The Local Christendom Podcast with Aaron Ventura

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.

Sermon: The Transfiguration (Mark 9:1-13)

The TransfigurationSunday, September 17th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 9:1-13
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
2 And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them. 3 And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them. 4 And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus. 5 And Peter answered and said to Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. 6 For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid. 7 And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him. 8 And suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves.
9 And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. 10 And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean. 11 And they asked him, saying, Why say the scribes that Elias must first come? 12 And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought. 13 But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him.
Prayer
Father, we thank you for the transfiguration of Your Son, this foretaste of divine glory that has been recorded and written down for our encouragement. We ask that you would give us insight and understanding of these things, and that as we behold you in truth, we might be transformed into your image. We ask for your cloud to descend upon us, in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Last week we were given some hard and challenging words from the Lord Jesus. We were told that the only way to attain to everlasting life is by denying ourselves, taking up the cross, and following Jesus to a painful crucifixion. The cross is a great symbol of shame, it is an announcement of our death and union with Christ, and of our death to the world and its lusts which are passing away. At the same time, the cross is also a great symbol of victory and conquest, because Christ died and rose from the dead victorious over Satan, sin, and death, for the Christian the cross is turned into a symbol of glory (we make jewelry out of it). It is the crown we wear upon our head at the same time we feel its heavy burden upon our back. The cross is the tree of life that we can only partake of if we are first crucified on it together with Jesus.
The cross is a window into the mystery of the gospel. The Apostle Paul calls it a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. It is an embarrassment to those who expect the messiah to take the kingdoms of this world unscathed, and it is an embarrassment to those who laud human wisdom and human strength.
As Jesus says to the Pharisees in Luke 16:15, “For that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.”
And likewise in Isaiah 55:8 God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, Neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”
The way that God chose to save the world is through death and resurrection. By taking the thing that is most fearful to men, namely death and shame (being stripped naked before the world) and He turns it inside out. Death and resurrection is the very pattern and sequence that God has woven into the fabric of reality. And so the gospel is something we are immersed in and surrounded by, and yet too often blind to.
There is evening and then morning. Darkness before light.
There is sleep and then waking. Weariness before the renewing of our strength.
There is the coldness of winter before the warmth of spring.
There is the caterpillar in the cocoon, before it becomes a butterfly.
There is seedtime and harvest, sowing before reaping.
Obviously, you should know that if there is death, there is also a resurrection.
The Apostle Paul makes this point in 1 Corinthians 15:36. And he saysthat you are fool if you do not recognize that a seed must die before it can become fruitful. And from this he goes on to prove the nature of our resurrection bodies.
“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: 43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:42-44).
If you want glory, honor, and immortality, if you want to upgrade your very weak and frail and at times very sick body, for something that can never get sick, never suffers, and never dies, that does not need food or exercise to maintain it in perfect strength, well Jesus gives us in our text this morning, a preview of that future glory. A preview of what we will look if we follow him all the way.
What is the destination for those who follow Christ?
Jesus has made clear that there are some hard stops along the way. There are the trials of youth and puberty, there are the trials of finding your calling, your vocation, finding a spouse, there are mid-life crises, there are health crises, there are financial crises. There are many trials along the way. But where do all of these trials lead? They lead to death, but even that is only a rest stop. The ultimate destination for the Christian is resurrection unto glory. It is entrance into a New Heavens and New Earth in which righteousness dwells.
So why all this talk about resurrection here, in the middle of Mark’s gospel? Because it is the purpose of our text this morning to stir us up to a living hope.
What does the transfiguration of Jesus give us?
It gives us a certain hope of the glory that awaits us after the cross.
God knows our frame. And He knows that if He asks us to die, we should have something to look forward to beyond the grave. So God is not asking anyone to take a blind leap of faith into the dark. No.
Jesus comes as light into the world, and he tells us in plain speech, in the open light of day who He is, and where He is going. He is the Son of God, and He is going to die and rise again for our sins. And just in case you had some doubts about the resurrection, well the transfiguration is a preview of the other side.
The transfiguration is what happens when the soul that sees God pours forth into the body. Jesus shows us what is shining in His soul behind the veil. A glory and radiance that is whiter and brighter than the sun.
So that is the purpose of this text, to give us hope, so let us consider these verses together.
Verse 1
And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.
This is a continuation and conclusion of Jesus teaching the disciples and the crowds about the cost of discipleship. The verse right before this, Mark 8:38 says, “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
And then he says unto that group, that some of them standing there, listening to him, especially the disciples, some of them will not die, before the kingdom of God comes with power. To what does this refer?
When did the kingdom of God come with power?
Well according to Jesus, it is going to come during the disciples’ lifetime, but some of them are going to die before its arrival, while some will live to see it.
Some have suggested that the kingdom coming with power refers to Pentecost, and while that is possible, I think it’s unlikely because all of the apostles except for Judas was alive at that time. So although it could be that the some refers to everyone except Judas, I think there is a much better option that has a lot more biblical support.
A few chapters from now, in Mark 13, Jesus is going to prophesy about the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the old world. He says in Mark 13:24-26, “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, 25 And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. 26 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.”
We’ll get into this in greater depth when we get to Mark 13, but this is not a reference to the end of human history. This “coming in the clouds” is not a reference to the bodily return of Christ in final judgment. Rather, it is the coming of the saints in union with Christ to receive the kingdom from the Father. We know this because it is a direct quote from Daniel 7, and there we are told the Son of Man is the saints coming up to the Ancient of Days, not Christ coming down to earth.
Furthermore, this language in Mark 13 of the stars falling from heaven and the powers being shaken is not about our solar system collapsing, it is about the end of a spiritual-political administration. And more specifically, it is the end of the four kingdoms spoken of in the book of Daniel. This can be proved from many passages, but I’ll give you just two:
1. This is exact same language used in Isaiah (and elsewhere) to refer to the fall of Babylon to the Medo-Persians.
Isaiah 13 says, “For the stars of heaven and their constellations Will not give their light; The sun will be darkened in its going forth, And the moon will not cause its light to shine…I will shake the heavens, And the earth shall remove out of her place…Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, The beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah” (Is. 13:10, 13, 17, 19).
So the falling of stars, and the darkening of sun and moon, the earth being removed, are a reference to the fall of a king and his kingdom, along with the spiritual or demonic powers behind them. You can this see even more explicitly if you read through Daniel and Revelation.
2. The second reason we know this is not about the end of human history is because Jesus says that all this great tribulation and cosmic upheaval is going to take place within one generation, that is within roughly 40 years of his prophecy.
So a few verses later in Mark 13:30, Jesus says,“Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.” And the all these things there includes, the spread of the gospel, the great tribulation, the coming of antichrists, the stars falling, and the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heavens.
All these events took place in the 1st century (within one generation), just like Jesus said they would, and just like church history attests to. By 70 AD, some of the apostles had died, but some (like John) were still alive. And that is when the kingdom came with power.
To deny this is to in effect call Jesus a false prophet. Jesus says, “Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.”
John records this moment in Revelation 11:15 where it says, “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.”
There’s a whole lot more to say about this, and we’ll address it in greater detail when we get to chapter 13, but there’s your preview.
So having giving this promise, in verses 2-8 we then ascend the mountain for Christ’s transfiguration.
Verses 2-3
2 And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them. 3 And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them.
Here we have the fulfillment of multiple Old Testament prophecies that reveal who Jesus is.
First, we see that Jesus is clothed in light, “his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow.” In Matthew’s version of this same event it says, “his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.”
Who is Jesus if he is emanating light such that it extends even to his clothing?
Psalm 104 says, “Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, You are very great: You are clothed with honor and majesty, Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment.”
God wears light as a garment. So who is Jesus that he wears the same?
We see also that Jesus is fulfilling the prophecies of Malachi 3 and 4. There we are told of two messengers. One is Elijah (John the Baptist), who prepares the way for the Lord, and the other messenger is the Lord Himself.
Malachi 3:2-3 says, But who may abide the day of his [the Lord’s] coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: And he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.
Notice that the Lord is said to come and purify his people like “fuller’s soap.” A fuller is like a professional dry cleaner or bleacher. And Malachi prophesies that the Lord will come with a kind of “divine bleach.” So Mark draws our attention to this by saying that Jesus’ clothes were so white “as no fuller on earth can white them.”
Who is Jesus? He is the one who comes to make His people divinely white, pure, and spotless. He comes to elevate human nature to what God had always intended for us.
This is the glory that radiates from who Jesus is, not only as the Divine Son of God, but as the heavenly Son of Man, who is perfect in his humanity.
And what this means for you and I who are united to Jesus Christ, is that this is what we are going to look like when we put on the resurrection.
Daniel 12:3 says, “And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”
When the kingdom of Christ comes with power, and the stars fall from the heavens (those old angelic powers). It is the saints who replace them. We are the stars. Paul says in Ephesians that we are presently seated with Christ in heavenly places.
He says in 1 Corinthians 6:3, that we are going to judge angels.
This is also why he says in Philippians 2:14-15, “Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as stars in the world.”
Jesus is revealing the majesty that awaits us, and the glory that we already have growing inside of us.
Romans 8 says that all creation is groaning for our glory to be revealed.
Romans 8:18-19 says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19 For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.”
Creation is groaning for the transfiguration of your body. And so as we groan and suffer in this life, keep your hope firmly fixed on this glory Christ reveals and shall give us.
Verses 4-8
Now after Jesus is transfigured, Elijah and Moses appear (verse 4). Why these two men (of all the people Jesus could have appeared with)?
To start it might be because both Moses and Elijah were forerunners, Moses preceded Joshua, Elijah preceded Elisha.
Both men were prophets who faced down kings and were persecuted by them, Moses by Pharoah, Elijah by Ahab and Jezebel.
Both men also had visions of God on the top of a mountain.
There are a lot of similarities between these two men.
But I think the primary reason for their appearance with Jesus is to make them into witnesses that Jesus is the Son of God.
We saw earlier that some people thought Jesus was Elijah, and so this appearance clearly distinguishes the two. He’s not Elijah, he’s someone greater.
It also turns the Jews greatest authority, Moses, into a personal witness to Christ. So if you say you follow Moses but not Jesus, well then you are not actually following Moses. Moses and Elijah are both witnesses to Christ.
They are especially witnesses to the voice of God from the cloud that says, “This is my beloved Son: hear him.”
This moment in Jesus’ ministry is a sequel to his baptism, it is a kind of second anointing. At his baptism, the Father said, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And now here for a second time, with Moses and Elijah, and the three disciples present, the Father declares, “This is my beloved Son: hear him.”
So will you listen to Jesus? Will you hear him? That is the one sentence the Father gives, the one command he issues to the disciples. “This is my beloved Son: hear him.”
This is the climax of the entire first half of Mark’s gospel. We ascend the mountain and see Christ’s glory, and now we go back down.
Verses 9-10
9 And as they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen, till the Son of man were risen from the dead. 10 And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean.
Despite this revelation, the disciples are even more confused. They appear to be wondering, if Jesus is so powerful, if he is the Son of God, then why would he rise from the dead? Why would he die in the first place? Is this a metaphorical rising from the dead, kind of like the metaphor of bread and leaven? They are genuinely confused by this.
So in verse 11 they ask Jesus…
Verses 11-13
Why say the scribes that Elias must first come? 12 And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought [treated with contempt]. 13 But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they wanted, as it is written of him.
The disciples are aware (via the scribes) of some of these prophecies about Elijah and the resurrection from the dead. And there was debate, just like there is today, about how to interpret these different prophecies and whether they are figurative or literal and when they will happen. To give you just two examples of this:
Ezekiel 37 is a prophesy about the dry bones of Israel coming to life, and this is a reference to the nation being resurrected and placed back into the land. It is a figurative resurrection for the nation. Maybe this is what the disciples think Jesus is talking about.
In Luke 2:34, when Jesus is a newborn baby, brought to the temple, Simeon says to Mary, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel.” So there is some kind of death and resurrection that Jesus brings about by his earthly ministry. What kind of death and resurrection is it?
So what the disciples and the Jews in general expected from the Messiah was that he would bring about a national resurrection, he would restore the kingdom to Israel, and establish God’s justice on earth. What they did not expect, was a literal death and resurrection in the middle of history. In their minds, a literal-bodily resurrection was only for the very end of time. So they wonder, why do the scribes say Elijah must come first, if Jesus is talking about a resurrection now? How can there be a resurrection before Elijah comes?
And Jesus says, Elijah did come, and they missed it. It was John the Baptist. And when John baptized the nation and baptized Christ, he restored all things. Because in Jesus, the entire government of the kingdom, priestly, kingly, and prophetic offices, were finally restored.
Conclusion
It says in 1 John 3:2-3, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
The gospels give us the transfiguration of Jesus, to show us the glory that is to come. And although we do not see it now with our mortal eyes, we hope for it by faith, and in the meantime, John says, whoever has this hope in Him, purifies himself, just as He is pure.
So behold the purity of the Lord Jesus. And cast aside your filth, your sin, the dirt that clings so closely. Put on the garments of the Lord Jesus, that you might share in his righteousness.
This is what the death and resurrection of Christ accomplishes for us. So look to him in hope.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Sermon: The Price of Your Soul (Mark 8:34-38)

The Price of Your SoulSunday, September 10th, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 8:34-38
34 And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. 36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
Prayer
Father, we are challenged by these words of the Lord Jesus, to pick up our cross and follow Him. Help us as we seek to be obedient to Your Divine Will, and kindle in us the gift of true and heavenly love, such that we can endure all suffering with joy. We ask for Your Spirit in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Once upon a time there was man named Demas (Δημᾶς). Demas was a friend and companion of the Apostle Paul, and Paul mentions him by name at the end of his letter to the Colossians and his letter to Philemon.
He writes in Colossians 4:14, “Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you.”
He says to Philemon in Philemon 23-24, “There salute thee Epaphras, my fellowprisoner in Christ Jesus; Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, Lucas, my fellowlabourers.”
So who was Demas? Demas was a fellowlabourer with Paul in the gospel. He was what we would call a professing Christian, a man who served the Lord and assisted the Apostle, and yet at the very end of Paul’s life, he writes a final letter to Timothy. And Paul says to Timothy, “Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me: For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica…Luke alone is with me” (2 Tim. 4:9-11).
There were roughly seven years that passed between what Paul wrote in Colossians/Philemon (AD 60), and what he wrote in 2 Timothy (AD 67). What happened in those seven years to Demas’ faith? What changed? How did he go from being called a “fellowlabourer” with Paul to forsaking him? How did he go from appearing to love God to actually loving this present world?
Paul says, “having loved this present world, he departed unto Thessalonica.”
We can only guess at the reasons for Demas’ apostasy. We are not told exactly what seduced him.
Perhaps there was a woman in Thessalonica.
Perhaps there was a lucrative job opportunity there that he just could not turn down.
Or perhaps he was just tired of the missionary life, of persecution, of troubles, and he thought, “I’ve put in my years of service, now I deserve a little Me-time.”
Whatever the specific reasons for Demas’ abandoning the faith, they are fittingly described under the heading, “having loved this present world.” Or in the words of Jesus, Demas having gained the world, lost his soul.
Demas like Judas is a cautionary tale. A warning sign for all believers to take heed to what is in your heart, to not be self-deceived. Take heed to what it is that you truly love and treasure.
For as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16:22, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maran-atha.”
And the Apostle John in 1 John 2:15, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
So what do you love? What do you prize and delight in? What really makes you happy?
Is it God and the contemplation of His beauty? Is it Christ and the loveliness He bestows on creatures? Is it the new heavens and new earth, and the glories of the world that is to come? Or are your affections stuck down here (wanting the next weekend, wanting the next meal, wanting the next episode of your favorite show), are your affections fixed upon God or are they stuck in this present world that is fading away like vapor?
What do you love? And what are you willing to sacrifice in order to get that thing you love?
This is the question Jesus impresses upon his disciples, and he cuts straight to the heart: “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” This is the challenge if you want to live forever. This is the way of the Lord, and it is the only way to salvation.
And so this morning I want to look at three things that Jesus says we must do if we would live forever (if we would avoid becoming Demas).
1. You Must Deny Yourself
2. You Must Lose Your Life for Christ
3. You Must Be Unashamed of His Word
Verse 34 – #1 – You Must Deny Yourself
34 And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me.
Notice first that Jesus is addressing the crowd and not only the disciples. This call to self-denial is not limited to apostles or missionaries or pastors but rather extends to every single person who professes the Lord Jesus. If you call yourself a Christian then this applies to you.
Christianity is a religion of ultimate ends, of death and resurrection. It is not merely a plan for moral or social reform, though it will demand that your morals and society change. Christianity is a religion that will not let you in unless you die first.
What is the initiation rite into the Christian church? It is baptism. It is the public renunciation of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The Christian life begins with a “so long farewell” to the self, and it is perfected as we continue in the Apostle’s words to “die daily” (1 Cor. 15:31).
So everything Jesus says here applies equally to all Christians.
Now what exactly is self-denial?
In the immediate context, Jesus is referring to a very literal death on a very literal cross (that’s where is he going). We must not forget that all metaphorical “dying daily” and “picking up our cross” (our trials), must be grounded in a very real commitment to literally die on a literal cross. This is the radical self-denial Jesus calls us to.
Torture and crucifixion was the fate for many Christians in the early church.History tells us that almost all of the apostles died painful and brutal deaths. Tradition holds that Peter was crucified upside down, James was beheaded, and John was dropped into boiling oil. Other Christians were fed to lions, had their tongues cut out, or were burned at the stake.
And so for those who were hearing this message in the 1st century, self-denial did not just mean waking up early and skipping your morning coffee. Self-denial was not just working out and taking a cold shower.
The kind of self-denial Jesus is calling people to is the kind of self-denial that might get you tortured and crucified by Caesar.
Jesus is saying, “If you follow me, you must deny in yourself that most basic and natural desire to live and avoid suffering.”
And to this we might respond, how is that even possible?
God created us with the natural desire to live forever. It is the essence of living things to desire to keep living. And therefore the only way you can soberly overcome the strongest natural desire there is (the desire to live), is for God to give you a supernatural desire for something greater, namely to attain unto the resurrection and a life of immortality.
We tend to think of living in strictly biological physical terms. If we are moving and breathing, then we are alive. And that is true insofar as it goes. But what God reveals to us in Holy Scripture is that there are actually two kinds of life and also two kinds of death.
There is a physical death which is the separated of the soul from the body. And there is physical life where the body and the soul are united and moving.
There is also a spiritual death, which is the soul’s separation from God. And there is also spiritual life, which is the soul’s union with God.
God told Adam and Eve, that on the day they ate from the forbidden tree, they would surely die. And yet on the day they ate, they did not die physically. Adam went on to live for 930 years (Gen. 5:5). And so what kind of death did they suffer? Adam and Eve suffered a spiritual death, their soul was separated from God, and it was this spiritual separation that caused their eventual physical death. Separation from God leads to the eventual separation of the soul from the body.
To give you a somewhat silly analogy, you can think of these two kinds of death in terms of the life of your smartphone. If you are your smartphone, spiritual death is when the phone gets disconnected/unplugged from the charger in the wall, and physical death is when your phone eventually dies because its charge runs out.
Spiritual death is what caused our physical death.
So when Jesus says, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself,”he is commanding us to subordinate our desire for physical life to the greater desire He gives us for spiritual life.
In other words, more than the desire for your soul to continue to be united to your body, you must want your soul to be reunited to God, and it is only be being reunited with God, that your soul will eventually be united with an immortal/resurrected body. This is the logic of self-denial.
Now what exactly is spiritual life? We said it is the soul’s union with God, but how does that union happen? Well Jesus tells us in John 17:3, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
The essence of spiritual life is knowing God, and the knowledge that Jesus speaks of here is the knowledge of intimacy and love that a husband and wife have in marriage. Adam knew his wife Eve, and the two became one flesh. This is an analogy for Christ and the Church, for the human soul and the life of God, and it is how we become in the words of 2 Peter 1:4, “partakers of the divine nature.” We remain distinct from God, like husband and wife are distinct persons, but we are joined to God in a spiritual union.
So it is by knowing and loving God, that we can be said to have eternal life abiding in us even now. If you know God and truly love him, you have eternal life. And when that is true of you, suddenly, self-denial and even painful martyrdom, becomes something you will gladly embrace for the sake of Christ. And in fact, death is changed from being something you are afraid of, to something you welcome, because death is now our doorway to glory and seeing God face to face.
Just as a man in love will do anything for his beloved, so we are compelled by the loveliness of Christ to do anything for Him. This is how long term, self-denial, even unto death becomes possible. Love makes us into people who will gladly lay down our lives for Christ and His people, if only we might get more of Him. So that’s the first thing, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus.
The second thing we must do to persevere unto glory is really the same thing but with different words, You must lose your life for Christ. And in verses 35-37, Jesus gives us the divine logic for why everyone should do this. Here’s the basic argument for why everyone should become a Christian.
Verses 35-37 – #2 – You Must Lose Your Life For Christ
35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. 36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
The words life and soul here are the same word in Greek (ψυχή), and it appears that Jesus is continuing to play with this idea that there are two kinds of life and death, natural and supernatural, temporal and eternal.
So we could read verse 35 as saying, “For whosoever will save his [natural] life shall lose it [because you can’t actually avoid natural death]; but whosoever shall lose his [natural] life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it [in that he will be resurrected unto supernatural life].”
And then in verse 36, the question is, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” And here soul could be either 1) remaining spiritually dead, or 2) physically dying. In either case, you end up with the same outcome: gaining something that you can only enjoy for a very limited time, death is eventually going take it all away.
This is then amplified by a further question in verse 37, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” In other words, from your perspective, the most valuable thing you have is yourself, your very being. And you need a you to be able to enjoy anything at all.
So to summarize Jesus’ argument in a syllogism:
Premise 1. Your soul is the most valuable thing you “own.”
Premise 2. In order to save your soul, you must die and give it to God.
Conclusion. Therefore, in order to save your soul, you must die and give it to God.
That is the airtight logic of salvation, and the only thing that will keep someone from coming to that conclusion is a denial of Premise 1 or Premise 2, or both.
You could deny that your soul is indeed precious and valuable, and many people are sadly taught and believe this today. You could deny that you have an immaterial soul. That is the logical conclusion of materialism and evolution, and it is what millions of students are taught every year in our tax funded secular indoctrination centers that we call public schools.
The spirit of the age is to exalt ourselves as god. To make ourselves the ultimate arbiters of reality who form our own essence and create our own meaning in the universe.
The spirit of the age teaches that there is no Loving Creator who made you to know and love him, but instead you are the creator and you can make yourselfinto whoever you want to be. You give meaning to your reality.
Our world places the existential burden of who we are and why we are here on the shoulders of the individual, and then we wonder why so many people are on antidepressants. “You have no soul, you create your own meaning, now go be happy.”
That is not a burden we were meant to carry, and the longer our culture denies the answer to Question 1 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “What is the chief end of man?” the longer our culture will continue on this suicidal path.
So you could deny what even the pagan Greek philosophers knew, that you have an immaterial and immortal soul. And if you deny that, well there’s no soul that needs to be saved, and no need for Jesus or his cross. That is one way of avoiding the inevitable conclusion of Jesus’ argument.
Now perhaps you affirm that you have a soul, and a precious one at that. You agree with Premise 1, Your soul is the most valuable thing you “own.”
But where you have trouble is with Premise 2, that in order to save your soul, you have to die and give it to God.
This is where many people falter and just outright reject Christianity.
Unlike Premise 1 which you can arrive at without any special revelation (Aristotle knew man had a rational soul), Premise 2 requires you to believe the words of Jesus. You have to take it on faith that Jesus is not lying to you when he says this. You have to believe Jesus is a credible source when he tells you this is the only way your soul can be saved.
Do you believe him? Everything hangs on that question. Either Jesus is lying, he is insane, or he is telling the truth. Do you believe him?
At the very least, everyone must reckon with the fact that they are going to die. And Jesus so poses the question, What will it profit you to gain everything you want, and then die, only to bring none of it with you?
Jesus is appealing to that most natural desire that is in you, (the desire to live), and he is declaring that if you want to keep living, this is the only way. You have to die in Jesus and for Jesus. You have to die to this world and its pleasures. You have to actually hate the world if you really love your soul.
So what are you willing to sacrifice in order to live with God forever?
The cry of the Christian heart is, “Take the world, you can have it, but give me Jesus. Take my body and destroy it but give me the knowledge of God. For He is eternal life and He is immortality.”
If you want to live forever, you must deny yourself, and you must lose your life for Christ.
Finally, in verse 38, Jesus warns us about one of the great temptations we will face.
Verse 38 – #3 – You Must Be Unashamed of His Word
38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
The third thing you must do if you want to live forever, is you must be unashamed of God’s Word.
How does the world silence Christians? What has been the most effective way of gagging believers?
In some times and places, it has been the overt persecution and murder of the saints. They cut out your tongue, they chop off limbs, they terrorize and intimidate the church into silence.
This has been at times a very effective way of silencing the church, and these kinds of tactics continue today in places like China and in Muslim dominate regions.
However, in the West, the primary tool for silencing Christians is simply shame. Our world shames Christians for believing such silly nonsense as the Bible, that archaic and outdated book.
There are many forms of public and private shaming.
Some of you have had your jobs and livelihoods threatened because of your Christian beliefs. There are all kinds of social, economic, and political pressures to be ashamed of what the Bible says.
Whether it is the laws in Leviticus against homosexuality, or the laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy that regulate slavery, or the principle of male headship in society and in marriage, or the radical statement of Jesus that there are only two genders, that from the beginning he made them male and female.
Whatever it is that the world is shaming you for believing, you must not be ashamed of a single word. You might not yet understand why God says what He says about slavery or homosexuality, or marriage, but you must never under any circumstance apologize for the Word of God. That is what being ashamed of God’s Word looks like, and if you do that, Jesus says, God will be ashamed of you.
Conclusion
Shame is a powerful force. Shame is also inescapable in a world of good and evil. The world is going to shame you for loving God and standing by His Word. And God will shame you if you love the world and apologize for His Word. You are gonna get shame either way. So who do you want it from? That’s your choice. Whose opinion of you do you care more about?
What will give you the courage to stand firm, to not budge an inch, when the world is shaming you, is the conviction that God’s opinion is all that matters. When you care exclusively about what God thinks of you, that is when you know you have died to the world. When God’s opinion is all that matters, that is when you know you have lost your life for Christ.
And so the invitation to deny yourself and follow Jesus, is an invitation to take up the most shameful sign there is, the sign of the cross. And the promise of the gospel is that if we are unashamed of the cross, unashamed of being identified with Christ and His Word, then we will win for ourselves, glory, honor, and immortality.
God will turn your shame into a more glorious resurrection than you can possibly imagine.
God says in Isaiah 61:3,
“I will give them beauty for ashes,The oil of joy for mourning,The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;That they may be called trees of righteousness,The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.”
The cross is the only tree of righteousness, and if you are planted with the Lord, united in His death, then you will be glorified with Him.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Men As Trees Walking (Mark 8:22-33)

Men As Trees WalkingSunday, September 3rd, 2023Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
Mark 8:22-33
22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. 24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. 25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. 26 And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? 28 And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. 29 And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. 30 And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. 31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.
Prayer
Father, you continue to impress upon us in this gospel, our absolute inability to save ourselves. We cannot open our own eyes. We cannot see clearly unless Christ touches us. And so we ask now that you would open to us again Your fountain of salvation, and that in your light, we might see light. We ask for your Holy Spirit in Jesus name, Amen.
Introduction
Before the disciples of Jesus were ever called Christians (Acts 11:26), they were called followers of “the way.” Before Christianity became the label for the one true religion, it was simply called “the way.”
Acts 9:2 describes Saul’s persecution of the church saying, “And [Saul] desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.”
Likewise in Acts 19:23 it says, “There arose no small stir about that way.”
And Paul says later in Acts 22:4, “I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women.”
If the early disciples were called followers of “the way,” the next logical question to ask is: Where does this way lead to? Why is it called the way? What does it mean to follow the way? Where is this way going?
It is these kinds of questions that the Gospel of Mark wants to both provoke and answer for us.
We remember how the opening verses of Mark’s gospel began, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. 3 The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
And so according to Mark, the whole ministry of Jesus is a showing forth of the way of the Lord. And now for the very first time, Jesus begins to tell us where this way leads. It leads to Jerusalem, where the “Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
If you are going to follow Jesus. If you would become worthy of the name, “follower of the way,” then you must come to grips with the fact this path you are on is a path of suffering unto death. It is a path of being rejected by the world and dying to that world.
As Paul says in Galatians 6:14, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”
This is the way. You want to be a Christian? If you want to follow Jesus, then you must resolve in your heart that the way to destruction is very easy and very broad (Matt. 7:13-14), but the way to eternal life is hard and narrow.
This is the way of the Lord, and you can see why many people choose not to follow it. You can see why many people begin, but then turn back, or turn aside, and never make it all the way.
And so what I hope to do in this sermon is just give you some encouragement. Encouragement to keep walking in the way of the Lord, but especially to not be afraid of suffering and death, not necessarily as a martyr for the faith (though perhaps that may come), but to simply embrace and endure joyfully whatever cross God gives you to carry. Whatever pain, whatever pressure, whatever toilsome difficulty is presently afflicting you, God wants you to carry that cross joyfully. This is the way of the Lord. At times it is hard and painful and ugly, but if you know what is waiting for you at you at the end of the journey (resurrection and eternal life), then joy can be had along the way.
This is the moment in Mark’s gospel where everything takes a turn. This is the beginning of Christ’s revelation of where the way of the Lord leads. And if we are going to walk with Jesus all the way, we need to catch what the disciples miss. That is my hope for this sermon so let me begin by giving you the division of the text.
Division of the Test
There are two basic sections here.
In verses 22-26, Jesus heals a man in two stages.
In verses 27-33, Jesus reveals where the way of the Lord leads.
Together these two sections bring to a conclusion a discussion Jesus was having with the disciples about bread and leaven.By now Jesus has fed the 5,000, he has fed the 4,000, but the disciples are still confused about the meaning of these miraculous feedings.
We saw last week that the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod is their false doctrine and hypocrisy. And here now Jesus gives the disciples the true leaven of the kingdom of God.
In Matthew 13:33 Jesus gives them a parable saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.”
Well hear Jesus gives us the contents of that leaven: That the Christ must suffer and die and rise again. That message is going to transform the whole loaf, it is going to remake and reform the whole world.
Verses 22-26
22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. 24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. 25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. 26 And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.
This is the second time Jesus has healed a man using his own saliva. In Mark 7 he healed a deaf/mute man by spitting and touching the man’s tongue. And here he heals a man by spitting on his eyes and touching him.
It is not obvious why Jesus spits on this man’s eyes, and anytime someone spits on someone else in the Old Testament, it is a sign of shame and uncleanness.
Leviticus 15:8 says, “If he who has the discharge spits on him who is clean, then he shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until evening.”
In Numbers 12:14, God says to Moses about Miriam after she rebelled, “And the Lord said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again.”
So spitting on someone in the Old Testament makes that person unclean, and yet here we see Jesus spitting on someone and making them clean, healthy.
We’ve seen this theme already with him healing the leper and the woman with the flow of blood. Wherever Jesus goes he spreads holiness and cleanliness, and here the very thing that we would expect to defile a person (spit) is the thing God uses to heal and cleanse.
So Jesus spits on this man’s eyes, and he touches him, and then he asks the man what he sees. Why does Jesus do this?
Well, you should already know that Jesus’ miracles are living parables and Mark has chosen specific miracles and includes certain details to give us a hint in the right interpretive direction.
This entire middle section of Mark’s gospel that runs from here to the end of Mark 10 is bookended by two healings of a blind man. And in between these two healings of blindness, Jesus teaches his disciples that he must suffer and die and rise again. He does this three times, and each time the disciples see but don’t see. So our text is the first of these three cycles where Jesus plainly and openly tells them the future. He’s going to suffer and die and rise again. But they don’t understand what that means. So who does this blind man represent? He is an analogy for the disciples, and the disciples are an analogy for the twelve tribes of Israel.
So what does this man see? In verse 24 he says, “I see men as trees, walking.”
What is the significance of seeing men as trees walking?
At the very least it means things are blurry. He only has partial vision, and therefore he needs Jesus to touch him again.
That is exactly what Jesus does, verse 25 says, “After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly.”
That is the miracle, that is the living parable, and now in verses 27-33 we see what that parable signifies.
Verses 27-29a
27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am? 28 And they answered, John the Baptist: but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets. 29 And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
This is the million-dollar question. It is the question by which every man who hears the gospel will be judged. And it is a question to which Mark has already given us the answer in the opening line of this book, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1).
Who is Jesus? Who do you say that he is? How you answer that by your confession and belief and manner of life will determine everything.
As C.S. Lewis famously put it in Mere Christianity, the gospels present us with a trilemma. If you read the gospels honestly, you are forced to one of three conclusions:
Jesus is either a liar, a lunatic, or He is Lord.
He is either lying when he says He is God, or insane for thinking He is God. Or He is God.
To quote Lewis directly, “You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
So who do you say Jesus is?
Jesus asks his disciples this question and Peter, speaking on behalf of the disciples confesses, “Thou art the Christ.”
Is this the right answer? Yes. The disciples can see that Jesus is the Christ. But although that is the correct answer (the right words), what they do not understand is what it means to be the Christ. What is prophesied in the Old Testament about the Christ. If Jesus is the Christ, there are certain things that He must do. And that is what Peter and the disciples do not yet see, their vision is still blurry.
This is demonstrated by what happens in the next few verses.
Verses 29b-33
And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ. 30 And he charged them that they should tell no man of him. 31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. 33 But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.
Notice how quickly this scene shifts. We go from Peter making this glorious confession that Jesus is the Christ, to rebuking Jesus for saying the Son of Man is going to die, to Jesus rebuking Peter for being inspired by Satan.
What is going on here?
Well, this is what that two-stage healing of the blind man is intended to illustrate.
The disciples recognize that Jesus is the Christ, and they see that Jesus is going to die. But their vision is blurry, they see men as trees walking. They see men like Jesus, they see men like themselves carrying a cross on their back (a tree), walking on the way to Jerusalem. And it is as if they cannot accept that that is where the way of the Lord leads. “How can we following the Christ be men as trees walking to Jerusalem to die?” That is their conundrum.
Perhaps they are confused because doesn’t Psalm 1 say that the blessed man is the one who is“like a tree planted by the rivers of water, That bringeth forth his fruit in his season; His leaf also shall not wither; And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so…” (Ps. 1:3-4).
So how then can the Christ, the most blessed one, how can the Son of Man be someone who suffers and dies? Isn’t suffering and death the destination of the ungodly?
You can see why this is a hard teaching for the disciples to accept based on their expectations. They had high hopes for what being called to follow Jesus meant. They left everything behind, they went all in on this venture, because they believed it would somehow be better than what they had before. No one voluntarily leaves a good job and situation behind unless he believes he can find something better. And so the disciples are confused.
If Jesus is the Christ (the anointed one, the promised Davidic king), then he should just ride to Jerusalem (or fly!), clean house, and use his omnipotent power to bring in the kingdom of God. We’ll see later the disciples jockey for position in this kingdom, to sit at Jesus right hand or his left. Their idea of the Messiah, the Christ, is one who simply conquers and takes what is rightfully his.
This is what the disciples expect and want, and it is also what Satan tempts Jesus to do. This is why Jesus rebukes Peter and says, “Get behind me Satan!”
How did Satan tempt Jesus in the wilderness? He offered him all the kingdoms of this world if he would only bow down and worship him. He thinks he knows what Jesus wants, and he offers him a shortcut to getting it. He offers Jesus a pain-free, death-free way to becoming king of the world.
As we said earlier in the exhortation, Satan always offers us a shortcut that is actually a long cut (or more accurately: a dead end). It does not belong to Satan to give Jesus anything. Jesus is the one, according to His Divine Nature, who gives Satan his very being and existence! For who can give to the Creator anything other than what God has first given him?
And so what the disciples are still blind to, what is still blurry to them, is that Jesus must die and rise again to make satisfaction for their sins.
How else can atonement be made for the sins of the world? If perfect justice is eye for eye, tooth for tooth, then how can the life of an animal, the blood of bulls and goats and Passover lambs, make satisfaction for a man’s sin?
God himself says in Genesis 9:6, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.”
Everyone knows (even if they deny it) that an animal is no substitute for a human being. If someone kills your child, and then offers you a dog in their place as restitution, that would be highly offensive, to say the least.
And the situation that the human race has been in, ever since our fall from grace, is that of committing sins worthy of death. As Paul says in Romans 6:23, “the wages of sin is death.”
So death is what we all deserve for sin. And what the Christ, the Son of Man came to do, is conquer sin, death, and the devil. He came to triumph over the evil that reigns and dwells in our hearts. And if what Jesus says is true about the source of evil in the world, that it is inside of us, from the heart of man evil proceeds, then what we need and what Christ gives us, is a way to die and come back different.
This is why, “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
At present the disciples are shortsighted. They don’t see the divine purpose in Jesus’ death. And it will only be after the resurrection, and more fully after Pentecost, that they are able to see clearly.
So what is the way of the Lord? It is the way of the cross. And it is only by dying on the cross that a man can be crowned with eternal life.
Closing Application
When Jesus rebukes Peter he says, “Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.”
What makes Peter’s thinking satanic is that it only thinks about himself and this life here and now, he only savors “the things that be of men.”
And so despite his true confession that Jesus is the Christ, Peter’s meaning and understanding of that confession is rather false.
If by Christ, Peter means, “a king who does not die for his people, but only treads upon his enemies,” well that is a half-truth at best. That is not the kind of Christ Jesus is.
And so I ask you, what kind of Christ do you take Jesus to be? Do you, like the disciples, have false assumptions (false expectations) about where the way of the Lord leads? Has Satan tricked you into thinking that being a Christian is actually the broad and easy way (it’s popular and everyone’s going to like you), and not the hard and narrow path fraught with difficulty?
Have you forgotten that when Jesus called you to follow him, he called you to pick up a tree that you will eventually be crucified on?
In what ways have you been deceived by the serpent? In what ways do you only see men as trees walking?
Sin is always shortsighted. The devil always tries to make obedience to God seem impossible and unsavory, and the reward of obedience hardly worth it. But what Jesus comes to reveal in the gospel is that there is no other way to salvation, no other way to happiness, no other way to the Father’s House, except through Him. Jesus is the way of the Lord, and the pain and suffering and cross of this life, is in the Apostle’s words, “not worth comparing to the glory that is to come…the glory that is to be revealed in us” (2 Cor. 4:17, Romans 8:18). That is the eternal glory we must fix our eyes upon.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.