The Local Christendom Podcast with Aaron Ventura

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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