The Local Christendom Podcast with Aaron Ventura

Sermon: The Rich Young Ruler (Mark 10:17-31)

The Rich Young RulerSunday, November 5th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 10:17-31
17 And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? 18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. 19 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. 20 And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth. 21 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. 22 And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.
23 And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! 24 And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 26 And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? 27 And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.
28 Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee. 29 And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, 30 But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life. 31 But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.
Prayer
Father, we ask now that you would do the impossible, and save us who are very rich in worldly possessions. Lord, you know how attached we are to the things we call ours, when in reality, everything comes from and belongs to You, and just as we entered into this world naked, so also shall we exit this world, unable to bring any earthly thing with us. So teach us now to become truly rich, truly wealthy, and to store up for ourselves treasures in heaven, by treasuring You who are of infinite worth and most to be prized. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
It says in Proverbs 27:5 that, “open rebuke is better than secret love.” King Solomon goes on to say in the next verse that “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.”
In our passage this morning, the Lord Jesus continues to be our faithful friend, for he continues to give us the loving wounds of open rebuke. This middle section of Mark’s gospel could be read as Christ rebuking us into the kingdom. Because God loves us and wants us to freely embrace Him, Jesus continues to cut away at the chains that we have bound ourselves with. Jesus continues to pull down the idols that we have erected in place of He Who Is the one true and living God.
So far Jesus has rebuked us for our vanity and self-conceit, our desire to be great in the eyes of the world. He has rebuked for our infidelity in marriage and our easy divorce laws. Last week he rebuked us forgetting in the way of children coming to him, and this morning he rebukes us for our love of money and worldly possessions.
We remember the context is Jesus teaching us the cost of following him. And he has just told us that if we want to enter the kingdom of God, we must become as little children (even as infants) in how we receive it.
And immediately following this call to become as little children, behold, a young man comes running to him, asking what he must do to inherit eternal life.
Outline
Our text divides neatly into three sections wherein each, Jesus answers a different question:
In verses 17-22, Jesus answers the question, “What shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”
In verses 23-27, Jesus answers the question, “How can the rich be saved?”
In verses 28-31, Jesus answers the question, “What reward will those who forsake all and follow Jesus receive?”
Those are the three questions we will seek to answer in this sermon.
Verse 17
17 And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?
This same scene is recorded also in Matthew and Luke and when we combine all three accounts, we discover that this man is rich, he is young, and he is a ruler.
All three accounts describe him as rich, although Mark withholds that detail from us until verse 22 for dramatic purposes.
Matthew 19:22 tells us that he was young (νεανίσκος). And young in this context means someone in the age range of roughly 24-40 years old. So he is not a teenager but not yet an “elder.”
Luke 18:18 calls him, “a certain ruler.”
So this is a young man of some significance and reputation and wealth. Moreover, as we will see, he is a morally upright and law-abiding ruler, he has kept the second table of the law. He’s the kind of person you probably wouldn’t mind having as your next-door neighbor.
And so this rich young ruler comes running to Jesus, kneels down, shows him respect, and says, “Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”
This is perhaps the single most important question a person could ask, and so we must commend this man for asking it of Jesus. He’s come to the right person.
How does Jesus respond?
Verse 18
18 And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.
This is an interesting question that Jesus responds with, “Why do you call me good?” And as with all of Jesus’ questions he asks not because he does not know, but because there is something he wants us to know. Jesus wants this man to think about why he calls Jesus “good,” and what he means by it. Because embedded in the answer to Jesus’ question, is also the answer to the rich young ruler’s question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” So let’s explore what is embedded here.
Why does this man call Jesus good?
Well in order to call anyone or anything good, you need some standard by which to judge, and where does that standard come from? In the mind of this rich young ruler, Jesus is a “good teacher” just like many other “good human teachers.” He is respectful, he even kneels, but he attributes to Jesus as a mere man the essential goodness that belong exclusively to God.
In other words, he calls Jesus good kind of like the man considers himself good, for as we will see shortly, he has kept the commandments from his youth.
And this is the essence of the rich young ruler’s problem: he doesn’t actually know what goodness is or where it comes from, and therefore he doesn’t know what is good for him.
He calls Jesus good as if man has some goodness apart from God.
The irony of course is that Jesus is God and very goodness itself, and so the man’s words are more true than he even intends (!), but he speaks them to Jesus from a place of false understanding, and therefore Jesus lovingly corrects him.
So the problem is not with calling Jesus a “good teacher,” the problem is with what the man means by that attribution.
And so Jesus says, “there is none good but one, that is, God.”
That is to say, God is what we call “good” absolutely and essentially and supereminently by nature (not relatively or derivatively), for there is no standard of goodness outside of God by which you could judge Him. God is the Supreme Good and nothing else can be called good unless it participates and imitates He-Who-Is-Very-Goodness itself.
Put another way, if God’s goodness is the sun burning at full strength, man’s goodness is as a flickering candle. And even that analogy puts man and God infinitely too close together. For God is the one who gives the sun to be, and as it says in 1 Timothy 6:16, “He alone dwells in light which no man approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see…” That is how good God is, His light is so bright that the sun is as darkness next to him.
This is what Jesus means when he says, “there is none good but one, that is, God.”
Continuing in verse 19, Jesus further exposes the man’s false notion of goodness. He wants the man to see in himself that he does not at present regard God as this supreme and essential good. And so he says…
Verses 19-20
19 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. 20 And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth.
So Jesus summarizes the second table of the law, commandments Five thru Ten, and the man says, “all these have I observed from my youth.”
The glaring omission here is the first table of the law, commandants One thru Four which describe how we are to love God as our highest good.
The first commandment is that we have no other gods before Him.
The second commandment is that we worship no images of Him.
The third commandment is that we hallow and revere His name.
The fourth commandment is that we remember His Sabbath Day.
And so despite this man keeping the externals of the second table of the law, he has not killed anyone, or committed adultery, or even gained his wealth by fraud, etc., he stills lacks one thing. He lacks the goodness necessary to inherit eternal life. He lacks God as His Supreme Good.
Verses 21-22
21 Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. 22 And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.
Note the irony. The man who has “everything,” youth, riches, power, and status, lacks the one thing he most needs, God. And Jesus loves this man enough to tell him how God can be his, how he can inherit eternal life. What must this man do to inherit God’s kingdom?
He must do what every other human being must do, he must have God for his highest good and supreme treasure. And in this instance, because earthly riches are his actual god, and because great possessions are the idol he has fashioned in place of God, all those things must go.
Not because those riches are somehow inherently sinful, but rather because those are the golden shackles keeping him from being actually rich. By not following Jesus, the man has chosen to lock himself in a golden prison, rather than receiving by faith as a little child, a kingdom wherein gold is what they use to pave the streets with.
This is the great danger and tragedy of being rich in this world. You are tempted to settle for lesser goods rather than pursuing and desiring He-Who-Is the Source of All Goodness, He-Who-Is the Ceaseless Fount of all blessing.
It is only the Christian who has God as his highest good that can actually handle and use the good things God gives us, without letting them handle him.
Wealth is a wonderful servant and a terrible master. And the reason the Bible warns us of the deceitfulness of riches is because it is very easy to think that you are ruling your possessions (being a good steward) when in reality your possessions are ruling/stewarding you. That’s a whole other sermon.
Summary: What must this man do to inherit eternal life? He must repent and believe just like everyone else. And Jesus says for him, repentance means the forsaking of all his possessions so that God may be enthroned as the highest good in his heart.
What we have seen throughout this gospel is Jesus simply accommodating and personally applying “repent ye and believe the gospel,” to diverse groups and individuals.
Whatever idols you have erected in your heart in place of God, Jesus has come to knock down. For some it is money and worldly possessions, for others it is sensual pleasure and gratifying the flesh, for others it is their own self-righteousness and conception of themselves. And on and on the list could go.
But whatever you regard as a good higher than God, that you must forsake if you would inherit eternal life. And therefore in principle, we must say with the Apostle Paul, “I count all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil. 3:8).
In other words, were Jesus to say to you what he said to the rich young ruler, “sell everything you have, give to the poor, and follow me,” there must be no hesitancy or sadness in us to do so. And our gut response to that command tells us what is actually in our heart.
And because God loves us, He sometimes causes or permits that we suffer certain losses (whether of health, or possessions, or even loved ones), in order to remind us that this world is not where our hope and treasure lies.
Like Abraham, God wants us to fix our gaze upon a better city, whose builder and maker is God. Christians desire a better country, a heavenly one, where we can enjoy God and His people and His creation with no sin and no suffering and no loss forever!
And when that becomes our hope and the ambition of our hearts, when God becomes our supreme joy, love, and desire, Jesus says that already eternal life has begun in you.
Returning to our text, the disciples watching this scene unfold are astonished.
Verses 23-27
23 And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! 24 And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 26 And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? 27 And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.
How then can a rich man be saved? How then can the wealthiest nation in the history of the world be saved?
Jesus’ answer is that with men, it is not possible. Or as Jesus says in John 6:44, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.”
There is no earthly way for man to move himself to love God more than his stuff. Man is so blind in his sin, that what he thinks is good for him is only that which his various appetites find appealing. After the fall, man lacks the ability to love God as he ought. And therefore, Jesus says, “With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.”
What this means is that unless God supernaturally intervenes, no man will ever be saved. And it is this supernatural intervention from outside of us, that the Bible calls grace.
What is grace? Grace is God’s action in man that leads to salvation.
Grace is one in essence, but it is diverse according to the many effects it brings about in us.
Thus, Scriptures speaks of grace that causes us to be born again (not of our own will but of God’s will), there is grace that justifies us and makes us righteous, there is grace that sanctifies us and unites us to God, there is grace that glorifies us and elevates our nature. There is grace that operates in us apart from our will (like regeneration), and grace that we cooperate with as we work out by charity what God works in.
But the essence of all grace is that, in Jesus’ words, it is not “from or with man,” but rather it is, “from and with God,” and with God all things are possible, even the salvation of the rich.
That is how a rich man can be saved. Only by the grace of God.
Finally, the disciples then wonder, well God’s grace has worked in us to forsake all and follow you, what then shall be our reward?
Verses 28-31
28 Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee. 29 And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, 30 But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life. 31 But many that are first shall be last; and the last first.
There are two kinds of rewards for those who are moved by God’s grace to follow Him.
There are spiritual rewards we receive in this life and spiritual rewards we receive in the next.
In this life, Jesus says that if we have left house, or land, or family for his sake and the gospel’s, we shall receive “now in this time” a hundred-fold return.
For example: If a man has to leave his house to follow Jesus, he will find that the homes of the saints are opened to him. There will be a hundred houses that will be hospitable to him because for a righteous cause he has been made homeless.
We experience echoes of this when we travel to foreign places and stay with Christians we’ve never met before.
Have you ever experienced that feeling of deep spiritual kinship with someone you just met, where that common bond of faith moves them to warmly welcome you into their home and give you food and shelter. Despite many cultural differences, there is a bond of love that unites all Christians as members of Christ’s body.
Likewise, if a man has been disowned by his natural family for following Jesus, they exclude him from their society, Jesus says that whatever he has lost, the Lord will make it up to him. There are friends who stick closer than a brother (Pr. 18:24), and those friends are brothers and sisters and mothers in the church.
Now if you compare these two lists, of things that are given up with the things that are received a hundredfold, you will notice that among the things received, there are two omissions and one addition.
The two omissions are father and wife, and the one addition is persecutions.
The most likely reason for not promising a hundredfold fathers is because in Christ we have one Father in Heaven.
As for not promising a hundredfold wives, well you can imagine why that would be perverse.
We have one Father in Heaven, we have one wife, but in the church, we can have a hundredfold mothers and brothers and sisters and children and lands, with one important addition: persecutions.
In case we had too idealistic or unrealistic expectations for what the church is, Jesus tells us up front that if you follow him, you can expect to be persecuted. And perhaps the reason he sets persecutions next to lands, is because those who bring the gospel to new lands are frequently those who suffer the most persecution.
The Apostle Paul affirms this same reality when he says in 2 Timothy 3:12, “all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.”
So yes, there are great rewards in this life for following Jesus, but the rewards are different than you might expect. And if persecution does not sound like a reward, well remember the spirit of the apostles in Acts 5:41, which says right after they were beaten, “they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.”
What makes the Christian faith so special, is that our God knows the way out of the grave. When they kill us, they further our cause. When they persecute us, they crown us with glory. What evil men intend for evil, God works and intends for our good. And when that kind of God is on your side, you cannot lose. You are free to forsake all, count everything as loss, even your own life, and in so doing you discover the surpassing riches of knowing God in Christ.
Conclusion
Jesus says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
The Lord Jesus did the impossible. And like a camel, that beast of burden, Jesus carried the immeasurable weight of the world’s sins to the cross and paid for them.
Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, and having passed through the eye of death, he came out victorious on the other side.
So what is your highest good? Is it God, or is something lesser? Whatever it is, Jesus requires you to count it as loss and follow him. And if you do,He will carry you through that same eye of death and give you eternal life in the age to come.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sermon: Suffer the Little Children (Mark 10:13-16)

Suffer the Little ChildrenSunday, October 29th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 10:13-16
13 And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. 15 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. 16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.
Prayer
Father, we thank You for sending Your Son into this world to save us. We thank you Lord Christ for lowering yourself and assuming a human nature, being conceived of the Holy Ghost in the virgin Mary, and making yourself small and weak, even as baby in the womb and a nursing infant. We praise You O Holy Trinity for Your condescension so that we might be elevated to sit and reign with You in heavenly places. Make us to become as little children now, for we sit at your feet. Amen.
Introduction
After two hard sermons on adultery, divorce, and remarriage, we pick back up in Mark’s gospel. And although our text this morning is only four verses, there is much instruction that God gives us here.
We remember the context is Jesus teaching his disciples the cost of following him. Every man must pick up his cross and follow Jesus, and if you would enter the kingdom of heaven, you must first be willing to cut off hand, foot, eye, or anything else that might prevent you from hearing the words, “well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:23).
Now because God loves us and wants to give us that commendation, Jesus has been rebuking us so that we can be made worthy of those words.
So far, Jesus has rebuked us for wanting to be great in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world. He has rebuked us for our lusts and for our low view of the marriage covenant. And now he rebukes his disciples again for their low view of children.
Already he has told them that anyone who stumbles a child in the faith, or who “gives offense to these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea” (Mark 9:42).
And so in our passage here, the disciples, as is their custom in Mark’s gospel, continue to make fools of themselves. They continue to act as cautionary tales teaching us what not to do. They are close to Jesus, they are taught by Jesus, but they are still not fully perceiving that He is God in the flesh. And because they are walking by sight, and not by faith, they continue to stumble in the way.
We should also note that it is no accident that immediately following Jesus’ teaching on adultery and divorce, he takes children up into his arms and blesses them. For who else suffers from adultery and divorce like children do? Children are the innocent bystanders; they are the collateral damage of our lusts and unfaithfulness. Children are what many parents sacrifice on the altar of infidelity and selfishness.
When a husband or a wife commits adultery, they are not only sinning against their own body, and sinning against God, and sinning against their spouse, they are also sinning against their children.
And this undermines one of the chief purposes of marriage, which is the raising of godly offspring.
Malachi 2:15 says, “Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.”
Few things undermine and stumble children like having parents who profess faith, and yet contradict that faith by their actions. And when children grow up in hypocritical homes, it should not surprise us when they grow up and want nothing to do with the church or Christianity, or the so-called faith you profess.
It is a grave sin to stumble the children, and so Jesus teaches us in this passage what loving the children ought to look like. So let us now to our exposition.
Verse 13
13 And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them.
Q. How old were these “young children” who were brought to Jesus?
The Greek word for “young children” here is παιδία which could refer to a child that is as old as twelve (like Jairus’s daughter in Mark 5:41-42) or as young as a newborn baby (like Isaac in Gen. 17:12 LXX).
However, we are told explicitly in the parallel passage of Luke 18:16, that these παιδία are infants (βρέφος). Moreover, the fact that they need to be brought/carried to Jesus suggests that these are little ones who cannot walk or do much on their own. They are infants/newborns, perhaps toddlers at the very oldest.
And this is important for us to know because Jesus is going to use them as an analogy for what we must become like if we would enter the kingdom of heaven. And there is a difference between becoming like a twelve-year-old and becoming like an infant. We’ll explore this idea more later on.
Q. Who is bringing these infants to Jesus and why?
We are not told exactly whether it was mothers or fathers or grandparents, but it was likely a mixture of these groups. But we are told the purpose for them bringing their children to Jesus, and that is, “so that he should touch them.”
Matthew says in his parallel, “that he might lay his hands on them and pray” (Matt. 19:13).
And so what these parents or grandparents or caretakers are seeking is a blessing from the Lord Jesus upon their children. They want their children to receive the grace of God and they believe their children can indeed receive that grace from Him even as infants.
Many people today think that children must reach some arbitrary age accountability before they can receive God’s grace and be considered “real Christians.”
Against this error stands numerous passages of Holy Scripture wherein children are called and regarded as saints, as sanctified, as holy, as clean (1 Cor. 7:14), and as inheritors of God’s covenant promises (Acts 2:39). The entire premise of God’s covenant with Abraham is that He will not only be Abraham’s God, He will be God to his children.
God says in Genesis 17:7 says, “I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you.” And because of that promise, Isaac is circumcised on the 8th day.
The children might walk away from the faith, they might break or reject God’s covenant (like Esau), but God promises that He will always keep His side of the covenant towards the children of believers and even through their unfaithfulness will show Himself faithful.
This is the promise in the Old Testament and it continues in the New.
One of the clearest examples of this in the New Testament is Timothy who had a believing Jewish mother but a Greek father (Acts 16:1). Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:15 that “from infancy (βρέφος) thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
So while newborn Timothy was still nursing, and before he could ever read or write or form whole sentences, God says he was being taught the Holy Scriptures from his mother and grandmother (2 Tim. 1:5), “from infancy thou hast known the holy scriptures.”
Likewise, we read in Psalm 22:9, David says, “But You are He who took Me out of the womb; You made Me trust while on My mother’s breasts.”
From infancy, while still nursing, children can be taught to trust God and even become acquainted with the holy scriptures. This is one of the reasons why we want our children to be with us in the worship service. They belong here.
This is why Psalm 8 can declare, “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have ordained strength.” Because God is the giver of grace and He can call, and sanctify, and bless even before children exit the womb.
God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee…” (Jer. 1:5).
This is also why Elizabeth could say to Mary, “For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.” John the Baptist, before he was born, is said to rejoice at the Lord’s coming.
When parents desire God’s grace for their children, they do not seek in vain. For as the Apostle Peter says at Pentecost, “the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39). The arms of Jesus are open to all who seek His blessing. It does not matter how old, or how young, or how far off you might feel from Abraham’s lineage. The promise of God’s covenant is offered to you.
Now despite these many examples of God’s sanctifying and blessing children,Mark tells us that the “disciples rebuked those that brought them.”
Q. Why did they do this?
Perhaps they thought that Jesus was too busy, or too tired, or too important to deal with all these children coming to him. The disciples probably think that they are doing Jesus a favor. “We’ve got more important things to do than minister to children who can’t even understand the sermon. They cry, they fuss, they are a distraction from the real work.” And so the disciples rebuke the parents (or whoever) was bringing these children to Jesus.
How does Jesus respond?
Verse 14
14 But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased (he was indignant), and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.
If you want to make Jesus angry, prevent children from coming to Him. Keep them away from Christian worship. Keep them away from hearing God’s Word. Keep them away by portraying God to them as some wrathful and distant deity who is too holy or too busy to touch them. Do this and Jesus will be made indignant.
Jesus is God in the flesh, and He shows us by His words and physical actions what the eternal and infinite God feels towards children. He is indignant at those who make him less loving than He actually is. He is much displeased with those who think Him unable or indisposed or too busy to give His grace and blessing to infants and toddlers.
Jesus says, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.” And the reason why is because “of such is the kingdom of God.”
What does this mean? In verse 15 he explains.
Verse 15
15 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.
Now there are diverse ways in which Scripture tells us to be like and unlike little children.
For example, in 1 Corinthians 14:20, Paul says, “Brethren, do not be children in understanding; however, in malice be babes, but in understanding be mature.”
So here Paul says, we are not to be like children in that they are ignorant and without understanding, but to be as babies in our malice. That is, just like a newborn baby is not envious of his neighbor or jealous of someone else’s spiritual gifts (like the Corinthians were), so also we should be babies in malice, but mature/grown up in understanding.
Likewise in Hebrews 5:12-14 it says, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.”
So there is a real sense in which we must not remain as nursing infants, drinking only milk, and unskilled in the word of righteousness. Indeed, we must give ourselves wholly to meditating upon God’s Word day and night (as the Psalmist says), and that will grow us into mature men and women.
At the same time, there is another sense in which we must become like infants if we would enter the kingdom. And the quality that Jesus commends for us here is the childlike quality of receiving. “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”
Q. What does it mean to receive the kingdom of God like a little child?
It means you receive God like an infant receives everything. Babies are almost entirely consumers and what they do produce is tears, snot, and dirty diapers. Yes, they are cute (they can produce smiles), but they are utterly helpless and need someone else to do just about everything for them. Babies receive all that is essential to them from outside of them. And Jesus says, that is how every single one of us must become in our relationship to the kingdom.
This quality of receiving is a quality of absolute reliance upon God (elsewhere the Bible calls it faith). Hebrews 11:1 says, “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
When an infant nurses at his mother’s breast, he is receiving by faith in his mother, the substance (the milk) that he hopes and hungers for. And while that faith must be active in that the child must suck/nurse, he does so as one who is absolutely dependent on that milk to live. The infant receives by faith the nourishment he needs.
This is the picture Jesus gives us if we would enter the kingdom. “Of such” as these who nurse upon God like a baby nurses upon his mother, so we must receive by faith the kingdom of heaven.
Q. What exactly is faith?
Faith (properly speaking) is an act of our intellect assenting to Divine truth, at the command of our will, moved by the grace of God. That’s your scholastic definition. And what Jesus presents to us in this scene is an accessible analogy for how faith must operate in us if we would enter heaven. We could break this down into three stages:
1. We start by recognizing that like a little child, we are helpless and will die without God.
2. We feel a certain emptiness in our soul, kind of like a newborn feels hunger, and we cry out to God to feed us.
3. And then, like a parent carries a newborn, and like a mother nurses her child, God carries us and brings us to Himself, and He gives us the milk of His Word.
That is what becoming a Christian is like. Not wanting to have a hungry soul anymore. Not liking that feeling of being empty and hallow inside. And so like a baby you cry out to God in faith, and what happens next?
Verse 16
16 And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.
When you receive the kingdom of God like a little child, God embraces you with a love that cannot be broken. And when you are placed by grace into the arms of Christ, he dotes on you, he draws you close to his bosom, he puts his hand upon your head and speaks blessing over you.
Zephaniah 3:17 says, “The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”
Likewise in Deuteronomy 33:27 it says, “The eternal God is your refuge, And underneath are the everlasting arms.”
This is what it means to be a child of the covenant. It means that God’s arms are forever embracing you, and faith is you embracing Him. God is always hugging his creation, and faith is us freely choosing to hug him back. That is the only way you can enter the kingdom. Jesus says, you must receive it like a little child.
Conclusion
The same arms that embraced these little children would eventually be stretched out on a Roman cross. And the same hands that blessed these little children, would eventually have nails hammered through them. How much does God love the little children? Enough to die for them. Enough to take them up in his arms and bless them on his way Jerusalem to be crucified for them.
Because as cute as they are, children are not inherently good. They are born sinners in Adam, like you and me. And the only way any man, woman, or child can enter the kingdom of God, is if Christ makes satisfaction for our sins. And this he has done, and in proof of that forgiveness, he has risen victorious and ascended to heaven, where He reigns and shall reign forever, making intercession for us as the mediator between God and man.
So become as a child and receive Him, and then you may enter into His joy.

Lesson 2: A Theology of God’s Presence (The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place)

The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy ScriptureLesson 2 – A Theology of God’s PresenceWednesday, October 25th, 2023Christ Covenant Church, Centralia, WA
Prayer
Father, we thank you for this opportunity to contemplate the many ways in which you are present to us. We ask that you would purge us of thoughts unworthy of You, and inspire praise in us for Your love and goodness. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Review of Lesson 1
Before we get into Lesson 2,let us review and refresh our minds with what we studied in Lesson 1. I will begin by restating the twofold goal/purpose for this class:
To become familiar with some of the most important symbols in the Bible, namely the Tabernacle and Temple (and all that is inside them).
To understand what those signs/symbols signify.
In Lesson 1 we looked at the creation week of Genesis 1 and said that the creation week is the foundational pattern and archetype for everything that comes after. Moreover, the telos or purpose of the creation week is: God building a home so that we can live together with Him. This is signified by the language of God “resting” on the seventh day and inviting man to enter into that rest. Rest signifies communion, fellowship, and friendship between Creator and Creature. And rest is what all of God’s works of creation and redemption are pointed towards (see Hebrews 4).
The two key takeaways from Lesson 1 were:
The Tabernacle and Temple are physical models of spiritual realities. They are types/shadows/figures of something more real and more true (Col. 2:16-17, Heb. 9:23-24, Heb. 10:1).
The Tabernacle and Temple are the places where God makes His special presence to dwell.
As it says in Deuteronomy 16:11 of the Tabernacle, it is “the place which the Lord thy God hath chosen to place his name there.”
Likewise in 1 Kings 8:2 it says of the Temple, “My name shall be there.”
Introduction
If the whole point of these sacred structures is to teach us something about God’s presence, the next question we should be asking (if we are good theologians) is: If God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, then in what sense is God said to be in the tabernacle, or in the holy place, or inside of us? What does it even mean for God to dwell with us or in us? How do we do justice to all that Holy Scripture makes us to say about God, in that He is both everywhere (omnipresent), and yet in some places (like the Tabernacle/Temple) in some other way? Or as the New Testament says, we are in Christ and Christ is in us, what does that even mean?
It is kinds of questions that we are going to meditate upon and try to answer over the new few lessons, but we begin this evening with a crash course in how to do theology. That is, I want to walk you through the process of how good theologians arrive at truth based upon divine revelation.
We could summarize the work of a theology in the famous maxim, “faith seeking understanding.”
That is, by faith we believe what God says simply because God says it (He is supremely trustworthy, our ultimate authority and therefore He gives us maximum certitude). And then because God said it, our will is determined to hold tightly to the truth (we believe and confess, we become Christians!). And then from that position of faith (already knowing what is true because God says so), we start to ask questions and exercise our reason in the light of faith, and we do the hard intellectual work of trying to understand the truths we already believe.
That is ultimately what theology is. Faith seeking to understand.
One example of this is that we believe that God is Trinity because Scripture tells us God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But exactly how God is Trinity, and in what sense God is three and one, takes enormous amounts of difficult intellectual work to grasp. So by faith we believe God is Trinity, and indeed we are not Christians unless we believe that truth. And then the work of theology is to achieve the diverse causes of these truths (formal, final, efficient, etc.). In theology we are trying to get to the formal explanation for the truths we confess.
So for us who are studying God’s presence in the tabernacle and temple, we take Scripture as our point of departure, and try to harmonize and distill everything that Scripture says about God and bring it to bear on one question before us: In what sense (or senses) can we say that God is present?
If you were to read your whole Bible with that question in mind, you would come to the conclusion that there are basically three senses in which God is said to be present.
1. God is present in every reality as giving them being (efficient cause). We call this “Common Presence.”
2. God is present in a special way by grace in believers. We call this “Special Presence.”
3. God is wholly present in Christ. We call this the “Hypostatic Union.”
So there is Common Presence, Special Presence, and God’s Presence in Christ, and within these three headings/buckets, we can adequately deal with every Bible verse about God’s presence. There might be subdivisions within these three headings, but for all intents and purposes those are the three ways in which God is said to be present in Holy Scripture.
Now before we try to understand these three kinds of presence (which we’ll unpack in future lessons), let me first give you proof texts for each. We’ve already read some passage that tell us God is present in the tabernacle and temple. But consider those passages in light of these other ones and think about how you would bucket/heading God’s presence in the tabernacle falls under.
Of God’s Common Presence
Acts 17:24-28 says, “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being…”
Isaiah 26:12 says, “Lord, You will establish peace for us, For You have also done all our works in us.”
Of God’s Special Presence in Believers
Romans 8:9-11 says, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. 10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
John 14:20, 23 says, “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” And  “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”
Of God’s Presence in Christ
Colossians 2:9 says, “For in him [Christ] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”
John 1:14 says, “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.”
Question: If those are the three ways in which God is said to be present, under which heading should we place God’s presence in the temple or tabernacle?
If God is present everywhere insofar as He causes them to be, we can say that God is present in the tabernacle and temple, just like He is present everywhere else. Of course, God is present there as efficient cause, but that doesn’t give us any insight into the sense of Scripture when it says that “God’s name is there.”
Upon further reflection, we discover that God’s presence in the tabernacle/temple is a sign of God’s future presence in Christ (the Incarnation) AND God’s special presence by grace in believers (our union with Christ). And it is this insight which we must keep before us as we meditate on these structures. There is a two-fold signification in these structures, they are shadows of the substance that is Christ and The Church.
This is why both Christ and believers are called temples of the Holy Spirit.
John 2:19-21 says, “Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 21 But he spake of the temple of his body.”
1 Corinthians 3:16-18 says, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? 17 If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.”
Next Time
In our next lesson, we will work from the ground up to understand these different ways in which God is present. We will consider what it means to say that God is far from us or close to us, etc.

Sermon: On Divorce & Remarriage (1 Corinthians 7:8-24)

On Divorce & RemarriageSunday, October 22nd, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
1 Corinthians 7:8-24
8 I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. 9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn. 10 And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: 11 But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife. 12 But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. 13 And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. 15 But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace. 16 For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife? 17 But as God hath distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every one, so let him walk. And so ordain I in all churches. 18 Is any man called being circumcised? let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised. 19 Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God. 20 Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called. 21 Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. 22 For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant. 23 Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men. 24 Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for your patience with our slowness to understand. We thank you all the more for your mercy in forgiving us when we disobey what we do understand. And now as we consider these difficult doctrines of divorce and remarriage, we ask for Your divine light to give us understanding, and we ask for Your divine love, to move us to obedience. We ask all this in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Introduction
Last week we studied Jesus’ teaching on adultery and divorce, and because divorce is so common in our society, I wanted to dedicate a second sermon to this topic and address some of the common questions that arise in the aftermath of adultery and divorce. There are two questions I want to answer in this sermon that flow from Jesus’ teaching in the gospels, and they are:
What is a Christian to do when their spouse divorces them?
Under what conditions is a Christian allowed to remarry?
Laying the Groundwork
Before we answer these difficult questions, we need to review and remind ourselves what marriage is, and what divorce is. So, let’s briefly define our terms according to Scripture.
What is marriage?
According to Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19:4-9 and Mark 10:1-12, we can say that a lawful marriage is a divinely instituted one-flesh union between one man and one woman for life.”
Jesus says in Mark 10:6-9, “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. [quoting Gen. 1:27] 7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; 8 And they two shall be one flesh: so then they are no more two, but one flesh. [quoting Gen. 2:24] 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
So a lawful marriage is God joining together one man and one woman into a lifelong covenantal bond. And this marital covenant is the analogy that God uses for His special relationship to His people in both old and new testaments.
We find elsewhere in Scripture what the duties of marriage are, and who can lawfully swear those marital vows, but for our intents and purposes we will set those questions aside since that is an entire sermon series in itself.
For our purposes, what we need to know is what constitutes a biblically lawful marriage, and then anything that deviates from that pattern falls into various categories of either improper, or unlawful, or adulterous marriages.
This is further complicated by the fact there are different civil laws that govern and define marriage (depending on where and when you live), and when sorting through the baggage, this needs to be factored in as well. But again, for our purposes, we will set that discussion aside.
There is another important distinction we should make here, and that is between what constitutes a biblically lawful marriage for unbelievers, versus a lawful marriage for Christians.
Marriage is a creational ordinance, not an exclusively Christian institution, and therefore an unbeliever can lawfully and truly marry another unbeliever. And when two unbelievers marry, God really unites them and the two become one flesh. There’s nothing inherently adulterous or unlawful about two unbelievers marrying.Christians on the other hand, are only allowed to marry “in the Lord” (as Paul says in 1 Cor. 7:39), and therefore it would be unlawful for us to marry “outside the Lord,” that is, to marry an unbeliever. As Christians we have this additional regulation.
When Christians disobey in this regard, it creates all kinds of very serious problems, because although sinful and contrary to God’s law, to marry an unbeliever is still to really marry. Intermarriage with unbelievers is forbidden because it is a joining together into a one-flesh union what ought not be united. Scriptures gives us numerous cautionary tales to warn us of intermarrying with unbelievers (Deut. 7:3-4, Ezra 9-10, the example of Solomon, etc.).
So for Christians, a marriage is only biblically lawful when we marry a fellow brother or sister in Christ. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?”Summary: What is marriage? Marriage is a divinely instituted one-flesh union between one man and one woman for life.”
If that is marriage, what then is divorce?
What is divorce?
Divorce is the dissolution of the marriage covenant and one-flesh union that God has instituted. Divorce we could say is a kind of covenantal death.
Furthermore, a divorce can be either lawful or unlawful, depending upon the grounds for which the divorce was sued out.
According to Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:9, there is only one lawful ground for divorce, and that is fornication (porneia). And in this context, fornication is any sexual sin that breaks the one-flesh union by being physically joined to another (this would include the crimes of adultery, homosexuality, incest, bestiality, etc.).
Matthew 19:9 says, “And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery…”
All other divorces that do not have fornication as their grounds, is considered an unlawful and adulterous divorce. And that goes for believers and unbelievers alike.
With all that fresh in our mind, let us proceed to answer our first question.
#1 – What is a Christian to do when their spouse divorces them?
To answer this, we must consider our text of 1 Corinthians 7.
In our passage, Paul addresses three different categories or situations:
In verses 8-9, he addresses the unmarried and widows.
In verses 10-11, he addresses the believer who is married to a fellow believer.
In verses 12-24, he addresses the believer who is married to an unbeliever.
And so in this chapter, we have instructions for just about any situation that a believer might find themselves in.
So what is a Christian to do when their spouse divorces them?
We’ll consider this under two scenarios, first when a believe is divorced by a fellow believer (Scenario A), and second, when a believer is divorced by an unbeliever (Scenario B).
Verses 10-11 – Scenario A (An Unlawful Divorce Between Believers)
10 And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: 11 But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.
First, we should note that when Paul says, that this is something “I command, yet not I, but the Lord,” he is emphasizing that what he commands here is nothing else than what the Lord Jesus taught in the gospels. So everything here in verses 10-11 is not new, it is just applying what we heard from Jesus in Mark 10:1-12.
What does the Lord Jesus command?
First, the Lord Jesus commands that believers must not divorce one another. The one exception is when fornication has occurred, and even then, divorce is merely permitted not required.
Paul says, “Let not the wife depart from her husband…and let not the husband put away his wife.”
And I should note here that some translations say, “let not a wife separate from her husband,” and that word separate/depart (χωρίζω),is not talking about our modern concept of a legal separation distinct from divorce, separation in this context is itself divorce.
So that’s the first command: believers are not to divorce one another (with the one exception being that it is permitted on the grounds of fornication).
However, God knows that Christians are going to disobey this command and that there will be unlawful divorces amongst believers, and so he tells us what is required when a believer is unlawfully divorced, it says in verse 11, “let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband.”
In the event that a believer unlawfully divorces another believer, both husband and wife are required to remain unmarried or be reconciled to one another. Neither party is free to remarry someone else because that would be to commit adultery (as Jesus says in Matt. 5:32, Luke 16:18, etc.).
So although they are really divorced (and we must not say things like “they’re still married in God’s eyes,” no, they are truly divorced), because the grounds of the divorce was unlawful, believers are duty bound to remain unmarried or be reconciled to one another. Those are their only two options.
The duty of the offending spouse is to confess, repent, and seek reconciliation.
The duty of the offended spouse is to forgive and go through the reconciliation process. As Paul will say later in verse 15, “God hath called us to peace.”
So to summarize: when an unlawful divorce occurs between believers, both husband and wife, are required to remain unmarried or seek reconciliation, anything else is adultery.
The Problem of The Unrepentant Believing Spouse
Now what if you are a believer, and your spouse unlawfully divorces you, and refuses to repent, they are unwilling to be reconciled, what then?
This is where the church must be involved and discipline the unrepentant person, (and in a godly society so also the civil magistrate). In an ideal situation that discipline would bring about one of two outcomes. Either:
1) The person repents and is restored (eventually remarried) to their husband/wife. Or…
2) The person is excommunicated from the church, declared an unbeliever, and the innocent party (the believing spouse), is then free to remarry.
What makes these situations so difficult is that many churches have no membership and no church discipline. So an unrepentant spouse might just switch churches or hideout in a church that will never discipline them, and continue to claim to be a believer (this really happens!). And then the innocent party is stuck, or worse, left to their own judgment to know “am I free to remarry or not? Or would I be committing adultery to do so?” Great danger and great sin (adultery!) can result from churches/pastors/elders failing to exercise discipline here.
This is sadly far too frequent of an occurrence, and therefore calls for great wisdom amongst the churches who do exercise discipline.
As an aside, this is one of the reasons why church membership is commanded by God and assumed in the New Testament. Because without it, there is no real accountability. There is no way to formally adjudicate or excommunicate someone who was never actually a member of a local church.
So in the case where believers unlawfully divorce, and then one of the parties apostatizes and is excommunicated, the innocent party is no longer bound, and is free to remarry. Their situation would fall under the rules Paul gives in the next section, verses 12-24. And we’ll talk more about this when we answer Question 2.
What about Scenario B, when a believer is divorced by an unbeliever, what is a Christian to do?
Verses 12-15 – Scenario B (A Believer Is Divorced By An Unbeliever)
12 But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. 13 And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. 15 But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.
Paul begins by saying that unlike verses 10-11 which are things the Lord Jesus commanded in the gospels, here is a situation that Jesus never publicly addressed. And so Paul speaks with divine authority as to what God commands. This is by no means a lessening of divine authority for Paul to say, “to the rest speak I, not the Lord.” He’s referring to the Lord Jesus in his earthly ministry.
The situation here is that of a spiritually mixed marriage. Perhaps two unbelievers got married, one of them gets converted, but the otheris still an unbeliever. Since that is now an “unequal yoke,” the Corinthians want to know, should the believer divorce their unbelieving spouse? In the context here it appears the Corinthian were thinking perhaps they should get divorced for the sake of the children.
As pious as such a divorce might seem, Paul’s answer to this question is a resounding “No!”
“If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. 13 And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.”
In cases of mixed marriages, the condition is, so long as the unbeliever is willing to live with the believer in matrimony, a believer must not divorce their unbelieving spouse.
Paul says further that we should not be worried that the unbelieving spouse might make our children unclean (lit. unwashed/unbaptized), but that children of just one believing parent are considered holy. That is, they are included in God’s covenant because God sanctifies the unbelieving spouse for the child’s sake, “now they are holy.”
Moreover, he states that God might use you as the instrument by which your unbelieving spouse is saved. And there are many who can attest to God doing this in the life, converting them through the influence of their spouse.
So as long as our unbelieving spouse is willing to live with us, we are forbidden to divorce them and should rather be praying and seeking to win them by our holy, loving, and respectful conduct.
And if that applies for marriages with unbelievers, how much more should be we holy, loving, and respectful towards our believing spouse!?
Continuing in verse 15, Paul then answers our original question about divorce when he says, “But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.”
So if you are a believer, and your unbelieving spouse is unwilling to live with you, God says, then let them divorce you. Consent to the divorce. Don’t try to stop them.
In such cases, you are no longer bound to remain unmarried or seek to be reconciled (as in Scenario A) because they are not a believer.
So those are the two scenarios Paul gives us to answer our first question, What is a Christian to do when their spouse divorces them? We proceed now to our second question which is…
#2 – Under what conditions is a Christian allowed to remarry?
We’ve already touched on this a little bit, but let’s walk through a few possible scenarios a Christian might find themselves in. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I’ve chosen four of the more common scenarios people find themselves in. We’ll start with the easiest scenario and proceed to the more difficult ones.
Scenario 1 – When Our Spouse Has Died
The easiest scenario is that in which our spouse has died (I will speak here in the first common plural “we/our” for sake of communication). Paul addresses this in verses 8-9, and also in verse 39 of this same chapter.
8 I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. 9 But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn…39 The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.
The principle here is that if you are an older widow or widower, and have the gift of sexual continence (you aren’t burning with desire), then it’s good to remain in that unmarried state and serve the Lord.
However, if you are a younger widow, or don’t have the gift of sexual contentment, then the best option for you is to remarry.
Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:14, “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully.”
So the death of a spouse frees us to be remarried (only in the Lord), but we must wisely consider factors like our own age and stage of life, our sexual continence and desires, and also the signs of the times. In some seasons of great persecution such as the Corinthians were living through (he speak of a “present distress” in 1 Cor. 7:26), marriage could be the cause of many earthly troubles, and Paul would spare them that.
Whatever the case, the death of spouse is the end of the marriage covenant, and believers are free to remarry a fellow believer after that.
A second scenario that is also somewhat easy to answer is…
Scenario 2 – When Our Spouse Divorces Us and Remarries Someone Else
Christians are free to remarry when our spouse has divorced us and remarried someone else. This rule applies whether the divorce was lawful or unlawful, and it falls under the law of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 which we studied last week.
I will not read again that whole text, but to summarize, it states that a divorced woman who remarries another man, is not allowed to remarry her first husband, even if her second husband dies. God says, “that is an abomination before the Lord.”
So once there has been a second marriage by our divorced former spouse, the Christian is free to remarry in the Lord. Any hope or obligation for reconciliation is removed, and the prohibition of Deuteronomy 24 now applies.
Scenario 3 – When Our Spouse Has Committed Adultery and We Lawfully Divorce Them
Here, things get more difficult because a lot depends upon the spiritual state of the spouse who committed adultery. In principle, a lawful divorce means a Christian is free to remarry someone else in the Lord.
However, just because something is lawful, does not make it wise. And therefore, in these situations, the elders should provide wise counsel as to how to proceed. If there is any hope of the adulterous spouse repenting, then in most cases it would be best to wait in that unmarried state and prayerfully pursue reconciliation (or not get a divorce in the first place).
But if the adulterous spouse remains unrepentant, or altogether untrustworthy and unsuitable to ever be a faithful husband/wife again, then it is no sin to remarry someone else. But great wisdom and prudence is needed here, you should talk to the elders and get their advice.
Scenario 4 – When Our Spouse Has Abandoned Us but Still Professes Faith
Finally, we come to our last and most difficult scenario (at least of the ones we have time to cover), and that is when our spouse has either unlawfully divorced us, or has simply abandoned us without a divorce, and still professes to be a believer. This is akin to that scenario that we discussed earlier, and which Paul addresses in verses 10-11, where two believers are unlawfully divorced and must remain unmarried or be reconciled.
In this case, the offended/innocent party is only allowed to remarry after an orderly process of church discipline has taken place (per Matthew 18), and the church has declared you free to remarry.
The principle here is to be patient and prayerful, and to allow the process of church discipline to play out. The hope should be that the professing believer truly repents and returns to the marriage. But in the sad cases where that does not happen, and with the consent and judgment of the church, the innocent party may be granted the freedom to divorce and remarry according to God’s law.
Conclusion
I hope you can see (if you didn’t already) that sin always makes life complicated. And that Jesus’ words are true that divorces only ever happen because of someone’s hardness of heart. At the same time, we should take heart that adultery does not have to be the end of our marriage, especially amongst believers. Although fornication is a lawful ground for believers to divorce, it is by no means required, and should only ever be a last resort after every effort to reconcile has failed.
And when divorce does happen, that does not mean the end of our happiness. We serve a God who raises the dead, who can resurrect and renew dead relationships, and therefore we can trust him to be faithful even when we have been faithless, for as it says in 2 Timothy 2:13, “He cannot deny Himself.”
The story of Scripture is that of God marrying a people, they commit adultery, he divorces them, and then he dies to forgive their sins.
Christ died to make an adulterous and divorced people into a holy and spotless bride. And if Christ has done this for you, he can certainly work for good whatever sinful situation you are entangled in.
Jesus is the only hope for our marriages, and he is the only hope for those who are divorced, or widowed, or unmarried.
Jesus is the God of hope. As Paul says in Romans 15:13, “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.” To that we say, “Amen and Amen.” Let us pray.

Sermon: On Adultery & Divorce (Mark 10:1-12)

On Adultery & DivorceSunday, October 15th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 10:1-12
And he arose from thence, and cometh into the coasts of Judaea by the farther side of Jordan: and the people resort unto him again; and, as he was wont, he taught them again. 2 And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him. 3 And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you? 4 And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. 5 And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. 6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. 7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; 8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 10 And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. 11 And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. 12 And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.
Prayer
Father, Your Word is a sword that cuts to the heart. And when we consider the high standards of Your Law, and the loose and low standards of ourselves, we are cut, we are convicted, we are laid low. And so we cling to the promise that where sin has abounded, grace can abound all the more. And so we ask for that grace now, in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
According to the 2020 US Census, 23% of children in the United States live in a single-parent household. That 23%, which represents 18.5 million children (for reference the total population of Washington State is just 7.7 million) is higher than any other nation in the world. The UK is a close second to us at 21%, and the world average is way down at 7%. So in America right now, almost 1 out of every 4 children is growing up without both father and mother in the home.
There are many factors that have contributed to this destruction of the family, but chief among our sins are divorce and sex outside of marriage.
In America the divorce rate is roughly 44%, and 50% of second marriages also end in divorce.
As for sex outside of marriage (what the Bible calls fornication), studies have shown that by the age of 44, 95% of Americans have had sex outside of marriage. 95%!
So if you make it to your wedding night as a virgin, you are now in a small minority of the American population. And if you make it to the age of 44 without having sex outside of marriage, you are in an even smaller minority, 5% of the entire population.
These numbers are staggering, and they reveal to us why it is that places like Planned Parenthood are still in business.
Because as Jesus said, we are an evil and adulterous generation. We are a nation of fornicators, murderers, and covenant breakers, and unless we repent (unless we make confession and truly renounce this sexual anarchy), we will die in our sins.
Our text this morning is a very sober and pointed rejection of American views (and laws) regarding marriage and divorce. Whereas our nation has embraced no-fault divorce, and by and large has decriminalized adultery (adultery is not a crime in Washington state, and in that so called conservative state of Idaho, it was decriminalized last year), the law of God remains unchanged. And no matter how creative ancient or modern Pharisees might be, Jesus upholds and reaffirms what Scripture has always taught. And it is to that teaching that we turn now.
Context
Remember the context of these verses is Jesus teaching his disciples what it means to follow Him. He has already said that “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Mark 8:34). And while we might pay lip service to that idea of denying ourselves, Jesus is not playing around. And he begins to poke us and prod us in all the places that we are not actually following him.
Last week, Jesus rebuked his disciples for wanting to be great in the eyes of the world. He told them that if they want to enter the kingdom of heaven, they must become as children. He said that if we want to avoid the eternal punishment of hell, then we must be willing to cut off hand, foot, and eye, or anything else that causes us to sin.
In the next section, he will rebuke for us our low view of children and their ability to come to Him, but before that, he is going to rebuke us for our low views of marriage and the marriage covenant.
So, by all means, let us receive this rebuke.
Verse 1
And he arose from thence, and cometh into the coasts of Judaea by the farther side of Jordan: and the people resort unto him again; and, as he was wont, he taught them again.
Jesus is still a very popular teacher, crowds continue to follow him, and we are told that he is now in the coasts of Judea by the farther side of the Jordan. This is an important detail because if we trace Jesus’ journey, we see that he has now entered into the territory of Herod Antipas.
Back in Mark 6 we saw that Herod Antipas had put John the Baptist to death, under pressure from his wife Herodias, and do you remember the reason why Herodias did not like John the Baptist?
Mark 6:18 says, “For John had said unto Herod, It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife.”
Herodias (Herod’s wife) had committed adultery, she had unlawfully divorced her first husband Phillip, and was now living in an adulterous marriage with Herod.And because Phillip was Herod’s half-brother, this was also an incestuous marriage as well.
So John the Baptist was executed because he preached the righteous law of God to Herod. No matter what the divorce and remarriage laws were in that region, John declared God’s unchangeable moral law to him. And when God’s law and man’s law come into conflict the rule for the Christian is, “We must obey God, rather than man.”
And so we see in verse 2, that the Pharisees are going to try to use this change in location/jurisdiction to their advantage. If they can get Jesus to run afoul of Herod like John did (by taking a strong stance against Herod’s marriage), perhaps Herod will kill him too. Or if they can get Jesus to capitulate in his views of marriage to save his skin, they can discredit him as a prophet. Either way, it’s a win-win for them, or so they hope.
Verse 2
2 And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him.
Mark tells us up front that this was not an honest question, but rather a malicious attempt to entrap Jesus. Although it is possible to ask this question honestly, it is a dangerous question to ask. What are the motives behind such a question?
The Pharisees ask, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife?” And if you know the law of God well, you know this is a trick question.
If Jesus answers with a simple “No,” they will say He has contradicted the Law of God which clearly regulates divorce (Deut. 24:1-4).
If Jesus answers with a simple, “Yes,” they will say He is a libertine, and has relaxed the law of God, making him a false prophet.
This is one of those questions that is so nuanced in its answer, that attempting to give an immediate response, on the spot, with a hostile interlocutor, and the crowd watching is no easy task. How many of us would stumble if this same question were placed before us?
And thus we see in the next verse the genius and wisdom of Jesus Christ in how he answers this question.
Verse 3
And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses command you?
When someone asks an honest question in order to learn, and we know the answer, we should tell them the truth right away.
But what is the best response to those who ask us questions in order to then slander us? How do you answer a dishonest question?
The best response according to Jesus’ example, is to make them to say what their own position is, and press them to be consistent (or to to show themselves inconsistent) with whatever authority they claim to abide by.
And so to do this Jesus responds with a question, What did Moses command you?
This also is a kind of trick question from Jesus, because Moses never commanded divorce. And Jesus is going to make them acknowledge this.
Verse 4
And they said, Moses suffered to write a bill of divorcement, and to put her away.
This word suffer (ἐπιτρέπω) means to allow or permit. So they grant Jesus point that there is no positive command in the law for a man to divorce his wife. There is only this regulation in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 where a woman is prevented from remarrying her first husband, after a second marriage. And this was hotly debate passage in the 1st century and even until today.
Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (ESV) says, “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who took her to be his wife, then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the Lord. And you shall not bring sin upon the land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”
This is tough text, and the Jews themselves disagreed over its interpretation.
But by choosing this as their proof text, the Pharisees have unknowingly done two things (they’ve fallen into the trap they set for Jesus):
1. By bringing this forward as their proof text, they convict themselves as being adulterers at heart.By choosing Deuteronomy 24 as their proof text for divorce, they reveal their own interpretation of it, which is that God’s regulation of an already sinful circumstance is actually a license to commit that sin. Corrupt hearts produce corrupt interpretation of Scripture.
2. They fail to actually answer Jesus’ question. Because what did Moses command? There are many other texts they could have brought forth and did not. And so Jesus is going to answer his own question in the following verses.
Verses 5-9
5 And Jesus answered and said unto them, For the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. 6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. 7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; 8 And they two shall be one flesh: so then they are no more two, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
What does Jesus do? First, Jesus refutes their corruption of Deuteronomy 24. He explains that it is only because of the hardness of their hearts that Godgave them that command.
We see something similar with how God regulates polygamy. Just because God commands that if a man takes a second wife, he must not diminish the food, clothing, and marriage duty of his first wife (Ex. 21:10), does not mean he condones or approves of getting a second wife. The law is simply mitigating the bad effects of an already sinful situation.
Likewise with slavery. Just because God regulates how and when certain slaves are to be released, does not mean we should all become slave traders.
And yet this is exactly what the Pharisees were doing, taking the regulation of divorce in Deuteronomy 24, and turning it into a justification for divorce.
Jesus’ response is that this precept was only given because of the hardness of their hearts. In other words, if husbands and wives had soft hearts, there would never be an occasion for divorce, and therefore there would be no need for God to regulate it in His Word.
So having refuted their corruption of God’s law, Jesus then proceeds to set before them what God has always required. And the two witnesses he brings forth are Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24.
Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
Genesis 2:24 says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
With these two quotations, Jesus reaffirms that marriage is a Divine institution. And in marriage one man and one woman are united in a one-flesh union for life. Therefore, what God has brought together in marriage, no man is to break apart.
This teaching comes as a surprise to the disciples who ask Jesus about it later.
In Matthew’s version of this same scene the disciples say, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry” (Matt. 19:10).
So the disciples feel that if fornication (πορνεία) is the only lawful grounds wherein a divorce might be permitted (as Jesus teaches in Matt. 19:9) then it’s better to just stay single.
They rightly recognize the seriousness of Jesus teaching about what happens in marriage. God brings man and woman together, and therefore nothing should break it apart.
Like many of us, the disciples have imbibed their evil generation’s ideas about easy divorce and remarriage. And so it is a shock to the system to hear Jesus restating this creational command and applying it as he does.
In verses 10-12 the disciples ask Jesus about this and receive additional instruction about constitutes adultery.
Verses 10-12
10 And in the house his disciples asked him again of the same matter. 11 And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. 12 And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.
Here, Jesus teaches that an unlawful divorce is itself adultery, a breaking of the seventh commandment.
An unlawful divorce is any divorce that takes place on grounds other than fornication (πορνεία).
Jesus says in Matthew 19:9, “And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.”
So according to Jesus, any unlawful divorce is itself an act of adultery, and under the law of God, adultery is considered a capital offense, it can warrant the death penalty.
Leviticus 20:10 says, “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”
Deuteronomy 22:22 says, “If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.”
So whereas 1st century Jews (and 21st century Americans) think of adultery only in terms of a married person having sex outside of marriage, Jesus clarifies that an unlawful divorce, such as the divorces the Pharisees were seeking to justify, those also constitute adultery.
In both cases, the man or the woman is breaking the one flesh union that God made, either by joining their bodies to someone who is not their spouse, or by severing their spouse from themselves by an unlawfully grounded divorce.
Jesus says, unlawful divorce is adultery, and therefore as with adultery, the adulterer and the adulteress deserve to die. Under the law of God, these are not merely venial sins that can be forgiven at the altar, they are criminal acts that deserve criminal punishment.
Various Exhortations
So that’s the exposition of our text. And these are hard words for an adulterous generation to hear. Next week I am going to give a second/extra sermon this topic of divorce and remarriage, but I want to close with some practical applications for a few different groups of people.
First, to the young and unmarried who hope to be married one day:
You are growing up in a world that has normalized what God has criminalized. Whether that be sodomy, homosexuality, abortion, divorce, or adultery, you are living in a lawless culture that is weighed down by bloodguilt.
And so heed the words of 1 John 2:15-16 which says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”
If you would make it to your wedding day as a pure and holy man or woman, you will bring great honor to God and be a great blessing to your spouse. And so pursue the purity, chastity, and holiness that God requires all of us to pursue.
As Paul says to Timothy, “Flee youthful lusts: but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:22).
Second, to those are presently married:
Keep your marriage vows. Remember what you swore to do before the Lord and witnesses.
Remember the words of Hebrews 13:4, “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.”
Before a man or a woman ever commits the physical act of adultery, they have already committed countless acts of adultery of the heart. And so confess those sins of your imagination, those adulteries of the heart, to the Lord (kill the sin there). And then plead with Him to keep you from temptation and the evil one.
Third, to those who have committed adultery, or who are presently entangled in an adulterous marriage:
Sin makes life complicated. And there are times when you simply cannot unscramble the egg. But God has given us in His Word clear directions for how to deal with sin. Next week I will address this in greater detail.
But for now, the place to start is with confession and true repentance. If you have committed adultery, you can thank God that although you deserve to die, you are still living. And it just so happens that there is a Psalm written by a fellow adulterer and murderer that can guide you in your repentance. It’s one we recite a portion of every Sunday, that is Psalm 51.
We read in the heading it says, “A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”
For David, because he repented, his adultery was forgiven, God put away his sin so that he was not executed, but for the rest of his life he suffered the consequences of that sin, and those consequences were devastating, children died, civil war ensued, and David lost the moral authority he once had.
And so if you have committed adultery, know that God can forgive your sins, and use Psalm 51 as a guide to show you how to repent.
And second, come and talk to myself or one of the elders, if you need help knowing what to do next.
There are few issues more difficult than untangling unlawful and adulterous marriages, but with God’s help, you can live before Him with a good and clear conscience. God has not left us without instructions in this area, but it takes great wisdom and prudence to apply His Word to each situation. And that is our job as your elders.
Conclusion
Jesus died for sinners. He did not come for the healthy, he came for the sick. And the whole story of Scripture is God making a way for his adulterous/idolatrous people, to be reunited to Him as a spotless bride. And so whatever mess you are in, Christ commands you to give that mess to him. He is anxious to forgive you, he is bursting with love for you, and if you come to him with a broken and contrite spirit, he will by no means cast you out.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Lesson 1 - Introduction (The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place)

The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy ScriptureLesson 1 – IntroductionWednesday, October 11th, 2023Christ Covenant Church, Centralia, WA
Prayer
Most Holy God, and Author of our being, open now the eyes of our understanding, that we might behold wondrous things from Your Law. Give us Your Holy Spirit, who is the Interpreter of truth, for we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
This evening I want to begin a new series with you that I have entitled, The Architecture of Reality: Sacred Time & Sacred Place in Holy Scripture. The goal or final cause of this series is twofold:
I want you to become familiar with some of the most important symbols in the Bible, and
I want you to understand what those signs/symbols signify. To not just stop and look at the sign itself, but to see through the sign into the reality that God intends.
As an aside, learning to do this is an exercise in how to read Holy Scripture, wherein God not only makes words to signify things, but things to signify other things.
Overview of Material
In order to do this, we are going to focus on the literal architecture and furniture of the Tabernacle and Temple, and then later at the Hebrew calendar. These two creaturely structures of divinely organized time and divinely organized space are rich with spiritual meaning. And by reflecting on these two basic structures, what I am calling sacred time and sacred place, we are taught many things about Christ, the Church, salvation, and even how the human person can come to know God.
So this series will take us a good year or more to work through, and by the end of it, my hope is that you will all know these structures like you know your own home. That you will be able to close your eyes, and walk through the Tabernacle, or walk through the Temple, and experience the joy of Scripture coming to life, or more accurately, the joy of you coming alive to Divine reality. Those are high hopes and ambitions, but by God’s grace we can ascend.
With that, let me give you the biblical foundations for attempting such a task.
Q. Why study the architecture and furniture and calendar of the Old Testament?
Short Answer:
1) Because large portions of Scripture are dedicated to describing these things in great detail (Exodus 25-40, Leviticus, Numbers, 1 Kings 6-8, Ezekiel 40-48, etc.), and “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16).
2) Because these are all shadows of the substance that is Christ and the Church. If the gospel was a literal physical building, it would look like the tabernacle and temple.
In proof of this second reason let me give you some examples.
Colossians 2:16-17 says, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”
So the dietary laws in Leviticus, the various feasts and sabbaths that God commanded them to observe, The Apostle Paul says “are a shadow of things to come; but the body (σῶμα) is of Christ.”
Likewise, it says in Hebrews 10:1, “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image (εἰκών) of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.”
Here we are told the sacrifices of the law were a shadow, and not the very image or substance that is Christ’s once for all sacrifice.
We see this same principle throughout the book of Hebrews. Hebrews 9:23-24 says regarding the sprinkling of the tabernacle with blood, “It was therefore necessary that the patterns (ὑπόδειγμα) of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures (ἀντίτυπος) of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.”
So again, the rituals and actions and furniture of the old covenant, were all “patterns” and “figures” of the true and heavenly things.
And if you miss this, you miss the gospel. Paul saysyou are like a child who refuses to grow up into his inheritance. In Galatians 4:3 he says, “Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.”
The “elements (στοιχεῖον) of the world” here refers to the old creation before Christ, which was regulated by the Mosaic law.
So everything in the old covenant that we are no longer bound to observe (Passover, circumcision, ritual washings, animal sacrifices, etc.), those are all signs/symbols that point to a heavenly/spiritual reality. And what we want to do is learn how to go from the shadow to the substance, from the sign to the thing signified. And when we do this rightly, we are coming to know God, “For from him, and through him, and to him, are all things (Rom. 11:36).
Q. What is the very first pattern we are given in the Bible?
A. The Creation Week.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Light/Dark Day/Night
Waters Above/Waters Below Firmament
Land/Seas Fruit Trees/Herb-Yielding Seed
Lights in Firmament: Sun, Moon, and Stars.
Fish and Birds
Land Animals and Man
Rest
God’s work of creation in six days and rest on the seventh is the foundational pattern for everything that comes after. God forms three spaces by making certain separations/divisions in three consecutive days and then goes back and fills those spaces on the following three days.
On Day 1 He forms light and day. On Day 4 He puts lights in the firmament (sun, moon, and stars) to govern the day and night.
On Day 2 He separates waters above from waters below. On Day 5 He fills the waters below with fish and sea creatures and the heavens above with birds.
On Day 3 He separates dry land from the seas and plants herb-yielding trees. On Day 6 he creates the land animals and mankind to cultivate those trees.
So this pattern of taking hold and dividing, forming and filling, organizing and restructuring is the work of God as Divine Architect and His work of creation is the archetype for every structure of time and place that He commands to be built later.
If the Creation Week is the foundational pattern and archetype for everything that comes after, the next question we should ask is: What is the telos or purpose of this pattern? What is it intended to teach us? Another way of asking the questions is…
Q. What is the one big story (meta-narrative) of the Bible?
The meta-narrative of Scripture is the story of God coming to live with man. It is the marriage between heaven and earth, and the union of human and divine.
So the creation week is a story about God building a place where God and man can dwell together.
The initial picture we have of our relationship with God before the Fall is that of God and man together in paradise. The Garden of Eden is the first sanctuary where God makes his home with man, and after the Fall, the story of the Bible is how God and man can eventually live together again. However, since man is now sinful and creation is cursed on his account, there must be some way of dealing with sin and making man worthy of living with God again. That is the problem that Genesis 3-Revelation 22 is addressing. And what we have in the construction of the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the Christian church, is God architecting a way for us to live together again.
We read in Revelation 21:1-3 what all of this architecture is leading towards. John says, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.”
So this is the theme of all themes in the Bible and it is what human history is all about, the reunion between God and man.
Key Takeaways from Lesson 1
There are two key takeaways that I want you to leave with and remember as we go through this series.
The Tabernacle and Temple are physical models of spiritual realities, and the spiritual realities are more substantive (more real and true) than the physical structures.
The Tabernacle and Temple are the places where God makes His presence to dwell.
Of the Tabernacle it says in Deuteronomy 16:11, “And thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite that is within thy gates, and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are among you, in the place which the Lord thy God hath chosen to place his name there.”
Of the Temple it says in 1 Kings 8:2, “That thine eyes may be open toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there: that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place.”
Of the Restoration Temple it says in Ezekiel 48:35, “It was round about eighteen thousand measures: and the name of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there.”
Of Christ it says in John 1:14, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt (ἐσκήνωσεν, 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.”
Next time we will give a theological account of God’s presence and the many ways in which can be said to be present.

Sermon: Have Salt In Yourselves (Mark 9:30-50)

Have Salt In YourselvesSunday, October 8th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 9:30-50
30 And they departed thence, and passed through Galilee; and he would not that any man should know it. 31 For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day. 32 But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him.
33 And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? 34 But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest. 35 And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all. 36 And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, 37 Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me.
38 And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us. 39 But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. 40 For he that is not against us is on our part. 41 For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward. 42 And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. 43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: 44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 45 And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: 46 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 47 And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: 48 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. 49 For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. 50 Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.
Prayer
Father, we ask now for the peace that surpasses understanding to dwell in us and amongst us. For You Holy Spirit are that kiss of peace between Father and Son, You are the breath of love that proceeds from the Father and the Son. And so we ask that You would bind us and unite us and weave us together in love, so that our unity might reflect the Divine unity, we ask this in the name of Jesus who is Christ, and Amen.
Introduction
As we pick back up in Mark chapter 9, we are still in the afterglow of Christ’s transfiguration. Peter, James, and John have beheld the divine glory, they have heard the voice of the Father from heaven, but when they come down from the mountain, they find as Moses did, a crowd of unbelief.
This crowd includes Jewish scribes, it includes the disciples, and it includes a demon-possessed boy, and his father who cries out, “I believe, help my unbelief.”
We saw that Jesus then casts out the demon and declares that some spirits can only come forth by prayer and fasting. That was how verse 29 concluded that scene.
Well in our passage, verses 30-50, we now receive some private instruction that Jesus gives to his disciples. We are no longer outside with the crowds, we are now in a house, back in Capernaum (their home base), perhaps even in Peter’s own home (Mark 1:29).
And so this section is a kind of coach’s huddle to review the game film and prepare them for the next. These disciples are supposed to be teammates, and as with any team, there can be a temptation to jockey for position, to compete, to make comparisons about who is better than who at what, and to try to show oneself as deserving the best and most prominent role. Everyone wants to be quarterback (everyone wants to be the star). We all desire the glory that comes from making the winning shot, hitting the homerun, of being the best, and beautifullest, and brightest above our peers.
And it this aspiration for superiority, that Jesus wants to redirect and refocus in his twelve disciples. Far from suppressing their desire for greatness, Jesus teaches them the meaning of true greatness. The problem is not with wanting to be great (Rom. 2:7), the problem is that we don’t know what greatness is. And that is what Jesus is going to unfold for us here.
Overview
And so our sermon text could be organized around five things that Jesus says we must purge from ourselves if we would become salty. He says in verse 50, “Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.” If you want peace with God and within yourself and within the church, Jesus is going to tell you how to get it.
The desire to be great in the eyes of the world.
The desire to gain a following for ourselves.
Sins of the hand.
Sins of the foot.
Sins of the eye.
Now the setup for this conversation is verses 30-32. And there Jesus describes his future death and resurrection.
30 And they departed thence, and passed through Galilee; and he would not that any man should know it. 31 For he taught his disciples, and said unto them, The Son of man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and after that he is killed, he shall rise the third day. 32 But they understood not that saying, and were afraid to ask him.
This is the second of three cycles wherein Jesus explicitly tells the disciples what is going to happen to him (he spells it out) and yet the disciples go away confused, not understanding.
We saw this earlier in Mark 8 with Peter rebuking Jesus, and then Jesus rebuking Peter (“Get behind me Satan”), and so you can imagine the disciples are not wanting to be the next object of rebuke. So they are afraid to even ask.
Nonetheless, they illustrate just how badly they do not understand by disputing amongst themselves about who is the greatest.
Verses 33-34
33 And he came to Capernaum: and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? 34 But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest.
Mark repeats this phrase from Jesus, “by/in the way” to advert us to the fact that Jesus is literally “on his way” to Jerusalem to die and yet the disciples are arguing over who is the best. This is like the impropriety of driving to your parents’ funeral while arguing with your siblings over who is going to get the house. The disciples fail to grasp the weight of what Jesus is doing and they are only thinking about themselves.
So Jesus, already knowing what they were talking about asks, “What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?”
Of course, nobody wants to answer (they are silent), and so Jesus tells them the first thing that must die in them if they would become salty, if they would have peace amongst themselves.
And so the first thing they must die to is the desire to be great in the eyes of the world. Self-importance, the good opinion of others, the adoration of the masses, these self-centered desires for greatness must die in us if we would truly follow Jesus.
So many of our problems and conflicts come from caring more about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us. And that is the opposite of the fear of the Lord.
You want to be great, you want to be better than that guy or that girl, why? What is driving that desire? This is what Christ exposes.
Verses 35-37
35 And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all. 36 And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them: and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, 37 Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me.
In order to illustrate the essence of true greatness, Jesus takes a little child up into his arms (this could have been Peter’s own son). And this child signifies the external insignificance that should characterize the disciples internally.
The disciples want to be great, children are small.
The disciples want to be powerful, children are weak.
The disciples want to be noticed and seen, children are often overlooked.
And yet Jesus says, that whosoever receives one of these little children in my name, whether an actual child, or a child in the faith, they are receiving Christ Himself, and not just Christ, but the Father who sent him.
And so Jesus flips the world’s value system upside down, and he literally embraces what is considered small, and weak, and insignificant, and gives it by the giving of his name to the child, an infinite value.
To receive a child in the name of Jesus, is to receive Jesus, and therefore to receive God. And if you have God, what more could you want?
And so far from discouraging their aspiration for greatness, Jesus redirects them to desire He who is Very Greatness, God Himself. If you want to be great, you must want God.
Practically, this means that by serving one another, by stooping low and embracing the little children, we come to embrace God. And when we embrace God in these little children we are conformed into the image of God, we begin to reflect to the world what God is like, and we become actually great in the eyes of God.
This is what Jesus exemplifies and it is what he calls all of his disciples to do. If you want to be great, if you want to be like God, then you must lower yourself like He did, that is what Greatness Incarnate did.
It says in Psalm 138:6, “Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly: But the proud he knoweth afar off.”
What does Mary say when she is given the honor of carrying the Godman in her womb? “My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” (Luke 1:46-48)
So the first thing that has to die in us, the must be purged from us if we would have peace, is the desire to be great in our own estimation and in the eyes of the world, instead of desiring to be great in the eyes of God.
It is easy to compare oneself with others and arrive at a conceited or inflated view of ourselves. But when we compare ourselves to the divine majesty, to He who is truly Great, suddenly the competition is exposed for the folly that it is.
Flowing from this inflated view of the self, is a second desire that we must likewise put to death. And that is the desire to gain a following for ourselves. Or put another way, it is the desire to be a gatekeeper according to our own opinions and preferences, rather than drawing the lines where God draws them. We see this in verses 38-40.
Verses 38-40
38 And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us. 39 But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. 40 For he that is not against us is on our side.
John is concerned that there is an exorcist outside of The Twelve that is casting out devils in Jesus’ name. And perhaps more embarrassing in the larger context is that the disciples had just found themselves unable to cast out a devil from the boy who was foaming at the mouth.
It is almost as if the disciples have an inferiority complex. They are insecure in their abilities and therefore forbid this man (who is actually being effective) from using Jesus name to do spiritual warfare.
Jesus corrects this misguided prohibition, and says, “Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. 40 For he that is not against us is on our side.”
Insecurity and self-importance breed evil suspicions. And when we are more concerned with ourselves and our click, and our place in the pecking order, we are unable to see clearly who is friend and who is foe, who is an ally and who is an enemy.
There is so much friendly fire in the church because we sin in this way. We think that just because some other Christians do things or think things a little differently than we do, that they must be heretics. Or in the words of John, “because they followeth not us,” therefore we must stop them.
Jesus’ response is that if they are doing miracles in Jesus’ name, they are doing good works, they are on our side, therefore, don’t forbid them.
There are resonances here to what Paul says in Romans 14:4, “Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand.”
Now this is not to say we must blindly approve of everyone who claims to come in Jesus’ name. We know from the Apostle Paul that some people really do need to be silenced. There really are false teachers and the church really must forbid certain people from teaching.
Paul says in Titus 1:10-11, “For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.”
So those people really do exist, there are many in the church today, and they must be silenced. That is not who Jesus is talking about here.
We are not told exactly who this man was. He might have been a disciple of John the Baptist, or a recent convert, for all we know, this mancould have been one of the other seventy disciples that Jesus had commissioned to do this work (Luke 10:1). Just because he was not among The Twelve does not mean he is an unlicensed minister.
Whatever the case, we are unworthy of making these kinds of judgments and unworthy of making this distinction between friend and foe, if we lack the humility and meekness of Christ.
And this is what Jesus wants his disciples to internalize. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. And so pray for God to raise up more laborers to go and gather in the elect, to fish for the souls of men, to spread the gospel to the ends of the world.
When we start to equate following Jesus with following us, as John did, we are in danger of confusing and mistaking our friends as enemies. And what is worse, we risk stumbling those who are children in the faith. Jesus continues in verses 41-42…
Verses 41-42
41 For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward. 42 And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.
It is a grave sin to make a child to stumble. And notice Jesus calls them “little ones that believe in me.” Little children have the capacity to believe in Jesus.
Regardless of whether you believe infants should be baptized or not, what you must not do is put a stumbling block in their way to Christ. You must not sow seeds of doubt in their heart, or keep them from the arms of Jesus. Instead, you should encourage and confirm their belief, not constantly second guess whether their faith is genuine or not.
When parents undermine the faith of their children (and they can do this in many way), they are asking God to hang a millstone around their neck and drop them into the ocean. That should sober us and scare us into repentance.
This is one of the many reasons why we want our children in the worship service with us. Because not only do they have the capacity to believe and participate at a very young age, but Jesus explicitly commands his disciples in Matthew 19:14, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
Likewise in Matthew 18:3-4, Jesus says, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus welcomes and embraces children, and he commands to humble ourselves as little child, with simple faith, if we would become great in the kingdom of heaven.
The disciples’ sin was to exclude the children, to exclude the unnamed exorcist, and to look down upon those who did not follow them. But in both cases, Jesus says, “forbid them not.” They may be children in understanding, they may be ignorant in many ways, but place no stumbling block in their path. Let the come to me.
So we must mortify in ourselves the desire to be more tidy and organized than God. Christ’s body, the church. is a messy place. There are many lines of division and schism in the body, and yet we will be unable to judge and discern rightly, if we are more concerned about people following us and our pet doctrines, than following Christ.
We must have a sense of due proportion if we do as Paul says in Ephesians 4:3, “Endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Summary: We must purge our desire to be great in the eyes of the world. We must purge our desire to gain a following for ourselves. And finally, we must put to death three sins of the body. We’ll call these:
Sins of the hand.
Sins of the foot.
Sins of the eye.
Verses 43-44
43 And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: 44 Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
The logic of Jesus argument in all three of these cases is essentially, do whatever it takes to not go to hell. Whatever you must do to avoid eternal punishment, do it.
It is of course unlawful according to Lev. 19:28 (and the golden rule, Lev. 19:18), to literally cut off your hand, or foot, or gouge out your own eye, but Jesus uses this image to get the point across.
One of the reasons we know this a figure of speech, a metaphor, is because cutting off your literal hand or foot or eye, doesn’t actually keep you from sinning. You still have the other hand, the other foot, the other eye, you still have a sinful heart from whence sin actually proceeds, and so it is not the literal body part that causes sin in the first place.
And this is why the Christian tradition has taken the hand, foot, and eye in this context as metaphors for different kinds of people or different kinds of sins we might commit.
And of course, Scripture itself uses these body parts as metaphors in countless places.
For example, Paul says famously in 1 Corinthians 12 that the church is one body with diverse members. So there, feet and hands and eyes and ears are all metaphors for different kinds of people in the church.
We see also that hands, feet, and eyes can signify different actions (good or bad) that we do.
To judge unjustly is to have an evil eye (Matt. 20:15).
The adulterous woman has feet that go down to Sheol (Pr. 5:5).
The works of man’s hands can be either good or evil.
So when we reflect on Jesus command here, to cut off the hand, or foot, or eye, we can apply it in a diversity of ways.
To cut off the hand may mean we need to sever certain friendships that are tempting us to do evil. A hand is like a counselor, a close friend on the right or the left. And Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:33 that evil counsel, bad company, ruins good morals.
So who is your “right hand man?” Who are your close friends? Are they making you more like Christ? Or are they making you more worldly?
If your friends are causing you to sin, you need new friends, you need to cut them out of your life.
And if that sounds harsh, or like it might be painful, there is reason Jesus then warns of the far greater pains of hell.
Three times he repeats himself, “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
So you can either have temporary pain and discomfort now, you can suffer the difficulty of ending close relationships. Or you can keep those relationships, and then suffer forever. That’s the tradeoff.
To cut off a foot might mean you stop going places that tempt you to sin. It might mean you stop going there literally, or in your imagination. It might mean you get a dumbphone and cut off access to the internet.
Proverbs 1:15-16 says, “My son, walk not thou in the way with them; Refrain thy foot from their path: For their feet run to evil, And make haste to shed blood.”
What roads do your feet take you down, that are not the straight and narrow path of Christ?
What mental roads do you stroll down, that you would be ashamed for other people to see? Especially God, who sees all.
Cut them off. Run to Christ.
And lastly, what sins of the eye must be cut out, if we would see God?
Job 31:1 says, “I made a covenant with mine eyes; Why then should I think upon a maid?”
Psalm 119:37 says, “Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, And revive me in Your way.”
Conclusion
Jesus says in verses 49-50
49 For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt. 50 Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.
Everyone is going to be salted with fire, that is everyone must pass through the judgment of God, who is a consuming fire.
And you can either burn forever, “where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched,” or you can become a living sacrifice that God receives and transforms into something glorious.
God’s covenant is called a covenant of salt, and He required in Leviticus 2:13 that “the salt of the covenant of thy God [must not] be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt.”
And so if you and I would become acceptable sacrifices to God, we must as Jesus says, “have salt in ourselves.”
So purge yourself from every sin that clings so closely, cut off whatever will keep you from the kingdom, for as Jesus promises, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sermon: Help My Unbelief (Mark 9:14-29)

Help My UnbeliefSunday, September 24th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 9:14-29
14 And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them. 15 And straightway all the people, when they beheld him, were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him. 16 And he asked the scribes, What question ye with them? 17 And one of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; 18 And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not. 19 He answereth him, and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me. 20 And they brought him unto him: and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming. 21 And he asked his father, How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child. 22 And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us. 23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. 24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. 25 When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. 26 And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. 27 But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose. 28 And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out? 29 And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.
Prayer
Father, kiss us with the kisses of Your mouth. Give us Your divine Word, He who is the very kiss of peace. Breathe into us Your Holy Spirit, that we might have our faith, our hope, and our love increased. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Introduction
When Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Law of God, it says in Exodus 24:18, that “Moses went into the midst of the cloud…and was in the mount forty days and forty nights.” We are also told that while he was there the “sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.”
So for forty days and forty nights, Moses and Joshua are up on this fiery mountain. And while they are there, God speaks to Moses and gives him the architectural blueprints for constructing the Tabernacle (Ex. 25-31). And then He inscribes with His own finger on two stone tablets, the law of the covenant, two tables of testimony (Ex. 31:18).
And while this climactic and glorious revelation is being given up on the mountain, meanwhile down below, the people are losing faith. They are starting to doubt whether Moses and Joshua will ever come down.
Exodus 32:1 says, “Now when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron, and said to him, ‘Come, make us gods that shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’”
We all know what happens next. Aaron makes a golden calf for the people, he builds an altar for them to worship before, and the people offer sacrifices unto it, they commit idolatry.
So at the same time that God is gloriously revealing Himself to Moses and revealing how Israel is to approach him and worship Him at the Tabernacle, the people down below are doing exactly what God forbids. They are worshipping a lifeless golden image as if it is God, when it is no such thing.
Our text this morning follows a very similar pattern to this apostasy at Sinai. While Jesus is up on the mountain, being transfigured before Peter, James, and John, and talking with Moses and Elijah, the other disciples are down below, with the crowds, trying to cast out an evil spirit from a boy.
We are told specifically that it is a deaf and dumb spirit, a spirit that prevents the boy from hearing or speaking. And this deaf and dumb spirit causes seizures and casts him into the fire and the water, it is trying to kill him.
And when Jesus comes down from the mountain, like Moses did, his response is a strong rebuke. He says in verse 19,“O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me.”
Outline
There are three questions I want us to consider as we work through this passage. And as we do I want you to keep the scene at Sinai in the back of your mind. Note some of the parallels between the golden calf apostasy and this demonic possession. So there are three questions I want to ask and answer:
Why does the son have a dumb spirit in the first place? How is it that this child became possessed?
What does Jesus reveal about Himself by the way he casts out this demon?
Why couldn’t the disciples cast this evil spirit out?
Q#1 – Why does the son have a dumb spirit in the first place?
In verse 21, Jesus asks the son’s father, “How long is it ago since this spirit came unto him?” And the father says that it has harassed him since he was a child. Sometimes it would cast him into the fire, sometimes into the waters, this spirit has been trying to kill his son for years but has not yet succeeded. Despite this great affliction, there is a certain resiliency this son has shown. He has these recurring seizures, he does not seem to be able to hear or talk, and yet somehow, he’s still alive. But how did he end up this way? How does someone become possessed?
In the Bible, there are a number of instances where God pulls back the veil, and shows us how the spiritual realm interacts with the earthly realm. One such occasion of this is when King Saul disobeys the Lord, and he goes from being filled with God’s spirit, to being troubled by an evil spirit.
1 Samuel 16:14, 23, “But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him…And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.”
Another example would be in Judges 9 where God sends an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem as an act of Divine Justice. It says in Judges 9:22-24, “When Abimelech had reigned three years over Israel, 23 Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech: 24 That the cruelty done to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might come, and their blood be laid upon Abimelech their brother, which slew them; and upon the men of Shechem, which aided him in the killing of his brethren.”
So one of the reasons why people become possessed by evil and demonic sprits is because they have done something very wicked, and therefore God removes his hand of protection, and allows evil spirits to harass them. This was the case with Saul, this was the case with Abimelech and the men of Shechem, and there are other examples of this in Scripture.
In the language of Romans 1, this is God giving people over to what their sinful hearts want. They don’t want to worship God, they don’t want to obey God, they want to serve idols and worship creatures, and so God lets them. He says, if that’s who you really want to worship, I’ll show you what that gets you. You can have a taste of the wickedness you so desire.
So when God is said “to send” an evil spirit upon someone, this is periphrastic or a metaphor for Him simply withdrawing his protection. He is giving them over to their sinful desires and the domain of the devil.
God does this with individuals, with families, with tribes, and whole nations, and He does this as both punishment for sin, and also so that they will repent. So they will see just how miserable it is to have Satan and demons for your gods.
This is also why Paul commands the church to excommunicate those who are unrepentant. He says in 1 Corinthians 5:5, “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
So God punishes and disciplines people by giving them over to the domain of the devil, and the hope is that they will not like it, and so repent.
Now what about this man’s son? Why is he possessed? What did he do if anything to deserve this demonic affliction?
Well we are not told what was in this boy’s heart. We do not know if he had committed murder as a child (παιδίον), or some other grave sin in his youth. But what the text does call our attention to, and what Jesus rebukes the people for, is being a faithless generation.
Jesus says in verse 19, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him unto me.”
This is a rebuke to everyone standing there: the boy, his father, the disciples, the scribes, the crowd, they are together a faithless generation. God has come and visited them in the flesh, but they do not believe.
Remember that Israel was God’s adopted firstborn son. God says to Pharoah in Exodus 4:22-23, “Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn: 23 And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.”
So the nation of Israel, of which these people standing there are a part, have broken faith with God. They have been rebellious sons.They have chosen to worship idols instead of the LORD, and because of this, the whole region is full of evil and unclean spirits. We saw this earlier with Jesus’ casting out demons even in the synagogue. So the whole land of promise, the holy land, has become unholy because of their faithlessness. And this son is suffering the effects of living in such a wicked place.
In a spiritual sense, this son, is a living parable (a picture) of what Israel has become. Mark has been showing us thatIsrael is unable to hear, unable to speak, they are suffering under demonic oppression and none has been able to deliver them. Israel has become like the deaf and dumb idols it worships.
We see this principle set forth in Psalm 115, that we become like what we worship.
Describing the idols of the nations the Psalmist says, “They have mouths, but they do not speak; Eyes they have, but they do not see; They have ears, but they do not hear; Noses they have, but they do not smell; They have hands, but they do not handle; Feet they have, but they do not walk; Nor do they mutter through their throat. Those who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them” (Ps. 115:5-6).
Israel had put its trust in idols, and therefore had become as dumb and deaf and senseless as the idols. The temple had become a den of thieves. The places that God had erected for justice had become places of oppression. And so God gave Israel over to their desires. He withdrew his hand of protection, and He allowed them to be conquered, subdued, and oppressed by the surrounding nations, all because they wanted to serve those other nation’s gods.
And so in this son, you have Israel. From the time of his youth, this spirit of deafness and dumbness had afflicted him. He refused to heed the voice of God at Sinai, he refused to make true confession before the nations. And no sooner had God adopted Israel into His house, and given them his law, that they are stripping off their clothes and dancing before the golden calf. Exodus 32:6 says, “the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.” When you worship things other than God, you become less than a man.
Jesus asks the boy’s father, “How long is it ago since this came unto him?” And he said, “Of a child.”
Do you remember what Moses did to the golden calf when he came down from the mountain. It says in Exodus 32:20, “Then he took the calf which they had made, burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder; and he scattered it on the water and made the children of Israel drink it.”
The deaf and dumb idol is cast into the fire and then the water. And Israel is made to drink that judgment into itself.
What is this deaf and dumb spirit doing to this son? It is casting him into the fire and the water, and trying to drown him.
You become like what you worship, and this is what faithlessness, this is what worshipping false gods gets you.
So why did this boy become possessed? Because he lived in a nation and household of idolaters. He had no faith of his own, nor his father’s faith to protect him, (no baptism, no church) and therefore he was vulnerable to demonic possession.
It is spiritually dangerous to live without faith amidst a faithless generation, and we see the effects of this all around us.This brings us to our second question, How does Jesus deal with such faithless people, and more specifically…
Q#2 – What does Jesus reveal about Himself by the way he casts out this demon?
Notice that in verse 20, it says, “and when he saw him, straightway the spirit tare him; and he fell on the ground, and wallowed foaming.” So the young man starts having a seizure, an episode, and is convulsing on the ground.
And Jesus does not intervene. He does not immediately heal him. Instead, he turns and has a conversation with the father, “how long has this been happening?” The father says, “from childhood,” and then he pleads with Jesus, that if he has the power, “have compassion on us, and help us.”
Well Jesus is overflowing with compassion. Love is who Jesus is. And yet, God’s love and compassion wants something more for this man and his son, than mere healing. What Jesus wants to give these men, and us who are watching, is a reason to believe (a motivation to trust Him). And so he challenges the man with a condition. He says, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
Jesus is exposing the reason for all their troubles. They don’t trust God. They don’t worship God. They don’t love God. They don’t obey God. If they did those things, no such exorcism would be needed.
And so in verse 24, we have a very honest confession from the father. “And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”
This father recognizes that his lack of faith has left himself and his son vulnerable. They are the faithless generation Jesus was rebuking.
And so he cries out with tears of desperation, his son still wallowing on the ground, “I believe, help thou mine unbelief.”
And then in verses 25-27, we behold the compassion of God.
25 When Jesus saw that the people came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. 26 And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead. 27 But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up; and he arose.
Jesus resurrects this son whom he loves, and notice that he does so apart from anything the son does. What was the son doing? The son was wallowing and foaming at the mouth. His father intercedes for him with a partial and weak faith, and yet the object of that faith was Christ and Christ is God and with God all things are possible to those who believe.
Who is Jesus? He is the compassionate and omnipotent God. And He is more than willing to resurrect a nation if they will cry out to Him, even if someone else cries out to Him on their behalf. This is why our church intercedes for our nation every week. Because Jesus is more than willing to cast out the dumb and deaf spirits of our age, if we will cast ourselves upon his mercy. If we will just say to him, “We believe, help our unbelief.”
Just as David played the harp, and the evil spirit departed from Saul, so now the voice of Christ is the music that casts down demonic strongholds. As it says in Psalm 91:1, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
That is to say that by faith in Christ, we come under the shadow of His wing (his protection). Whereas those who are faithless are made vulnerable to demons and evil spirits.
So what kind of generation shall we be? Faithless, or faithful? And will we intercede on behalf our nation that is wallowing in its sin, and foaming at the mouth?
Finally, we come to our third question.
Q#3 – Why couldn’t the disciples cast this evil spirit out?
This is the question the disciples ask Jesus in verse 28, and Jesus answers saying, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.”
Earlier in chapter 6, the disciples were given power over unclean spirits (Mark. 6:7). Mark 6:13 says, “And they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them.” Why is it that now their powers seem to not be working?
There are a few reasons for this that we can conclude from Jesus’ answer. I will give you just one of them and leave the others for you to contemplate.
1. Not all spirits are the same. Jesus says, “this kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.”
So when we survey the Scriptures, we learn that some evil spirits are stronger or more wicked than others. There is a demonic hierarchy just like there is a celestial hierarchy.
For example, Jesus says in Matthew 12:43-45, “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.”
So not all evil spirits are the same, and this kind in particular, Jesus says requires prayer and fasting.
This principle applies equally to different kinds of sins that we struggle with.
Some sins are easier than others to overcome and avoid (to expel from our lives), while other sins can seem impossible to get rid of. We call these more difficult sins, besetting sins, or vices. These are the sins that have become habitual for us. They can feel like an addiction. They can feel like part of who are and even come to define us.
If that’s you, if you are feeling stuck somewhere, one of the remedies that Jesus gives us is prayer and fasting. You need to cut out the distractions, the reliance upon food or other carnal things, so that you can know deep down in your belly, how desperately you need God.
What is fasting meant to teach us? It is meant to teach us to hunger for God more than we hunger for food. It exposes our overreliance upon the flesh and carnal things. It weakens our body so that we can become spiritually strong.
As it says in Hebrews 13:9, “it is good that the heart be established by grace, not with foods which have not profited those who have been occupied with them.”
It is very easy to say that “man does not live be bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” It is a lot more difficult to go without physical bread, and feed only upon the Word. And so this is what fasting can help to teach us. That we are people with huge physical and carnal appetites and tiny spiritual appetites that need to grow.
If you are feeling stuck, perhaps you need to fast and pray, “this kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.”
Conclusion
Fasting is a voluntary death. It is the choice to forego something good and lawful, in order to gain something greater and more glorious. And this is what Jesus has done for you.
Jesus could have left you in your sins. He could have left you wallowing in the ground, foaming at the mouth, suffering the just penalty for your unfaithfulness.  
And yet, because of his great love and compassion, He chooses to undergo a voluntary fast, a fast fromthe very life that emanates from him. Jesus voluntarily dies on the cross, he lays his life down, and he did this because he wants something greater and more glorious. He wants you.
Jesus wants to bring you home to His Father’s house, where there is no more pain, no more suffering, and joy everlasting. Jesus wants to give you eternal life.
So believe in Him, and ask him to help your unbelief.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.