There's probably a clock in your house that's still wrong 🕐

Mark My Words — Week 1

Mark 1:15

From the sermon by Pastor Samuel Sutter • March 8, 2026

Here's something nobody tells you about daylight saving time: for the next two weeks, at least one clock in your life is going to be wrong. Your phone fixes itself. You'll get the one by your bed. Maybe even the microwave. But there's always that one — the oven that requires a YouTube tutorial, the one in the garage you've just decided lives in a different time zone now.

And here's the thing. That clock isn't broken. It's working fine. It's just pointed at the wrong time — running with total confidence in the wrong direction.

I think that's how a lot of us relate to Jesus. We're not broken. We're not even disinterested. We're just… oriented wrong. Our picture of him comes from TV, social media, half-remembered Sunday school lessons, that one coworker with opinions about everything. All secondhand. Someone else's clock. And some of those clocks? They're wrong. But you can't tell — because you've never actually gone to the source and checked.

The First Thing Out of His Mouth

Mark 1:15 is Jesus' opening line. His first recorded public statement in the earliest gospel we have. Probably important.

Two halves. And the order matters more than you think. First half: announcement. "The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near." Second half: invitation. "Repent and believe the good news." The announcement comes first — which means God's arrival is not the reward for your turnaround. It's the reason for it.

Most of us have the sequence flipped. We think we need to clean up, get our act together, then maybe God shows up. And when that clock is wrong, the whole day is off. You fail on a Tuesday — lose your temper, give in to the thing you said you were done with — and your first instinct isn't to turn toward God. It's to hide. "I'll pray tomorrow. I'll get back on track this week." You know what that is? That's someone who believes God is only available to the put-together version of you.

And honestly — it poisons your good days too. Because when you do get it right, now you feel like you've earned the conversation. Your whole relationship with God rides on your performance. Good week, God feels near. Bad week, God feels far. That's not grace. That's a treadmill. And the worst part? You think the exhaustion is what faithfulness feels like.

The Greek word for "good news" here is euangelion. In the ancient world, when an army won a battle, they'd send a runner — an evangelist — into the surrounding cities. His job wasn't to hand out assignments. He didn't say, "Here's what you need to do to earn your freedom." He said, "We fought for you. We won. It's over. You're free." That's what a gospel is. It's not advice. It's a headline.

Repentance Isn't What You Think It Is

Let's talk about the word most of us flinch at. "Repent." We hear it and picture the sandwich-board guy on the street corner with the megaphone that somehow makes every word angrier. A word that's been weaponized by people who seemed to enjoy saying it a little too much.

But the Greek — metanoia — doesn't mean "feel terrible about yourself." It means a complete reorientation of direction. You were walking one way. Now walk the other. It's not primarily emotional. It's positional. That clock doesn't need new batteries. It doesn't need to feel bad about being wrong. It just needs to be reset.

And that matters — because most of us have tried the emotional version and it didn't stick. The retreat. The music swelling. You're crying. You mean it. Things are going to be different this time. And they are — for about nine days. Ten if the worship band was really good. Then the feeling fades, the old patterns creep back, and you feel worse than before because you think you failed at repentance. Again.

But here's what actually happened. You didn't fail at repentance — you never actually repented. You had an emotional experience. And emotions are real, but they're not a direction. Metanoia is: I was facing that. Now I face him. Whether it comes with tears or not. Whether it's a Sunday at church or a Wednesday in your car.

Into the Dark

Here's what wrecks me about the timing. Look at verse 14:

His cousin. The prophet who prepared the way. Faithful, obedient — and crushed by a corrupt system. A man who spoke up against injustice and paid with his life. That's the backdrop to Jesus' first sermon. Not a sunny day. Not a revival tent. Loss. Injustice. A faithful man doing everything right and getting destroyed for it.

And some of you are living in verse 14 right now. Not verse 15 — verse 14. You're in the "after" of something. After the diagnosis. After the divorce. After you did the right thing and it cost you everything. Nobody told you the Christian life includes seasons where the most godly person in the room gets handed over.

Into that mess — Jesus says, "Turn around. There's good news." Repentance isn't something you do when life is tidy. It's something you do in the dark. When nothing feels right and you don't have the emotional energy for a mountaintop experience. You don't need the feeling. You just need to turn. His first word to the world wasn't "feel bad." It was "face me."