The Local Christendom Podcast with Aaron Ventura

Sermon: The Christ of Christmas (John 1:1-5, 14)

The Christ of ChristmasSunday, December 24th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
John 1:1-5, 14
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not…And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
Prayer
Father your Word says in Jeremiah 17, “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man…[but] Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.” O God, we believe that Jesus Christ is no mere man, and therefore we put our trust in him, as one is who is very God of very God, begotten not made, of one substance with You O Holy Father. We also confess on behalf of our nation that we are rightly cursed for trusting in men, in flesh, in mammon, rather than in God who raises the dead. We ask that you would dispel such misplaced trust in our own hearts, and establish us firmly in the faith once received. We ask this in Christ’s name, and Amen.
Introduction
Merry Christmas to you all. This morning I want to do something a little different than what I normally offer you in the sermon. As most of you know we have been preaching verse by verse through the Gospel of Mark, we started back in April, and have made it through chapter 11. So we will still have a little ways to go. And while verse by verse exposition is typically my preferred method for preaching (because it is easier), it is equally or perhaps even more important to teach the word of God topically, that is where we gather what all of Scripture has to say about one doctrine, and then expound the truth of that doctrine rather than just a single text. Both methods are legitimate, each has its own virtue according to the preacher’s intended end, but this morning I want to give you one of those topical sermons. And the sermon this morning is going to focus on a single question and that is, “Who is Jesus Christ?”
On the surface, that may sound like a rather easy or simple question to answer, and yet history testifies to how difficult this question actually is. Moreover, Scripture itself warns us that there will be false versions of Christ and false prophets and false doctrines about Christ that we must be on guard against.
The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 1:8-9, “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed (anathema). As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.”
There is one gospel, there is one Christ, and God reserves the strongest words of condemnation (anathema) for those who preach a different gospel or a different Christ than what was already preached to them.
Moreover, He commands the church in Jude 3, to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
Why? Verse 4, “Because certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.”
As soon as the truth of who Christ is came into this world, wicked men governed by evil spirits and impure thoughts attacked the truth and began to mix it with many errors. And so the first 700 years of church history, wherein six ecumenical councils were convened, were marked by the church defining the truth, clarifying the truth, explaining the truth, and at times dying for the truth.
That is how our forefathers contended for the faith, and without their efforts, and without their sufferings, and exiles, and martyrdoms, perhaps none of us in this room would be Christians today.
The Nicene creed that we recite every Lord’s Day is the result of a world in crisis over the identity of Jesus Christ. The questions that we ask before someone is baptized, are questions about the identity of Jesus Christ. Your very salvation, your eternal destiny hangs upon how you answer this question, “Who is Jesus Christ?”
And so this morning I want to answer that question according to the Holy Scriptures, and then survey how this truth has been defended against various heresies and competing interpretations of who Jesus is. So the outline of the sermon is as follows:
1. A basic explanation of who Christ is.
2. A summary defense of that explanation from our passage (John 1:1-5, 14).
3. Heresy Parade wherein we will look at and then refute each heresy the church has faced.
#1 – A Basic Explanation of Who Christ Is
According to the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Definition of Chalcedon, there are three basic truths that Scripture gives us about Christ.
1. Jesus Christ is fully God.
2. Jesus Christ is fully man.
3. Jesus Christ is one divine person.
Put another way, Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God who has taken to himself a fully human nature. In theological terms we call this joining of the human nature with the divine, the hypostatic union. The two natures are united in the hypostasis/person who is the Son.
So Jesus is God in the flesh, He is one divine person with two distinct natures, and the divine nature and human nature do not mix, they do not mingle, they do not morph into some third thing, they are joined together hypostatically, in the Son of God.
If that seems hard to understand well it is, but it is in no way a contradiction in terms or in reality. The mystery of the incarnation is not saying that there are square circles, or circular squares, or that 2+2=5. No. There is a real, genuine, and harmonious truth that Scripture gives us about Christ, and the creeds summarize for us what that truth is.
To give you just one imperfect analogy for how Jesus can be one person with two natures, consider that you are one person and you have two natures. Every person has a body and a soul, and those two natures come together and form a human person.
Jesus however, is not a human person. He is a divine person with a divine nature, and then he joins to himself the fullness of human nature, which includes the nature of body and the nature of soul (together we call those two things human nature). And so while Jesus has a divine mind and a human mind, a divine will and a human will, this is only possible because he is a divine person, not a human person.
We can kind of understand this a little bit when we feel tension between our two natures. The alarm goes off in the morning, our body is tired, but our mind says, gotta get up. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And while we have that tension in ourselves because of sin, Jesus had no sin, and therefore even his human mind could perfectly rule his human body (as we have seen in Mark’s gospel).
So these analogies help us to see that while we cannot fully understand the hypostatic union, there is nothing contradictory about it. We are one person; we have two natures. Jesus is one divine person, and he has two natures.
And what you will find in the history of the church, is that just about every heresy about Christ is a denial of one of those three basic truths. That Jesus is fully God, Jesus is fully man, and Jesus is one divine person. And we’ll see this more clearly when we get to our heresy parade.
Well let us move now to our text and see how the church arrived at these three basic truths.
It has been said that in these opening two verses of John’s gospel, together with verse 14, are contained all the truths necessary to refute every heresy about Christ. If we consider well what is contained in these verses, we will arrive at the true doctrine of Christ.
#2 – Exposition of John 1:1-5, 14
Verses 1-2
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God.
John does four things in these opening lines of His gospel.
First, he tells us when the Word was, “in the beginning.”
Second, he tells us where the Word was, “the Word was with God.”
Third, he tells us what the Word was, “the Word was God.”
Fourth, he tells us in what mode the Word was, he “was in the beginning with God.”
Together these four statements establish that the Word who became flesh (in verse 14) is wholly divine. So let us examine each phrase in greater detail.
“In the beginning was the Word.” (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος)
Our English word Word translates the Greek logos. But what is a logos/word? We need to think about this deeply.
A spoken word is vocal sound that is a sign of an affection in our soul. Before we make any noise with our mouth to communicate to others, first we form in ourselves or conceive some notion or intention of what we want to express. And it is that interior idea or understanding that we call an interior word/logos/verbum. And then when we make sounds with our mouth to communicate that concept in our mind, we call that spoken sound an exterior word/logos/verbum.
So with us and among creatures, a Word is something that is first intellectual, interior to us, and immaterial, it is something that proceeds from within ourselves as we understand something, and yet this Word/logos is distinct from us. It is in us, but not identical to us. There is a lot more we could say about this but for now let that suffice. A Word/logos is first a concept/notion of understanding in our mind.
John says, “In the beginning was the Word.”
Why does John say, “in the beginning?”
This word beginning translates the Greek word arche, (in Latin it is principium). And arche/principium/beginning can have a diversity of meanings.
It of course can refer naturally to the beginning of time. But it can also refer to the first principle/cause in certain hierarchy or order. It can refer to the point at which two surfaces or lines meet (ie. a corner or an arch). It can refer to the beginning or first principle from which we gain further understanding (Heb. 5:12). It can even refer to a person, like a ruler or authority figure, Paul speaks of Jesus spoiling the principalities (τὰς ἀρχὰς).
And yet whatever meaning of arche is intended here, John makes known to us that in the beginning the Word already was, whether of time, or order, or anything created, when those things were, already the Word was.
As it says of wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-23, “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. I have been established from everlasting, From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.”
So pick your beginning, pick your arche, whatever and whenever it is, John tells us the Word already was. And thus we have established that this intellectual, interior, and immaterial Word is what we call “eternal.”
Next we are told…
“and the Word was with God,” (καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν,)
So when was the Word? Always. In the beginning he was. And now where was the Word in his eternity? The Word was with God.
So here we now have two subjects, God and the Word. They are both distinct and yet together, they are “with” one another before the beginning.
This “with” signifies as we will discover in the next phrase, a union of nature between God and the Word. The Word was with God in that they share the divine nature (they are both God). And yet this “with” also signifies that they are distinct from one another. There is a genuine relation of otherness between the Word and God such that they can be said to be with one another.
So the Word was with God as sharing the divine nature, and with God as somehow distinct from Him.
Next we are told…
“and the Word was God.” (καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.)
So when was the Word? Always, eternally. Where was the Word? With God as together and yet distinct from Him. And now what is the Word? The Word was God.
By this identity of Word and God, we are forced to further adjust our concept of Word so that it matches up with everything else we know about God.
So whereas a Word that proceeds from our intellect is both in us and distinct from us, it is not of the same nature as us. Put another way, our conception or understanding of ourself is not identical to who we are as real beings. It is real in our mind, but it is not real outside of our mind.
But when it comes to the Word in God, this interior procession in the Divine Intellect, God’s own self-understanding, is of the same nature as God. John is telling us God and God’s Word are both God.
We can also add that this Divine Word is unchanging and immoveable. Whereas our thoughts and words change and develop over time or are forgotten altogether, the Divine Word comprehends everything, eternally, in Himself, and knows everything through His own essence. God’s Word and God’s Essence are One.
We should also note that however we account for this Word being with God, in God, and God, it does not and cannot equal out to two gods, that would be a genuine contradiction of John’s statement. There is one singular God all the way through.
So here is the beginning of the mystery of the Trinity. There is one God. And yet there is a real procession in the Divine Mind that John calls the Word. And this Word adds nothing new to the Divine Essence, it just is the Divine Essence, the Word was God.
Finally, in verse 2 we have our fourth phrase which is a kind of epilogue and summary of these three statements that ties it all together.
Verse 2
2 The same was in the beginning with God. (οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν Θεόν.)
Just in case there was any misunderstanding about the previous three statements, John clarifies here that this same Word was with God in the beginning. So contrary to Arius, there was never a time when the Word was not. When God was, the Word was also. The Word is what we call coeternal and consubstantial (of the same nature) with God.
And then in case you still did not believe that this Word is really God, John says in verse 3…
Verse 3
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
So according to Genesis 1, who created the world? God. And here John is telling us that this Word is the one God who made everything, “without him was not any thing made that was made.”
John is really clear that this Word is God. You cannot say that the Word is a lower created being, because the Word is the one who created everything. If it has being, the Word gave that thing its being, “all things were made by him.”
Furthermore, in verses 4 and 5, John tells us that this Divine Word has life in Himself.
Verses 4-5
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
So whatever life, whatever knowledge and light that men possess, it comes from the Word who is God. And the darkness cannot encompass it. The Word is the light that is impossible to extinguish. He is the light and life of men.
And so take all of what John says about the Word here in these 5 verses, and see what John does with it in verse 14, “And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
Who is Jesus Christ?
According to John 1, he is the Divine Word who was in the beginning with God, eternally begotten from the Father, who was made flesh and dwelt among us.
Jesus is the one divine person we call the Son of God. He has the fullness of divinity from the Father, and a real human nature like you and I, except without sin. For he is full of grace and truth.
So there’s a brief exposition of our text. Let us turn now to consider how this biblical doctrine of Christ was challenged by a parade of heresies. And these are printed for you in the bulletin.
And I remind you that every heresy boils down to a rejection of one of three truths.
1. Jesus is fully God.
2. Jesus is fully man.
3. Jesus is one divine person.
So as we go through these different heresies, you can try figure out which truth they are rejecting.
#3 – Heresy Parade
The first heresy in our parade is Docetism (which is a form of Gnosticism), which taught that Jesus only seemed/appeared to have a real human body, but in reality he was a pure spirit.
Which truth does this deny? That Jesus is fully human, Docetism denies that God came in real human flesh.
Against this heresy, it says in 2 John 6, “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.”
Likewise in 1 John 4:3 it says, “every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.”
So contrary to many of the reformers and even the original Westminster Divines, Pope Francis is not The Antichrist. The Antichrist is not a future incarnation of the devil. An antichrist is anyone who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. It says in 1 John 2:22, “He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.”
So there were many antichrists in the apostolic era (1 John 2:18), and that spirit of antichrist continues down to the present day in all who reject the Father and the Son, and the full humanity of Jesus Christ. This includes Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Atheists, etc.
Simultaneous with various Gnostic heresies, there were also some uniquely Jewish heresies like Ebionism that taught that Jesus was the supreme prophet, he perfectly kept the law of God, and was adopted as God’s Son at his baptism.
Which truth does this deny? That Jesus is fully God. You can imagine how this would be a temptation for many Jews who could not square their Old Testament monotheism, with the belief that Jesus is God in the flesh. And so they tried to split the difference, by acknowledging that Jesus was the greatest of men and inspired by God, but not identical to the One Supreme and Invisible God.
Against this heresy you have the witness of all four gospels where Jesus does what only God can do, like forgiving sin.
So in the apostolic and early church era there were all kinds of fringe belief systems, gnostic and Jewish heresies, but the first real great doctrinal crisis came from within the church, amongst its own leaders, and this became known as the Arian crisis.
Arius (256-336 AD) was a presbyter who taught that “there was a time when the Son was not.” He believed that if Jesus is God, then that makes two Gods, the Son and the Father, and this would of course violate monotheism. So by trying to protect the Father as the one God, he taught that Jesus was an exalted but created being.
This doctrinal division was tearing the Roman Empire apart, and so in 325 AD, the emperor Constantine called for the first ecumenical council at Nicaea (modern day Turkey) to settle this dispute.
The result of this church council was the original version of the Nicene Creed, which stated against Arius’ position that the Lord Jesus Christ is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same essence (homoousias) as the Father…”
It then pronounced anathemas against anyone who taught otherwise: “As for those who say, ‘there was a time when He [the Logos] was not,’ and ‘He was not before He was created,’ and ‘He was created out of nothing, or out of another essence or thing,’ and ‘the Son of God is created, or changeable, or can alter,’ the holy catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes those who say such things.”
Arius refused to sign the Creed of Nicaea, and so Constantine sent him and two other bishops who refused to sign, into exile.
This defense of the truth and its victory over error marks the beginnings of what would eventually become Christendom. For here in Constantine was the most powerful man on the face of the earth, and he was defending and enforcing the orthodox faith, the true religion.
Constantine knew what many Christians now overtly reject, namely that an empire cannot stand unless the truth of Christianity prevails. If there is a division and schism in the church, there will be even greater division and war in society. And only the true Jesus Christ can be the glue that holds everything together.
This is also just what the first commandment teaches. “You shall have no other gods beside me.” The Christianity that Arius proclaimed was a different God and a different Christ than what Scripture teachers, and therefore it was rightly condemned as heretical.
By the way, do you know what happened to Arius? Eleven years after the Council of Nicaea, Arian Christianity was on the rise, the great Athanasius was in exile, and the church in Constantinople was preparing to formally bring Arius back into the church. But on the day before the ceremony in 336, he was in a public restroom, where he suffered a hemorrhage in his intestines and died.
Christ is the king of his church. And he will defend her from wicked heretics.
Summary: So Arianism denied that Jesus was fully God, and at the next ecumenical council in 381 AD, the church would have to refute a new and opposite error, called Apollinarianism.
Apollinarianism taught that Jesus was God but denied that Jesus had a human mind/soul. In Apollinarianism, the divine mind replaced Jesus’ human mind, and therefore, which truth do they deny? That Jesus is fully man.
This was rejected at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, and out of this controversy, Gregory of Nazianzus established an important principle in Christology that is, “What has not been assumed [by the Son of God] has not been healed.” In other words, if the fullness of our humanity (our mind/soul especially), has not been united to God, then that part of our nature has not been redeemed.
Therefore, in order to secure our complete salvation, Jesus Christ had to have a complete human nature joined to His Divine Person.
Against this idea that Jesus had no human mind/soul, we can point to texts such as Hebrews 4:15 which says, that Jesus “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Or the many places where Jesus does something that only someone with a human mind can do, like marvel (Matt. 8:10), or lay down one’s life/soul (John 10:17) or increase in wisdom (Luke 2:52).
So as much as we must defend that Jesus Christ is a fully divine person, we also must defend that Jesus Christ has a fully human nature, that is our real humanity minus sin and its effects.
The next great heresy that arose was Nestorianism, which taught that Christ is two persons, a divine person and a human person. This was rejected at the council of Ephesus in 431.
One of the creedal affirmations that came out of this controversy and was included 20 years later in the Definition of Chalcedon (which our church holds to), was that Mary was the mother of God (theotokos in Greek).
I’ll read you the relevant line from the Definition of Chalcedon, “He was begotten before the ages from the Father according to his deity, but in the last days for us and our salvation, the same one was born of the Virgin Mary, the bearer of God (Theotokos), according to his humanity.”
So this is not saying that Mary is divine or that she somehow gave divinity to Jesus, but what it does force you to say is that Mary gave birth to a divine person (the Son of God) according to his humanity.
If you think about it, to reject Mary as theotokos, as God-bearer, is to divide Jesus into two persons, as if the baby Jesus who comes out of her is not the Son of God, but rather some other individual. The theotokos title for Mary ensures that Jesus Christ is one divine person, not two persons, and not a human person with a divine nature. This is the genius of the Definition of Chalcedon which goes on to say, “He is one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, and Only Begotten, who is made known in two natures (physeis) united unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably. The distinction between the natures (physeis) is not at all destroyed because of the union, but rather the property of each nature (physis) is preserved and concurs together into one person (prosopon) and subsistence (hypostasis). He is not separated or divided into two persons (prosopa), but he is one and the same Son, the Only Begotten, God the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the way the prophets spoke of him from the beginning, and Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and the Council of the fathers has handed the faith down to us.”
If you want the best creedal formula for who Christ is, read the Definition of Chalcedon.
After Chalcedon there were two other errors that had to be refuted. One was Monophysitism, which taught that Christ had only one divine nature, so Jesus was not fully man. And then there was a lighter form of Apollinarianism called Monotheletism, which affirmed two natures in Christ, but denied that Jesus had a human will. Both of these heresies were soundly rejected on Chalcedonian principles, and thus ends our heresy parade.
Conclusion
Peter says in Acts 4:12, that there is no other name under heaven but Jesus Christ of Nazareth by which we must be saved. And what we learn from John’s gospel, what we learn from church history, is that it really matters what you mean by the name Jesus Christ.
Even Arius said that “Jesus Christ is Lord,” but he meant something false by it, and so it is who do you say that Jesus Christ is? Confess He is God, Confess He is fully man, and confess that He is one divine person. For there is no other Christ but this, than can save you.
In the name of the Father, and the Word, and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Lesson 4: Humaniform Structures (The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy Scripture)

Review of Lesson 3
We are in the middle of giving a theological account for how the Bible makes us to say that “God is present.” And the reason we are doing this is because we are trying to understand the significance and meaning of the Tabernacle and Temple.
And because both of these physical structures are symbols of God’s presence, we want to make sure we understand the ways in which God can actually be present, so that we tie our symbols to a concrete reality. The whole point of a symbol/sign is to lead us to the actual thing signified, and in this case, it is the reality of God’s Presence.
There are three ways that Scripture makes us to say that God is present. Does anyone remember those three kinds of presence?
1. Common Presence: God is present in every reality as giving them to be (efficient cause).2. Special Presence: God is present in a special way by grace in believers.3. Hypostatic Presence: God is wholly present in Christ.
We ended Lesson 3 by comparing and contrasting God’s Omnipresence (Common Presence) with various heretical beliefs such as pantheism and monism.
Pantheism teaches that God is the soul of the world, or that God fills the world like the soul fills the body. This is ultimately a form of monism that posits no real distinction between God and creatures.
Both pantheism and monism commit the cardinal sin of making God a creature, either by attributing to him some vast spiritual body that fills the world like air fills a balloon, or by making us all a part of God and one with him in essence.
The crucial distinction we have to make when we talk about God’s relationship to the world is that God is present everywhere as the efficient cause, not as the material cause.
God is present to creation like C.S. Lewis is present to Narnia, in that He gives it being. This is an analogy for God’s efficient causation.
God is not present to creation as the material substance (atoms, molecules, etc.) that everything is made out of. God gives things to be (efficient cause), God is not the material out of which things are made (material cause).
Summary: Acts 17:28 says, “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” From this we arrive at the true judgment that: God is present in every reality, not as being contained within creation, but as containing all creation as giving them existence.
To use the balloon analogy again, God is in creation, not like air is inside a balloon, but as the one blowing air into the balloon from outside.
So that is God’s Common Presence, any questions before we talk about God’s special and hypostatic presence?
Lesson 4 – Humaniform Structures
The New Testament explicitly tells us that the Tabernacle/Temple are figures of Christ and the Church. That is, these architectural structures symbolize the Divine Person of the Son who became incarnate, and the body and bride of Christ that is you and I, the church.
Christ as Tabernacle & Temple:
John 1:14 says, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν, σκηνόω, lit. tented/tabernacled) among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
John 2:19-21 says, “Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was speaking of the temple of His body.”
The Church/Christians as Tabernacle & Temple”
2 Peter 1:13-14 says, “Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent (σκηνώματι, σκήνωμα, lit. habitation, see Acts 7:46 and Psalm 132:5), to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.
2 Corinthians 5:1-5 says, “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.”
St. Thomas says, “Man is called a mind, since that is the most important thing in man. Now this mind is to the body as a man is to a house. For just as the man living in a house is not destroyed, when the house is destroyed, but he continues to exist, so when the body is destroyed, the mind, i.e., the rational soul, is not destroyed, but continues to exist.” (https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~2Cor.C5.L1.n153.2)
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 says, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
Summary: So both Christ and the Church are called Tabernacles/Temples in the New Testament, but where is this idea coming from? Well the idea that these structures signified a person can be found in the very letters of the Old Testament. I will give you just a few examples of this from 1 Kings 6.
Old Testament Hints of a Humaniform Structure
1 Kings 6 describes the construction of Solomon’s Temple. And there we find a variety of anatomical terms for this building.
1 Kings 6:1-5And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord. 2 And the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.
Note first that the dimensions are derived from the human body. A cubit (אַמָּה) is about 1.5 feet and is derived from measuring the elbow to the tip of your middle finger.
The original Tabernacle was 30 cubits long (about 45 feet). The Temple was double that at 60 cubits in length.
Smaller items like the table of showbread included dimensions such as the hand breadth (Ex. 25:25). The breastplate for the high priest was measured as a span in length and breadth (Ex. 28:16).
3 And the porch before the temple of the house, twenty cubits was the length thereof, according to the breadth of the house; and ten cubits was the breadth thereof before the house.
Now this is obscured in English, but in Hebrew, where we read “and the porch before the temple” or some translation have “in front of the temple,” it says in Hebrew, עַל־פְּנֵי֙ הֵיכַ֣ל “upon the face of the temple.”
So the imagery is that the entrance to the holy place is an entrance into the face/mind/head of the temple.
Next time, we will look at a few more examples of this and then explore the implications.

Sermon: By What Authority (Mark 11:27-33)

By What Authority?Sunday, December 10th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 11:27-33
27 And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, 28 And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things? 29 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me. 31 And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? 32 But if we shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed. 33 And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for giving to Christ all authority in heaven and on earth. We thank you Lord Jesus for commissioning the apostles to proclaim your death and resurrection to all creation. We thank you also for the faithful transmission of that message to us living in 2023, the Year of Our Lord’s Everlasting Dominion. We ask now for your Holy Spirit to descend upon us and give us fresh faith and courage, for we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
It is Tuesday of Passion Week in Mark’s Gospel.
On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem riding upon a donkey.
On Monday, Jesus cursed a fig tree and enacted judgment on the temple.
And now here on Tuesday, Jesus again comes to Jerusalem, but this time is confronted by “the chief priests, scribes, and elders.”
The charge against Jesus is that he has no jurisdiction in the temple. The Jewish authorities want to know by what authority Jesus is teaching and healing and rearranging things. They want to see his “license and registration please.” “By what authority do you do these things?” They ask.
And what follows in this brief interchange is Jesus exposing the Jewish leadership for the frauds they are. Jesus knows they are hypocrites and blind guides, who are seeking to murder him, and therefore as the king who is wiser and greater than Solomon, Jesus brings the true proverb to pass that “Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and he who rolls a stone will have it roll back on him.”
The question that the Jews are using to trap Jesus to discount his authority, will end up rolling back on them and discounting their authority.
What wicked men employ for the destruction of our Lord, will become the instrument of their own destruction. This is the wisdom and justice of God, so let us watch as our Master go to work against the corruption in His House.
Outline of the Text
Our text divides neatly into four sections.
In verses 27-28, the Jewish leaders ask Jesus by what authority he does what he does.
In verses 29-30, Jesus responds with a counter-question.
In verses 31-33a, the Jewish leaders deliberate and give no answer.
In verse 33b, Jesus likewise refuses to answer.
This passage is a kind of Q&A session between two adversaries. On one hand we have Jesus, prophet, messiah, populist, and God, and on the other hand we have the Jewish elite and aristocracy. And the scene that plays out here in the public square, is a scene that will be replayed a few days later, but in private, when Jesus is secretly captured, tried, and condemned in the middle of the night. So this scene anticipates the charges that will lead to Christ’s crucifixion. “Who are you and by what authority do you come?” So let us expound our text.
Verses 27-28
27 And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, 28 And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?
This reference to the “chief priests, scribes, and elders” should remind us of what Jesus predicted back Mark 8:31, where it says, “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
So this is the beginning of that rejection that Jesus foretold. Who were these three groups?
The chief priests were the highest ecclesiastical/church authority.
The scribes were the highest legal authority being experts in the law.
And the elders are the highest non-priestly authorities.
Together these groups composed the high council in Jerusalem, which is sometimes called the Sanhedrin.
So these are the heads of the most influential families in Jerusalem.
A modern equivalent would be something like if all three branches of our civil government got together (the president, the supreme court, and congress), and also all the highest religious leaders, the bishops, the denominational heads, the CEO’s of the big publishing houses, and together they sent a delegation to Jesus and asked him, “who do you think you are?”
That is what the high council in Jerusalem functioned like. As far as they are concerned, with the exception of Caesar, they are the highest authority in Jerusalem.
So they are in the temple (likely in the outer court), and it is Jesus and his disciples one on side, and this Jerusalem council on the other. And undoubtedly a large crowd gathers to see this showdown.
They ask Jesus, “By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things?”
Now before we see how Jesus answers. Think about how Jesus could have answered.
Jesus is God, and He could have just said right then and there, I am God. I am the Creator. I am the Word made flesh. I am that I AM.
But Jesus chooses not to do this.
He could have also said, I am Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, and if you look up my family lineage, I am the promised son of David who would be born in Bethlehem. I am the Messiah from the tribe of Judah you all have been waiting for.
But again, Jesus chooses not to say this either.
Why is that?
Think about why Jesus came in the first place. He came to offer his life as a sacrifice for sinners. Jesus says in John 10:17-18,“Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.”
So in this great conflict between good and evil, between Jesus and Jerusalem, there is this deep irony that both sides want Jesus dead; just for very different reasons.
Jesus wants to die to save the world. And the chief priests want him dead because he is a threat to their power.
But despite this apparent unity of purpose, the time has not yet come for Jesus to offer up his life. Before he lays it down of his own accord, at his own will, he comes to give these authorities another chance to repent. And should they refuse, he will expose them for the wicked shepherds and frauds that they are.
In a very real sense, Jesus has come as a judge, to gather evidence, to hear testimony, and to see with his own eyes how the chief priests, scribes, and elders are doing. Are they obeying God’s law? Are they doing justice and mercy? Are they teaching true doctrine?
Jesus is kind of like the owner of a company, who dresses up as a customer to see how the supervisors and management are treating those they are called to serve.
As God, Jesus is the owner of the Temple (it’s his house). As God, Jesus is the authority from which the chief priests, scribes, and elders, derive their authority.
And when we get to chapter 12, immediately following this scene, Jesus will give them the parable of the vineyard owner, which essentially makes this same point.
God is the owner of the vineyard, and these leaders are the wicked tenants who murder the owner’s son.
Jesus is like that undercover boss who goes to see how management is doing. And behold, they are all going to get fired.
So they want to know where Jesus authority comes from, and Jesus answers with a counter-question.
Verses 29-30
29 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30 The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me.
This is one of those great trick questions that makes you marvel at Christ’s wisdom. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:19, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness.” He beats them at their own game.
In a certain respect, by posing this counter-question, Jesus is indirectly giving them the answer to theirs.
Where did Jesus’ authority come from?
Well humanly speaking, who ordained Jesus to the ministry? John the Baptist. Jesus’ baptism by John, at 30 years of age, was his ordination ceremony, after which his public ministry began.
Moreover, who was John the Baptist? He was the son of Zacharias the priest. John was of priestly lineage, just like the chief priests were. He was the miracle son of Zacharias and Elizabeth, who was filled with the Holy Spirit, even from the womb (Luke 1:15).
And so John the Baptist had all the right credentials for a priest and prophet. Remember it was in the temple, where Zacharias had ministered 33 years earlier, that an angel appeared to him to announce John’s heavenly calling.
But despite all these signs and wonders, it says in Luke 7:30, “But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him.”
So apart from Jesus’ divine authority as being the very person of the Word, the eternal Son of God, he also hadthis publicly known ordination from a publicly recognized prophet who was descended from the priestly line.
And so in a certain sense, Jesus counter-question is a statement that his authority (humanly speaking) comes from John. And so what you think about John’s authority, is what you should think about Christ’s. If John’s authority was from heaven, so also is Christ’s.
So how do these chief priests, scribes, and elders answer?
Verses 31-33a
31 And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? 32 But if we shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed. 33 And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell.
This Jerusalem council recognizes that if they say that John’s authority was from heaven, they condemn themselves as having rejected God’s authority. They would have to admit that they were wrong, which nobody ever wants to do.
And so they would like to say that John’s authority was from men. They would like to claim that John was a false prophet, or self-ordained, and discredit his whole ministry. And this they would do except that the masses believed John was a prophet and many had been baptized by him. If they say John’s authority was from men, or was false, they would be endangering their own lives.
For as the parallel passage in Luke 20:6 says, “But if we say, ‘From men,’ all the people will stone us, for they are persuaded that John was a prophet.”
So Jesus has cornered them. Either they acknowledge that John’s authority and therefore Jesus’ authority are heavenly, or if they say it was from men, the people will stone them. And therefore, they choose the best of their bad options, which is to plead ignorance. They tap out and concede the question saying, “we cannot tell.”
And then in 33b, it says…
Verse 33b
And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.
Jesus has just publicly humiliated the highest authorities in Jerusalem. They tried to double down on their rejection of Christ by questioning his authority, and Jesus makes them pay, now their authority is in question.
It is this showdown that precipitates and accelerates their desire to murder him. What do proud men fear the most? They fear losing their power, their reputation, their authority, they fear losing the basis of their pride. And with one question, Jesus has threatened all of that.
What was this council’s whole job after all? It was to judge and discern the will of God. And if they cannot do this, they show themselves to be disqualified and unfit for office.
The chief priests were in charge of maintaining God’s worship at the Temple.
The scribes were in charge of interpreting and applying God’s law.
And the elders were in charge of judging and enforcing God’s law.
And so if they are unable to discern that John was a true prophet (as he was), they show themselves to be false judges who have no real interest in the truth.
And so Jesus gives them just enough rope to hang themselves.
Well that is the exposition of our text. Let us make a few applications now from it.
Application #1
The longer you reject Christ’s authority, the more miserable your life becomes.
Take this Jerusalem council as a cautionary tale for what happens when you reject Christ as Lord.
These men were given countless opportunities to repent. They had heard John preach; they had heard Jesus teach. They were eyewitnesses of the invisible God coming in the flesh. And yet because they did not love the truth, they were blind to His arrival, so blind that they murdered him.
For many people, the obstacle to salvation is not a lack of data, it is not a lack of knowledge, instead it is their own unwillingness to admit they are wrong, that keeps them from heaven. Hell is locked from the inside, and it is the pride of man that prevents him from being truly happy.
Do you think the chief priests, scribes, and elders, were happy, joyful, contented men? Is anyone happy who has to constantly keep up appearances, and justify themselves to themselves, and spin lies and believe those lies to soothe their conscience? No. Living in sin is miserable, and one of the first signs of God’s grace in our lives, is that we recognize just how miserable we are without God.
Repentance happens when you are willing to say, “I am wrong. God is right. I am not the highest authority, Christ is, and I will submit myself to his judgment. Whatever he says, goes.”
The Jerusalem authorities were unwilling to undergo a temporary humiliation so that they might be eternally exalted with Christ. And when you refuse God’s will for your salvation, the harder it gets to repent, and the more blind and miserable you become.
The person is self-deceived who thinks he can sin now and repent later. Which is why the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:1-2, “We then, as workers together with Christ also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says: “In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
It is dangerous to presume upon the grace of God. For no man knows when his last day might be, or when God shall require of him his soul.
And therefore, “If today you hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” Lest you become like Esau of whom it says in Hebrews 12:17, that “when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears.”
If you refuse to repent now, what makes you think you will choose any differently later? Esau rejected God’s blessing, he sold it to Jacob, and later when he wanted that blessing, his repentance was not genuine, but rather it was a worldly sorrow that leads to death. And we know this because the next thing Esau did was try to kill Jacob. Just as the Sanhedrin will try to kill Christ.
Remember that sin is a liar. Sin is a deceiver. Sin is not your friend. Sin promises life but leads to death. And the longer you persist in sin, and reject Christ’s authority, the more miserable you will become. So make confession. Come clean. Do not do as the scribes and Pharisees, and reject God’s will for your life.
Application #2
If Christ is Lord, then his authority has no bounds. And therefore, your submission to Him must be absolute.
The sin that many professing Christians commit, is that of thinking they can pick and choose which areas of their life they will surrender to God, and which areas will remain under their own authority. They live as if, “Jesus can be Lord of Sunday morning, but the rest of the week belongs to me.”
And what is this but the same sin as the Sanhedrin. They let Christ clear out some portion of the temple, but anything more and they’ll murder him.
If you are a temple, as the Bible says you are, then where is Christ not allowed to go?
If your life is a house, which rooms are “off limits” to Jesus?
Is there a closet or an attic that is too messy to let him into?
Is there a “man cave” where you keep your secret vices that no one knows about. No one except God.
Whatever you have deemed “off-limits,” wherever you are still holding on to your authority, Jesus has come to take over.
Why did Jesus suffer and die? Because he wants all of you.
Why does he call us to repent of our sins? Because he wants you to be truly happy and at peace with Him.
The absolute authority of Jesus Christ is the greatest news in the world. Because in Christ, perfect love and perfect goodness is married with perfect power. And that means, God’s authority in your life is unbreakably and infallibly good for you. There is no room that if you let Him into, that he will not renovate and cleanse and make better than before. It might be embarrassing to let him see what’s inside, but He is the one who already knows.
So drop the front. Stop lying. Don’t double down like the Pharisees did. Open the door, and let Christ in. Let him rule everywhere.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Sermon: The Parable of the Fig Tree (Mark 11:12-26)

The Parable of the Fig TreeSunday, December 3rd, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 11:12-26
12 And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry: 13 And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. 14 And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.
15 And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves; 16 And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. 17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves. 18 And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine. 19 And when even was come, he went out of the city.
20 And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. 21 And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away. 22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. 23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. 24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. 25 And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. 26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
Prayer
Father, we confess that there are times when we are as stubborn and immoveable as mountains in our unwillingness to forgive others. And so we ask now that you would cast us into a sea of grace and mercy as we behold Christ entering the temple and exercising judgment upon it. Make us to be fruitful in love and good works, so that we might be assured of our salvation and look with greater hope and joy to your final judgment. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
It is Monday of Passion week in Mark’s Gospel. In just a few days, Jesus will be captured, crucified, and buried, and then the third day rise from the dead. And as Jesus approaches the ultimate end for which He came to this earth, that is, to die and rise for you, we see also that his warnings of judgment intensify.
You see, it is one thing to reject Jesus when he has not yet fully revealed Himself to be the eternal Son of God. You could be forgiven at this point for not recognizing that Jesus is a Divine Person who created the world and created you. You could be forgiven for rejecting someone that appears to be a mere man, and you would be right to not worship him if that is all that he is. But with every new miracle Jesus performs, and every new sign and wonder and teaching that Jesus gives, the more your culpability increases.
That is to say, the more you know about Jesus, and who He is, and what He has done, the more dangerous it is to not obey Jesus as Lord.
It is this rejection of Jesus as God that will eventually burn the city of Jerusalem to the ground 40 years later. In AD 70, during the Jewish/Roman War, the words of Christ were fulfilled that “not one stone of the temple shall be left upon another” (Mark 13:2).
And so what we have in our text this morning, is actually the final miracle Mark records before the resurrection. And as with all of Jesus’ actions and miracles, this one also has great symbolic import.
What is the miracle? It is the accelerated destruction of a fig tree. Jesus curses a fig tree, and the next day it is all dried up. We have to admit that this is kind of an odd miracle to go out with. If the resurrection is the grand finale, cursing and killing a fig tree is an odd setup. So what does Jesus want to teach us by it? That is the question we will be answering in our sermon.
Division of the Text
Our passage divides neatly into three sections:
In verses 12-14, Jesus curses the fig tree.
In verses 15-19, Jesus casts out the buyers and sellers in the temple.
In verses 20-26, The disciples see the fig tree is dead, and Jesus teaches about prayer.
So you will notice that in between the cursing of the fig tree and its apparent death is the judgment on the temple, and Mark has placed these two actions together because they are mutually interpreting, one explains the other. So with that in mind, let us walk through our text.
Verse 12
12 And on the morrow, when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry:
We recall that Jesus is likely staying with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus at their home in Bethany. Bethany is situated on the Mount of Olives and is just a few miles outside the walls of Jerusalem.
We remember also that Jesus just visited the temple and surveyed what was going on there the night before. So Jesus and his disciples arise and set off to go back to Jerusalem, and on the way we are told, Jesus was hungry.
Now because Jesus is a Divine person with a human nature (not a human person with a Divine nature), the fact that Jesus is said to be hungry here is not just because he skipped breakfast that morning.
We already know that Jesus went forty days and forty nights without eating while he was tempted in the wilderness, so the purpose of his decision to be hungry here is to teach us something, and what is that lesson? It is to teach us that God is “hungry” for us.
Have you ever wondered why God commanded Israel to offer him all the firstborn of their animals, and the firstfruits of all their harvest, and to appear before him in Jerusalem three times a year. Why does God command that His people give him a tenth of the increase? Why do we tithe?
Well, it is obviously not because God needs animals or fruit or anything from us. God has no body that needs to be fed. God is all-sufficient in Himself, He is absolutely perfect, we can add nothing to Him. Therefore, the reason God commands us to tithe and offer Him our firstfruits, is because we need Him. We need regular and constant reminders that all that we have comes from God and we are utterly dependent on Him.
Moreover, the animals and fruits and offerings themselves are signs of us, they are signs of our works. When you give a gift to someone you love, you are trying to give them a piece of yourself. Our gifts are meaningful because they represent our love, our appreciation, our devotion. And because we cannot literally give ourselves to someone else (except in marriage), gifts are a proxy, they stand in for us.
And so when God commands His people to tithe and give Him the firstfruits, God is actually trying to give us more of Himself. When we give to God, we are the ones who actually get rich. We place something temporal and fleeting on the altar (an animal that God has no need for), and we receive back from Him something spiritual and everlasting (love, joy, peace, salvation). For as Jesus says, “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” And so to give to God, because he is “hungry,” is really to receive from God what our souls are hungry for.
When we give, we are deified, we partake of the divine nature in that we become like God who is the Giver of all things (2 Peter 1:4).
So when Jesus chooses to be hungry here, he is signifying that God is hungry for us. God desires us, and we ought to desire Him.
Verse 13
13 And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.
So hungry Jesus sees from afar what looks like a healthy fig tree. But when he gets closer, he finds that the tree is all leaves and no fruit. And Mark adds the comment, “for the time of figs was not yet.”
Now we already know that these events took place during Passover week which is early spring, so either the last week of March or the first week of April.
We also know from other places in Scripture, like Song of Solomon 2:13, that in the springtime green figs would begin to grow, and then by late summer they would be ready to harvest.
Jesus Himself will say a couple chapters later in Mark 13:28, “Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender, and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near.”
So this is a fig tree that looks promising from a distance, its leaves are growing, but when Jesus comes to it, he finds there are no green figs. There are no beginnings of what will become a late summer harvest.
And so what does hungry Jesus say to the fig tree?
Verse 14
14 And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.
Notice that Jesus is not making the tree unfruitful, it is already unfruitful, and therefore his curse is really just telling the honest truth about the health of the tree. Jesus is like a doctor giving the diagnosis that this fig tree, for all its appearances of life, will never produce figs. It is barren, it is sterile, it is all leaves and no fruit.
“No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever.” If there are no beginnings, no green figs now, there won’t be any ripe figs later.
So Jesus declares this and the disciples hear it. That’s our first scene. Jesus sees the fig tree from afar, it has the appearance of life, but when he comes near to it, it is fruitless and so he declares its judgment. And now Jesus, having seen Jerusalem from afar, and inspected it the night before, comes to judge the temple.
Verses 15-16
15 And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves; 16 And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.
Now it is common for interpreters to see in this scene a kind of divine commentary on class warfare, where Jesus is turning over the tables of the capitalists/money changers because their exchange rates are too high. Or Jesus is condemning the price gouging at the temple, kind of like we experience at the airport. They don’t let you bring any liquids through security and then charge you $8 for a bottle of water.
And while there was certainly economic oppression taking place at the temple, that is not the only or even primary reason why Jesus is turning over the tables.
And we know this because Jesus is not just casting out the sellers (for their high prices, etc.), he is also casting out the buyers. Verse 15 says he “cast out them that sold and bought in the temple.”
Selling doves and other sacrificial animals was actually a convenience for those who had no animals of their own or didn’t want to risk traveling with their spotless firstborn lamb all those miles, only for it to get injured and then be unable to sacrifice it at the temple. So the buying and selling in itself is not the problem.
So what is the problem? According to Jesus, the problem is where they are doing it and why.
Verses 17-19
17 And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves. 18 And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine. 19 And when even was come, he went out of the city.
There are two Old Testament passages that Jesus quotes here. And when you hear them in their full context, it really makes clear why Jesus does what he does. So I am going to read to you couple larger chunks of text so that we can understand the force of his teaching.
When Jesus says, “my house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer,” he is quoting from Isaiah 56:7.
Isaiah 56:1-8 says, Thus says the Lord: “Keep justice, and do righteousness, For My salvation is about to come, And My righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, And the son of man who lays hold on it; Who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And keeps his hand from doing any evil.” Do not let the son of the foreigner Who has joined himself to the Lord Speak, saying, “The Lord has utterly separated me from His people”; Nor let the eunuch say, “Here I am, a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me, And hold fast My covenant, Even to them I will give in My house And within My walls a place and a name Better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name That shall not be cut off. “Also the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, And to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants— Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant— Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, says, “Yet I will gather to him Others besides those who are gathered to him.”
The whole point of this section in Isaiah is that God’s house, God’s temple, God’s mountain, is a place of worship for all nations, for foreigners, for eunuchs, for the children of Gentiles who love the Lord, God says “to them I will give in My house and within my walls a place and a name better than sons and daughters.”
And yet, what the Jews had done is take away those places within God’s house. They kicked out the Gentiles, they erected a wall of hostility (Eph. 2:14), and turned their place of worship into a place for trade. And so Jesus comes to set things right.
The second text Jesus quotes is from Jeremiah 7:11, and I’ll read a few portions of the surrounding context.
Jeremiah 7:1-7, 11 says, “The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you of Judah who enter in at these gates to worship the Lord!’ ” Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Do not trust in these lying words, saying, ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these.’ “For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, or walk after other gods to your hurt, then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever…11 Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of thieves in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” says the Lord.”
So Jeremiah is sent to the temple to call the Jews to repentance, and the charge against them is that they trust in the physical temple (with its pomp and beauty and external glory, their “leaves”), and they think that they are safe there, despite all their wickedness and injustice and bloodshed.
So the Jews had turned the temple into their mafia hideout space, their robber’s den. They had turned God’s House into a front for their money laundering schemes. And Jeremiah warns them that the temple is not going to protect them if they are disobeying God, and in fact, it’s actually going to be even worse for them if they remain there without repentance.
If you read on in the book of Jeremiah, you will learn that he is one of the prophets who lived through the Babylonian conquest and destruction of Jerusalem.
And so when Jesus comes to the temple, quoting these lines from Isaiah and Jeremiah, he is putting them on notice that if they do not repent, the same thing that happened to the temple in Jeremiah’s day (their house being left desolate), is going to happen to them.
Jerusalem and its temple, the scribes and the pharisees, are the fig tree that you can see from a distance, and it appears beautiful and healthy and full of leaves. But when Jesus comes to it, there is no fruit. They are dead inside.
This is further proved by how the scribes and chief priests react to this teaching. They could have repented and welcomed the Gentiles back. They could have confessed and acknowledge that what they were doing was contrary to God’s law. But instead, they mark Jesus as someone who needs to be taken out. Verse 18 says, “And the scribes and chief priests heard it, and sought how they might destroy him: for they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine.”
Summary: The fig tree is a parable of Jerusalem and its future. If they do not bear fruit, if they persist in hypocrisy, no man will ever eat fruit from it again. The temple will be destroyed and as Jesus says in Matthew 21:43, “the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it.”
Well after this judgment on the fig tree and the temple, Jesus elaborates on how this transfer of the kingdom will take place.
Verses 20-26
20 And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. 21 And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away. 22 And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. 23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. 24 Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. 25 And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. 26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.
Now this may seem at first like a non-sequitur. Why does Jesus go from foretelling Jerusalem’s destruction to teaching about faith, and mountains, and the power of prayer?
Well first, remember that Jerusalem is the mountain of prayer. The temple also is structured like a mountain laid our horizontally, so that as you go in from the outer court to the inner court to the altar to the sanctuary to the most holy place, you are symbolically ascending from the base of Mount Sinai to the darkness of God’s throne and glory cloud.
So when Jesus tells his disciples that by their faith in God they can move mountains, this is of course literally true, in that God can do whatever He wants, and if we ask according to His will, it will be done. If God can part the Red Sea, and make the sun to stand still, and rain down bread from heaven, he can certainly move a mountain if there is real need to move it.
Now although it is literally true that God can move mountains by our prayers, I believe that Jesus has something more specific in mind that is unique to the apostles and the 1st century. And that is that when Jerusalem and the temple mountain is destroyed, the church is going to become the new place of worship. The church is going to become the house of prayer for all nations. And this is why Jesus then speaks so forcefully about forgiveness.
The reason why Jesus was angry at the Jews for excluding the Gentiles, was because Gentiles need the forgiveness of sins. And under the Old Covenant, that seeking of God’s forgiveness was ritualized by the temple sacrifices. And so the Jews were actually getting in the way of God cleansing the nations. Instead of being like that river of living water that flowed out of Ezekiel’s visionary temple, they had become like the dead sea. They were ingrown, and hostile, and did not want God’s grace going out to the ends of the earth.
And what we find in the book of Acts, and the rest of the New Testament, is the Jewish establishmentdoubling down on this rejection of Christ. And by the prayers of the church in the 1st century, God did indeed cast that mountain into the sea. The sea is a common symbol of the Gentile nations, and Jesus says in Luke 21:24, “Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”
So Jesus is giving instructions about Jerusalem’s future and the transfer of the kingdom to the church. As it says in Hebrews 12:22, “you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.”
The Christian Church which is Christ’s body, is the new temple and house of prayer for all nations.
And Jesus wants his apostles, who are going to be the foundation for that church, to not make the same mistake the Jews made. Whereas the Jews were withholding forgiveness from the Gentiles, exchanging their salvation for worldly profit, Jesus commands the apostles to offer forgiveness to the nations freely.
This is why he says to them, “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
And then he seals that command to forgive with a solemn warning: 26 But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
Jerusalem was destroyed because they stopped worshipping God. They rejected Christ, they refused forgiveness, and they turned God’s house into a hideout for thieves. And whenever the church becomes like this, God comes to it, Jesus visits his church every Lord’s Day and investigates to see if there is any fruit on our fig tree. And if there is not, curse and judgment will fall.
The first three chapters of the book of Revelation is Jesus sending letters of discipline (and commendation) to the seven churches. So this is not just an Old Covenant reality, it is something that Christ continues to do today.
If we are lukewarm, he will spit us out of his mouth. If we are tolerant of immorality and false teaching and allow the spirit of Jezebel to infect the church, Jesus will come and discipline us.
Jesus says in Revelation 2:18 to the church at Thyatira, “I gave her time to repent of her sexual immorality, and she did not repent. Indeed I will cast her into a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of their deeds. I will kill her children with death, and all the churches shall know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts. And I will give to each one of you according to your works.” This is what the risen and glorified Jesus says to his church.
Conclusion
Jesus is zealous for the purity of his bride. He wants you to be spotless and without blemish. He wants you to be fruitful and to bear fruit that remains. And the only way this can happen is if you seek forgiveness for your sins, and you forgive those who have sinned against you. That is how you become a Christian and that is how you stay a Christian. It’s really that simple.
So don’t be all leaves and no fruit, lest you dry up and whither. Come to Christ, and He will make you alive.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sermon: The Sunday Before The World Was Reborn (Mark 11:1-11)

The Sunday Before The World Was RebornSunday, November 26th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 11:1-11
And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount of Olives, he sendeth forth two of his disciples, 2 And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him. 3 And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither. 4 And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him. 5 And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye, loosing the colt? 6 And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go. 7 And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him. 8 And many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down branches off the trees, and strawed them in the way. 9 And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: 10 Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest. 11 And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.
Prayer
O Holy God and Most Merciful Father, we thank you for sending Christ to be the King of Righteousness. We thank you for the increase of his government and of peace which shall have no end. We thank you for His dominion which is from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. We ask now Lord Jesus that by your zeal you would accomplish your purpose of making all things new, even us. We ask for Your Holy Spirit now, and Amen.
Introduction
We have come in Mark’s Gospel to the first day of the last week of Jesus’ earthly life.
Christ’s coming to Jerusalem, riding upon a colt, upon the foal of donkey, takes place on the Sunday before Easter Sunday. And so our text this morning is how Passion Week begins. This is Jesus’ last Sunday before he will rise from the dead and bring about a new creation.
Context
We remember the context is that Jesus has just healed blind Bartimaeus. Already there was a large crowd following him on that 18-mile road from Jericho to Jerusalem, and now finally they are approaching their destination. And while this scene may be familiar to many of us, you may know it as Palm Sunday, or The Triumphal Entry, Mark’s version has included some oddly specific details that invite us to consider this scene’s deeper meaning. So much so that we could almost call this passage The Parable of the Donkey. So with that in mind, let us walk through our text and then try to make some deeper applications from it.
Verse 1
And when they came nigh to Jerusalem, unto Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount of Olives, he sendeth forth two of his disciples,
Just to get our geographical bearings, Jerusalem is situated with the Mount of Olives to its east. The ridge of those mountains rises about 100 meters above the city, so from the Mount of Olives you would have a striking view of Jerusalem. If you wanted to take a picture of the city, this would be the place to do it.
Bethphage and Bethany were both villages that were just outside of the city, a couple miles walk from the temple.
Bethphage means “house of figs,” and this is significant because right after our passage, Jesus is going to curse a fig tree.
Bethany likely means “house of God’s hearing” or “house where YHWH has hearkened.” And this was the hometown of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. It’s also probably where Jesus stayed during this last week of ministry.
So Jesus and the crowd approach these two villages and the city of Jerusalem comes into view.
It was required by the law of the God, that three times a year all Jewish males who were of age, must appear before the Lord to offer sacrifice.
Deuteronomy 16:16-17 says, “Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread [Passover], at the Feast of Weeks [Pentecost], and at the Feast of Tabernacles; and they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed. Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord your God which He has given you.”
So three times a year, there were these caravans of Jews traveling up to the Temple. And it was customary for pilgrimsmaking this journey to sing the Psalms as they went, especially the Psalms of Ascent (Psalms 120-134).
For example, we sing in Psalm 121, “I will lift up my eyes to the hills—From whence comes my help?” and it is these hills of Jerusalem, of Zion, and the Mount of Olives that would be in view as these pilgrims sang these psalms.
So as Jesus and the crowds draw nigh to Jerusalem, just a few days before Passover, he sends forth two of his disciples to run an errand for him.
Verses 2-3
2 And saith unto them, Go your way into the village over against you: and as soon as ye be entered into it, ye shall find a colt tied, whereon never man sat; loose him, and bring him. 3 And if any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him; and straightway he will send him hither.
The task of these two unnamed disciples is to go and fetch a young donkey (called a colt in the KJV). And Jesus specifies that this young donkey is one that no man has ever sat upon, and is presently bound.
Why get a donkey?
Well back in Genesis 49:10-11, Jacob before he died, prophesied that, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, Nor a lawgiver from between his feet, Until Shiloh comes; And to Him shall be the obedience of the people. Binding his donkey to the vine, And his donkey’s colt to the choice vine…” So rather than a horse, the donkey was the vehicle for Judah’s kings, and by it they signified that their trust was not in horses and chariots (as the nations put their hope), but rather in the name of the Lord. To ride upon a donkey, was a sign of faith in God’s power to save.
Moreover, Zechariah 9 prophesied that when the Messiah comes, he would come, “lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of donkey.”
So it is this moment in history that Genesis 49 and Zechariah 9 and numerous other passages looked forward to.
We are not told whether Jesus had already made arrangements with the owner to acquire this donkey, but Jesus tells his disciples that if anyone asks you “what are you doing loosing this animal?” tell them, “The Lord hath need of it.” And when the owners hear that, they will send the donkey straightway to Jesus.
So notice that Jesus is explicitly identifying himself here as “the Lord.” The revelation of who Jesus is has been shown forth already by his baptism, by his teaching, by his transfiguration, by his authority over nature, over demons, and over sickness. And here now from his own mouth, Jesus says that what he “needs,” God “needs,” “say ye that the Lord hath need of it.” Jesus is publicly identifying himself as the Lord.
Verse 4
4 And they went their way, and found the colt tied by the door without in a place where two ways met; and they loose him.
So the disciples find this donkey just as Jesus said they would, and for some reason, Mark wants us to know that it was “tied up, outside, in a place where two ways met.” This is not merely a road or a dead end, this is what we would call a crossway where multiple roads come together.
And it is here at this crossway, outside a door, where the donkey is tied up.
Perhaps you are starting to catch some of the parable.
What do these two disciples do? Theyloose/unbind the donkey.
Verses 5-7
5 And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye, loosing the colt? 6 And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go. 7 And they brought the colt to Jesus, and cast their garments on him; and he sat upon him.
The donkey is fetched, unbound at the crossway, and brought to Jesus. And because there is no saddle, this donkey has never carried a rider, the disciples place their garments upon it, and that is where Jesus the Lord sits down.
Seeing Jesus now mounted upon the donkey we read in verse 8…
Verse 8
8 And many spread their garments in the way: and others cut down branches off the trees, and strawed them in the way.
So just as blind Bartimaeus had cast off his garments to follow Jesus, here now the crowds join in. They place their garments on the road as a carpet for the Lord, and they cut down branches and strew them in the way. What is signified by these actions?
These are the actions of a people coronating a king.
When Solomon was crowned, he rode upon David’s mule, and the people sang and shouted, “Long live King Solomon” (1 Kings 1).
When Jehu was anointed king by Elisha it says, “Then each man hastened to take his garment and put it under him on the top of the steps; and they blew trumpets, saying, “Jehu is king!” (2 Kings 9:12).
By the putting off of their garments, the people are pledging themselves to be loyal servants to this king. Their garments are signs of their own bodies and their works, and by placing them on the ground before him, they are placing themselves beneath his lordship.
By the cutting down of branches, the people portray Christ as riding high above them, even above the trees.
We see in 2 Samuel 5:24-25, that God’s heavenly army is said to march upon the tops of the trees. God says to David, “And it shall be, when you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the mulberry trees, then you shall advance quickly. For then the Lord will go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines.”
Likewise in the Psalms, God is portrayed as a heavenly warrior who, “rides upon the clouds…[and upon] the heaven of heavens” (Ps. 68:4,33). And what is interesting about Psalm 68 is that it also speaks of God coming to save his people in a great procession towards the temple, just like our scene.
Psalm 68:24-26 says, “They have seen Your procession, O God, The procession of my God, my King, into the sanctuary. The singers went before, the players on instruments followed after; Among them were the maidens playing timbrels. Bless God in the congregations, The Lord, from the fountain of Israel.”
Well what are the people doing as Jesus the Lord rides upon the branches? In verses 9-10we hear them singing Psalms of praise.
Verses 9-10
9 And they that went before, and they that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna; Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: 10 Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.
The crowds are singing a psalm of salvation. Hosanna is a request for God to save right now, and in Jesus, the son of David, they believe that salvation has come.
The words Mark records for us come from Psalm 118:25-26 which says, “Save now, I pray, O Lord; O Lord, I pray, send now prosperity. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.”
So this crowd rightly recognizes that Jesus is the promised son of David who has come to deliver daughter Zion, and so they rejoice. But what they do not yet know is how that salvation is to come.
What is ironic about their singing of Psalm 118, is that this is also the Psalm that says, “The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone,” and the verse immediately following their cries of Hosanna is, “Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.”
So while the crowd thinks they are coronating a new King Solomon, a new Jehu, a new son of David, they are also unknowingly praising the festal sacrifice, they are actually praising the paschal lamb, who in just a few days will be rejected by the builders, bound to the horns of the altar, and nailed to a Roman cross.
This is how the king answers their cries of Hosanna, this is how God brings salvation now.
Finally in verse 11, the king and sacrifice, enters his city.
Verse 11
11 And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.
Now perhaps you are thinking this is a little anticlimactic. Where is the cleansing of the temple? Where is the showdown with the Pharisees? Why does Jesus just go in, look around, and then leave because it’s late. What is going on here?
Well unlike Matthew and Luke, Mark tells us that the day before Jesus cleanses the temple, he first enters the city and surveys his house. So on Sunday he enters as a king to observe his kingdom, and he enters as a priest to inspect the health of the temple.
In other words, this is the patience of God and the quiet before the storm. Before Jesus turns over the tables, and casts out the den of thieves, he arrives and puts them on notice. He enters and observes and gives them one more day to repent. The king has come, but the king is merciful, but judgment will be enacted tomorrow.
So that is our text. On the Sunday a week before his resurrection, Jesus enters Jerusalem as a humble king and then goes back to Bethany.
And the whole purpose of this passage is to show forth the mercy and humility of God. It is to teach us that before Christ comes riding upon a white horse to judge and destroy his enemies like we see in Revelation 19, first he comes meek and mild and riding upon a donkey.
The way that the kingdom of God is established in this world is “not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts” (Zech. 4:6). And that same Spirit is given with all fullness to Jesus, who says at the beginning of his ministry, quoting from Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, Because the Lord has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn, To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
And so if we would be a faithful church militant, that seeks first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, then our lives and ministries should look like Christ humble and riding upon a donkey. It should sound like Psalms of praise and thanksgiving and a royal procession as we walk to God’s city to offers ourselves as a living sacrifice before Him.
This is the way of the Lord, and there is no other way of salvation than this.
Application
I want to close with two points of application for us.
#1 – We are like donkeys.
We know from the sacrificial system that animals represent different kinds of people. For example, a young bull signifies the priest, a male goat signifies a ruler, and a female goat or a female lamb signifies a layman, and so forth.
We also know that God gave distinctions between clean and unclean animals as a sign of the difference between clean and unclean nations.
A donkey is an unclean animal, it’s a “Gentile,” and it was used for carrying heavy burdens. And yet God explicitly commands in the law of Moses, in Exodus 13:13, that “every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb; and if you will not redeem it, then you shall break its neck.”
So when a donkey gave birth, that firstborn belonged to the Lord, and in order to actually use it, you had to offer unto the Lord a clean animal, a lamb, in its place.
The tradition of the Christian church has been to see in Jesus riding upon this young donkey, a picture of the salvation of the world.
The donkey is “tied up by the door outside at a crossroads,” and by this is signified the nations who are bound up in sin and without direction, they do not know their right hand from their left, they do not know where to go.
Moreover, it is the disciples of Jesus who unbind this donkey and place their garments upon it. So also, after Pentecost, the disciples would go forth into the world preaching the gospel, loosing the nations from their sins, and enthroning Christ above them.
And when that donkey receives the Lord Jesus upon its back, where does Jesus lead it? He leads it to God’s house, to the temple, to the place where no unclean animal was able to go.
Jesus is the lamb that redeems the donkey so that its neck need not be broken. Instead, it can be used in God’s service. It can trade the burdens of sin, for the burden of Christ and his kingdom, and in doing so ride upon the branches high in the heavens.
What this means in very plain terms is that if you don’t want to die in your sins, if you don’t want your neck to be broken as your sins deserve, then you must humble yourself beneath Christ the King. And you must ask him to clothe you, and rule you, and bridle your passions, and steer you straight to His Father’s house.
This is how the humble Christ triumphs over us.
#2 – We are all temples.
Every human being is a place of worship. And inside every person is a place where sacrifices are offered, and some god is magnified. That god might be the self, it might be someone else, but everyone is worshipping and serving someone or something every moment of every day.
When Solomon’s temple was profaned by idolatry, God abandoned the temple, his glory departed, and the place was destroyed.
But here in Jesus’ entrance into the temple, the glory of God returns. And when you receive Christ as king into your self, when Jesus is enthroned in your most holy place, the inner recesses of your spirit, well then Christ can make you glorious.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:10-12, “But God has revealed hidden things to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by Him.”
Conclusion
Every Lord’s Day, we enter God’s House, and in worship He enters us. And when we receive His Spirit, and His Word searches us out, we are convicted, we are comforted, we have our inward thoughts and intents of our heart discerned. And all this King Jesus does so that when he does come in final judgment, we can count that day a day of glory and vindication, and not a day of fear and condemnation.
So cast yourself upon this merciful and humble king, cry Hosanna, and he will answer. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sermon: The Son of Timaeus (Mark 10:46-52)

The Son of TimaeusSunday, November 19th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 10:46-52
46 And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging. 47 And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. 48 And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. 49 And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee. 50 And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. 51 And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. 52 And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.
Prayer
O Father open our eyes, that we might behold wondrous things from Your law. Give us the light of faith and the light of understanding, that we might rejoice in beholding the Lord Jesus, who is the fairest of the sons of men. We ask for your Holy Spirit in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Before Jerusalem became the capital of Israel and the city of David, it was inhabited by the Jebusites. We read in 2 Samuel 5:6 that the Jebusites, and particularly the blind and the lame, taunted David saying, “Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither.”
In other words, the Jebusites felt so secure in Jerusalem that even the blind and lame among them could defend their stronghold against David. Or so they thought.
Well David as God’s anointed king is not going to be hindered, and in the next verse it says, “Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David. And David said on that day, Whosoever getteth up to the gutter, and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind, that are hated of David’s soul, he shall be chief and captain. Wherefore they said, The blind and the lame shall not come into the house.”
So before David can enter Jerusalem, the blind and lame Jebusites must be destroyed. The blind and lame defenders of Jerusalem must be removed, and afterward, they are not permitted to enter his house.
Well in our sermon text this morning, we have the final episode before Jesus, the Son of David, invades Jerusalem. And what do we find? A blind beggar named Bartimaeus, who cries out for mercy.
Now this story of Jesus healing a blind man is on the surface, a fairly simple and straightforward story. However, there are certain peculiarities about this story that suggest there’s a lot more is going on here.
Already we have seen that everything that Jesus does is a living parable, and just as we must meditate upon seed or soil or light to understand Jesus’ parables, so also we must meditate and ponder all his actions. And because Jesus is God, everything that Jesus does is illustrative and instructive for revealing to us who God is. The actions and words of Christ are the actions and words of God.
So as with the parables, there are multiple layers to this healing narrative. And so as we consider first the historical/literal sense of the text, we want to also keep our eyes out for the deeper spiritual significance.
Context
Now, remember the context. Jesus has just completed the third of three cycles wherein he prophecies in plain words his coming death and resurrection. However, the disciples do not get it.This happens three times, and these three cycles are bookended, or enclosed on either side, by the healing a blind man.
So back in Mark 8, Jesus healed a blind man in two stages, and when we studied that passage we said that this healing is a parable for what the disciples are like, their vision is still blurry to who Christ is and what he has come to do.
And now here in Mark 10, after Jesus has told his disciples three times he is going to die and rise again, Jesus heals another blind man,and this is the final healing miracle that Mark records.
This is the setup for Jesus’ triumphal procession into Jerusalem and the cleansing of the temple. Everything else after this healing is centered in and around Jerusalem. So with all that in mind, let us walk through our text.
Verse 46
46 And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging.
Notice first that this scene takes place on the way out of Jericho.
We remember that after Moses died, and Israel crossed the Jordan river, Joshua conquered Jericho. Mark has already portrayed Jesus as a new Joshua, who is regathering Israel in the wilderness, and leading them into the promised land. And here again we have that same theme.
Mark says Jesus came to Jericho, and he goes out of Jericho, and he is accompanied by a great crowd. This is Joshua conquering Canaan all over again.
Now Jericho was where the steep ascent to Jerusalem began. It was roughly 18 miles of very difficult and dangerous terrain to go from Jericho to Jerusalem. You recall that the famous story of The Good Samaritan takes place on this road between Jericho and Jerusalem. Jesus is retracing the very steps of Israel, and he is walking the same path that Joshua and David and many others walked before him.
Now as Jesus is beginning his ascent to Jerusalem, we are told that a blind man named “Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging.”
This is what we a call a “lightning letter” in Holy Scripture. It is something that strikes us as odd, it stands out, and it invites us to contemplate its deeper meaning. Now maybe you are wondering, what is so significance about verse 46, this blind beggar?
What is significant is that the gospels almost never tell us the names of the people who are healed. There are some very rare exceptions, like Lazarus in John’s gospel, but if you think about it, the gospel writers almost always name the people Jesus heals by their affliction or their relation to someone else. So we have “the demoniac,” we have “the woman with the flow of the blood,” we have “Jairus’s daughter,”, “Peter’s mother-in-law,” “the leper,” etc. Hardly ever are we given their proper name.
In Mark’s gospel in particular there is only one person that Jesus heals, whose name we are told. And that is this man, “Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus.”
What’s more, Bartimaeus is an odd name, it is a fusion of Aramaic and Greek. Bar is Aramaic for “son of,” while Timaeus is a very Greek name that means “honor,” or “highly prized.”
So Mark actually gives us his name twice, first in Greek and then in Aramaic, so he really wants us to know this man’s name. And the real question is why? Why is he drawing so much attention to this?
I believe there are at least two reasons for why Mark gives us this name.
First, remember what Jesus has been drilling into the disciples’ heads about wanting to be great and honorable in the eyes of the world. Jesus just rebuked them for worldly ambition, envy, and rivalry, and he was just turned down by the Rich Young Ruler, and so here in Bartimaeus we have the total opposite of everything the world aspires toward. Here is a blind man, who has nothing, who sits on the side of the road, and begs for alms. No one would want trade places with this guy. And what is his name? Bartimaeus, son of honor.
Jesus says in Luke 16:15 that, “what is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.”
Well here in blind Bartimaeus, what is abominable in the eyes of the world, becomes highly esteemed in the sight of God.
Jesus is going to restore to this man, the honor that is due to his name.He is going to make Bartimaeus into a true Bartimaeus, a true son of honor. And so what follows is a real life summary of everything Jesus has been teaching The Twelve: that honor is found not in what the world esteems, but in the eyes of God, and that is what we should care about.
As to the second reason for giving us this name? I will that save for later.
Verse 47
47 And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.
So blind Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is approaching and cries out to him.
And this is the first time that anyone calls Jesus the “son of David” in Mark’s gospel. After the healing of the first blind man in Mark 8, Peter confessed “thou art the Christ,” but here it is the blind man himself who sees even more clearly than the disciples who Jesus actually is. Jesus is David’s Son, a king of mercy, who is going to reconquer Jerusalem.
How do the people respond?
Verse 48
48 And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.
Here the crowd is doing what the disciples were doing earlier, keeping the children and needy away from Jesus. It says, “many charged him to hold his peace,” to stop crying out for Jesus to have mercy upon him. Clearly, the crowds do not know why Jesus came to earth or why he is going to Jerusalem in the first place.
Despite the crowd trying to silence him, Bartimaeus perseveres, and he cries out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy upon me.”
Here is a man who has no illusions about his wretched and pitiable state. Bartimaeus knows there is nothing honorable or great about him. Unlike the Rich Young Ruler, Bartimaeus has nothing to lose. And because he has nothing to lose, he is not ashamed to keep crying out for mercy.
This is the poor in spirit, of whom Jesus says, “belongs the kingdom of heaven.” And so what does Jesus the son of David do?
Verse 49
49 And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee.
So Jesus, hearing this cry amid the crowd, stops and stands still. God hears the cry of the afflicted, and when He does, He commands us to come to Him.
By standing still, Jesus signifies the immoveable and unchanging character of God, which is that His goodness inclines Him to remove our defects and dispel our misery. As it says in Psalm 24:10, “All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.” Wherever Jesus walks, whether in Galilee, or Jericho, or Jerusalem, all his paths are mercy and truth.
This means that if you are in pain and you persevere in crying out to God, you can be assured that what Psalm 34 says is true, “The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous: But the Lord delivereth him out of them all” (Ps. 34:18-19).
“The Lord is gracious and full of compassion” (Ps. 111:4), and if hears the cries of hungry lions and feeds them, then of course he will hear the cry of his people.
So God stops when he hears our cries for mercy, but notice that He does not immediately come down and remove our misery. What does He do?
He tests our faith. He tests our resolve. He calls us to Him so that we are forced to abandon those earthly comforts we cling to. As it says in Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
Some people cry for mercy but only half-heartedly. When the crowds tell them to be quiet, they stop calling out. When a little relief comes, they stop praying.
And what is worse is that many people are part of the crowd. They go to church, they’re in proximity to Jesus and his disciples, but they themselves have never cried for mercy. It has never dawned on them that they are the ones who are spiritually blind and spiritual beggars, and are in desperate need of God to have mercy upon them. And because they never cry out, they never receive mercy, and therefore they remain at distance, only knowing about Jesus, but never knowing him as their true and close companion.
This is why Psalm 138:6 says, “Though the Lord is on high, Yet He regards the lowly; But the proud He knows from afar.”
If you want mercy, if you want relief from your misery, then cry out and don’t stop crying out until you are searching for Him with all your heart. And then when He calls you to Himself do what Bartimaeus does…
Verse 50
50 And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.
Remember that Bartimaeus is still blind. He has heard that Jesus is calling him, but in order to get to him, he must literally walk by faith in what he hears, and not by sight. Not only this, he throws off his garment, he forsakes what is probably the only possession he still has, and he arises and goes to Jesus.
By these actions, Mark shows us that mercy is found when we put off the old man and forsake everything. Mercy is had when we cast away our old garments, our sins and evil works, and arise and come to Jesus. And when we are standing there, naked and exposed in the light of God’s presence, what does He do?
What does Jesus do?
Verse 51
51 And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?
When we have nothing in our hands but a humble plea for mercy, God says to us, “What do you want Me to do for you?”
Now remember the context. Where did we just hear this same question? This is what James and John asked of Jesus, “we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire” (Mark 10:35). And Jesus said, what do you want? And they wanted worldly glory and honor.
Well, here is a son of honor. Here is blind Bartimaeus. And because he cried for mercy from the son of David, Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
Verses 51b-52
The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight.  52 And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.
Here now is the final test. Jesus gives him what he asks for, his physical sight, and then says to him, “Go thy way.” But what does Bartimaeus do? Well, we see that Bartimaeus has also received spiritual sight, and therefore Mark says he, “followed Jesus in the way.”
This is the choice you have when you receive God’s mercy. Where do you go when the pain is gone? Where do you go when your body is healthy, when there’s money in savings, when your relationships are thriving, and life is good? Do you go your own way, or do you keep following Jesus in His way?
Many people settle for temporal blessings from God. God is abundant and overflowing in mercy, He gives to all far beyond what we deserve, and yet many people are content to have only their temporal afflictions removed. People forget that this life is very brief, and mercy must be had here if we would avoid eternal misery.
So behold in this healing of Bartimaeus God’s delight and joy to give you salvation, and the only thing keeping you from heaven and eternal bliss is you. Jesus was just as willing to give the Rich Young Ruler mercy, but he never asked, he didn’t want it, he didn’t think he needed it. He counted the cost of losing his stuff, and of becoming like the blind beggar to be too great a sacrifice. He had too much to lose.
And so you can see why it is hard for those who are not afflicted in this world to enter heaven, because they are comfortable here.
This is also why we can learn to be content and joyful in our afflictions, because by them we are made to yearn for God. When we forsake ourselves, and cast away the earthly things we hold dear, even the good things, we are able to then receive the best thing, namely God. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: But the Lord (who is merciful) delivereth him out of them all.”
Eternal mercy is what God wants us to yearn for, and so temporal suffering can be received as His loving and wise hand to bring us to Him.
Conclusion
You remember I said there was a second reason for Mark giving us this name Bartimaeus. Well I believe that second reason is because in Bartimaeus, is signified the salvation of the Gentiles (our salvation). Let me explain.
Have you ever seen that famous painting by Raphael called The School of Athens (1509-1511 AD). It’s in the Vatican. It’s the one the onewhere Plato is pointing up, and Aristotle is gesturing down, and there are all these other famous philosophers around them.
Well in that picture, Plato and Aristotle are each holding a book. Aristotle is holding his Nichomachean Ethics, and do you know what Plato is holding? It’s not The Republic (as much as we might expect), it’s his book Timaeus.
And Timaeus is Plato’s origin story for how the world came to be. In it, a man named Timaeus describes the creation of the universe, and he is the only ancient author to posit a Creator who predates matter. Every other ancient creation myth has the world being eternal or the gods being a part of creation. And so Timaeus is the closest the pagans ever got to the truth of Genesis 1.
Well in Timaeus, Timaeus himself says the following: “According to my account, sight is responsible for the greatest benefit to us because not one of the accounts we are relating about the universe would ever have been spoken without seeing the stars or Sun or the heaven…From this (sight) we have acquired philosophy in general, and no greater good has ever or will ever come to mortal creatures as a gift from the gods than this. So I declare this to be the greatest benefit of eyes.”
For Plato, for Timaeus, the highest good was philosophy, and it was sight that allowed man to achieve that highest good. And so it is a remarkable coincidence, that the only person Mark ever names, who is healed by Jesus, is a blind man, named “son of Timaeus.”
And when Jesus heals this son of Timaeus, he gives him more than sight. He gives him a far greater good than philosophy. He gives him the saving knowledge of God. He gives him theology. He gives him the supernatural light of faith. He gives him everlasting mercy.
Bartimaeus represents the blindness of the gentiles, who grope in the dark, with their half-truths many falsehoods. But as Matthew 4:16 says, in Jesus, “The people which sat in darkness have seen a great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.”
Jesus is the son of David, who brings the blind and the lame into His house. Jesus removes the blind and the lame from the land, not by violence, but by healing them and making them whole. This is the mercy of the Lord, that endures forever, and by Christ’s death and resurrection, that mercy is offered to all who call out to him.
In the name of Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen

Lesson 3: Omnipresence (The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy Scripture)

The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy ScriptureLesson 3 – A Theology of God’s Presence: Common PresenceChrist Covenant Church, Centralia, WA
Prayer
O Father, your Word says in Psalm 111:2 that, “The works of the Lord are great, studied by all who have pleasure in them.” And so we ask now that You would give us real pleasure, real delight, in studying Your great works, and that in so doing, we might receive the gift of understanding, that gift that you only give to those who keep your commandments. Purify us now, that we might ascend the mountain of God. We ask this in the name of Jesus, whose blood washes away all our sins, and Amen.
Review of Lesson 2
Before we get into Lesson 3, let us briefly review some of what we covered a couple weeks ago. In case you forgot, we are on a year’s long (or more) journey to understand some of the most important symbols in the Bible, namely the Tabernacle/Temple and the things inside of them.
And we are starting with what those structures symbolize in their broadest sense, that is, in the sense of being a special place where God lives. Metaphorically speaking, the tabernacle/temple is God’s home address on earth, and we want to get clear in our minds what that means and what that does not mean. Hence, the theology lessons we are working through now.
In Lesson 2 we gave an overview of the three ways in which God can be said to be present, does anyone remember what those three kinds of presence were called?
1. Common Presence: God is present in every reality as giving them to be (efficient cause).
2. Special Presence: God is present in a special way by grace in believers.
3. Hypostatic Presence: God is wholly present in Christ.
We then concluded with the question, under which of these three headings should we place God’s presence in the temple or tabernacle?
To this we said that God’s presence in the temple/tabernacle assumes God’s common presence and is a sign/shadow of God’s special presence in us, and God’s hypostatic presence in Christ.
Put another way, the whole point of these sacred structures is to teach us about God’s dwelling place in Christ and the Church. That is their primary special signification.
This is why both Christ and believers are called in the New Testament, temples of the Holy Spirit (John 2:19-21, 1 Cor. 3:16-18).
Introduction to Lesson 3
Tonight, we are going to work at understanding God’s Common Presence since that is (quite literally) the foundation for everything else.
First, we will determine that God is present in every reality (as giving it be) from the Holy Scriptures.
Second, we will give the formal explanation for how to say, “God is present in every reality,” such that we speak truth and not falsehood.
Q. Whether God is present in every reality?
This is a Yes or No question, and then depending on whether you answer Yes or No, you must give an explanation.
For Christians, what is our highest authority? God. So we should be asking, “What does Holy Scripture say?”
And because the biblical standard for giving testimony is 2 or 3 witnesses, I have chosen 3 passages of Scripture to bring forward that make us to answer in the affirmative, “Yes, God is present in every reality.”
Supernatural Authorities:
Isaiah 26:12 says, “Lord, You will establish peace for us, For You have also done all our works in us.”
Philippians 2:13 says, “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
Acts 17:28 says, “For in Him we live and move and have our being.”
Having answered Yes, let us now give our explanation for how this can be so. In what sense is God present in every reality?
Explanation:
First, we recognize that with us among creatures, we say that something is present in whatever or wherever it operates. In scholastic terms, this is the notion of God as the efficient cause (the efficient cause of something is what makes that thing to be).
For example, we say “the sun is in my eyes,” when we feel the effects of the sun blinding us. “Because the sun causes blindness, the sun is in my eyes.”
Or we say to someone who loves us, “you are in my heart,” when we feel in ourselves their love for us. “Because your love causes me to feel loved, you are in my heart.”
In both examples, the sun and the lover are not physically or spatially inside of our eyes or heart, but rather they are inside of us as the efficient cause that makes us to be blind or feel loved.
In this way, as efficient cause, God is said in Scripture to be in every reality because He makes it to exist.
An analogy that might help us to grasp this concept more fully is that of how an author is present to his story.
For example, we might say that C.S. Lewis is omnipresent toNarnia insofar as He makes Narnia (and every reality in it) to be. Lewis is present in Narnia as efficient cause.
Or we might say that J.R.R Tolkien is present in Middle-Earth in that He gives being to every place, person, setting, and scene.
So to borrow the Scriptural language for a moment, we could say that “In C.S. Lewis, Narnia lives, moves, and has its being.”
Or we might say, “It is Tolkien who worketh in Frodo and Sam, Gandalf and Gollum, both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
Neither Lewis nor Tolkien are spatially/physically inside of their stories (nor could they be!). Moreover, Neither Lewis nor Tolkien need or depend on their stories to continue to be C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
In a similar way God relates to and loves His creation as giving every reality the gift of existence. God is in nowise dependent on His creation, nor can creation move or change Him in any way. For just as Lewis/Tolkien exist on a different ontological plane to their fictional characters, so also God exists on an infinitely higher ontological plane than we. “It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Ps. 100:3).
Summary: Holy Scripture makes us to say that God is present in every reality as giving it to be, “for in him we live and move and have our being, and it is God who has “done all our works in us.”
However, if we were to stop here in our understanding, we might go away with a very untrue and even heretical understandings of God’s presence.
One such heresy would be Pantheism or Monism, which teaches that God and the universe are one. There are various forms of pantheism. More ancient versions posit God as a world soul (God fills the world like the soul fills the body). In pop spirituality this is the idea that “all is one” or that “we are all God” in that we all come together and compose God.
Or some people think that God is like the force in Star Wars. He is an impersonal/personal(?) energy that is spread out and invisible but you can get in tune with that force and manipulate it for good/evil, light/darkness. God is basically the atoms and molecules that everything is made out of, or he is that “negative space” between all that is.
This is heresy for many reasons, chief of which is because it makes God the material cause of creation (that which creation is made out of) as if God is this vast material body. Don’t make God a creature!
Furthermore, we find examples in Scripture of various pagan nations thinking that different gods inhabit different locations (ex. god of the hills vs. the god of the planes, 1 Kings 20), and Christians sometimes fall into this error of spatializing/localizing God’s presence in this way.
And we should note here that it would be extremely easy to read certain passages of Scripture (ex. the tabernacle and temple) as teaching that God is spatially/locally present when in truth, that notion is false.
Hence, Solomon prays at the dedication of the temple, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” 1 King 8:27.
So having said that God is present in every reality as efficient cause (as causing it to be), we must now restate this in light of other truths that Scripture declares about God, like that He is perfect, undivided (simple), infinite, and incorporeal (does not have a body). It is these truths that Solomon has in mind when he prays what he prays about the temple.
Next time, we will learn how to remove and negate the faulty notions of God’s Common Presence and affirm with greater understanding that He is present in every reality as efficient cause.

Sermon: Dying to the Gift (Mark 10:32-45)

Dying to the GiftSunday, November 12th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 10:32-45
32 And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them: and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid. And he took again the twelve, and began to tell them what things should happen unto him, 33 Saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles: 34 And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again. 35 And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come unto him, saying, Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire. 36 And he said unto them, What would ye that I should do for you? 37 They said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory. 38 But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? 39 And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: 40 But to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared. 41 And when the ten heard it, they began to be much displeased with James and John. 42 But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. 43 But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: 44 And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. 45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for sending Christ to lead us back to Paradise. We thank you Lord Jesus for offering your life as a ransom for many. And we thank you Holy Spirit for redeeming our lowly nature, and elevating us through faith, hope, and charity to abide and dwell with God. Teach us now the proper use of authority, and the essence of real greatness, as we meditate upon Your Word. In Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
If you could change one thing about yourself or about your life, what would it be? If God came to you like He came to Solomon and said, “Ask what I shall give thee” (1 Kings 3:5), what would you say? What would you ask God for?
Solomon asked for wisdom, and God gave him not only wisdom and an understanding heart, but also riches, honor, and the promise of a long life if he kept God’s commandments.
It is an interesting thought experiment to imagine yourself in Solomon’s position. To be king for a day, or a year, or longer. To have God’s blessing, to possess great wisdom, and to also have wealth and power and a healthy body. Who wouldn’t want those things that seem to make life easier and more pleasurable?
Well one of the chief purposes of Mark’s Gospel is to portray for us what a king ought to be. The Gospel of Mark is a revelation of Jesus Christ as the true son of David, and therefore as a new and more faithful King Solomon.
Already, Mark has emphasized this aspect of Christ’s kingship through his fighting with wild beasts in the wilderness (Mark 1:13), by his showdowns with the Pharisees (Mark 2:23-27), and by drawing many other parallels between the life of David as he was hunted by Saul, and the life of the Jesus as he is hunted by Herod, by demons, and by those who desire to murder him.
The life of Jesus after his baptism (his anointing) is the life of a wanted man. Just as David was anointed long before he ever reigned in Jerusalem, so also Jesus in his earthly ministry. And here for the first time in Mark’s gospel, we are told exactly where he is going, he is going to Jerusalem to die and rise again. That is the path the king of kings walks for his people.
And so what we have in the life of Jesus, is the pattern for how authority is to be wielded in this world. If you have any authority over someone else, whether as a governor, or boss, or manager, or teacher, or parent, or older sibling, whatever sphere of authority God has given you, however small or large, Jesus gives us the pattern for how to wield that authority well. What is authority for? What is the gift of kingship for? What is a leader or ruler supposed to look like? Jesus is giving his disciples the answers to these questions because they are going to lead and rule the church.
So as we walk through this text, let us his consider how we might imitate Christ’s actions and obey his words.
Division of the Text
Our text could be divided into three sections.
In verses 32-34, Jesus foretells his future death and resurrection.
In verses 35-40, James and John ask Jesus to give them honor and authority.
In verses 41-45, Jesus explains the purpose for his coming to earth.
Verse 32a
32 And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them: and they were amazed; and as they followed, they were afraid.
Notice first of all, that a king goes before his people. Mark wants us to know that while they are walking to Jerusalem on their way to celebrate the Passover, it is Jesus who “went before them.” Jesus is zealous to accomplish his task. He is a man on a mission, and his sole desire is to do the will of His Father.
When leaders lack this kind of single-minded conviction, it is easy to grow idle, it is easy to go astray. And in the worst cases, like King David, some men abdicate their role as commander in chief, they delegate certain tasks that ought not to be delegated, and they choose to stay back and lounge in their palace. This is a real temptation for anyone who has been given power and authority. You are tempted to sit and be ministered to, rather than get out in front and minister to your people. David abdicated, he stayed behind, and what did that lead to? Adultery, murder, and civil war.
But what does Jesus do, he arises and goes before his disciples, and they follow him in fear and amazement. Why are they amazed?
We are not told exactly, but perhaps they are perplexed why his face is now set like flint to go to Jerusalem. Or perhaps it is because he just said that“the first shall be last, and the last first,” and now here he goes first in front of them. This is a real turning point in Jesus’ ministry, and Jesus tells them for a third time what is going to happen to him.
Verses 32b-34
And he took again the twelve, and began to tell them what things should happen unto him, 33 Saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles: 34 And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again.
What does a king do for his people? In what sense is a king first? He goes before them as a shepherd goes before his sheep. He is the first to go into danger. And because he is the tip of the spear, he also suffers first and foremost.
In this case, the wolves are the chief priests, scribes, and Gentiles. And because they are hungry for the flesh of the righteous, Jesus is going to be mocked, scourged, spit upon, and slaughtered. And only after a brutal crucifixion, shall he rise again. This is the work Jesus is zealous to accomplish, and yet despite his plain words, the disciples continue to not understand. They are still thinking of the kingdom in carnal terms.
Verse 35
35 And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come unto him, saying, Master, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire.
Here are two of the men in Jesus’ “inner ring,” who are asking for a blank check to get from Jesus whatsoever they desire. Their mindset after hearing of his immanent death and resurrection is what can I get from Jesus, not what I can give to Jesus.
Despite Jesus having just rebuked them for arguing over who should be the greatest (Mark 9:34), the disciples have not given up that contest, and James and John are intent on winning.
Verses 36-37
36 And he said unto them, What would ye that I should do for you? 37 They said unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.
This is the ask: to sit on either side of Christ in glory. They want to be exalted with Jesus in the highest possible places of honor. How does Jesus respond to such a lofty request?
Verse 38
 38 But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?
James and John are kind of like two toddlers that wants to drive their dad’s sportscar, but if they were put into the driver’s seat and given the keys, they would not even be able to reach the gas pedal. What they imagine they can do, is totally beyond their actual abilities.
So Jesus says to them, you don’t know what you are asking. James and John are only thinking about the laurels of victory, of fame, of glory, and the authority they will have over everyone else. What they are not thinking about is all the responsibilities and duties that come with such a position.
Who is qualified to be Christ’s counselor? To sit as his right hand and his left hand? This is one of those instances where if you regard Jesus as a mere man, you might think yourself just below him. He is great, but you could sit next to him. And this is how the disciples are thinking. They fail to recognize that what they are asking in reality is to sit next to God and give him advice.
Which as you know from other places in Scripture is something no man can actually do, although at times God invites certain men, like Abraham, or his prophets, to “deliberate” with him over his actions.
Paul says in Romans 11:34, quoting Isaiah 40:13, “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become His counselor?”
So there is a sense in which no man can counsel God, and yet God condescends to reveal certain truths to his prophets and the apostles. This whole 3-year training program the disciples are living through, is Christ training them to exercise his authority when he ascends to heaven. But the disciples have yet to connect the dots. They are still thinking like worldly men.
So Jesus asks James and John, “Are you able to drink the same cup and receive the same baptism as me?” Both of which are symbols for judgment and death.
The cup refers to the cup of salvation, and the wine of God’s judgment.
Baptism refers to the ordination for death and the washing of the sacrificial animal before it is placed upon the altar.
Jesus is the lamb of God who offers himself for the life of the world. And before He is enthroned as king, before he is placed upon the altar as an offering for sin, he must drink the cup, and be baptized into death.
Can James and John do the same?
Verses 39-40
39 And they said unto him, We can. And Jesus said unto them, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of; and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: 40 But to sit on my right hand and on my left hand is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared.
Despite James and John not really knowing what they are asking for, they believe they are qualified, they can drink the same cup and receive the same baptism as Jesus.
And while in their present state they are certainly not able, which will be manifest when all the disciples scatter and hide (Mark 14:50), Jesus knows that eventually, after the Holy Spirit is poured out, indeed they will drink the same cup, and receive the same baptism, and suffer death for Christ.
As with the rich young ruler who called Jesus good (not knowing he was God), James and John likewise speak the truth of themselves, though not as they intend.
Tradition holds that John was boiled alive in oil but survived and was exiled to Patmos.
As for James, Acts 12 says that Herod Agrippa “killed James, the brother of John, with the sword.”
So just as Jesus foretold, both of these men (and all the apostles) would suffer and die for Christ, but nevertheless, to sit at his right hand or his left, is not something that Jesus gives out according to the flesh, for James and John were likely Jesus’ cousins, and these places of honor are not given out according to blood relation, but rather according to God’s predestination and man’s true merit.
Now hearing of James and John’s request, the rest of the disciples are made envious and angry.
Verses 41-45
41 And when the ten heard it, they began to be much displeased with James and John. 42 But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. 43 But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: 44 And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. 45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
How do you cut the cord of envy in your heart? The disciples are “much displeased,” not because they love Jesus, but because James and John asked for something that they all want.
In their mind there are only two seats up for grabs, two open cabinet positions as chief advisor to the king, but there are twelve of them. And it is this kind of scarcity mindset, and zero-sum thinking, and personal glory chasing, that Jesus comes to bring an end to. How does Jesus do this?
He does this first by dying for our sins of envy and jealousy and vainglory, and second by calling his church to imitate his life as servant of all.
What is the essence of kingship? What is the essence of being a lord or master or ruler? It is to bear in yourself the burdens and sins and needs of those under your authority. Because as far as your authority extends, so also your responsibility and duty before the Lord.
In Scripture, authority is portrayed as a burden that the king, or high-priest, or prophet, carries on his shoulders.
Aaron the high priest literally wears an onyx stone on each shoulder that has the names of the tribes of Israel inscribed upon it. Moreover, he wears on his chest a heavy golden breastplate, keeping the people close to his heart. That is the priestly burden, and it is a heavy weight.
Likewise Moses, who functions as prophet, priest, and king, says to God in Numbers 11:14, “I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness.”
The burden that Moses felt as ruler over such a rebellious nation as Israel, was so heavy that he asked God to kill him and relieve him of that duty. He essentially says to God, “if you love me, please kill me, I cannot carry these people and their constant sins.”
What does God do? He distributes a portion of that burden to seventy other elders who will help carry it.
Is the burden of responsibility what the disciples are thinking about when they vie for the best seats in the kingdom? Of course not. They are thinking of the kingdom in carnal and earthly terms. Jesus says, they are thinking like Gentiles.
What then does lordship and authority look like in God’s kingdom? It looks like loving service. It looks like slavery. It looks like stooping low and bearing up under the heavy burden of other people’s problems, and doing them good even when they think you are doing them harm.
Service is not doing whatsoever your inferiors demand of you. Servant lordship is doing whatsoever God commands of you, which is to own no man anything but to love him.
For isn’t this exactly what Christ has done for us?
Jesus does not cater to our petty and selfish demands. But he does always and in every instance, do what is most good for us.
Jesus gladly and joyfully assumes responsibility for the sins of the whole world, sins that he did not commit. What Moses could not carry for one nation, Jesus picks up and carries for all nations throughout all time. Christ bears on his kingly, priestly, and prophetic shoulders, the weight of the world’s sins.
For this is why he came. “Not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
This is the servant lordship that Jesus wants his disciples to imitate, because they are the foundation for the church, their witness is going to be the beginning of Christ’s everlasting kingdom.
The irony of the disciples jockeying for power is that they are going to receive from Christ even greater authority than they presently aspire to. Jesus has already told them they are going to sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28). And while they presently conceive of those thrones in earthly terms, as ruling like the Gentiles rule, in actuality, their thrones are spiritual and heavenly and everlasting.
Revelation 21:14 describes the New Jerusalem saying, “And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”
Christ is the chief cornerstone, and the apostles are the glorious foundation that the heavenly city shall be built upon. And what do foundations do? They bear weight. What do kings do? They bear the burdens of their people. And it is this bearing of heavy weight that becomes our glory/
I have told you this before, but I’ll tell you again, that in Hebrew the word for heavy and glory is the same word. It’s this word chavod (כָּבוֹד). Gold is chavod, for it is heavy and glorious. When Abraham’s flocks multiply and his possessions increase, he becomes more chavod, more weighty, more wealthy. God is the one who is supremely chavod, which is why we speak of the weight of his glory, and the gravity of his presence.
And this idea of chavod really captures what it means to be a king, what it means to have authority.
It is to have honor married with duty.
It is to have authority married with responsibility.
It is to have weight and distinction married with humble service.
Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus is the brightness of God’s glory. Jesus is God’s chavod.
And so the path to glory, the path to honor and immortality, is always cross before crown, pain before pleasure, humiliation before exaltation.
Two Points of Application
I want to close with two points of application for us.
#1 – Serving others rarely feels glorious, but it is glorious in the eyes of God.
Serving others does not usually feel in the moment like some great heroic act. The kind of service Jesus commands of us, is often the kind of service that goes unappreciated, unseen, and at times can feel very insignificant and even futile. You wash the dishes, so that they can dirty again, so you have to wash them again.
When you are frustrated, or tired, or annoyed by other people’s problems, when it starts to feel heavy, that is a sign that you are exactly where God wants you to be. And he has given you in those people and in their problems, a great opportunity to become chavod.
If you really want to be glorious like God, which all of us should aspire to be, that glory will not come to you apart from difficulty.
So when you are going through a hard season, when you feel the burden upon your shoulders, that weight and sorrow in your heart, receive those trials as God’s gift to you to make you more like Him, to make you shine even as He shines. Ask God to help you wear the crown of thorns with a good attitude.
#2 – When you serve others, remember you are serving the Lord Jesus.
How do you stay motivated to serve thankless sinners? How do you stoop low and wash people’s feet, even when they are spitting in your face and criticizing you?
Jesus says in Matthew 25, when he judges between the sheep and the goats, that inasmuch as you serve others, you are serving the King himself.
Matthew 25:35-40 says, “For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me. 37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink?…etc. 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
So when you are serving fussy children, or your angry husband or your nagging wife, or your unreasonable boss or your irresponsible employees, remember that they are the Lord Jesus. Your service to them is as serving Jesus Christ himself. And what they may not see or appreciate or like, God sees and God appreciates and God shall reward.
This is why the Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6:5-8, “Servants, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ; not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men, knowing that whatever good anyone does, he will receive the same from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free.”
When we begin to see in one another, that we are serving God himself, we can overlook their many faults, we can cover their many sins in love, and owe them nothing but to love them, just as Christ has loved us.
So who has God called you to serve? See in them the Lord Jesus Himself.
Conclusion
When you are faithful in the little things, God makes you a ruler over much. And there comes a point in everyone faithful Christian’s life, when they must die to the gifts God has given them, in order to receive something even greater.
Abraham was given the miraculous gift of a son in Isaac. And then God asks him to give Isaac up. He asks Abraham to die to the gift. And it is that death to the gift, and the passing of that test, that made Abraham into the father of all the faithful. He dies to the gift to become more chavod.
This is the pattern of all the great saints.
1. God promises us a blessing.
2. We wait for it in faith, eventually we receive it.
3. But then God asks for it back because he wants to give us something even greater.
The Christian life is God taking us from one degree of glory to another. But in between each glory, we have to die to what He has already given. We must put everything on the altar again, we must drink the cup, until finally at life’s end, we die for real, but by then we have had plenty of practice in dying, and we know what waits for us on the other side: resurrection and glory.
So die to the gift. Die for your people. Become a priest and king unto God.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.