“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15).

‘You’re not crazy!’ is the name of a podcast on The Gospel Coalition site which Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry have produced. Today, I listened to a couple of episodes at the end of the first season to see what it was like. How delighted I was to find that the episode ‘Gospel Culture and Renewal’ was along the revival theme (compare my ‘riding on the clouds’ podcast).

Along the way Sam refers to Mark 1:15 and Ray goes on to comment in this way (taken from the transcript):

Ray Ortlund:

A verse I keep coming back to is that kind of programmatic verse Mark 1:15, when Jesus speaks his first public words in Mark’s gospel: ‘The time is fulfilled, The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel.’ That verse strikes me because it reminds me of how central and unavoidable repentance is – that there is no gospel without repentance.

And Ray continues a little later:

…in that verse in Mark chapter one, that’s the entry point for Kingdom powers to come in and push back and displace demonic powers. This is powerful. If the gospel coalition stands for anything, it stands for gospel doctrine, creating gospel culture, being detonated with the power of the Holy Spirit, to make Jesus not be ignored.

The podcast is particularly directed at young pastors – but I think anyone interested in the gospel going forward would find it worth listening to.

One final comment – Sam mentioned that he loved listening to Mozart’s piano concerto no 13. Well I’m not familiar with that one, but I find it hard to believe that it would match Mozart’s piano concerto No 21 (K467), especially as played by the Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son. It is sublime!