All of Life is Repentance (Ezra 9-10)

by Darryl on May 23, 2010

Today we’re coming to a different kind of service. Our church has recently been through a consultation process. The report at the end of the process gave us a list of seven strengths, five obstacles we face, and five prescriptions for health growth. One of the obstacles in the report is “a primarily Inward Focus of Attention with no clear compelling Vision and Strategy for local church mission.” They also mentioned a disabling focus on the past among some. So the first prescription we received is:

That Richview Baptist Church Cry out to God in repentance and prayer regarding a lack of obedience to the Great Commission by focusing with a renewed vision implementation plan to reach lost people in the community to become a church of 400 in the next five years.

Hold a Sacred Assembly to Repent and Cry Out to God for a renewed vision of Mission for the Church.

So today I’d like to look at a passage that I think is going to help us. It’s found at the end of the book of Ezra. Ezra’s a book about the completion of the second Temple and the return of God’s people to Jerusalem after the exile, at the lowest point of their history. You can summarize the theme of Ezra in one word: restoration. It’s a book that helps us think about our own restoration so that we become who God is calling us to be.

Today we come to the end. The end of a book is when we usually expect that the crisis has been resolved and things are looking up. In this case, the crisis of the exile and the destruction of the Temple has been resolved, but there’s a fresh crisis.

The fact that Judah faces this crisis after all that God has done to restore them teaches us something. We never arrive, at least not in this life. The crisis they faced is a crisis that we continually face.

I don’t want to preach this passage today so much as walk us through it in three stages. I’d first like to look at the problem, then I’d like to look at confession, and finally I’d like to look at the resolution to the problem. The problem, the confession, and the resolution. In between each of these sections, I’d like to give us some time to reflect and even to respond to what we’re going to read.

The Problem

Ezra 9:1-2 says:

After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.”

Here’s the problem. “The people…have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices.” They have intermarried with the neighboring peoples. The prophet Malachi, who lived at this time, even hints that people had broken their marriages to marry daughters of foreign gods.

Let’s be clear about what the problem was not. The problem was not interracial marriage. That’s a good thing for us since one of the things that makes Richview unique are the number of interracial marriages we have, which is a great thing. The concern with marrying outside of Judah was not racial; it was religious. Verse 1 mentions “detestable practices.” Deuteronomy 7 says:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations…and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you.

The problem wasn’t racial; it was religious. The problem in this case is that they were not distinct from the practices of other nations, and their worship was compromised. They were expressing their devotion to pagan gods as well as to YHWH. A Jewish settlement at Egypt at this very same time went through the same problem, and was gradually assimilated and disappeared. When God’s people lose their distinctiveness and compromise on the worship of YHWH, they eventually become assimilated and disappear. Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot” (Matthew 5:13). When we lose our distinctiveness, we lose our relationship with God and we lose our usefulness.

Notice the end of verse 2. “And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.” Not all of the leaders, of course – it was leaders who raised the concern in verse 1. But there is a danger that the very people who are supposed to be spiritual leaders are instead leading the way toward disobedience. That’s one reason, by the way, that you need to pray for those in leadership. The Bible tells us that they’re going to have to give account for your souls, and those who teach are especially going to be held to a higher standard. When they go off track, they can lead the way toward unfaithfulness.

So let me pause right here. The problem is unfaithfulness. The problem is that God’s people don’t always act as God’s people. They aren’t distinct from the ways of the world. What’s our problem?

What is our problem? In what ways are we being unfaithful as the church at Richview? In a nutshell, I believe that we need to repent because we have not had God’s heart for our local community. We have not been faithful to obey God’s call to be salt and light. We’ve been primarily inward-focused. We’re going to spend some time praying for some areas that we need to confess in just a few minutes.

What I’m talking about here is conviction. Now listen, there’s a good and a bad way to go about this. I’m not asking you to wallow in guilt or to beat ourselves up this morning. Instead I’m asking for us to pray with the psalmist: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).

And we can do this without feeling insecure. Tim Keller says:

The gospel gives you psychological freedom to handle the wrong things that you will do. You won’t have to deny, spin, or repress the truth about yourself. These things don’t make it impossible to know who you are. Only with the support of hearing Jesus say, “You are capable of terrible things, but I am absolutely, unconditionally committed to you,” will you be able to be honest with yourself.

I’m going to invite you to spend a few minutes praying, in a few minutes, especially in the context of our whole church but maybe also personally, the words of the psalmist. “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).

Confession

When Ezra heard about the problem, his response was extreme. Ezra 9:3-4 says:

When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles. And I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice.

Then after hours of this, he prayed a prayer of confession. Some call Ezra’s prayer the “theological high point of the book.” It is a magnificent prayer.

I want to notice a few things. Ezra prays as if the problem is his. Ezra identifies with the people in their sin and sees the sin as a collective one, even though he personally wasn’t guilty. I’ve noticed a huge difference in churches between the people who say, “They have a problem” as they point a finger, and those who say, “We have a problem.” When we’re part of a church, the community of God’s people, we confess our corporate sins together, even though we personally may not be guilty ourselves. This is an important point. This morning we are not coming to God and pointing the finger at others. This morning we are coming to God in humility ourselves instead of pointing the finger at others.

Ezra begins his prayer with a general confession. “I am too ashamed and disgraced, my God, to lift up my face to you, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens” (Ezra 9:6). He then remembers the sins of previous times (verse 7), recites God’s mercy and goodness (verses 8-9), further confesses Israel’s sins (verses 10-12), and then appeals to God (verses 13-15). Listen to how he ends his prayer: “Lord, the God of Israel, you are righteous! We are left this day as a remnant. Here we are before you in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in your presence” (Ezra 9:15). In a way there is no resolution, no solution. Ezra just throws himself on behalf of the people on God’s mercy and confesses his sin before God.

A denominational leader recently talked about the churches that had turned around within his region. He said none of the churches turned around until the people got serious about prayer. He said:

In our churches, often the turnaround began when we said to the church, ‘Call a day of prayer.’ And here’s how the day of prayer started. We had the pastor and board stand and lead in prayers of confession, asking God to forgive them for being a disobedient congregation and not taking seriously the great commission to make disciples.

A pastor friend of mine started a church in Portland. They only ever grew to about forty or fifty people for the first few years, all of them Christian. One day the pastor, Rick, realized that he only hung around people who were like him, who shared the same views, held the same belief. He read every how-to book on how to reach people, and began to realize that the problem wasn’t really a how-to problem. It was a want-to problem. He didn’t want to reach out to those who were unlike him. He really didn’t care.

He decided to call for a weekly meeting, every Wednesday night, to repent – something, he says, that was pretty hard to market. They began to meet and to repent of the fact that they didn’t care, that some of them hated their neighbors. They continued to pray this way for nine months. They confessed, just like Ezra confessed. And it eventually led them to change their hearts.

When God really begins to move in a group, it often begins with corporate confession. When we confess, we reach new levels of honesty. “For him who confesses, shams are over, and realities have begun” (William James). Confession prepares us for what God is going to do among us. Max Lucado writes:

Confession does for the soul what preparing the land does for the field. Before the farmer sows the seed, he works the acreage, removing the rocks and pulling the stumps. He knows that seed grows better if the land is prepared. Confession is the act of inviting God to walk the acreage of our hearts.

David wrote:

When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.

For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord."
And you forgave the guilt of my sin.
(Psalm 32:3-5)

We’ve already asked God to reveal areas we need to deal with. We’re going to spend some time in confession in just a few minutes.

Resolution

Ezra concludes with a chapter that can only be called disturbing. Someone has said that it’s the most distasteful chapter in Ezra, and ranks among the most distasteful in the whole of Scripture.

At the end of chapter 9, Ezra has prayed, but there’s really no solution offered. Everyone is still overwhelmed with guilt and there’s no suggestion of what to do. It’s looking hopeless.

Then somebody comes up with an idea. Ezra 10:3-4 says:

Then Shekaniah son of Jehiel, one of the descendants of Elam, said to Ezra, “We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples around us. But in spite of this, there is still hope for Israel. Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these women and their children, in accordance with the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commands of our God. Let it be done according to the Law. Rise up; this matter is in your hands. We will support you, so take courage and do it.”

And this is exactly what they did. We learn in this chapter that 110 had taken foreign wives, and some of them had children.

The problem is that this seems unusually harsh. It seems extreme to require these marriages to be dissolved. We have no idea what provisions, if any, were made for them. There are even debates about whether or not they chose to do the right thing.

If you want to see something ugly, the effects of sin are always ugly. Justice here looks incredibly harsh, and it conflicts with our sense of the loving thing to do to these foreign wives and children.

But then we see, in the middle of the ugliness, some hope. Verse 19 says of some of those who were guilty, "They all gave their hands in pledge to put away their wives, and for their guilt they each presented a ram from the flock as a guilt offering." They put away their wives, but then they availed themselves of the provision that God had made for sin in a sacrifice.

It was a sacrifice, of course, that anticipated the sacrifice that Jesus would one day make. Why could God forgive these people's sins? We know that sin has a cost. Somebody has to pay it. We know this instinctively. Whenever we do something wrong, it comes with a price – a price that's too steep for us to pay. Many of you have paid a part of the cost of the sins committed by others. It's why you have scars, why you've been hurt. Sin always has a cost, and someone has to pay it.

But the one who paid the ultimate cost was not the wives or children in Ezra's day. The one who paid the ultimate cost for their sins was Jesus. "God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood," Paul writes (Romans 3:25). "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

When Martin Luther wrote his 95 Theses, his first thesis said, "All of life is repentance." If there's one thing Ezra teaches us, it's that the work of restoration is never done. Just when you think we're restored, another issue comes up that needs dealing with.

But when we see how accepted and loved we are because of Jesus, the more often we'll repent. And the more we see our own flaws and sins, the more electrifying and precious God's grace will appear to us. God's grace will drive us to confess our sins, and our sins will drive us back to the beauty of God's grace found in Jesus Christ.

Sin and its consequences are ugly, and the only cure for the depth of the ugliness of sin is the beauty of the cross. That's where I want to live. Let's pray.

We thank you this morning for the cross.

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered
Was all for sinners' gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But Thine the deadly pain.
Lo, here I fall, my Savior!
'Tis I deserve Thy place;
Look on me with Thy favor,
And grant to me Thy grace.

Thank you, Lord, for the cross. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Living Water (John 4:1-28)

by Darryl on May 16, 2010

Occasionally you have a conversation that changes your life. You can’t plan these things. It’s not like you wake up one morning and say, “Today I’m going to have a conversation, and it’s going to change my life forever.” They seem to come out of the blue when you least expect it.

Today we get to eavesdrop on such a conversation. It happened almost two thousand years ago, and it’s so significant that, if the world is around a thousand years from now, they’ll still be talking about it. It’s a conversation that still has the power to change our lives today.

I’d like to look at four things in this passage: the surprise, the need that’s uncovered, the solution to this need, and the resolution.

First, let’s look at this story and see the surprise.

Because one of the most surprising things about this conversation is that it even took place.

In John 4:4-9 we read:

Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

You need to know a little about the background of these times to understand how surprising this conversation was. This is a conversation that nobody would have expected.

We read, “Now he had to go through Samaria.” Jesus was Jewish, and Jews and Samaritans did not get along at all. Samaritans were people with some Jewish background who had intermarried with other nations to become a mixed race. They had their own version of the Jewish Bible, their own temple. The orthodox Jews of that time hated Samaritans so intensely that they often traveled miles out of their way to avoid the Samaritan territory. Hostility between the two groups was widespread and very bitter.

On top of that, Jesus and this woman faced a gender divide that was very unusual in that day. Today we don’t think twice about a man initiating a conversation with a woman like Jesus did here, but back then it was highly unusual.

On top of this, this was a woman with a sexual history. She’s at the well in the middle of the day, at noon, and alone. We read those detail and it doesn’t really strike us as unusual at all. But people back then did not go to the well at noon in the heat of the day. They would much rather go early in the morning or later in the day when it was cooler. And they wouldn’t go alone. She had to carry back water for drinking, cooking, and washing. It’s not a fun job, but it’s a lot better if it’s social and if you have help. Why is she there in the middle of the day and all alone? Probably because she’s a bit of an outcast. We’re going to read later that she’s had serial marriages and is now living with a man who is not her husband, which was against both Jewish and Samaritan standards at that time.

On top of that, she wasn’t looking for a conversation or an encounter with Jesus. It’s not like she woke up that day and prayed that God would move in her life that day. She has all these strikes against her: racial barriers, gender barriers, moral barriers, and even spiritual barriers. And yet Jesus reaches past those barriers and strikes up a conversation that changed her world, and continues to change worlds today.

Listen: it’s important to see this. In the last chapter, Jesus has just finished talking to a man who has none of these barriers. He’s Jewish, he’s male, he’s upstanding, and he’s spiritually minded. It’s very easy to think that these are the people that Jesus likes. Jesus likes hanging out with good people who live good lives and who have good reputations. But John here shows us that Jesus does not just relate to people like that. Jesus has no problem taking the initiative with people who aren’t that good, who may have all kinds of reasons for not being at a church. Jesus initiates with people who have pasts, people that other people have written off. In other places he says that these people enter his kingdom before the “good” people.

You may be here this morning thinking that you have to overcome all of these barriers before you can have a conversation with Jesus. You have to clean up your life and get ready to become a respectable, religious-type person. But the message of the Bible is that Jesus initiates with us right where we are in the most surprising way. Becoming a religious do-gooder can actually take you further away rather than closer. Jesus initiates with the most unlikely people. He may be initiating with some of you this morning.

That’s the first thing we see in this story. Jesus initiates in a surprising way with unlikely people. We also see something else:

Second, that Jesus uncovers our deepest need.

Jesus and this woman are at a well. It’s noon and both are probably very thirsty. These days we rarely feel thirst because we usually have water handy. Think of a time when you have really been thirsty. You finally get some water or some other drink, and when you get it, you’ve never tasted anything better.

Jesus touches on this need for water, because he’s already asked for a drink. He takes it further when he says in verse 10: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” What’s living water? It’s water that moves in a stream or a spring, as opposed to water that sits in a well. Now, if there was a stream or a spring around, there would have been no need for this well, which was at least a hundred feet deep. Where would Jesus have found this living water? We find out that Jesus is not actually talking about a literal spring or stream. He’s using it as an image to get to her deep thirst, a thirst that goes far beyond physical thirst. In verses 13 and 14 he says:

Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

If you’re ever in Philadelphia, there’s a a beautiful drive that leads out of the city along the eastern bank of the Schuylkill River. Along the drive there is a section of the riverbank lined with boathouses, called Boathouse Row; and across from Boathouse Row there is a statue of a pilgrim with a Bible under his arm. If a person is on foot and is exploring the riverbank, he soon finds a stream that empties into the Schuylkill near the pilgrim, as well as a trail that winds along it. If he follows this trail up over Sedgley Hill toward Brewery Town, he comes upon the source of the spring. There, over the spring’s source, there’s an inscription once placed by the city government–”Whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again.”

I wish that we could post this inscription over many things – over our careers, over our relationships, over achievements, over everything really. All of these quench our thirst at some level, but whoever drinks of these things will thirst again. They don’t ultimately quench our thirst. We use money, sex, and power to try to quench our spiritual thirst. Ultimately these thirst quenchers leave us unsatisfied. When used as a substitute for the living water that Jesus talks about, they can be spiritual poison. They ultimately leave us thirsty.

Quarterback Tom Brady set the record for most touchdown passes in a regular season, paving the way for his winning the MVP award. At the age of 30, he has already won three Super Bowls–an accomplishment that sets him apart as one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game. He’s now married to a supermodel. Yet listen to what he said in an interview:

Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there’s something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, “Hey man, this is what [it's all about].” I reached my goal, my dream, my life. Me? I think, “It’s got to be more than this.” I mean this isn’t–this can’t be–all it’s cracked up to be.

What’s the answer? I wish I knew… I love playing football, and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I’m trying to find.

Canadian author Doug Coupland put it this way in one of his novels:

Now, here is my secret. I tell you with an openness of heart I doubt I will ever have again. So I pray you’re in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God. My secret is that I need God, that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I am no longer capable of giving. To help me be kind, because I no longer seem capable of kindness. I need God to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.

Jesus has an uncanny ability to put his finger on the greatest need of the person he is talking to. Here he puts his finger on this woman’s deepest need. She’s spiritually thirsty. She has a deep hunger for God that nothing else can fill.

So far we’ve seen that Jesus initiates with unlikely people, and that he puts his finger on their deepest needs.

The next thing we see in this passage is the solution to this thirst.

There are two things we learn about this in this passage. The first is what is not the solution. You’ll notice in this passage that Jesus and this woman have an interesting conversation about a lot of things:

  • Her moral situation in verses 16-18 – Jesus surfaces the issue, which allows her to know that he is no ordinary person. Make no mistake: Jesus knows about all the things we’d like to hide, but they’re not really the issue. Our sin is a big issue, but Jesus can give us living water no matter what our sins may be.
  • Religious arguments in verses 19-25 – Jesus and the woman get into all kind of issues – which temple is the right one, and so on. I don’t think this was a diversionary tactic. Once the woman realized that he was at the very least a prophet, she brought up one of the live issues of that day. There are all kinds of issues that we can talk about today – science and the Bible, why there is so much evil in the world, what about other religions – but they are not the real issue. They’re important, but they are not the core issue.

You’ll notice that the core issue in this passage is actually a person. They get to it in verses 25-26:

The woman said, “I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you–I am he.”

What is he saying here? He’s saying that the key issue we must wrestle with is who Jesus is. He claims to be the source of living water. He claims, as one commentator puts it, “more than either Jew or Samaritan had comprehended in the word ‘Christ’. He is the answer of God to the sin of the world” (Edwin Hoskyns). In which case Jesus is not just giving this woman information. He is giving her an invitation. It’s a challenge to respond. It’s another way of Jesus saying, “Come to me, and I will satisfy your deepest thirst.”

This is very good news. Jesus claims to be sent from God. He goes out of his way to encounter people who have a past. And he reveals their deepest hunger, and then offers himself as the solution to their thirst. Later on in John, Jesus goes to the cross. The Bible teaches that Jesus takes our place. In John 19:28 Jesus says, “I am thirsty.” This is more than just physical thirst. He would have been physically thirsty. He had been scourged. He was bleeding and hanging in the hot near-Eastern sun. But it would have been more. Tim Keller says, “When Jesus says I’m thirsty he says He is taking the spiritual cosmic thirst so that He can give you the Water of Eternal Life..”

Well, what to make of all of this?

I hope that you will see this morning that Jesus surprises us by initiating with surprising people. He also identifies our hunger. He then presents himself as the real solution, the one who assumes our deepest thirst, and offers us satisfaction for our deep longing for God. He claims to be the one who has come to save us and satisfy us, and he invites us to come to him.

What do we do about this? C.S. Lewis wrote a scene in his book The Silver Chair. Jill is in the land of Narnia, and she’s thirsty. At once she sees a magnificent stream . . . and a fearsome lion (Aslan, who represents the Jesus):

“If I run away, it’ll be after me in a moment,” thought Jill. “And if I go on, I shall run straight into its mouth.” Anyway, she couldn’t have moved if she had tried, and she couldn’t take her eyes off it. How long this lasted, she could not be sure; it seemed like hours. And the thirst became so bad that she almost felt she would not mind being eaten by the Lion if only she could be sure of getting a mouthful of water first. . . .

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion.

“I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill.

“Then drink,” said the Lion.

“May – could – would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill.

The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. And as Jill gazed at its motionless bulk, she realized that she might as well have asked the whole mountain to move aside for her convenience. The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic.

“Will you promise not to do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill.

“I make no promise,” said the Lion.

Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. “Do you eat girls?” she said.

“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms,” said the Lion. It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.

“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill.

“Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion.

“Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.”

“There is no other stream,” said the Lion. It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion – no one who had seen his stern face could do that – and her mind suddenly made itself up.

It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went straight to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once. Before she tasted it she had been intending to make a dash away from the Lion the moment she had finished. Now, she realized that this would be on the whole the most dangerous thing of all.

Let’s pray.

Jesus initiates with us. It’s surprising. He identifies our deepest need, our deepest thirst. He offers himself as the solution to that thirst. He is the one who, when he died, assumed our deepest thirst so that he could offer us the water of eternal life.

Come and drink. There is no other stream.

Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,

and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,

and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;

listen, that you may live.
(Isaiah 55:1-3)

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The Goodness of Motherhood (1 Timothy 2:8-15)

by Darryl on May 9, 2010

This morning we come to a very difficult passage of Scripture. It’s one of the most difficult verses in all of Paul’s writings to understand. And understanding it is only half the problem. It’s also one of the most difficult writings to accept. It seems wildly out of date and possibly even offensive to the modern reader. If you bristled as you read this passage, you’re not alone.

Why would we look at this passage on Mother’s Day? Believe me, it’s not to offend anyone. It’s actually because I believe this passage provides a very needed encouragement to us today, and one that applies to everyone here.

This morning I want to look ask three questions of this passage. One: why should we look at passages we don’t like? Two: what does Paul mean? Three: what does this mean for us today?

One: Why should we look at passages we don’t like?

Before we look at this passage in particular, we probably need to deal with the elephant in the room. All of us – and I include me – have passages of Scripture that we love. But other passages, including these ones, are not to our liking as much. We still may affirm them as God’s Word, but we struggle with their meaning. If we’re honest, we can relate to what Mark Twain said: “It’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that I have the most trouble with. It’s the parts I do understand.”

We need to ask ourselves why we would even bother with a passage like this. Many people in fact dismiss it because it doesn’t fit with their understanding. They say that Paul was wrong our outdated or tied to his culture. But there are problems with this view.

Peter wrote in 2 Peter 3:16 of Paul’s writings:

He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Aren’t you glad that Peter says that Paul’s letters contain some things that are hard to understand? Every time you are wrestling with what Paul wrote, take comfort in the fact that even Peter had a hard time understanding them.

But Peter says two other things. One: that Paul’s writings are Scripture. This means that they although they are on one hand letters written by Paul, they are also more than that. They are God’s Word. Scriptures were written, Peter teaches, “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). We are not reading Paul’s thoughts as we read this passage. We are reading God’s Word, which means we can’t afford to ignore it.

This leads to the danger that Peter mentions: “…which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” One of the greatest dangers we face as we approach a passage like this one is to distort it so that it says what we want it to say. Once we start doing this, we put ourselves in the position of being able to pick and choose what we like and don’t like. What we’re doing is essentially elevating ourselves over the Word of God. Rather than listening to what God has to say to us, we put ourselves in the position of choosing what we’ll listen to, and what we’ll discard. Rather than sitting under God’s Word, we elevate ourselves above God’s Word. We also elevate ourselves above other cultures who have no problem accepting what the Bible says in this area, but who struggle with different areas. It’s actually a very arrogant assumption to make.

But there’s something else that happens. If you are in a close relationship with someone – a marriage or a close friendship – one of the marks of how genuine a relationship you have is whether or not you are willing to be contradicted by the other person. If I agree with Charlene only when she agrees with me, and then discard everything she says that contradicts my beliefs, then I don’t have a genuine relationship with her. It’s the same with our relationship with God. If you have a God who never contradicts you, then you don’t have a genuine relationship with God. If you have a God who always agrees with your opinions, you’ve made God in your own image. Tim Keller puts it this way:

Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.

So we shouldn’t avoid passages like this. We should actually welcome them as part of what it means to be in a real relationship with God. Passages like this are good for us, because they remind us that we are not in relationship with someone who always agrees with us. We are actually in submission to God who knows about, well, everything much better than we do, and who wants to be in relationship with us. That doesn’t mean that we won’t find it hard sometimes. But finding it hard shouldn’t make us shy away from wrestling with, and submitting to, the passages that trouble us.

With that in mind, let’s look at the passage before us and ask:

Two: What does Paul mean in this passage?

Entire books have been written on the passage of Scripture we have before us. I’m going to cheat and tell you what I think he’s saying without giving you all the complexities. Keep in mind that I’m giving you my interpretation. I think it’s a good one, but my interpretation has considerably less weight than the text itself. But let me tell you what I think Paul is saying here.

I believe what Paul is addressing is the eldership of the church in verse 12. The role of teaching and exercising authority is combined in the church under the position of elder. The issue I believe he’s addressing is in general who can serve as an elder within the church.

The problem he seems to be addressing is that some seemed to be teaching that gospel obliterates the differences between men and women. You can see why people believed this. They lived in a very patriarchal culture, and Paul came along and said:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

It’s clear that the gospel revolutionizes the relationships between men and women. After all, both were created in the image of God. Both men and women are equal in value. The gospel is revolutionary in its understanding of women, and its affirmation of their value and role. It elevates them in ways that would have been unthinkable when Paul read this letter.

But there’s a danger. It’s a danger they faced then, and it’s a danger we face today. The danger is to think that because men and women are equal, that they are the same. Anybody who thinks about this for a minute knows how ridiculous this is. Men and women are gloriously different. We’re obviously differently physically. But we’re also very different in the way we think. Our emotional wiring is different. A psychology professor from the University of California says that there are essentially two types of brains. The activity centers of the brains are very different, as well as the neurological pathways. I think we would all agree that men and women are equal, and yet at the same time they are wonderfully and gloriously different.

Paul says two things in verses 13 and 14. One: that the differences between men and women were hardwired at creation. Paul goes right back to creation to get this. He goes from the order of creation. It’s hard for us to understand this now, but birth order really did make a difference back then. It’s called primogeniture. The firstborn in a family was given a different role. Paul argues from the order of creation that men have a different role. He’s saying that men and women are equal, but that they have different roles that go right back to creation. They’re equal but different.

He also says that ignoring or subverting these roles causes all kinds of problems. He mentions the Fall. If you think he’s being hard in Eve here, you need to understand that Paul is even harder on Adam in Romans. Paul says that sin and death entered the world through one man. He’s not pegging all the blame on Eve. Both are responsible. The Fall reminds us that God created us to be different.

This is hard teaching. Paul knows it’s hard. Virtually everyone understands that Paul wrote verse 15 to cushion the impact of what he’s said. Let’s review what he’s said: men and women are equal but different, and disaster comes when we forget this. Men and women are vastly different, and men should serve as elders. Then verse 15:

But women will be saved through childbearing–if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

You may be thinking, “What? That’s supposed to cushion the blow?” It doesn’t seem much better. It seems like Paul is digging the hole even deeper!

Before the Fall, God told Adam and Eve: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). This is God’s first command. God says in three different ways that we are to reproduce, to fill the earth. God wants humans, and lots of them. He’s created this world and wants us to fill it and, as someone put it, procreate so that we can co-create with Him.

In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve sinned, and the Fall took place, God could have written us off then. He could have said, “You know what, that’s enough. That command to have children? Forget about it. I don’t want any more.” But right there, right after we wrecked the world, God said to the serpent that the offspring of Eve was going to crush the serpent’s head.

And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.
(Genesis 3:15)

And then there’s another note of hope. At the end of all of this, we read, “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.” Eve’s name literally means life-giver. God’s not done with us yet. Eve and generations of women ever since have brought life into the world. Every new life is a fulfillment of the command that God gave us, and a sign that he is not done with the human race yet.

By the time Paul is writing this letter, some are disparaging the role of mothers. Some of the false teachers in that congregation seemed to be disparaging sex. Some later Gnostics even taught that “marriage and the begetting of children are of Satan.” Just like today we face the pressure to downplay the role of mothers. Paul says: don’t you dare! Don’t ever minimize the fact that every child born is evidence that God is not done with us yet. Every child born is a continuation of the life that God gives. Every child is a continuation of the mandate that God gave us to co-create with him. Don’t ever let anyone put this down. It’s through this very giving of life that our Savior Jesus Christ came to this earth. And as women continue to do this, they continue to work out their salvation. Don’t let anyone ever put motherhood down.

This isn’t to say that every woman has to be a mother. He’s definitely saying that motherhood is to be esteemed.

Culture may obliterate many of the differences between men and women. But it can’t do one thing: make men give birth. But it can cause us to devalue labor and delivery. Paul says we must never do this. As John Stott puts it:

Even if certain roles are not open to women, and even if they are tempted to resent their position, they and we must never forget what we owe to a woman. If Mary had not given birth to the Christ-child, there would have been no salvation for anybody. No greater honor has ever been given to a woman than in the calling of Mary to be the mother of the Savior of the world.

That’s good, but I would also add that we owe a debt of gratitude for women who continue to bring new life in the world.

What does this mean for us today?

Let me tell you four things I think this means for us today.

One: we need to let the Bible speak to us even when it’s uncomfortable, and even when it says what we don’t want to hear. Some passages are hard. This is actually a good sign. It’s a sign that we are in relationship with God who, after all, does have the right to contradict us. So let’s not be afraid of passages like this.

Two: let’s celebrate the differences between men and women. Let’s never think that men and women are the same. We’re equal, but we’re very different. We need to work at this a lot, because there is so much pressure to resist being put in a box. Some boxes need to be broken, but we need to remember that God did make us different. As the French say, vive la difference!

Three: let’s value motherhood. We aren’t all mothers, and that’s okay. But all of us can hold motherhood in high esteem. This goes against the culture which tends to put other things first: career, advancement, vacations. One of the reasons I wanted to tackle this hard text is because I think it makes a very necessary point. Don’t ever let anyone put down motherhood. It’s great to do that on Mother’s Day, but it really needs to go much farther than that.

Finally: I love how even this leads us back to Jesus. Every child that’s born is a sign that God is not done with us yet. In fact, the very salvation of the world came through the birth of a child. Every baby that’s born is a sign that history is still unfolding, that God is still extending his grace, that he is still welcoming sinners to return to relationship with him through the grace that’s offered in Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

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Entrust the Good Deposit (2 Timothy 1:8-2:7)

by Darryl on May 2, 2010

When you have something that’s worth guarding, then you find a safe place to put it. You can buy a safe, but there are problems with safes. If you know what you’re doing you can break into a safe. If it’s not a heavy one, somebody can walk out with the safe and break into it at their leisure.

You can rent a safety deposit box. They are more secure, but nothing’s perfect. Safety deposit boxes can be destroyed or flooded. If you don’t pay the fees, the bank can seize the box and the contents. If you’ve watched movies you know that there are ways to pull off bank heists that nobody would think possible. One of the most enjoyable novels I’ve read is The Great Train Robbery, which is about a train heist that took place in Victorian England against impossible odds.

I’m not going to tell you about where the church’s valuables are stored, although I should mention that we had someone break into the church and try to get into the safe in my office a few years ago. I think they would have been very disappointed with what they would have found if they’d gotten into the safe!

One thing is clear, though. We have something worth protecting. Scripture is clear about this. This morning I’d like to look at this and ask three questions. One: what is it that we have to protect? Two: how do we protect it? Three: what steps do we at Richview need to take to make sure that we’re doing this?

One: What is it that we have to protect?

The letter we have before us was written near the end of Paul’s life. Paul was in prison in Rome awaiting death. Within a few short years after writing this letter, Paul would be martyred under Nero’s reign. And so Paul writes this letter to his young associate, Timothy, encouraging him to continue the fight of faith even as Paul approaches the end of his life.

At the end of the previous letter that Paul had written to Timothy, a few years earlier, Paul had written, “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you” (1 Timothy 6:20). What deposit? What is Paul talking about? Well, here in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, Paul again writes:

What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you–guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. (2 Timothy 1:13-14)

What Paul is saying here is that Timothy has been given something that is valuable and that needs to be protected. It’s a deposit – something that one person has placed in trust to another person’s safekeeping. And Timothy, Paul says, is to protect it, keep watch over it, and with God’s help ensure that it’s kept safe. In other words, it’s something that’s in danger of being lost if it’s not protected.

What exactly is he talking about? Paul tells us. In 1:13 he calls it “the pattern of sound teaching.” In 2:2 he calls it “the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses.” Paul is talking about the message that he’s entrusted to Timothy. He’s talking about the apostolic gospel itself. It’s exactly what Paul mentioned in chapter 1:8-10:

So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life–not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

This is the good deposit we’ve received, and Paul says: protect it. Guard it. It’s too valuable to lose. The message is that God has saved us and called us to a holy life. He has done this not because of anything we have done, but because of his own purpose and grace. It’s not because we merit it or deserve it. It’s simply because of God’s grace. God’s purpose and grace were given before the beginning of time, but have been revealed through Jesus who destroyed death by his death and has brought life and immortality to light through the good news of what he has accomplished at the cross. This is the good news for which Paul was willing to die.

This is the good news that has been entrusted to Timothy that must be protected. By implication, this is what we are always in danger of losing. The danger we face is gospel erosion. As one person puts it:

You don’t need much more than a cursory scan of history to see that solid Christian organizations can easily lose the gospel if they are not attentive. Losing the gospel doesn’t happen all at once; it’s more like a four-generation process.

  • The gospel is accepted
  • The gospel is assumed
  • The gospel is confused
  • The gospel is lost

It is tragic for any generation to lose the gospel. But, as Philip Jensen says, the generation that assumes the gospel is the generation most responsible for the loss of the gospel.

So this is one of the most important things we must do as a church: guard the gospel. On one had, it’s not an attractive thing to do. It’s the very thing that landed Paul in prison. It’s not the most exciting thing to do. Guarding what is already in our possession is not as exciting as some other things we could do. But there is nothing that is more important than guarding the gospel.

I stayed at a hotel in the States a couple of years ago. When I arrived I hid my passport in the room. I hid it so well that when I was packing a few days later I couldn’t find it. It made for a tense couple of hours. In a sense I guess I meant to guard it, but what actually happened is that I lost it. We can’t afford to do this with the gospel. We must treasure it, make sure it’s in sight, protect it, pay attention to it. “Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you–guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.”

Second question: How do we protect it?

I’m sure we could come up with all kinds of ways to answer this question. As elders we’ve spent time discussing how we can keep the gospel central. That’s my job as I preach weekly. Everything I teach must be grounded in the gospel. I need to make gospel connections, showing the doctrinal and behavioral implications of the gospel. Every ministry of the church must maintain the gospel at its core. Martin Luther put it well:

I must hearken to the gospel, which teaches me, not what I ought to do, (for that is the proper office of the law), but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: to wit, that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel wills me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. It is also the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consists. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.

This is a great way of putting it. We’ve got to be swinging the gospel hammer continually. I think this is exactly what Paul is saying we need to do.

But Paul says we need to do something else if we are to guard the gospel. Read the first couple of verses in chapter 2:

You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.

If you were going to protect a valuable item, you would lock it away where people couldn’t get it. You would remove it so that it couldn’t be touched or accessed by anyone who wanted to put their hands on it. But if you are to protect valuable news, to ensure that it’s not lost, you don’t want to hide that news away. You want it broadcast. You want it passed on so that as many people as possible have it. If you have news that needs to be safeguarded, you get it into the hands of people who can be relied upon to get the word out.

Paul says that’s exactly what Timothy is to do. He’s already had this information passed on to him by Paul in the presence of other witnesses. He’s supposed to find reliable men so he can entrust the gospel to them. But they’re not supposed to just hold on to the gospel themselves. They will be entrusted with the gospel so that they, in turn, can pass it on to others. You already have four generations in this verse: Paul, Timothy, reliable men, others. The gospel is protected as it is transmitted from generation to generation. We become part of a living chain of truth that extends through the centuries.

I’ll give you one historical example. In 1630 Dr. Richard Sibbes wrote a little book about Christ called The Bruised Reed. Ancient history, right? A copy of that book fell into the hands of a tin peddler, who gave it to a boy named Richard Baxter, who became the greatest of Puritan pastors. Baxter wrote a book which Philip Doddridge read in the early eighteenth century. He in turn wrote a book that William Wilberforce read. It changed his life so much that Wilberforce led the fight for the abolition of slavery. Wilberforce’s example continues to inspire us, and has been an inspiration for Charles Colson and the organization he founded, Prison Ministries. I’ve just given you four centuries of one chain. The story of Christianity is one of countless chains, countless generations who have entrusted the gospel to others who can, in turn, entrust the gospel again to the next generation.

This isn’t just for pastors and authors. In 1:5 Paul writes, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.” Paul also applies this to the ministry of the church, specifically to women, in Titus 2: “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live…Then they can urge the younger women…” (Titus 2:3-4). This is to be part of how we function as a church. One of the best ways to guard the deposit of the gospel is to pass it on so that others can hold to it as well. This applies to elders. It also applies to parents, Sunday school teachers, youth leaders, everyone. Every believer has a responsibility to teach God’s truth to other believers, to entrust the deposit of the gospel to others.

This means, by the way, that all of us have a job to do. Colin Marshall and Tony Payne write:

If the real work of God is people work – the prayerful speaking of his word by one person to another – then the jobs are never all taken. The opportunities for Christians to minister personally to others are limitless. (The Trellis and the Vine)

Paul is saying we need to protect, to guard, the gospel. He’s saying that one of the best ways we have to guard it is to entrust it to others, who in turn will be able to trust it to others. There’s one more question we need to ask.

Three: what steps do we at Richview need to take to make sure that we’re doing this?

I said there was one more question. I lied. Let me ask you a few questions as we think of what Paul said.

First, do you get the gospel? Remember what we saw in chapter 1:

So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life–not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Timothy 1:8-10)

It’s so important that we get it. Each phrase in this text contradicts some common misunderstandings of the gospel. One of the most important things we need to realize is that God has saved us by sheer grace. It’s not anything we have done. God took the initiative by sending Jesus Christ. Jesus has revealed God’s grace. By his death he destroyed death. By his resurrection he has brought life and immortality to light. I hope you have this, that it’s real to you, that you have believed the good news of the gospel. Before you guard it, you have to have it.

Second, do you treasure it? There are certain things in my possession that I treasure. If I lost some things, I wouldn’t care. In fact, I would be grateful. But I treasure other things. I look at them. I keep them safe. I protect them. Do you treasure the gospel? Is it something that you don’t assume, or do you value it? Does it move you? Do you try to gain greater clarity on the gospel and all of its implications?

When we interviewed Barth as a potential elder, we asked him to explain the gospel in his own words. He did a very good job. At the end of it, I honestly wanted to stop the interview and hold a worship service. It never fails to move me. We need to check our souls to make sure that it still thrills us, that we’re still amazed by it. We don’t need to just get the gospel, we need to treasure it. This applies to us individually and as a church.

Final question: are you entrusting the gospel to others? I’m not talking specifically about evangelism here, although we need to do lots of that as well. Remember the quote I read you a few minutes ago:

If the real work of God is people work – the prayerful speaking of his word by one person to another – then the jobs are never all taken. The opportunities for Christians to minister personally to others are limitless.

This really is a job for all of us. The past three sermons we’ve been talking about this from Deuteronomy, from Psalm 78, and now 2 Timothy. It’s not just a task for pastors. We want to be gripped by the gospel, and then to allow others to get clear on it as well, to pass on to coming generations the good news of what Jesus has done.

Let’s get clear on it ourselves. Let’s major on what Jesus has done. Then let’s treasure it. Let’s guard it so that we’ll never lose it. And then let’s entrust it to others, so that we become part of a living chain of truth that extends through the centuries. Let’s pray.

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Tell to the Coming Generation (Psalm 78)

by Darryl on April 25, 2010

A couple of weeks ago I went to my family doctor for what they call the annual physical. I don’t know why they call it annual, because nobody I know goes every year. If you’re like me you avoid that thing as long as you can, and when you go you go reluctantly. You know what’s coming. You’re going to get poked and prodded and examined. The doctor is going to ask you uncomfortable questions, and give you advice you probably don’t want to hear. I would probably go get a physical more often if they told me to cut down on my vegetables and to start eating more cookies.

In any case, they asked me about my family history. They wanted to know about the medical history of my parents and brothers and sister. The reason is that a lot of our health is a matter of genetics. The 23 chromosomes you received from your mother and the 23 chromosomes you received from your father combined to make you who you are, and doctors like to know what you inherited so that they know what you’re passing on to your children.

The psalm we just read is not concerned with your DNA. But it is concerned with what you and I are passing to our children. Verses 1 to 3 are kind of like the receptionist from the doctor who keeps calling to say it’s time for an appointment. They are trying to get our attention so that we listen to what this psalm has to say.

My people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
I will open my mouth with a parable;
I will teach you lessons from the past-
things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us.

The psalmist is saying, “Listen up! This is going to be really important. You need to pay attention to this.”

Verses 2 to 4 tell us what the psalmist wants to talk about. The psalmist is concerned that we learn “lessons from the past.” Verse 4 says:

We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
his power, and the wonders he has done.

Verses 6 and 8 continue this theme:

so the next generation would know them,

even the children yet to be born,

and they in turn would tell their children.
Then they would put their trust in God

and would not forget his deeds

but would keep his commands.
They would not be like their ancestors-

a stubborn and rebellious generation,

whose hearts were not loyal to God,

whose spirits were not faithful to him.

What is the psalmist saying? I believe he’s saying three things that we desperately need to hear. One: about our responsibility. Two: about our failure. Three: about the hope we can have despite our failure.

First: We have a responsibility not just to our generation, but to future generations.

Over and over in this passage the psalmist reminds us that we have a responsibility that extends beyond ourselves to the next generation.

So:

  • verse 4 – “we will tell the next generation”
  • verse 5 – “he commanded our ancestors to teach their children”
  • verse 6 – “so the next generation would know them”
  • again in verse 6 – “and they in turn would tell their children”

Last week, Robin shared with us that we have 50,000 people living within two miles of this church. He reminded us of the staggering responsibility we have as a church for sharing the gospel with these people. These are people in our community who are not in relationship with God, and who have not heard the gospel. Feel the weight of this. We’ve been placed in this community with the charge to make disciples, to take the gospel to people in our community.

The psalmist reminds us that our responsibility is not just to the people who live around us. There are generations yet to come: our children, our grandchildren. We need to tell them about “the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD” because we want them to put their trust in God. And we want to tell people in this community about the Lord not only because we went them to trust the Lord, but because they will have children and grandchildren. We want people in our community to trust the LORD, knowing that they will be changed, and God-willing their children will change, and their grandchildren, and so on.

There was a man named George McCluskey. When McCluskey married and started a family, he decided to invest one hour a day in prayer, because he wanted his kids to follow Christ. After a time, he expanded his prayers to include his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Every day between 11 a.m. and noon, he prayed for the next three generations.

As the years went by, his two daughters committed their lives to Christ and married men who went into full-time ministry. The two couples produced four girls and one boy. Each of the girls married a minister, and the boy became a pastor.

The first two children of the next generation were boys. One became a minister; the other became a psychologist and author – James Dobson.

We have a responsibility to the 50,000 people around us. But we also have a responsibility for future generations.

We will not hide them from their descendants;
we will tell the next generation
the praiseworthy deeds of the LORD,
his power, and the wonders he has done.
(Psalm 78:4)

That’s what the psalmist is saying. We have a responsibility for the next generation. But he’s also telling us something else:

Second: We have failed.

Now, I’ve heard some people talk about their pasts. Every time I hear their stories, their life has been even more dramatic. The obstacles they faced get bigger, and their victories greater. I would love to be able to tell stories about great exploits, of how well we have lived and served.

But that’s not what the psalmist says in this psalm. He says that we have a message, and the message is one of our failure, and God’s grace. Verses 7 and 8 give us the burden of this psalm, both positively and negatively:

Then they would put their trust in God

and would not forget his deeds
but would keep his commands.
They would not be like their ancestors-

a stubborn and rebellious generation,

whose hearts were not loyal to God,

whose spirits were not faithful to him.

The psalmist charges us to fulfill our responsibility to the next generation. He then holds up the past as a mirror so that we can see ourselves, and he says: history must not repeat itself. He’s relentless in making his point. From verses 9 to 64 he recounts failure after failure on the part of Israel.

  • In verses 9 to 16, he says they turned back in the day of battle, forgetting all that God had done in delivering them from Egypt. They could talk about God’s power in the past, but it made no difference in the present. They were cowards despite God’s power.
  • In verses 17 to 31, he says they sinned even more in the wilderness. The more God gave, the less they appreciated it. They murmured and complained. They failed time after time despite God’s miraculous provision.
  • In verses 32 to 39, it looks like they finally repent, but their repentance is only skin deep. God disciplined them, and they repented for a while. But it was all a lie. Yet God showed compassion and restraint despite their disobedience.
  • In verses 40 to 53, the psalmist emphasizes, again, their continual ingratitude for the deliverance God had provided for them. “How often they rebelled against him in the wilderness…Again and again they put God to the test; they vexed the Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 78:40-41)
  • Finally, in verses 54 to 64, he says they were ungrateful for the promised land.

There you have the entire history of Israel up until that point. Over and over again: they sinned, they rebelled, they forgot.

Don’t forget that this is a psalm. This is Israel’s songbook. I don’t think we have any songs like this today. Maybe we should. Why would Israel sing a song reminding itself of all of its failures, and of God’s patience?

I think it’s because the psalmist wants us to examine ourselves, and to remind ourselves that we’re in danger of repeating history. We’re supposed to learn from the past and to remind ourselves that we have a pretty good track record of blowing it. This is also a reminder that our strength is not in ourselves, and our story is certainly not about how great we are. There is a hero in the story, and it’s not us. It’s God, who extends grace over and over.

Most of all, this psalm is part of worship to call us to something better. Don’t let history repeat itself. Let’s not make the same mistakes. Repent. Remember. Respond in gratitude to the deliverance God has given you. Do so for the sake of the next generation.

This is an especially timely message for us after last week. In a sense, we’ve had our history recounted for us. We’ve been reminded of our strengths, but we’ve also been confronted with some things for which we need to repent. The psalmist is saying: don’t let the future be like the past. Don’t repeat all the mistakes you’ve already made.

So, the psalmist says, realize that we have a responsibility to the next generation. And realize that we have a track record of failure. Learn from the mistakes from the past. But the psalmist has one more thing he’d like to tell us:

Finally, he tells us where we can get hope despite our failure.

If you’re gotten this far in the psalm, you’re looking for some hope. It’s been kind of gloomy. It’s like getting in trouble with a teacher at school, and having that teacher list all the times you’ve failed, all the times you’ve talked in class, all the times you’ve blown it, and then hearing, “Now tomorrow’s a new day.” Even if you want to do better, you know that it’s not looking good. In class the next day you’re probably going to repeat the same patterns you’ve been repeating for years.

Up until the end of this psalm we’re not left with a lot of hope. But in verses 65 to 72 there’s a new beginning. God wakes up as from sleep. He beats back his enemies. He chooses Mount Zion, which is in enemy hands, and captures it and reigns there. And then he gives them their greatest king, king David, who “shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them” (Psalm 78:72). All of this is undeserved, completely by grace. Their record is nothing but shame, but God emerges as their last and best hope.

Now we know it doesn’t end there. Even after David, Israel persists in its sin. Eventually a new and better King arrives. The chosen tribe mentioned in verse 68 refused its rightful King, and did so in the chosen city. Yet God more than kept his promise. We have a King who is evidence of God’s continuing grace, and who is evidence that God has not given up on his people. Where we have failed, he has obeyed. The King who came lived perfectly. He took our sins to the cross. He rose again triumphantly from the grave to give us new life. He reigns at the right hand of God, and offers eternal life to all who trust in his name.

For the sake of this generation and the next one, it’s time. It’s time to repent of the sins of the past, and to not let history repeat itself. It’s time to renew our hope in Him despite repeated failure. This is going to take all of us. It’s time to tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord.

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Knowing God (Deuteronomy 6)

by Darryl on April 11, 2010

In their book The Leadership Challenge, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner recommend a way for you to clarify what’s really important to you.

Imagine that your organization has afforded you the chance to take a six-month sabbatical. You will not be permitted to communicate to anyone at your office or plant while you are away…But before you depart, those with whom you work need to know the principles that you believe should guide their decisions and actions in your absence. They need to know the values and beliefs that you think should steer the organization while you’re away.

You’re allowed just one page, and the result, according to the authors, is going to tell you a lot about what’s really important to you.

In the passage that we have before us, Moses is not about to take a sabbatical. It’s much more serious than that. Moses is about to die. He has led Israel for all these years, but he’s now preparing for his death, and thinking about Israel’s future. Before he dies he gives a series of sermons to Israel. These sermons are all found in what we call the book of Deuteronomy. These sermons reveal what’s most important, according to Moses. These sermons are Moses’ last chance to impress upon Israel some of the key lessons that they will have to remember if they are to continue faithfully.

And out of the whole book of Deuteronomy, we have come to the very core of the matter this morning. This is the very core of what Moses wants to leave behind. In fact, it’s affirmed by rabbis and even Jesus himself that we have here the very core command that we need to apply as we follow God.

So let’s look at this passage. We’re going to see that Moses gives a command to know God in a way that transforms the whole of our lives and that deals with our greatest temptations, so that the next generation will experience God as well.

First, Moses commands us to know God.

Verse 4 says: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

This is called the Shema. It is the centerpiece of the Jewish faith. It’s the pivot around which everything else in Deuteronomy revolves. It’s been called the touchstone of Israel’s faith.

What is so important about this verse? In this passage, God reveals himself. God says in this verse that he is going to identify himself, that he wants his people to understand who he is. In that day, people generally thought of multiple deities depending on the location and country. Today we generally have the same thing as well – we each get to decide what God is like, and we respect that you may have a different god or understanding of God than we do. But in this passage, God reveals himself. He says, essentially, that he is the only God, and that he as God is one. He is not divided. He is not one of many. And he alone is worthy of our allegiance. God begins with saying that he wants us to understand who he is.

Do you know what Moses is telling us here? He’s saying that the most important thing is to know who God is. That’s not all he’s going to tell us – there’s more – but it’s important to pause here because it’s tempting today to think that this doesn’t matter at all. God reveals himself to us so that we will know who he is. As J.I. Packer puts it:

Knowing God is crucially important for the living of our lives…we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentenced yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.

Back then, as is the case now, there are a lot of false understandings about who God is. Some of us think that this doesn’t really matter. It’s a topic for theologians and academics, but not for normal people. But don’t you see that the core of having a relationship is knowledge. It’s getting to know about somebody, to accurately understand who that person is like, what motivates them, what gives them joy, what they love. You can’t say that you have a relationship with somebody until you know them.

Moses is telling us that the great business of our lives is to develop an accurate knowledge of who God is – what he’s like, what he has revealed of himself. To help us, God has revealed himself in Scripture so that we can grasp who he is. So Moses says that this is our primary task: to understand what God has revealed of himself. But then Moses says:

Our knowledge of God is meant to transform our entire lives.

It’s not enough to know in our heads only. Moses continues:

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:5-9)

Jonathan Edwards says, “The Scriptures represent true religion, as being summarily comprehended in love, the chief of the affections, and the fountain of all others.” So, Moses says, we aren’t supposed to just understand who God is. It’s got to be much more than that. It’s meant to transform our entire lives. It’s meant to capture our hearts. It’s supposed to transform every part of our lives. They are to love him totally. Later on, Jesus affirmed this as the first, greatest, and most important commandment, so it’s very important that we pay attention to it.

You see here that the relationship that we have with God is intensely personal. What Moses calls us to is not mere outward obedience. I’ve had jobs in which I’ve done my part. I’ve worked all day and given my best effort, but at the end of the day I was glad to walk away. They had my work but they didn’t have my heart. Moses here says it’s not to be like that. You’re not to go through the motions with God. It’s not even enough to do the right things. You’ve also got to have the right heart. It’s not just outward obedience. It’s about heartfelt love and the commitment of the whole person.

That’s why he says “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” – with your entire personhood, with all of you. And the commands of God aren’t just supposed to be on tablets; they’re also supposed to be written on your hearts. Talk about them constantly, so it’s not just about talking about God during devotions. Talk about them both at home and when you go out – not just in your personal life, but in your public life; when you lie down and when you get up – not just some of the time, but all of the time; on the door frames and the city gates – in your personal life, but also in your public life. Our love for God is to encompass all of our lives.

I was listening to a book this week. The author talked about his favorite radio station in Atlanta. It plays some good music. Some of the lyrics really aren’t that good. But then they’ll insert something they call an “inspirational vitamin.”

The thing I find most interesting however is how they wedge the Inspirational Vitamin into their normal programming. What often happens is that right before they transition to the spiritual segment of the show they play some sort of [rap] song…Then they do the Bible verse and then they go back to booty music when it’s over…

It’s easy to laugh at how insincere that Inspirational Vitamin seems when it’s sandwiched between hardcore rap songs, but to do so misses the bigger point – we Christians often live our lives the same way. Maybe God is listening to the broadcast of my day and this is what he hears:

  1. Quiet time in the morning. Read the Bible, prayer, give thanks.
  2. Go into work and act completely different and disconnected from God.Come home.
  3. Spend time with wife. Read the Bible, pray.

Moses tells us that this is not the way. The greatest priority is to know God. But don’t just know him intellectually. Allow your heart to be engaged. Love God with the totality of your being, all the time, in every area of your life, not as an inspirational vitamin that you stick in occasionally.

Moses seems to anticipate our reaction here. I think many of us can see the logic in what he’s saying, and we may even agree that this is a good idea, although we also know we won’t really be able to do this consistently. That’s why Moses goes on to say:

Our knowledge of God and relationship has to take into account some of our greatest temptations.

In verses 10 to 19, Moses is very realistic about the fact that we will be tempted to forget God in our lives. Moses addresses the land that the people are going to enter, “a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant.” And then he gives a warning: “then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Deuteronomy 6:10-12). The blessings they are going to enjoy will also present them with dangers. The very blessings of God can take the place of their relationship with God.

And that’s not the only danger they face. They’re going to be tempted by other gods, according to verse 14. And ironically they’re going to be tempted not only by abundance but by times of suffering, as they were in Massah, according to verse 16. They’re going to be tempted by both blessings and suffering, as well as by false gods of the people around him.

Today we could update this and say that some of us are going to be tempted because we’ve got the house with the double garage, as well as a high-definition TV and money in the bank. But some of us are going to be tempted by the bad diagnosis at the doctor’s office, or the period of unemployment we weren’t expecting. We’re also going to be tempted by all the gods that people around us worship – power, sex, money, pleasure. In the middle of all of these temptations, Moses warns us to not forget God. Forgetting is a constant problem. At every turn we’re tempted to forget God, and abandon the first and most important commandment.

One of the best things for us to do would be to begin to identify the things in our lives that make us forget God. What is it in our lives that causes us to live one way on Sundays, and a completely different way other times? We need to identify the temptations specific to you that may cause you to forget God.

At this point in the message you may be thinking that this is all well and good. But you may be feeling guilty because you don’t live this way. You don’t love God completely, and you don’t have a hope of remembering him in all areas of your life. But this passage ends with perhaps the key for how we can do this. Because the last thing Moses says here is this:

Do all of this in such a way that the next generation will experience God as well.

Let’s end with this one. The biggest test for you is going to be children, if you have them. You can fool people at church. You can fool the people in your small group. You can go through all the motions and even have daily family devotions. But the real test is if you’re living in such a way that will transform not just your life, but the life of your children.

That’s why verse 7 says, “Impress them [these commandments] on your children.” Verse 20 assumes that you’ll be living in such a way that your children will ask, “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?”

One elder statesman of a Christian church has devoted himself to a fifty-year study of Christian and non-Christian families. He says that in American culture today, most young adults following Jesus Christ either come from non-Christian homes where they were converted to Christ in their teenage years through a dynamic youth ministry, or they come from homes where they grew up in love with Jesus because mom and dad were so in love with Jesus that love permeated their lives. It passed through their pores. Very few believers come from homes where there was a kind of indifferent, apathetic commitment to Christ.

It is sobering and thought provoking to suggest that, in American culture, the chances are better for a child growing up in a non-Christian home to become a Christian than for a child growing up in a home that has an indifferent, apathetic commitment to Jesus Christ. One of the keys to our children experiencing God is that we ourselves have a love for God that permeates our lives.

How do we get this? Notice what Moses says. When children ask the meaning of the stipulations, decrees, and laws, don’t just answer, “God commands us to.” When your kids ask why we go to church, don’t say, “Because we’re supposed to!” Moses says: answer with a story. And what a story it is. In verses 21 to 23, Moses says to answer this question with a story of the gospel. He told them the best story of the gospel that they had up until that time: that God had delivered them out of Egypt and saved them and made them his people. And Moses says, “That’s why we obey God! As a response of gratitude for what he’s done for us.”

That’s the best story that Moses had at that time, but we’ve got an even better one. If you want your life to be transformed, and not only your life but the life of your children, then tell yourself a story. Drill it into your hearts. And then allow it to overflow so that your children get it also. What’s the story? That we were slaves to sin. And God brought us out of judgment and captivity with a mighty hand. At the cross, Jesus bought our freedom at the cost of his life, so that now we have peace with God. Tell the story of what Jesus has done for your life. Drill it down deep into your own life, and when your kids ask why we do what we do, tell them the story too. Our obedience is a response to that story.

In this very important passage, Moses tells us that we need to know God, not only know him but also to love him. And the way to do this is to get the story of what Jesus has done for us deep into our souls. And when this happens, it will change our lives, and it will also allow the next generation to experience God and his gospel as well.

So Father, I pray that in the next few weeks you would help us. We’re going to look at how to know you, and also how we can pass on that knowledge of you to our children. We’re looking at this because this is such an important issue. We want to be transformed, but we want our kids to know you as well.

We begin today by realizing that it starts with us. It doesn’t start with forcing our kids to attend church or to follow all the rules. It starts with us getting so caught up with the gospel that it overflows into every area of our lives. Transform us with the gospel, Father, and allow our children to be transformed as a result. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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The Empty Tomb (Mark 16:1-8)

by Darryl on April 4, 2010

On Friday, things couldn’t have been any worse. Jesus Christ, who had been preaching and healing for three years, had been completely abandoned by even his closest friends. One of the twelve people closest to him had betrayed him. One of his three closest friends had cursed, saying that he didn’t have anything to do with Jesus. Not even his family believed. The story was over. Jesus had joined the history heap. He was just one of countless messiahs who came, built up a following, and then flamed out. If the Gospel of Mark ended at chapter 15, then Jesus would have been nothing more than a footnote of history, maybe getting a line or two in some ancient text but nothing more.

But just when things are at their worst, everything changes. In just 8 verses Mark shows us that everything has changed. In these 8 verses we’re going to see that Easter was a surprise; that Easter includes us; and that the Easter story continues.

First: Easter is a surprise.

If you had lived at the time of Jesus, you would have understood that Jesus was just one of many messianic figures who came, and ended up dying disappointing deaths. For instance, Simon bar Kokhba led a revolt against the Roman Empire in 132 AD. He set up an independent Jewish state, and ruled for three years as ruler. But his revolt was eventually crushed, and today his name is hardly known. After the failure of the revolt, rabbinical writers began referring to him by a new name. Instead of calling him Bar Kokhba (“Son of a Star”) they started calling him Bar Kozeba (“Son of the disappointment”). If the story of Jesus ended in Mark 15, this would have been the story of Jesus as well. Disappointment. Failure. End of story.

Now, Jesus had told his disciples over and over again what was going to happen.

“We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” (Mark 10:33-34)

Here it is the third day, and absolutely nobody has even considered the possibility that what Jesus said would come true. His disciples are scattered. In verse 1 of this passage, three women come as soon as they can, early in the morning, with spices to anoint the body of Jesus. These spices would be very costly. They were designed to help deal with the stench that a decaying body would create. Nobody is expecting a resurrection. They expect to find a bloodied and decaying body there. Not a single person expected anything other than a dead body. As far as they were concerned, the story was over. Theologically, they didn’t even believe that a resurrection could even take place in this age. That is something that the Jewish people believed would take place at the end of history. They certainly didn’t expect Jesus to be risen from the dead.

Sometimes we make the mistake of reading the Bible and thinking that of course ancient people could accept the story of someone rising from the dead, and now we’re so much more sophisticated. What you need to understand is that nobody back then expected the resurrection of Jesus. They didn’t even have categories for it. When other leaders were killed, nobody thought to make up a story of resurrection.

The people in Mark didn’t get it either, and yet something happened to transform them completely. A group of first-century Jews who were scattered and defeated and had no category for the resurrection were suddenly changed to emboldened witnesses who were prepared to give up their lives speaking about what they’d seen. As Pascal put it, “I [believe] those witnesses that get their throats cut.” Virtually all of the disciples and early Christian leaders gave up their lives testifying to the resurrection of Jesus. Something happened on Easter morning that nobody had expected that changed everything.

If you’re here this morning and you have a hard time believing the resurrection, join the club. There’s not a person in the Gospel of Mark who expected it to happen. But something happened that changed everything – and is still changing everything today. Easter is a surprise.

But then, secondly, we see:

Easter includes us.

Mark 16:1 says, “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.”

It’s easy to miss how shocking this is. These women had been witnesses of Jesus’ death. “Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome” (Mark 15:40). Two of them, according to Mark 15:47, witnessed where Jesus was buried. Now these three women are about to become the first witnesses to the empty tomb, and to the message of the angel.

What’s so surprising about this? In Jesus’ day, women were viewed as being unreliable witnesses. Their testimony was not considered admissible evidence. N.T. Wright makes the point that if you were inventing the story of the resurrection, you never would have made the first and best witnesses to be female. It would have been too inconvenient. The only reason you would say that women were the first and best witnesses is because that’s what actually happened. It’s there because it’s true.

But it’s surprising for another reason. The readers of Mark’s Gospel would have understood that one of these three women, at least, was a woman with a past. Mary Magdalene was somebody who had previously been demon possessed. Luke 8:2 calls her “Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out.” At least one of these three women is somebody who has a history.

What does this tell us? Mark is showing us how the gospel turns things upside-down. People who are excluded, who are pushed to the side, are the first and best witnesses of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The least likely people become part of the Easter story. You may be here this morning thinking that you’re the least likely person. The first to be discounted in human society are the first to be included in divine society.

And just in case we get ahead of ourselves, Mark still points out that we won’t get it right away. These women go to the tomb. They enter into a small chamber in the tomb and see a young man sitting there. This young man – an angel – announces the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They’re told to go tell the disciples. All along, Jesus has told people not to tell people about him. Jesus commanded people to silence, and they spoke. Now, they’re compelled to speak, and what do they do? Verse 8 says, “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” Easter is for the least likely people, but even the best of us blow it. The Resurrection changes us. The gospel changes us. But it’s a process. Easter includes people like us, people who are the least likely to be included, people who still blunder in our responses to God and who don’t get it right away.

What about the disciples? The angel told the women, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you’” (Mark 16:7). Before Jesus was betrayed, he told his disciples:

“You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written:
“‘I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.’

But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.” (Mark 14:27-28)

The disciples had completely blown it. Jesus had told them over and over again what was going to happen, and they just couldn’t get it. And when put to the test, they caved and they fled.

And out of all the disciples, no failure was more dramatic than Peter’s. Peter had sworn emphatically, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you” (Mark 14:31). But when the moment came, Peter denied even knowing Jesus. Out of all the disciples, except for Judas, Peter knew that he had let Jesus down profoundly.

Yet the message was, “But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” You see what this means? Jesus hasn’t written Peter and the other disciples off.

Easter includes unlikely people. It includes people who blunder. It even includes people who have completely and utterly failed. Easter includes people just like us.

That’s what Mark has been showing us so far. Easter is a surprise. It caught everyone by surprise. Nobody expected. And Easter includes us – the unlikely ones, the blundering ones, the failures. There’s one more thing Mark shows us:

Finally: the Easter story continues.

You’ll notice this morning that we’ve looked at verses 1 to 8. There’s a reason. The oldest and most reliable manuscripts end at verse 8. Early church fathers don’t seem to know of anything beyond verse 8. It seems like the last verse we have that authentically and originally comes from the pen of Mark is verse 8. Verses 9 to 20 seem to have been added later as a way to smooth out the ending.

I don’t want to get into all the theories this morning about why Mark ends the way it does. Some think Mark meant to end this way. Others think that something happened – Mark wasn’t able to complete his book, or what he originally wrote was lost. In a sense it doesn’t matter. We learn a lot about what happened from the other records. No doctrine is affected no matter what we conclude about the abrupt ending of the Gospel of Mark.

But you have to agree that it’s a strange way to end. Women come to the tomb and find the stone rolled away. They meet an angelic messenger who tells them that Jesus is risen, and he gives them a message to pass on to the disciples. Jesus is alive, and he’s going to reconvene his community. The story continues. And then: “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” The end. Amen. Let’s pray.

What a strange way to end the book! You can see why they’d try to neaten the ending and smooth it out.

But let’s think for a minute. Those who first read Mark’s Gospel would have known that this wasn’t the end of the story. They would have heard the stories of Jesus’ resurrection appearances. The very fact that the Gospel of Mark had been written would have been evidence that this wasn’t the end of the story. Easter Sunday had set in motion a series of events that had transformed the disciples. Somebody points out that you have all the raw materials you need: an empty tomb, the young men’s message, Jesus’ indication that he’s not done with his disciples yet. It’s left to us to pull it together and to trace the line from what happened then to where we are today.

No matter how you understand the ending of the Gospel of Mark, it points out that Easter Sunday was not the end of the story. It’s only the beginning. The resurrection of Jesus set in motion a new story that has not yet finished or resolved. It’s a story that includes us today.

In a sense, Mark’s Gospel ends at verse 8. For all we know, there was more, but we don’t know. What we have ends, though at verse 8. But the story that Mark has begun to tell is a story that continues right to the present day. Jesus has been raised from the dead. It’s taken us all by surprise. And Jesus is calling the most unlikely people – people who have let him down – to join his community of followers, and to announce the good news that Jesus is alive and has finished his work. The Gospel of Mark is over, but the story isn’t. The story continues to this very day, and it includes you.

I’m glad that Mark ends with the disciples scattered and the women scared. I’m glad because we know that it doesn’t end there. God transformed them into a group of people who, through the power of the Spirit, turned the world upside-down.


But it gives me hope, because some of us are scattered and afraid today. There’s hope for us too. Easter may be a surprise, but the Easter story includes you in. It pulls you in so you see that Jesus has risen, and is alive, and the story continues. And it’s a story that includes you.

Father, thank you for Easter. We’ve seen that Jesus bore our sins and our shame. But we’ve seen today that this isn’t the end of the story. Jesus also rose to give us new life. You vindicated him, and he now sits at your right hand as King.

But you take us – those who are caught off guard, those of us who don’t matter, who blunder in our responses, who flat-out fail you – and you pull us into the story. You take us and use us to change the world, not because we’re strong, but because Jesus is risen.

So change us. Would you draw some of us even now into this story. We thank you for Jesus, for what he did. We thank you that he lives. And we pray in his name, the name of the risen and reigning King. Amen.

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The Death of Jesus (Mark 15:21-47)

by Darryl on April 2, 2010

At first glance, the death of Jesus looks like a horrible defeat. In the passage we just read, Jesus is alone and abandoned. Instead of defeating the Romans as the Messiah, he’s killed by the Romans. His own friends abandon him, and he’s surrounded by mockers and strangers. And he dies with a loud cry, and it’s over, and then he’s buried. Why would Christians celebrate this death? Why do we call this Good Friday?

But you’ll notice as you look at this passage that there’s more than meets the eye. Because in this passage Mark tells, first, us that history’s changed. Not only that, Mark tells us that our lives can change as well. Finally, Mark shows us, what took place at the cross is not a defeat; it’s actually something that’s worth celebrating.

First, History’s Changed

Let’s see how Mark shows us that history has changed by what takes place in this passage. In verse 33, right before Jesus died, we read: “At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.”

This detail – the darkness – is so important that it’s mentioned by three of the four gospels. This couldn’t have been an eclipse. Why? For one thing, an eclipse only lasts for a few minutes. Passover – which is when Jesus died – took place during a full moon, and eclipses only take place when it’s a new moon. So this was no eclipse. Some people think it might have been a dust storm, but a dust storm would have been unlikely at this time because it was the wet season.

What Mark is telling us here is more than a weather report. Mark is showing us the significance of what happened. In the Bible, darkness means judgment. In Deuteronomy, God warned Israel:

However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you…At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you. (Deuteronomy 28:15, 29)

One of the Hebrew prophets foretold a day when God would judge the nation of Israel. Amos predicted that God would call his people to account for their injustice. He said:

“In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD,
“I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.”
(Amos 8:9)

What Mark is saying is significant. We’re going to look at the other events that take place around the cross. You’re going to see that a lot is going on. But for three hours, the focus is not on any human activity, but on unnatural darkness. And it’s not a darkness that goes to midnight. It’s a darkness that ends at the death of Jesus. For three long hours, time passes as the death of Jesus takes place in unnatural darkness. Judgment. Isaac Watts wrote:

Well might the sun in darkness hide
And shut his glories in,
When Christ, the mighty Maker died,
For man the creature’s sin.

What’s going on at the cross? This isn’t simply somebody’s death. This is something far more than that. This is divine judgment. At the cross, Jesus bears the full weight of divine judgment for sins that we had done. God finally judges – but instead of judging those who had done wrong, God bears the judgment himself for all that we had done. As one person puts it, “Christianity is the only faith system where God both makes the demands and meets them” (Tullian Tchividjian). That’s what happened at the cross.

But there’s more. Verses 37 to 38 say: “With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”

At the very moment that Jesus dies, something unbelievable happens. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. There were actually two curtains in the temple. One, the outer curtain, separated the sanctuary from the outer porch. The other was the inner veil that separated the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. Only the high priest could enter in, and only once a year for a moment. The curtain was 60 feet high and 30 feet wide. We don’t know which curtain it was, but Hebrews identifies it as the inner curtain.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body… (Hebrews 10:19-20)

At the cross, Mark is saying, Jesus bore the judgment of God. And something happened at the temple which showed that the death of Jesus changed everything. At the cross, Jesus took the punishment for the sins we had committed. He experienced the judgment that should have been ours. At the death of Jesus, something happened that made the temple system of sacrifices and priests and all that it involved obsolete. This wasn’t just an ordinary death. History changed at the cross.

But it’s not just history that changed. Mark shows us something else in this passage. Here’s the second thing that Mark shows us:

Secondly, Mark says, Our lives can change as well.

Do you notice the motley crew of characters in this passage?

In verse 21, we meet Simon of Cyrene. He’s from north Africa. He stumbles upon the scene, and his family is changed as a result. Mark mentions his sons, Alexander and Rufus, presumably because his sons would have been familiar to the original recipients of Mark’s book. A stranger from Africa stumbles upon the scene, and it evidently transforms his family.

Then there are three big surprises. In verse 39 we read, “And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’” The centurion in this passage would have observed the death of many crucified criminals. He’s the last person you would expect to be changed. But something about the way Jesus dies grabs him. He says that Jesus is the Son of God. The Romans called the emperor’s son the son of god. This soldier transfers the title of the most revered figure in the Roman imperial cult to a Jew who’s just been crucified. The first human witness to describe Jesus as the Son of God is not a disciple, not a Jew at all, but a Gentile army officer with no previous connection to Jesus. The disciples don’t get it; the religious leaders don’t get it; this Roman officer gets it. He may not have understood the full significance of what he said, but he gets that this is no ordinary insurrectionist. He understands that something more is going on. This is the true Son of God, who does not die in failure. He dies fulfilling his Father’s will.

Then there are the women. Verses 40-41 say:

Some women were watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joseph, and Salome. In Galilee these women had followed him and cared for his needs. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were also there.

What’s surprising about this? In all cultures at that time, women were viewed as inferior. Their testimony was not accepted. Up until this point, women had played a very minor role in the Gospel of Mark. Mark doesn’t mention any female disciples. But here, at the climax of the Gospel, the male disciples have deserted Jesus, and the women are still there, faithful to the last. They are the witnesses of all that takes place. They are the ones that saw Jesus die; they saw his body being laid in the tomb; they are the ones who find the tomb empty. They are the only eyewitnesses of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. God entrusts the message of the resurrection to them. This is one evidence, by the way, of the accuracy of the Gospels. If you were making a story up, you would never invent that women are the first eyewitnesses. You’d only write that if it were true.

Do you see what Mark is showing us? The death of Jesus is turning everything upside-down. It’s changing families of a random person walking by; a Roman soldier becomes the first to grasp something of who Jesus is at the cross; women who are normally excluded are brought into the very center, and become eyewitnesses of the greatest event in redemptive history.

There’s one more person who’s changed in this passage. We read in verses 43: “Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body.” Joseph, Mark says, is a prominent member of the Council, the Sanhedrin – the group that has just condemned Jesus. He has significant social standing in Jerusalem. And yet he risks his life here by going to Pilate and asking for the body of Jesus. Romans usually left bodies hanging on the cross until they decayed as a warning to other would-be rebels and slaves. And yet Joseph puts his reputation and life at risk by asking for Jesus’ body. And even more shockingly, he prepares the body for burial himself. Preparing a crucified corpse for burial would have been an unthinkable task, certainly well below what a man like Joseph would ever do. It was a job that was usually left for those much lower than him.

Do you see what Mark is showing us in this passage? What happened at the cross changed history. At the cross, Jesus bore God’s judgment, and he made a new way for us to approach God. But it didn’t just change history. It changed people. At the cross, the death of Jesus changed the lives of the most unusual people, people who would otherwise have nothing in common. It’s still changing the most unlikely people: people from all different nationalities; people who are religious and people how aren’t; people who are prominent and powerful and people who aren’t. The death of Jesus changes history, and it changes lives as well.

There’s one more thing Mark wants to show us.

The death of Jesus is not a defeat; it’s a victory worth celebrating.

In this passage, Jesus is remarkably silent. Mark records only two times that Jesus says anything. As he dies, Mark says in verse 37, he lets out a loud cry. And in verse 34 he cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

What is this about? At first glance it looks like the desparate cry of someone who’s been completely abandoned by God. It is that, but it’s actually much more.

If you study the gospels carefully, you’ll notice that this is the only time that Jesus addresses God as “My God.” Every other time that Jesus refers to God, he calls him Father. Jesus addresses God not in terms of the intimate relationship he enjoyed with God as his Son; he addresses God at a distance. And his cry, “Why have you forsaken me?” gets to the heart of what happened at the cross. On the cross, Jesus is experiencing the immense pain of divine abandonment. Centuries before, the prophet of Isaiah wrote:

Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save,
nor his ear too dull to hear.
But your iniquities have separated
you from your God;
your sins have hidden his face from you,
so that he will not hear.
(Isaiah 59:1-2)

Isaiah says that our sins have separated us from our God. The Bible teaches that God’s eyes “are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing” (Habakkuk 1:13). On the cross, all of our sins were poured on Jesus. When he took on the sins of the world, “he became the most grotesque, most obscene mass of sin in the history of the world” (R.C. Sproul). And at that moment, God turned his back on Jesus. He hung in the cross cut off from the relationship he had enjoyed with his Father throughout eternity. He didn’t just feel forsaken; he was forsaken. Phil Ryken put it this way:

It was as if God had taken a giant bucket and scooped up all the sins of his people – all the jealousy and the lying, all the rebellion and the stealing and the incest, all the hypocrisy and the envy and the swearing – and dumped them all out on Jesus Christ. “The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6). “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us…” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Once he had done that, God the Father had to forsake all that sin. When Jesus was wearing our sin on the cross, God the Father could not bear to look at the sin or at his Son. He had to avert his gave. He had to shield his eyes. He had to turn his back. He had to condemn and reject and curse and damn that sin…When Jesus Christ picked up our sins, he became a curse for us, and when he became a curse for us, he was accursed by God. God was not forsaking his Son as much as he was forsaking the sin the Son was carrying.

I said this was good news. So far I haven’t told you how this is good news, have I? It’s good news in two ways. First: “The forsaking of the Son of God on the cross is a fearful thing, but it’s good news for sinners who repent” (Phil Ryken). Why is it good news? Jesus was forsaken so that we don’t have to be forsaken. He was rejected so that we can be accepted. At the cross, he was cut off from God so that we could be brought in.

It’s also good news because of where Jesus got this prayer: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus is actually quoting Psalm 22. Psalm 22 is the prayer of someone who is being attacked, someone who feels abandoned by God. When Jews quoted the Hebrew Scriptures back then, quoting one verse would be enough to bring up the whole passage. So many of those hearing Jesus quote Psalm 22:1 would have remembered how Psalm 22 ends: it ends with vindication. It begins like this:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
(Psalm 22:1)

But it ends like this:

For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.
(Psalm 22:24)

Jesus is saying that he knows the abandonment is not the end of the story. God will vindicate him. There’s more:

All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him…
(Psalm 22:27)

As Jesus goes to the cross, there’s more than meets the eye. At the cross, history changed. Not only that, but lives were changed. At the cross, Jesus was cut off from God so that we wouldn’t have to be cut off. Because God did not reject him forever, neither will God reject us when he place our faith in Christ and understood what he did for us at the cross.

So help us see beneath the surface, Father. Thank you that on that Friday long ago, history changed. Thank you, though, that it’s not just history that changed. For two thousand years now, you’ve been changing lives because of what Jesus accomplished at the cross. He bore our sins; he was cut off so we wouldn’t have to be.

Help us see the cross. And I pray it would change us today. We pray in the name of the one who was rejected so we could be accepted, in the name of the one who gave his life so that we could live. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.

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Enduring the Shame (Mark 15:16-32)

by Darryl on March 28, 2010

We’re in Mark 15 this morning. Jesus has been tried and condemned, and abandoned by everyone. We are now moments away from his death in this passage.

But before Jesus is killed, we have an interlude. And in this interlude we notice two things. One: that Jesus is mocked. Two: that in the entire time leading up to his death, Jesus does nothing to resist what’s happening. He never raises his voice to defend himself. He willingly endures whatever comes his way as he moves closer to the cross.

As we look at this passage we’re going to see three things. First: we’re going to learn about ourselves. Second: we’re going to learn about Jesus. And then lastly, we’re going to learn about what Jesus accomplished for us not only in his death, but in the hours leading up to his death.

First: let’s learn about ourselves in this passage.

What’s shocking in this passage is the extent to which Jesus is abandoned. Look at this passage and what takes place immediately before:

  • In 14:43, Judas – one of the twelve disciples that Jesus had chosen – betrays him with a kiss.
  • in 14:51, another one of his followers runs away naked. Some think that this person is Mark himself. Whoever it is, it points to the complete failure of Jesus’ friends to support him when the moment came.
  • In 14:65, members of the Sanhedrin – the top religious leaders – spit on Jesus, covered his face, and struck him.
  • In 15:13-14, the crowds call out for Jesus’ death.
  • In 15:15, Pilate had Jesus scourged. Scourging meant that Jesus was tied to a post and beaten with a leather whip that had pieces of bone and metal that would tear through the skin. Scourging itself was sometimes fatal.
  • In 15:16-20, the guards sarcastically mocked Jesus as a supposed king.
  • In 15:29-30, those who passed by the scene of the crucifixion mocked Jesus. They wagged their heads and taunted him.
  • In 15:31-32, the chief priests and scribes joined the mocking.
  • In 15:32, even those who were being crucified alongside Jesus joined in and mocked him.

It’s absolutely shocking as we read this. Jesus is completely and utterly abandoned by everyone. Jews and Gentiles, religious and non-religious, leaders and ordinary folk, and even criminals join in the mocking. His own friends betray him.

What is this supposed to teach us? Martin Luther, a monk and Reformer who lived 500 years ago, wrote:

Let us meditate a moment on the passion of Christ. Some do so falsely in that they merely rail against Judas and the Jews.

Let’s stop there for a minute. Luther was saying that 500 years ago, some would open up the Bible as an excuse to attack Judas or the Jewish people. In other words, the Bible became a tool they used to point the finger at others, and even to engage in racist behavior. Luther continues:

The true contemplation is that in which the heart is crushed and the conscience smitten…Take this to heart and doubt not that you are the one who killed Christ. Your sins certainly did, and when you see the nails driven through his hands, be sure that you are pounding, and when thorns pierce his brow, know that they are your evil thoughts…The whole value of meditation of the suffering of Christ lies in this, that man should come to the knowledge of himself and sink and tremble.

Do you see what Luther is saying? There are two ways to read this account. One is to read it and to shake our heads at the people who mocked Jesus. We look at them and condemn them. The other way to read this account is to contemplate that this is a passage that reveals our hearts. This passage shows us to be enemies of God who abandon and mock him, because nobody is excluded from this passage. Everybody joins the mocking. Everybody abandons Jesus. As Luther says, “The true contemplation is that in which the heart is crushed and the conscience smitten.”

This passage both humbles us and raises us up. First, it humbles us. You know, it’s easy to blame a group of people to which you don’t belong. We’ve all been parts of groups in which we begin talking about the faults of others who aren’t like us. But what if we are all put on even ground, and what if there is no difference between us? That’s exactly what happens in this passage. Everyone is humbled. Everyone abandons Jesus. The religious mock him; so do the irreligious. Jews mock Jesus; so do the Gentiles. His friends abandon him; strangers shake their heads at him. Nobody gets off. Everyone is humbled as we read this passage.

But this passage also raises us up. What do I mean by this? Because we’re all in the same boat, nobody here can claim superiority over the other. Everyone of us is equal in our need for Christ. We’re all brought to the point of sinking and trembling. But we’re going to see in a moment that there is hope for us in this passage as well.

This is the first thing that Mark asks us to see in this passage. Everyone is guilty. Everyone abandons Jesus. Everyone joins in the mocking. All of us are humbled. All our hearts our crushed, and all of our consciences are smitten.

Secondly, let’s learn about Jesus.

If you’ve ever been falsely accused, you know how you want to respond. You are going to let people know the truth. There’s no way that you are going to allow people to spread falsehood about you and to ruin your good name. Yet in this passage, Jesus is falsely accused and verbally attacked, and he says nothing. He’s silent.

If you’ve ever been physically attacked, you know that we all instinctively either fight or flee. But in this passage Jesus does neither. He endures the blows and is beaten and shamed, and he doesn’t raise a voice or a fist to defend himself.

This is especially significant because had Jesus stuck up for himself, he would have been very convincing. Adrian Rogers writes:

If Jesus had risen up in his own defense during his trials, I believe he would have been so powerful and irrefutable in making his defense that no governor, high priest, or other legal authority on earth could have stood against him! In other words, if Jesus had taken up his own defense with the intention of refuting his accusers and proving his innocence, he would have won!

We’ve seen that Jesus is incredibly convincing whenever he’s had a verbal confrontation with anyone in this gospel. Jesus is never at a loss for words. But in this passage, Jesus says nothing in his defense, nor does he make any move to avoid what’s happening to him. Centuries earlier, the prophet Isaiah had written of Jesus:

I offered my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard;
I did not hide my face
from mocking and spitting.
(Isaiah 50:6)

In other words, Jesus willingly endured the mocking and the spitting. Hebrews 12:2 puts it this way: “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame.” It’s here that we learn something very important about Jesus.

What do we learn? In a sense, everything that is said about Jesus is true in this passage. They mock him as King of the Jews; ironically, they’re right. He is the King of the Jews, except he’s a king who suffers. Read verses 29-32:

Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!”

In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.”

What are they saying? They’re calling on him to save himself. They accuse him of saving others, but not being able to save himself. And in a way they’re right. Don Carson imagines what it would have been like if Jesus had taken them up on their challenge:

This would be a pretty remarkable and convincing display of power, and the mockers would be back-peddling pretty fast. But in the full Christian sense, would they believe in him? Of course not! To believe in Jesus in the Christian sense means not less than trusting him utterly as the One who has borne our sin in his own body on the tree, as the One whose life and death and resurrection, offered up in our place, has reconciled us to God. If Jesus had leapt off the cross, the mockers and other onlookers could not have believed in Jesus in that sense, because he would not have sacrificed himself for us, so there would be nothing to trust, except our futile and empty self-righteousness.

But then Carson explores the meaning of their statement, “He saved others, but he can’t save himself.” Carson says:

The deeper irony is that, in a way they did not understand, they were speaking the truth. If he had saved himself, he could not have saved others; the only way he could save others was precisely by not saving himself. In the irony behind the irony that the mockers intended, they spoke the truth they themselves did not see. The man who can’t save himself–saves others.

One of the reasons they were so blind is that they thought in terms of merely physical restraints…But those who know who Jesus is are fully aware that nails and soldiers cannot stand in the way of Emmanuel. The truth of the matter is that Jesus could not save himself, not because of any physical constraint, but because of a moral imperative…It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father’s will–and, within that framework, it was his love for sinners like me. He really could not save himself. (Scandalous)

Jesus was completely capable of saving himself – but then he couldn’t have saved us. So he willingly chose to endure the mocking and the spitting. He willingly chose to suffer and die so that we could be saved. He chose death so that we could live.

What is this about? Maybe a movie from 1938 will help. The movie is called Angels with Dirty Faces. James Cagney plays the part of Rocky Sullivan, a celebrity criminal who is the hero of all the young juvenile delinquents in the city. He’s about to go to the electric chair. The night before his execution, he’s visited by his childhood friend Jerry, who is now a priest trying to save inner-city kids from a life of crime. Jerry makes a request of Rocky. He asks Rocky to disgrace himself so that his juvenile followers can live.

I want you to let them down. You see, you’ve been a hero to these kids, and hundreds of others, all through your life – and now you’re going to be a glorified hero in death, and I want to prevent that, Rocky.

Rocky can’t believe it.

You asking me to pull an act, turn yellow, so those kids will think I’m no good…You ask me to throw away the only thing I’ve got left…You ask me to crawl on my belly – the last thing I do in life…Nothing doing. You’re asking too much…You want to help those kids, you got to think about some other way.

Jerry is saying to Rocky, “It’s them or you. If you go down in glory, these kids are going to go down in shame. But if you go down in shame, if you’re willing to throw away everything you have, your entire reputation, then they can be saved.” But Rocky refuses.

The next morning he walks out to the execution chamber as Father Jerry watches. He comes out with a snarl. When one of the guards insults him, he slugs him. He’s in control. He’s going down in glory. But when he gets to the door of the death chamber, suddenly he begins to squeal like a child. “No! I don’t want to die! Oh, please! I don’t want to die! Oh, please! Don’t make me burn in hell. Oh, please let go of me! Please don’t kill me! Oh, don’t kill me, please!”

Father Jerry, as he sees that happen, looks to heaven. The next day, the newspaper says:

At the fatal stroke of eleven p.m. Rocky was led through the little green door of death. No sooner had he entered the death chamber, than he tore himself from the guard’s grasp, flung himself on the floor, screaming for mercy. And as they dragged him to the electric chair, he clawed wildly at the floor with agonized shrieks. In contrast to his former heroics, Rocky Sullivan died a coward.

You see what Rocky did? He substituted his life for the boys. He gave up his reputation so that he could save others.

You see, we are in that story. We are those boys whose life is about to go down. And Jesus is in the story too. He can either save his reputation and his life or save us. And in the most stunning reversal, he offers his life and his reputation so that we could be saved. He substitutes his life and everything he has for us.

Friends, we’ve seen ourselves in this passage this morning. We’re crushed because we are the ones who mocked him. We’ve seen Jesus in this passage. He willingly endures the mocking and the spitting, because he can either save himself or us. He can’t do both. And amazingly, he chooses to save us. There’s one more thing we need to see this morning.

Finally, let’s see what Jesus accomplished by enduring the shame.

Have you ever been shamed? I mean, really shamed? We see it happen with celebrities and politicians. Scandal hits, and somebody’s good name becomes fodder for the late night comedians. We’ve seen it in business. You spend a lifetime building a good reputation, and you hit one rough patch and your name becomes mud. Think of the worst thing that you’ve ever done being made public. It would be enough to disgrace every person here.

What does that have to do with this morning’s sermon? You’ve probably been told that Jesus died for your sins. I believe that this morning’s passage also teaches us that Jesus did more than this. Adrian Rogers puts it this way: “The Bible teaches that when Jesus took our sin, he took all the punishment that goes with that sin. A part of that punishment is shame.”

You see, Jesus assumed your sin. But in this passage he also assumed the shame. Jesus didn’t just die; he was humiliated and shamed so that you don’t have to be. Romans 10:11 says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”

As one person put it, “You don’t have anything to prove to us or the world. The work is finished at Calvary, and that work has unlimited meaning and value. Keep your focus there” (Jack Miller). You have nothing to prove. You never have to be ashamed. Jesus took all the shame. And anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.

So Father, humble us this morning. We see ourselves clearly in this passage. We are those who mocked him. Everybody abandoned him. Our hearts are crushed, and our consciences are smitten.

But we see Jesus, who willingly endured the mocking and the spitting. He couldn’t save himself and us at the same time, so he chose to save us. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame.

Because he took the shame, we don’t have to be ashamed. Help us to trust in him and in what he did. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Two Kingdoms (Mark 15:1-15)

by Darryl on March 21, 2010

We’re in Mark 15 this morning. In Mark 15, the book of Mark is reaching its climax. Jesus has been betrayed by Judas and abandoned by his disciples. He has been arrested and beaten and condemned by the religious leaders. And now he’s in his last hours. He’s about to face his death, but before he does he’s going to come up against Pilate, the Roman governor who was in charge of Judea. Only Pilate had the power to condemn Jesus to death. So as we approach this morning’s passage, Jesus is bound and beaten, completely abandoned, and about to lose his life.

This morning’s passage is really a contrast between two people. Mark has set this scene to contrast two types of strength, two kingdoms. One type of strength is the strength that we all aspire to; the other type of strength is what we’ll avoid at all costs. Mark is going to show us what true strength looks like, and if we understand this, it’s going to turn our church and our lives upside-down.

First, let’s look at the strength, the kingdom, that comes from power.

When Jesus was alive, Rome was in power over the nation of Israel. Because Rome was so huge, they appointed governors in different regions to maintain order. The Romans allowed self-government, so that each nation felt like they had some of their identity and autonomy. But the real power belonged to Rome. They had the ultimate say. They had all the military and economic power, and what they decided is ultimately what happened.

So as we open Mark 15, Jesus is brought before the most powerful person he has ever met in his life:

Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, reached a decision. They bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate. 


“You have said so,” Jesus replied.

The chief priests accused him of many things. So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.”

But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed. (Mark 15:1-5)

Notice the contrasts.

Scholars tell us that these events took place early in the morning, because Roman officials began work at daybreak so they could be free by midmorning to pursue activities of leisure. Pilate was going to enjoy the rest of his day; Jesus was on his way to being killed later that day.

Pilate was connected to the most powerful people in the world at that time. He was a mover. At one point he was considered a possible future emperor. He had connections and knew how to access the levers of power. Jesus had no connections. His closest friends had abandoned him. He had no access to the levers of power, and was completely abandoned, even by those closest to him.

Pilate was sitting in a palace. The trial probably took place in Herod’s Palace, which was used by Roman governors when they came to Jerusalem for the feasts like Passover. It was encircled with ramparts and towers. It was the largest and most elaborate of Herod’s palaces. It had two huge and elaborate reception halls in which you could entertain hundreds of guests. One historian from the period said described it as “the king’s palace, which no tongue could describe. Its magnificence and equipment were unsurpassable.” The historian wrote that this palace had rooms that were even more magnificent than the Holy Temple, Herod’s greatest edifice in Jerusalem. Pilate had free access to all of this magnificent palace. Jesus, on the other hand, came as a prisoner, bound and about to be beaten and condemned.

Pilate had troops at his disposal. It is written that he had “power even to execute.” He hadn’t been afraid to use his power either. Luke 13 tells us that he had once mixed the blood of Galileans with their sacrifices, perhaps in response to a riot. Pilate was the law, and he could essentially determine what was going to happen. There was no appeal, no supreme court to second guess his decisions.

In short, Pilate has wealth, connections, power, and leisure. Jesus has nothing – no money, no friends, no power, and no freedom. The contrast between Pilate and Jesus in this passage couldn’t be more striking.

I want us to see this today because Pilate has everything that we can hope for in our own lives. Henri Nouwen wrote:

Our addictions make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink; and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love.

I don’t know about Pilate’s sex life, but everything else that Nouwen mentions is what Pilate had, and what we long for too: the accumulation of wealth and power; the attainment of status and admiration; the best food and drink. Pilate had it all. He had everything that we spend our lives trying to get. We want the connections, the money, and the power. In this passage, Pilate embodies everything that we normally want for ourselves.

But notice what happens in this passage. Pilate has all the advantages, but it’s Jesus who seems to be in control. We read in verse 10 that Pilate perceives that the real reason Jesus is on trial is because of the jealousy of the religious leaders. Pilate comes to an accurate conclusion about Jesus, and realizes that Jesus isn’t guilty of treason. It’s here that you begin to realize that what Pilate has is the appearance of power. He’s not a free man. In verses 6 to 15 he tries to free Jesus, but the crowd won’t let him. Look a little more carefully and you begin to see the problem with Pilate’s strength.

He has access to the best that Jerusalem has to offer – but he hates the place. He has all the power, but he’s learned from the past to pick his battles. He’s already backed down from one battle with the Jewish people, and here again he gives in. It turns out he’s really not in control after all. Eventually he is removed from office and and travels in haste to Rome to defend himself against charges. Before he could get there, the Roman emperor died, and so Pilate disappears from history. Nothing more is known about him. Pilate is a man who has everything, but even in this passage you see that there’s really nothing there.

Listen. You and I will spend our lives chasing everything that Pilate had. Many of us are doing this right now. We want the money, the leisure, the respect, and the power. But this passage shows us the futility of this kind of strength. These things are idols that promise the world but that ultimately never deliver. Mark contrasts the strength of Pilate with the weakness of Jesus, which ultimately turns out to be the greatest strength that ever existed.

So let’s look for a moment at the strength, the kingdom, that comes through weakness.

We’ve already seen the weakness of Jesus in this passage. He’s bound and abandoned. The religious leaders turn the crowd against him. An insurrectionist and murderer ends up being more popular than him. By the end of this passage, Jesus is condemned and scourged. Scouring means that Jesus would have been bound to a pillar or post and flogged with whips made of leather that were sometimes weighted with pieces of metal, bone, or even hooks. There was no prescribed number of lashes, so scourging was sometimes fatal if they got carried away. At best it left you severely weakened and already on your way to death. There’s no greater picture of weakness than in this passage.

Yet it’s a chosen weakness. Jesus had a kingdom that far exceeded Pilate’s kingdom. Rome could not compare to the riches or the power or the acclaim that Christ enjoyed. Yet he laid it all aside and chose to become weak for our sakes. He chose weakness.

The irony is that Jesus is bound and seemingly powerless, yet it’s Jesus who is in charge not Pilate, and not the crowds. Jesus had predicted that this would happen. Jesus had said back in Mark 10:

“We are going up to Jerusalem,” he said, “and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.” (Mark 10:33-34)

And Jesus could have put an end to it at any moment. But he didn’t. Jesus chose everything that happened to him, because somehow his kingdom functions completely different from every earthly kingdom. His kingdom functions through weakness.

That’s why, when Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answers: “You have said so.” What kind of an answer is that? It’s an enigmatic answer that means yes or no – or in this case, maybe it means both yes and no. Jesus says, in essence, that he is a king. But he’s not the kind of king that Pilate is. He doesn’t hold to his rights or his privileges. He’s the king who willingly leaves his throne to come to earth unrecognized, to give his life for people who don’t deserve his grace or return his love. Jesus is the kind of king who offers his life. He’s the king who lays aside his strength and comes in weakness. Isaiah 53 says:

He was despised and rejected by others,

a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces

he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain

and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

stricken by him, and afflicted.
(Isaiah 53:3-4)

If that’s the kind of king we have, what does that mean for those of us who are in his kingdom? It means that we too will lay aside our privileges so that we can serve others. We’ll choose to be weak. Justin Martyr, an early church father who lived from 100-165, wrote:

We who used to value the acquisition of wealth and possessions more than anything else now bring what we have into a common fund and share it with anyone who needs it. We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.

Hear that? Willingly choosing to give up wealth and grudges. Clement, who lived around the same time, described a Christian this way:

He impoverishes himself out of love, so that he is certain he may never overlook a brother in need, especially if he knows he can bear poverty better than his brother. He likewise considers the pain of another as his own pain. And if he suffers any hardship because of having given out of his own poverty, he does not complain.

Nobody puts this better than John: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 John 3:16). Jesus chose to be weak, and we’ll choose to become weak as well as we follow him – willingly pouring out our lives for others.

Because it’s not just a chosen weakness, it’s a saving weakness. The end of this passage gives us a picture of what happened because Jesus chose to be weak. This man, Barabbas, actually had another name: Jesus Barabbas. Somebody was going to be free; someone was going to be condemned and killed. Pilate knew that Jesus Barabbas was guilty and deserved to die. He was an insurrectionist and a murderer. Pilate also knew that Jesus did not deserve to die. He was guilty of nothing. The only reason he was on trial was because of the jealousy of the religious leaders.

Unthinkably, the convicted murderer goes free, and the innocent Son of the father is condemned. Barabbas deserves to die, but Jesus dies in his place. The love of God does for us what we can’t do for ourselves. It’s a picture of what Jesus does for every one of us who trusts in him: he dies in our place, while we who are guilty go free. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Mark is showing us two kings, two types of strength. One king, one type of strength, is how we normally live. It’s about getting ahead and enjoying the best of life. As Nouwen said, it’s what “the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment.” But it ultimately leads to the kingdom of self, a kingdom that ends in weakness.

But Mark shows us another type of king, another type of strength. It’s a strength that willingly lays aside its rights, the strength of a Savior who’s condemned for our sins so that we can go free.

Mark shows us two types of kings – but only one is a king who saves, and a king who will reign forever.

So Father, help us to see what Jesus did.

He left His Father’s throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace!
Emptied Himself and came in love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race!

And I pray that all of us would trust in that kind of king.

And I pray it would change us, individually and as a church, so that we would lay down our lives for each other. I pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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