be mine? The Bible tells us that there is a hell. The Bible is very serious and very clear about that. And it has this awful word, condemnation. And not all people will be saved. And so the question is, how can this salvation that Jesus accomplished come to be mine?

And we saw the first step to answering that question is in this word, grace. God’s unmerited favor is ill-merited favor to sinners, grounded in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We saw that God does for us, in Christ, all that he requires of us. He gives us to Christ, or we could say it the other way, he gives Christ to us and, joined to Christ, we participate and share in all the benefits of the salvation that he accomplished.

And so we saw the connection then of those two slogans that have come to characterize the Protestant Reformation. First of all, Christ alone. Of course there’s the Latin for that, solus Christus, Christ alone. He did all the work that saves. And precisely because Christ did all the work that saves, salvation then necessarily comes to us. Second slogan: through grace alone. He did it all, we do nothing, it comes to us freely from God through Christ. Christ is the sole ground of our acceptance before God. We are saved only by a right association with him and not by anything that we have done to contribute to it.

So if we are saved then only by a right association with Jesus, our next question now in working out what Christianity is all about is, how then does that grace become mine? How can I have it if it is not by works and I can’t earn it? I can do nothing to merit God’s favor; how can that saving grace become mine? And Jesus gives the answer here to us very briefly and crisply in verse 15. Verse 14 tells us he came proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, verse 15, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand,” and here are the two twin demands: “repent and believe the gospel.”

Repent And Believe

Those are the two demands that God lays on us. If the saving grace is to be ours, there must be repentance, that is turning from your sin, renouncing your sin as that which stands between us and God, acknowledging Christ as King and following Him. We’ll see that next time. So repentance, number one, and number two, faith. He says, “repent and believe the gospel.” That is, trust God’s promise of salvation in Jesus Christ. God says that he has sent his Son to accomplish salvation, that all the salvation that is available is in him only. And that is our topic today, then: how then can that salvation become ours? And the answer is we must believe the gospel. We must believe the promise that God has made, that if you come to him by way of Jesus Christ, and not anything else, he will have you, and there will be the forgiveness of sins and acceptance.

And so again, returning to those Reformation slogans, there’s Christ alone. He did all the work that saves. Because Christ did all the work by himself, then salvation comes to us by grace alone. And if it’s by grace alone, apart from anything we do, the only way to receive it is through faith alone. Not contributing anything, not bringing anything to the table, saying, “Here’s what I have to offer.” But it is God’s work through Christ alone, received by grace alone, through faith. So we don’t come to God then saying that we are doing anything.

And we saw last time that very important distinction in the gospel: do versus done. All the difference in the world. The gospel does not come to us saying, “Here’s what you must do.” The gospel comes to us with a happy announcement that all the work that saves has been done. It has been done for us in Jesus Christ, and we must only then trust in Jesus to be for us everything that God requires of us. And God then accepts us, not because of anything about us, but he accepts us because of Jesus.

So the gospel presents Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient Savior, as everything that God demands of us. The gospel says that Christ can save you; it tells us that He will save you. It requires nothing of the sinner. It only points us to the promise that God made in Christ, that if you come to Him by way of Christ, He will have you. If you’ll turn from your sin and entrust yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, you may be saved.

And so then, we come to God at the outset not pretending, imagining that we have done this or that well enough, or that we’ve been religious enough, or that “I’ve been baptized and therefore God will accept me.” That’s not the ground. We go to God saying, “I have nothing to plead but Jesus Christ.” And that is the essence of saving faith. Not just acknowledging that certain propositions are true, but acknowledging that those things are true, we venture out and rest on Christ and lay our whole case with him, trusting in Jesus. Well, that in a nutshell, then, is what saving faith is.

Acted Parables of Faith

Now, in the Gospel of Mark, as well as in the other Gospels as well, we often have Jesus performing miracles of various kinds. And often those miracles, they serve other purposes as well, very important functions to understand who Jesus is and the significance of his coming and all. But among the purposes and the function of Jesus’ miracles is that they serve often as acted parables. Here in the action of Jesus in performing miracles, we see illustrations of saving faith. And we’re going to look at a couple of those today.

Look over at Mark chapter 5. Mark chapter 5, and we’ll begin reading with verse 24: “And he went with him and a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse.”

Now, before I read on, I have to make an observation here. It has always amused me. All three of the synoptic gospels record this event for us. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record this for us. Matthew makes no mention of the physicians. Luke, himself a physician, makes a remark to the effect that the doctors weren’t able to help her. Mark evidently has a dim view of the doctors. He says in verse 26, “she had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all she had and was no better but grew worse.” So here are the doctors. They didn’t help, but at least they made her worse and it cost a lot. I’m sorry, Ryan, there it is. I don’t know what to say about that. She’s got—Mark evidently has a dim view of the doctors of that day. I don’t know what they were like.

Verse 27: “She’d heard the reports about Jesus. And she came behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, ‘If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.’ And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, “Who touched me?”‘ And he looked around to see who had done it. The woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.'”

So, weak, perhaps a bit superstitious as it was, this woman’s actions reflected a sense of trust, faith in Jesus. “I can’t help myself. The doctors can’t help me. Nobody else can help me. But I’ve heard about Jesus.” And evidently she’d heard a lot, because she has this thought in her mind, “all I need to do is get in contact with him.” And so she sneaks up behind Jesus, touches his garments, and she’s healed. And that is the same in short for every sinner aware of his sins. You come to recognize that you are lost. You recognize that you’re alienated from God, justly under his condemnation because of your sin. And you begin to recognize, and it dawns on you in grace, that I can’t help myself, and nobody else can help me. And then you hear about Jesus, and you go to Jesus, and then you find healing and salvation in him.

Now this little vignette here answers an important question about faith, and that’s why I went to this passage first. A very important question, it’s a practical one that comes up very often in the discussion, and that has to do, I’ll call it, with the quantity or the quality of faith. It is not uncommon to hear someone say with concern or worry, “I wonder if I have enough faith,” or, “I wonder if my faith is strong enough.”

Well, what’s interesting here is that this woman is not presented to us as a model of robust faith. This is hardly a David versus Goliath kind of faith. She comes sheepishly, secretly. Afterwards, when she’s called out, verse 33, she comes in fear and trembling. But verse 27, she’d heard reports about Jesus. And so she sneaks up behind him in hopes, reaches out with a timid kind of faith, and verse 29, immediately she recognized that she’d been healed.

In other words, then, it was not the quality of her faith. It was not the quantity of her faith. She was not healed because she had a strong enough faith. She was healed because of the object of her faith. This is an all-important distinction to make. She had no hope in herself. She had no hope in other physicians. She had no hope in any other resource. All she had was Jesus. And coming with a weak and even almost a superstitious kind of faith—just touch his garments—she knew Jesus could heal. And coming with this weak faith even, she finds healing.

And so it is with every sinner. We recognize our sickness, our sinfulness, our lostness. We hear reports about Jesus, whom God has provided for sinners. And so we go to Him, trusting in God’s promise that He’ll have us if we come through Jesus Christ. And to our joy, we find that we’re accepted, our sins are forgiven. And if anyone ever asks us afterwards, “How is it you are saved?” we never say, “God saved me because I had a strong faith in Jesus.” We never say, “God saved me because I had enough faith in Jesus.” What we say is we have a strong Savior. And what we learn is that even a weak faith in a strong Savior can save.

Because you see, in reality, it is not—this is an important, it’s a fine distinction, but it’s an important one—in reality, it is not your faith that saves you. It is Jesus who saves you, and you have him through faith. The question is just this, simply: what or who is the object of your faith? Did you think that God would save you because you did anything? Did you think that God would have you because you’ve done well enough? Did you think that God would have you because you’ve been baptized, or you gave your money to the church? All of that is to point to an object of faith that is unworthy of your trust. And what this drives us to see is not the quality or quantity of your faith that saves. It is Jesus who saves. And even with a weak faith, attached to a strong Savior, we can be saved.

Receiving The Kingdom Like A Child

Now there’s another passage I want you to see in this regard: Mark chapter 10. This is another well-known incident, and again, this is recorded in all three of the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This passage takes us a little bit deeper into our understanding of what saving faith is.

Mark 10, begin with verse 13: “They were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them [that is to the disciples], ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.’ And he took them in his arms and he blessed them, laying his hands on them.”

This is a fascinating scene. It’s not surprising that much has been written about it. We see something here of the heart of Jesus, his compassion. It’s wonderful to see the Lord Jesus reaching out to little children and blessing them and helping them. Much has been written on this. He takes time for them. He’s compassionate toward them. He blesses them. Such an important event, those who are paedo-baptists believe that here’s evidence of infant baptism. I don’t see any water anywhere near the passage. And in fact, that is to miss the point entirely.

It often goes unnoticed here that Jesus’ point, as touching as this scene is to see Jesus with little children, it often goes unnoticed that Jesus’ point here in his words of explanation have nothing to do with children. Children are an illustration of his point. The children here are used as illustrations of a deeper, more important point. Keep in mind verses 14 and 15. The question at hand, Jesus’ point, has to do with the question: how do we enter the kingdom of God? How are we saved? And Jesus’ answer is not, “Well, only young children can be saved.” He is not saying here that the kingdom belongs, the kingdom of God belongs only to young children. It’s not what he’s saying at all. He says, verse 14, “to such,” to such as these, that is to such like these belongs the kingdom of God. Verse 15 then elaborates, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” He’s not saying here that the kingdom consists of actual infants, but those who have become like infants. The children are a picture of those who receive the kingdom of God. If you will be saved, Jesus says, you must become like these children.

And in fact, before we answer the question, we should look more carefully to see exactly who is in view. Who are these children in view here? You’ll see it, I think, very often in children’s books that are written and they portray this scene and you have grade school-aged children running up to Jesus and he’s putting his hands on them and blessing them. Something like that. Older children are in view often in those kinds of depictions of this scene. It’s not what is in view here at all.

Mark chapter 10 verse 13, same as in Matthew’s account of this, Mark uses the broader term, little children. It can mean an infant, it can mean a little child, it’s a broader term. Luke’s account of this in Luke chapter 18 verse 15 specifies infants are in view. And in fact, that’s in view here as well if you read it carefully. Verse 13, it says these mothers were bringing the children. Verse 16, he took them up in his arms and blessed them, embraced them, took them up as little children. These are children of the youngest ages that they’ve been brought to Jesus.

And that’s probably why—there’s no doubt why—the disciples are rebuking the mothers. These kids are too young. They can’t profit from Jesus. They can’t understand anything that he says. They’re just babies. “Go away, you bother the master.” And Jesus rebukes the disciples in saying, “No, you don’t understand. These children, helpless as they are, infants as though they are, are illustrations of every person who comes to me and is saved.”

So the question then is: what is it about little children, these little infants, that Jesus says we must become like? How is it that we must become like an infant in order to enter the kingdom of God? Interestingly, some have tried to answer that by saying Jesus was referring to childlike innocence. The problem with that, of course, is that Jesus nowhere commends the innocence of anyone, particularly as a requirement for entering the kingdom of God. In fact, he tells us that he’s not come to call the righteous; he’s come to call sinners. Christianity is explicitly a sinner’s religion. It comes to address sinners, and there’s nothing commending about anyone’s innocence in that regard.

And so some have done a little better and they’ve suggested that Jesus is referring to a supposed humility on the part of these infants. That’s an interesting answer because humility is hardly the leading characteristic of babies. This is, without doubt, the most self-centered stage of life. It doesn’t matter if mama loses all her sleep. “I want my bottle and I want it now.” It doesn’t matter if she’s lost three nights’ sleep. “I want to be changed and I want it now.” This is the most self-centered stage of life for anybody. Now, Jesus does say in Matthew chapter 18, in his account of this, we must humble ourselves and become like a little child. But there again, he’s not commending humility itself. He’s saying that humility is the pathway to becoming like a little child. He’s saying that there’s something about these babies that you must, in order to be like them, humble yourself to get there.

And so, this is even a better step in the right direction. Some have suggested that Jesus is commending the natural, even if gullible, trustfulness of little children. Well, it’s certainly a step or two better, but again, these are babies, not capable of trusting so much. All of these suggestions focus on something subjective about the child himself, some disposition of mind. But infants, they don’t have any particular characteristic disposition of mind. Jesus here is not calling for some particular disposition on our part for entering the kingdom. Rather, he’s speaking of something more objective. Not our disposition; he’s pointing to our condition. Our condition before God.

What is the outstanding characteristic of infants? Objectively, what’s the outstanding characteristic? Answer: they’re helpless. They have to have everything given to them. Mom and dad must give them everything or they die. They’re helpless. They have no ability to contribute anything to the equation. They have nothing to say, “Well, mom, if you feed me, I’ll do this for you.” They’re utterly dependent upon the mercy given them by their parents. In fact, that’s the very distinction, the definition of maturity, the distinction between maturity and infancy. In maturity, we are more self-sufficient. We’re more capable of doing things ourselves. But an infant has no capability of doing any of that at all.

Babies require mercy. And this, as Jesus says, is what is required of all who would enter his kingdom. We must recognize that we are as helpless as a newborn baby. We must strip ourselves of every notion of other kinds of hopes, and we must acknowledge that what we need before God, we are unable to provide. We are in absolute dependence upon God for mercy. And so we come to God then, utterly dependent on his mercy, just as a baby lies helplessly and yet secure in his mother’s arms. So we recognize our sin and we cast ourselves helplessly into the care of Jesus Christ. That is the nature of saving faith.

We have nothing to plead but Jesus. When we come to God in open acknowledgement and confession, as we saw last week, in open confession, “I have nothing to offer. I’ve got nothing to bring to the table. I’ve got nothing that will commend me to you. I have nothing. All I plead is Jesus, and you’ve promised that you’d have me if I come through him.” That’s the essence of saving faith.

Now, we don’t have time to develop this, but you can see that this is Jesus’ point here by other observations in the context here. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all three accounts of this incident, it is followed by an account of the rich young ruler. You’re familiar with that story. We have that here in Mark 10 verses 17 and following. The whole trouble with this young man—let me say it that way—the whole trouble with this young man is that he had so much to commend himself. He was high-born, he was well-behaved, he was moral, he had done all of these good things, and he thought that he was capable. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus exposed the shallowness of his thinking, and Jesus made the point clear. Salvation is not acquired; it’s given. You don’t buy your way into this thing. You come helpless.

And he follows up with the comment in verse 25: “It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Now, there have been some who’ve tried to weaken this a little bit and explain that, “Well, the eye of the needle, well, that’s actually a gate in the walls of Jerusalem, and there’s a small gate, and it’s a little one, and if a camel gets really down low, he might be able to squeeze through,” and all of that is centuries later. Jesus is not talking about a gate in the wall. He’s talking about the eye of a needle, a sewing needle. And can you imagine double-humped Humphrey the camel squeezing his way through your sewing needle in the eye of a needle? And he tells us in verse 26, they were exceedingly astonished, “Well, if he can’t be saved, well, then who can?” And so they ask, “Who can be saved?” Verse 27, Jesus says, “With man,” there it is, “it’s impossible. But with God, all things are possible.” You can no more contribute to your entrance into the kingdom of God than a big camel can work his way through the eye of a needle. It’s impossible. It can’t be done. In every case, and without exception, salvation is a bestowal of divine mercy on the helpless and the ill-deserving.

There are other contextual clues here as well to the same point. In Matthew’s account, this is followed by the account of the, or the parable of the, laborers in the vineyard. You remember those who worked eight hours expected that they would get paid more than those who worked one hour? And it didn’t work out that way. And Jesus’ whole point in that parable is to say your standing in this kingdom has nothing to do with you. This is all of grace. You don’t contribute a thing.

In Luke’s account, this passage is immediately preceded by the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. This model of virtue, the Pharisee, and the model of vice, the tax collector—the lowest of the low, right down there with the prostitutes. The model of virtue goes to God on those grounds: “Lord, I thank you that I’m not like others. I tithe, I give my money to the church, I’ve been baptized, I do, I do, I do.” And that model of vice pleads nothing: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And it is that model of vice, not the model of virtue, Jesus says, who went to his house justified. He comes helpless.

This is what we find in all three gospel accounts of this incident. It’s surrounded by this theme of human inability and divine grace. We must come acknowledging our ill-desert, acknowledging our helplessness, our utter need and utter dependence of everything from Jesus. And we lay claim to nothing but what Jesus has done for sinners.

This is the first beatitude: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Not the rich, not those who are self-sufficient, but those who recognize they have nothing to offer. And this is the lesson our Lord is teaching his disciples. These little children, the disciples thought, they’re too young, they’re too helpless to profit from Christ. They can’t understand; they have nothing to offer. Jesus says, “No, you are the ones who are mistaken. Bring those children to me, because the kingdom of God belongs to people just like this, who come helplessly to the King to receive from him what only he can give.”

And that’s the nature of saving faith. It’s more than an assent to certain propositions that are made. It is the trust of a helpless soul casting himself on the mercy of God in Christ. And that, in short, is the gospel invitation. The gospel doesn’t come to us encouraging us to try harder, be baptized, do what you can to contribute, and then God will have you. The gospel comes to us saying, “You’re helpless, you can do nothing. What you need is a Savior, someone who can rescue you from your sin.” And the invitation is just that. God has provided a Savior in Jesus Christ, an all-sufficient Savior. God says, “I’ll have you if you come through him who has done the work in place of sinners.”

And so we go to God, as I’ve said already, stripped—stripped of all sense of self-worth and our contributions to the thing—and we go pleading Jesus only. And that’s the essence of faith, and that’s the gospel offer. You may be saved, and you may have it freely, because Jesus is an all-sufficient Savior. And this in great part is the glory of the gospel. Although we are helpless, and although we can do nothing to earn God’s favor, we are invited: come just as you are. That’s the invitation hymn that’s so common, isn’t it? “Just as I am, without one plea, but this, that Jesus shed his blood for sinners and God promised that he’d have me if I come through him.” That’s my plea. Jesus is an all-sufficient Savior. He will all by himself give you all that God requires of you. And the gospel invitation is: come just as you are, join yourself to Jesus Christ in faith, and find in Christ all that God requires of you.

We had a chorus that we sang when I was a kid in church. I don’t think I’ve heard it sung in a congregation probably since the late 70s, mid 70s maybe. I suppose the chorus could be criticized in some way because it doesn’t say much. It just says one thing. But that one thing it says is great. The song goes, “Christ is all I need.” And that’s the whole song. “Christ is all I need. Christ is all I need. All, all I need.” Then it repeats it. “Christ is all I need. Christ is all I need. All, all I need.” Boy, if you’re going to sing a song that says one thing, sing that.

So we come to Christ with nothing, and we receive from Him everything that God requires of us, and we spend the rest of our lives not having to wonder, “Have I done well enough? Have I believed strongly enough? Did I have enough faith?” We spend the rest of our lives saying, “I have Jesus. That’s all I need.” That’s the essence of saving faith, and that’s the offer of the gospel. Come just as you are, and receive in Jesus all that God requires of you. Amen.