Mark 10:35–45 — Servant Leadership and Godly Authority

Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: Sunday, Jul 5, 2026 at 10:30 AM

Scripture Reading

Our scripture reading for today is Mark chapter 10, verses 35 through 45. This is the word of God, and it is eternally true.

James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus saying, Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.
And he said to them, What do you want me to do for you?
They said to him, Grant that we may sit one on your right and one on your left in your glory.
But Jesus said to them, You do not know what you are asking.
Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?
And they said to him, We are able.
And Jesus said to them, The cup that I drink you shall drink, and you shall be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized.
But to sit on my right or on my left is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.
Hearing this, the ten began to feel indignant with James and John.
Calling them to himself, Jesus said to them, You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them.
But it is not this way among you.
But whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant.
And whoever wishes to become first among you shall be slave of all.
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

This is the word of the Lord.

Opening Prayer

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts will be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Jesus Sees Through Men

One of the things that's interesting about Scripture is how Jesus sees through men. Because oftentimes you'll be in a conversation with someone and they'll ask you a question. And you'll think they're asking something about you, but really they're revealing something about themselves. Right?

Have you ever noticed that in conversation?

That the way someone responds, the way someone talks, the way someone even asks questions, oftentimes tells you more about them than really they care to know about you. If you haven't noticed that before, watch for it in conversations from now on. Because you'll start to notice that this is true. And this is exactly what we see with James and John here. Right?

James and John ask for glory. They want to sit. Right?

Like, we've got the two chairs here. Right?

Like, I can imagine someone saying, hey, can I come sit up there?

Can I, any of you want to come sit up here?

We can put one on either side. And we can have one on my right and one on my left. Right?

That's the vision. Right?

You can imagine a king sitting in a throne and who's on his right hand and on his left. Have you ever watched the State of the Union?

How, if you ever watch the State of the Union, you'll see that there's the, I'm trying to think of how it actually looks now that I'm talking. There's the president of the Senate on one side. And then, anyway, I'm not going to get into all the details because I'm going to flub it if I do. But anyway, you have powerful men, powerful women on either side of the president who's giving the address. And then you have others around, right, that are ready to go, you know, whether they're pages or whether they're the parliamentarian or whatever they are.

That's the seat of power. Right?

It's the president's, I'm trying to remember the office. It's the person who schedules, does all—is the chief of staff, right?

The chief of staff is the one, if you want an in, you get an in with the chief of staff because that's the person who can, you know, fit you in the schedule or get you in the door or fit you between appointments. Right?

You want to be at the person in power's right hand or left hand because that's where, you know, you might not be the person in power, but you get a lot of their power. And everyone treats you like you do have the power. Scripture gives us many examples of people going to Jesus and asking for things or going to God or going to rulers and asking for things. Right?

I mean, you've got Solomon who asked God for wisdom to lead. You have Jacob who wrestles against God to demand a blessing. You have Esther who goes before her king and he promises up to half my kingdom. Right?

That's like, that's the gracious kingly offer. Right?

Up to half my kingdom. When Herodias' daughter dances before Herod, she gets the same offer. Right?

That's like the gracious kingly offer is up to half my kingdom. But even with that in mind, James' and John's words are just jarring. Right?

Jesus, I want you to do whatever I'm going to ask. Right?

If your kid comes up to you and says that, they're setting you up for something. Right?

You know that. Right?

Otherwise, you just ask the question. If you thought it was a reasonable request, if you thought there was a good chance you're going to get it, what you want to do is you want to bind them to, you know, doing what you want and then tell them what you want. It's bold and it's presumptuous. Now, it's almost understandable. You know, if we try and put ourselves in the disciples' shoes, which is always a good thing to do.

Right?

We're closer to the disciples in our thoughts and our actions than we are to Jesus. And so, put yourself in the disciples' shoes. And you have to think, they had just heard Jesus say that they were going to Jerusalem and in three days he would be lifted up. And so, the thought is, well, here comes the earthly kingdom. Right?

Jesus is going to go conquer, prevail upon Jerusalem. And he's going to set up a throne there and he's going to start to rule Jerusalem. And so, we want something very natural. We want to be the vice president or the chief of staff or the, you know, president of the Senate or whatever the position is, whatever the role is. Who cares what the title is?

The idea is, we want to sit there right next to you. There's no doubt they had in mind this quickly coming political victory where Jesus sits down and has authority. And asking for such power makes sense, right?

Asking, Glory, and Leadership

Because Jesus had already taught them. This is from Luke 11. Mark doesn't record this, but Luke does. > So, I say to you, ask and it will be given to you.

Okay, right?
Seek and you will find.
Knock and it will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives.
And he who seeks, finds.
And him who knocks, it will be opened.
Now, suppose your father is asked by his son for a fish.
Will he not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?
Or if he's asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he?
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him? So, okay, Jesus has already told them, ask for good things, right? Ask. We want our children, we want those under it, to ask us for good things. And we know that being in a position of authority is a good thing. You know, Paul hadn't written this yet, but he's going to write to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3.1. If any man aspires to the office of overseer, bishop or elder, it's a good work that he desires to do. So it's good to desire leadership. Young men, it's good to desire leadership. I was just talking to somebody yesterday who was telling me that they have, he serves in a church of 500 and they have five elders and they struggle to get men to commit to doing the work of being an elder. And I just thought that should not be, right? I mean, we should want, it's a good thing for you to want to be a leader, for you to want to take authority, for you to want to succeed. Drive is good. Passion is good. Leadership is good. And so what's wrong with this request? What's wrong with James and John saying, I want to sit at the right hand and I want to sit at the left hand? Because it's good to ask and it's good to want to be a leader. So what's wrong? What's the problem here? Well, that's why I think, that's why I started with what I did.

Jesus Reveals Their Ambition

Jesus starts to unpack their hearts, right?

He reveals what their real desires are, right?

This, these words came out of their mouth, but what's their desire?

What's their, what are they after?

And what's also interesting is how the other disciples reveal themselves, right?

Because when the 10 hear what James and John have asked, they become indignant. You ever become indignant?

Do you know what indignant means?

It's like, how dare you?

How dare you think that?

How dare you ask that?

But why did they think, how dare you?

Because they're jealous. Why didn't I think of that first?

Why didn't I think of that?

Of course, they all were jockeying and positioning. They all wanted to be leaders. They were jealous. Each one secretly carried the same expectation of being first. Well, if he gets the right hand, that means I can't. I don't get that. And who does he think he is?

Does he think he's better than me?

Does she, right?

It's ambition for place and honor and advantage. Everybody wants that. So what does Jesus do?

Jesus doesn't like throw them all away. He's not disgusted with them. He gathers them in together. This should stand out to us. This is verse 32. The 10 began to feel indignant with James and John. So there's problems, right?

There's division in the crowd. What should we do if there's division among y'all?

We should gather you in together. Calling them to himself, Jesus says to them, you know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. So he gathers them in and then he teaches them. He doesn't pretend like there's no problem. He addresses the problem right head on. Come on, guys. Come, come. We got to talk about this. There's a problem. I know you think you want to be the boss and they are really mad that you said you want to be the boss.

So let's come together and let me explain what's really going on here.

The Cup and the Baptism

Because James and John are representative of the desire of what the disciples are after. But James and John have a flaw in their request. And Jesus unpacks this in two glorious ways. I mean, the one is they don't understand the depths of which Jesus is going to suffer in the very near future. And so the way Jesus reveals this to them is a little obscure to us. If you're not familiar with the Old Testament terminologies.

And right, this is verse 38. Jesus said to them, you do not know what you're asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?

Now, if you're not familiar with how Scripture uses the word cup and drinking from the cup, it doesn't make sense, right?

You think that there's some king's goblet and it's like, oh, can you drink from the cup?

But the cup is often in Scripture referred to as the cup of God's wrath. And what happens is as people sin, this is how Scripture uses this terminology. As people sin, God's wrath starts to fill up this cup until it overflows. And then that's when discipline and punishment flow out from it. Like, if you read Isaiah, you read Jeremiah, you see this sort of imagery, this sort of symbolism of how God deals with mankind. And so here's Jesus getting ready to go be crucified.

He knows why he's here. He knows the mission he's on. And he knows the cup that he's about to drink. He's about to drink the wrath of God for the sins of mankind, right?

For the sins of all those who are saved in Jesus Christ. He's about to take all that punishment, a cup of punishment. Think about the most bitter, vile, nasty cup of punishment. And he's about to drink it down. And so he says, are you able to drink the cup that I'm going to drink?

And then he says, you shall be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with. Okay, now most of us in this room have been baptized. Was it a scary thing?

Rachel, you're most recent, right?

You know, if you were going to talk to somebody here and you're going to say, oh yeah, be careful. You're going to be baptized with the baptism I was baptized with. It wouldn't be a terribly scary thing. But Jesus is not referring to that kind of a baptism, right?

A water baptism like we have here, where you go down and you come out. Well, at least not that quickly. The baptism Jesus is talking about here is his death and burial and resurrection. Okay, that is what our baptism symbolizes. That's what our baptism is a picture of. Is Jesus going down into the grave, his dead body being laid into the tomb and then three days later being brought back out of the tomb. So what is the baptism?

The baptism is nothing less than his death and burial and resurrection. So in that regard, anybody excited to be baptized into the baptism in which Jesus is baptized?

I mean, that means dying. James and John say, yeah, we can do that. We just see their underestimation of the pains of the work that Jesus had before him, right?

They're so enamored with this idea of glory that they don't stop to think about what the depths of the suffering that Jesus is going to have to go through. But then I also think that they misunderstood, yeah, they underestimated, wrongly, the height to which they were looking for. You know, the idea of sitting at God's right hand and God's left hand. If they were thinking about an earthly kingdom, that makes sense, right?

I want, we want to live with you. We want to reign with you. We want to be the chief of staff. We want to be the vice president. We want to be the Senate, you know, secretary, whatever. Don't think they saw the heavenly kingdom yet that they were asking to be co-reigning with Jesus at, right?

They had no thought that Jesus was going to be taken out of this earth to sit in the heavenly places at God's right hand in his throne ruling heaven and earth. Jesus Christ, the uncreated, immeasurable, eternal son of God who took on flesh and bore our sins, entered into the grave, rose from the dead so that, as we read in verse 45, he would be the ransom for many. What should happen to them happens to him. And so when we think about, you know, that, that, that just total misunderstanding of the, of the suffering, the depths of the suffering that Jesus was going to go through and the real height of glory that Jesus was about to enter into, the disciples had no concept of either the depth or the height.

Authority Under God's Law

And, and so Jesus is, is, is gracious and slow to tell them this. And in doing so, he tells us something about what it means to have authority under God's law, what it means to, to be responsible for that authority. And, and so he, he basically ignores their question, right?

And he says, it's not mine to give God's the one—the Father's the one—who's going to give that. But then he gets at a greater problem that they have. And the greater problem that they have is that they're so consumed with this worldly Gentile form of leadership. And now we're all Gentiles. Like everyone, I don't think we have any Jews in here. And, and that's, that's how the world's divided, right?

Jews and Gentiles. So my guess is all of us are Gentiles here and it can be a little, okay. Gentile leaders, but you have to put yourself in a Jewish frame of reference, right?

And so it's like, these are the worldly leaders. These are the leaders over top of the Jews at this time, right?

This is King Herod. This is, this is, you know, the, the various levels of leadership in Rome at the time. These were all Gentile leaders. So what he explains is that these Gentile leaders, they accumulate power so that they can be served. So that they get all the benefit, right?

The, the, the leader of the people is the, is the man who sits on the softest throne and does the least amount of work and has the most amount of benefits. And just like that, that's how they envision the kingdom of God. They think, oh, if I'm great in the kingdom of God, then I'm going to be served and I'm going to be honored and I'm going to be elevated and I'm going to be comfortable, right?

Like that makes sense in the context of the world of Rome. And it's not too far off from today, right?

If you look at our leaders, there's a lot of self-servicing going on. And Jesus is telling them that those who have authority, they have a responsibility. And it's a responsibility to, to serve. And not just that it's them who has the responsibility and those who have authority. He's telling them about himself. I am the first, I am the greatest, says Jesus. And I am going to be the greatest servant of all. I am going to serve more than anyone has ever served.

And this is, you're going to see this and you're going to know this is what leadership in my kingdom looks like. But I want to, we're going to talk a little bit more about that because it is, we've twisted this idea of servant leadership, which is a good idea and a good phrase and it's biblical.

Servant Leadership Is Not Servility

But we've twisted it so that it becomes servile leadership. And so let me, let me distinguish servant leadership from servile leadership. Servile leadership, at least the way I'm thinking about it, is, is this idea that a leader should give those that he leads over everything they want. If you want a thing and you ask your leader for it, he should give it to you. If you ask your father for a thing and you, and he should give it to you.

If, if, if you ask your husband for something, he, he, that's how he's a servant leader is he gives you the thing you want. Problem with that. The problem with that is it actually takes authority and it flips it on its head. The servant leader is actually no leader whatsoever. It's all servant and no leader. Because everything that, that he does is driven by the desires of those underneath him in authority. And that's the trick about combining these ideas, right?

Jesus, and this is where this passage, it was, I just spent a lot of time thinking about it because it's so perplexing. James and John come to Jesus and they say, teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you. And Jesus finishes this passage by saying, the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve. So he says, yeah, I came to serve. I came to do the things, do things for you. I am your servant. I am leading in your service.

How is that different than what James and John were thinking of, of this service, this servant?

It's because Jesus knows what we need. Jesus loves us and cares for us and knows what we need. And so he doesn't give James and John the thing they ask for just because they ask for it. He gives them what they need. He trains them up how they need to be trained. He dies for them because he knows their greatest need is not to have more authority in this life. It's to have their sins washed clean. It's to be given his righteousness.

And that's what they need. And then what do they need after that?

This is what's hard. Well, then they need to drink from the cup that Jesus drank from. And they need to be baptized with the baptism that Jesus was baptized with, which means they need to join with him in his suffering. And they need to join with him in his death. They need to have their sins killed. They need to have their flesh mortified. That's, that's what they need. And so Jesus's service is not just giving them everything that they're asking for.

It's giving them what they need. It's seeing what they need and giving it to them. He's a servant and he's a leader. He leads by serving his family, not just by bringing what they order to the dinner table, but by knowing them and loving them and caring for them. Now that's Jesus. And Jesus is the authority here.

Ordinary Authorities

But we are also authorities in our own right. And so this isn't just some abstract teaching that doesn't apply to us. It's not just about like what good government is. It has to do with what good government is. And I told you already, I've been reading some of the, some of the letters from some of the founding fathers. And, and, and, and been thinking about probably as, as a lot of you are at this 250th year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

What led up to it and, and what its significance is and what it should be for us today. And what I was struck with is how much they focused on the king's abuse of his authority. And this follows in a, in a long tradition, a great tradition, which is easily traced back to like the Magna Carta. If you know what the Magna Carta is, it, the, the king is not just the law, but he's subject to the law. And then, you know, that's, that's in 1215.

So we're talking almost a thousand years ago. That tradition continued about 400 years later with Samuel Rutherford's. He wrote a book called Lex Rex. And, and the argument is that rulers are under God's law. And even a king's authority is delegated rather than absolute, right?

So there's standards by which the rulers, the authorities have to comply themselves. They have to, have to abide under. And so that was one of the driving arguments of the revolution was that the king had a duty to rule over subjects, not as Gentile rulers do, not lording it over only for his own advantage, but that he could abuse his authority in a way that, that undermined and severed the real relationship. He was no, I mean, that was the argument.

He was no longer really the ruler because he had so abused the colonies that they were on their own already. They were under an abusive leader. Okay. So that's, you know, again, that's Jesus and that's the American revolution. And, and, and so what do we do with, with, with this teaching?

How do we apply?

Because I think it's easy for us to think that we're just ordinary people in ordinary positions and, and, and we really, you know, authority is not really a thing that we have to worry about. So I want to start and just unpack some very ordinary authorities that all of us in this room have.

• For the married man, the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. So for those who are married, you have authority and leadership responsibilities for your wife. You have to use those well. That is authority. The duties of authority apply to you.
• Fathers and mothers, hopefully this comes as no surprise to you, but you also have authority over your children. This is the fifth commandment. > Honor thy father and mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God gives thee. So if, if children have to honor their parents, what are they honoring of their parents? The authority of the parent, that is the father, son, mother, daughter relationship. It's one of authority.
• Okay, maybe you don't have children. Maybe you're not married. How about brothers and sisters? Do brothers and sisters have any authority? Does an older brother have authority over his younger brother? Certainly not as much as a parent has over their children, but they do, right? By, by means of maturity and education and physical capability, there is an authority that comes just from being an older sibling. That applies to brothers and sisters, right? These are all natural positions of authority within the family.
• Outside the family, we have authority in the church, right? We have pastors. We have elders. We have deacons. We have deaconesses. We have committees. Each one of those are either individuals or groups that have been given some certain amount of authority over an aspect of the church.
• We also have state authorities. We have county commissioners. We have mayors. We have precinct men. We, all the way up, right, to, to, to, at the state level, you have congressmen. You have senators. You have governors. You have, and then at the federal level, you have presidents and senators and congressmen, right? Those are all different levels of authority. Some of us wield multiple of those, but all of us have some level of authority. And when God places you in such a position, he commands you to use it well.

Two Ways Authority Can Be Abused

Authority can be abused in two separate ways, right?

It can be abused by being harsh and critical and cruel and domineering, but authority can be abused the other side as well. It can be abused by weakness and neglect and a refusal to serve, a refusal to do the things that you've been, that you've given authority to do. So if we think about the American Revolution, it is easy to see the abuses of authority over us, right?

Every one of us loves to grumble about the authority over us, legitimate or illegitimate. It's more difficult to see the ways we abuse our own authority. Scripture tells us that those in authority must use the position God has given them to love and pray for and to bless those under our care. So that could be your children. That could be, you know, if you're on a homeowners association, that could be the owners of the homes in your neighborhood.

If you are on the library board, that could be the staff of the library. If you're an employer, that means your employees.

• Those with authority have to teach and guide and warn those under their authority.
• And they must encourage and praise and reward those who do what is right.
• And they must oppose and rebuke and discipline those who do what is wrong. You can't just be Mr. Nice Guy. If you have authority, it's essential, it's necessary that you both commend your children or your staff or those who are under you who do well, and that you discipline those under you who do not.
• You must protect them and provide for their physical needs as well as their spiritual needs.
• Those in authority must live in a serious, wise, holy, and godly way. Like there's responsibility and duty in that. To bring glory to God and to earn proper respect and preserve the authority that God has given. This means that those in authority sin when they fail to do these duties that God has given them.
• They also sin when they seek their own honor and comfort, gain, or pleasure, instead of the gain of those under them. And this is, you know, going back to John and James, this is exactly what they were looking for. We want to be the important ones, and so we want to sit at the right hand. It's not that they wanted to sit at the right hand because they thought they were really good administrators of God's mercy, and they were going to accomplish that effectively for everyone. Fathers, I feel like this is the easiest thing in the world for us to get in the habit of doing. It's seeking our own honor and comfort and gain and pleasure instead of the good of those underneath us. That's getting at the heart of servant leadership. Not doing what you're told is desired of those under you. It's looking out for their best interest, looking out for how you can serve those who are under your leadership.
• They sin when they command what is sinful or demand what people cannot do. And again, as fathers and mothers, this is hard. This is a hard line to learn, is what are your children capable of doing? And it's just as bad to underestimate as it is to overestimate. Because if you look at a four-year-old and you expect them to behave like a 12-year-old, they can't do it, right? They can't reach as high. They don't have the coordination. They don't have the understanding. They don't have the discipline. So we have to engage those who are under us according to who they are. And not everyone has the same gifts. I mean, this is as true with employees as it is with children. Different children have different strengths and weaknesses. And it's to the benefit of those who have the authority to see what the strengths and weaknesses of those underneath us have.
• Those in authority sin when they advise, encourage, approve, or support what is wrong.
• And they sin when they discourage, oppose, or suppress what is right. It's hard, right? That means you can mess up on either side. Whether you tell people to do a thing or to not do a thing. To be fearful or to be bold. To be outgoing or to be, you know, quiet. There's not always a right answer. Be careful of someone who always has a right answer in every situation. Because a lot of situations, you really have to know the person to know how they should respond.
• Those in authority sin when they discipline unfairly or excessively. Which side do you normally fall on? Do you abdicate your responsibility to discipline? Or are you an excessive disciplinarian? It's good to know yourself. It's good to know who you are and which side you tend to err on. And then if your spouse errs on the opposite side, then you guys can have good conversations and learn how you can both improve. And if you're both on one side, then that's harder. Then you might need some outside help.
• Those in authority sin when they carelessly expose those under them to harm and temptation or danger or leave them unprotected. We have a duty to protect those who are under our authority. And if we fail to do that, if we expose them to harms, and this is why we need to warn each other about false teachings and wicked things and ways to avoid, thoughts to avoid. There's things that will happen to you in this life or paths you're tempted to start walking down as young men and young women that you don't see how dangerous they are. And those who have a few more years of experience can see where that path leads you and how dangerous it is. And they have a duty to warn.
• Those in authority sin when they provoke those under them to an anger.
• They also sin when through unjust, foolish, harsh, or overly lenient behavior, they dishonor themselves and weaken the authority God has given them. Overly lenient behavior is my temptation of sin. It is easy for me to be overly lenient, to assume the best, assume the best motives, and to be slow to discipline. But what's the consequence? The consequence is that we weaken the authority that God has given us. It's a dangerous thing. Because what happens when authority gets weak? Power abhors a vacuum. Have you ever heard that saying? So if authority gets weak, what happens? Is there just less authority? No, someone else jumps in and takes over the authority. And that's exactly, if you watch parents very often, this is exactly what you'll see. You have this little domineering child who dominates their parents. And we were recently at somewhere and we were going to introduce our kids to someone. And the response was, well, let me see if my child will let me introduce them. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, we have to love those under us. And we have to choose things that are good for them and things that are bad for them. And that's hard. And we'll often get it wrong. And so we have to be quick to repent. And we have to see our own sinful desires in this. And we have to work through it. But what we can't do is abdicate parental authority to the tyranny of the four-year-old, the tyranny of the five-year-old, right? And you watch parents taking their kids to Disney World on an airplane trip. And you just see that tyranny all over the place. We have to be careful. If you give up your authority, someone's going to step in, even if it's a four-year-old girl. Right, Autumn? This means that a husband, father, mother, brother, or sister can sin in responsibility, both by being overly harsh and by being overly weak. Authority is not faithful merely because it avoids harshness. It must also accept responsibility for protection, correction, provision, care. So the godly authority does not give James and John the seats of authority simply because they asked for it. It's not Jesus is to give. Jesus came to serve, but his service is not servility to human desires. We don't control God's kingdom by our own passions and desires. His service is faithful obedience to God the Father for the true good of his people. And fathers and mothers, that means we don't properly exercise authority by giving our children everything they ask for. That would be a transfer of this very authority you've been given to the children themselves. And that corrupts them. That makes them presumptuous. That's letting them be James and John and then not gathering them all in and correcting them. Those in authority must therefore use authority as servants. Not by surrendering responsibility, but by seeking their true good before God. Which is hard because sometimes that means you have to say no. And no is a hard word to say. You have to say no. Your desires are wrong. You can't have what you desire.

Christ the Pattern of Kingdom Leadership

So when Jesus says that the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, he's not merely giving us better leadership techniques. He's revealing the pattern of his kingdom, right?

Christ takes the lowest place. He does the hardest thing. He does the thing that we can't do for us on our behalf. Is that what we would have asked for?

No! We would have asked to rule in an earthly kingdom with him. Christ bears the cup of wrath and enters the baptism of death and gives his life as the ransom for many. You know what a ransom is?

If someone gets kidnapped, you give them money, you get the person back. It's that swap. Therefore, if we would follow him, we must stop grasping for glory on worldly terms. And instead, we must exercise authority, responsibility, and even enter into the suffering that God has given us. Abandoning authority or abusing authority is an abuse of the image of God, how he's created us. And it corrupts those underneath us.

And God holds those in authority accountable for how they treat those under them. So we have to be careful with this.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that we would hear this warning, that we would see the duties and the responsibilities that you have given us as fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters in our homes, in the church, in the state, even babysitting. There's an authority given to young men and young women to care for and protect those under their care. Father, help us to see this authority. We live in a day that authority is almost a bad word.

It's a thing that everyone desires for, but no one wants to admit. And it's a thing that many young men are fearful of. Because it is work, and it is responsibility, and there is a cup, and there is a baptism that comes with it. There is a cup, and there is a baptism that comes with being a mother and a father, of being a husband and a wife, of being a young adult who's growing up. Father, I pray that you would sustain us in this, that you would provide your Holy Spirit to give us that abounding hope, that we would not grow weary in doing good.

Father, I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 34
Speaker: Alex McNeilly

God Saves Those Who Cry Out to Him

Good morning. It's a pleasure and a privilege to get to be with you this morning, and I appreciate the opportunity to preach God's word to you. It's encouraging always to get to fellowship with the body of Christ away from your home and to see God working in other places and even to get to be a part of that work.

So we're grateful to be here, grateful for the hospitality of the Coughlins in particular and for you as a church as well. So thank you. Would you please pray with me before we go to God's word? Father in heaven, I pray that you would please strengthen me by your Holy Spirit.

I pray that you would use me as a vessel to deliver the truth of your word to your people. I pray that you would set aside my weaknesses and my sins that your people might truly be built up from the truth of your word. Would you, by your spirit, work in the hearts of each man, woman, child, each boy and girl here in this place.

Would you work in our hearts to respond to your word with joy, with gratitude, and with peace, knowing that through Christ we can have peace with you. Would you speak to us and strengthen us for walking in obedience to your commandments that we might live as lights and shine in this world.

The glory of your excellency and your truth to save a people out of this world and to be redeeming the whole world through your kindness and your grace. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. Well, to start, I want you to think of a time of weakness or vulnerability in your own life.

Think of a time when you felt small or powerless or unable to help yourself. Maybe a time when you were in danger and very afraid of something. Perhaps this was a time of sickness or of injury. Perhaps it was losing a job.

Maybe you were rejected by someone close to you. Maybe you were even betrayed by your own husband or your wife. Maybe you sinned in some way that you couldn't undo or take back. And all you could do is sit back and watch as the consequences of your sin felt like dominoes hurting one person after another in your life.

Maybe someone took advantage of your weakness and sinned against you in some way. And you felt the shame of vulnerability and violation. And maybe the time you're thinking of happened many years ago. Maybe that time of vulnerability is right now and you're experiencing it right now in your life.

The Context of Psalm 34

Our sermon today is from Psalm chapter 34. And this is a psalm for those who have experienced great weakness or vulnerability or exposure or danger. It was written by David, King David, but before he became king. And this was just such a time in David's life that he wrote this psalm, Psalm 34.

A man named Saul, the king of Israel at the time. A man whom David had been completely loyal to. Saul was the father of David's best friend. And actually at this point in the story of scripture, Saul was David's own father-in-law.

So David had married one of Saul's daughters. But Saul was actively trying to kill David at this time in scripture. Now I know some of you have some pretty strained relationships with your in-laws. But this is pretty bad, right?

Very few of us can say our father-in-law is actually actively trying to kill us right now. But this was true for David. And so he runs away from his own family and his own people from his own hometown to try to get away. And the only real option for David was to run into the arms of his enemy neighbors, the Philistines.

And the Philistines also would have loved to have gotten their hands on David and to have killed him. Before he gets to the Philistines, though, David visits a man named Ahimelech. And Ahimelech is a priest in the tabernacle of God, in the tent where God was worshipped and where the Ark of the Covenant was.

And he stops by at the tabernacle and Ahimelech helps David out. He gives him some of the holy bread from the tabernacle is one thing he gives him. And then another thing that Ahimelech gives him is the sword of Goliath. Which they happen to have there at the tabernacle.

Now this sounds like a perfect setup for David to make a heroic stand against Saul, who's trying to kill him, right? Or for David to lay waste to the Philistines and firmly establish himself as the Savior King of Israel. That is not what we get at this point in the story.

And I want to read the context of this psalm. Psalm 34 is from 1 Samuel 21. And I'm going to read this bit of a story. Some of you might know this history, but this is what it says.

Then David arose and fled that day from before Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, Is this not David the king of the land? Did they not sing of him to one another in dances, saying, Saul has slain his thousands and David his ten thousands?

Now David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them, pretended madness in their hands, scratched on the doors of the gate and let his saliva fall down on his beard. Then Achish said to his servants, Look, you see the man is insane.

Why have you brought him to me? Have I need of madmen that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house? David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam.

Now this was certainly a time of great weakness and vulnerability and danger for David. And his weakness is not just from his external circumstances. This was a time of internal weakness for David. A time of fear and anxiety and I believe even of weakness of faith.

What we get here is not a David and Goliath moment. It's the opposite of a David and Goliath moment. No standing up with great courage to face down the enemies of God. Instead, he pretended to be out of his mind to the point of drooling all over himself.

It's actually pretty embarrassing what David does here. And this is the context of Psalm 34. We're told that specifically, which we'll read in a second. And though it's not really, this isn't really a psalm of confession of sin.

There are a few psalms where David is specifically confessing some sin to the Lord. We think of Psalm 51 after David has been convicted of his sin by the prophet Nathan about his adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah. And David writes Psalm 51 as a response, a crying out to God confessing his sin.

And this is not that kind of psalm, but it is a psalm with a context and it's a crying out to God when someone's in danger. And just as Psalm 51 teaches sinners how to come to God, Psalm 34 teaches those who are weak, vulnerable, and fearful how to come to God.

Reading of Psalm 34

I'm going to read Psalm 34. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word? Now, I'm reading from the New King James Version today. Our family's working on memorizing this psalm this summer.

And so that's the version I picked that we're memorizing it in so it was easier to do it in the New King James. This psalm, though, should be pretty similar from version to version. So Psalm 34. This is the word of God. A psalm of David when he pretended madness before Abimelech.

Now, I'll make one comment there. Abimelech was a name, a general name that could be used for a king in the ancient world, in this part of the world. So if you read 1 Samuel 21, you'll see the name Achish. Abimelech is like the king.

Sort of a name, a personal name for a king that could be used for different men. Before Abimelech, who drove him away and he departed. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul shall make its boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear of it and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord and he heard me and delivered me from all my fears.

They looked to him and were radiant and their faces were not ashamed. This poor man cried out and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear him and delivers them. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Blessed is the man who trusts in him. Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints. There is no want to those who fear him. The young lions lack and suffer hunger.

But those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing. Come, you children, listen to me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man who desires life and loves many days that he may see good?

Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their cry.

The face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and save such as have a contrite spirit.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He guards all his bones. Not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked.

And those who hate the righteous shall be condemned. The Lord redeems the soul of his servants. And none of those who trust in him shall be condemned. Would you please have a seat?

Why Did David Write This Psalm?

So why did David write this psalm? Verse 3 in the psalm is a purpose statement in the form of an exhortation. David says, Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together. David's goal in writing this psalm is very straightforward.

It's to get God's people to exalt the name of the Lord with him. I want you to notice a couple of things here. One, David's exhortation in this psalm flows from a personal commitment on his part to praise the name of the Lord. He preaches what he practices.

David himself is committed to blessing the Lord at all times. That's how it starts. And out of that personal commitment comes his call to others to join him in that praise. David's not a hypocrite is one of the things that we can say about David.

Now he says, I will bless the Lord at all times. Now this of course means that David was committed to praising God in the morning, in the middle of the day and in the evening. It's always right to praise the name of the Lord, no matter what time of day or week or month or year it is.

But just as much when scripture says we should praise the name of the Lord at all times, it means we should praise the name of the Lord in all circumstances. Think of David's circumstances at this time. What do you think he's thinking when he says at all times and he's just been running away and pretending to be insane?

I think he's thinking along the lines of the Apostle Paul who writes in Philippians 4. Paul writes, I have learned in whatever state I am to be content. I know how to be abased, to be made low. And I know how to abound.

Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. David knows it is right to praise the name of the Lord when he's just won a great battle, like his defeat of Goliath.

And he knows it's right to praise the name of the Lord when he's just drooled on himself to escape from the Philistines. Even though David has changed in his behavior and in what he looks like, God has not. And God is still just as worthy to be praised even when David has faltered.

God is to be praised in times of strength and in times of weakness. In fact, for David, a time of weakness provides all the more reason for his soul to make its boast in the Lord rather than in himself. Coming off of this embarrassing episode, David doesn't build himself up by reliving his glory days.

This is one of the exemplary things, one of the things that makes David a really good example for us, is that no matter whether he's strong and courageous or weak and vulnerable or even caught in outright sin sometimes, for David, it's all glory to God all the time.

When he tells his stories, he's not concerned with making himself look great. David doesn't write in this psalm, And then I obtained the sword of Goliath, and I heard the Philistines talking about my battlefield prowess, and I remembered how awesome I am. He says, I will bless the Lord at all times.

His praise shall continually be in my mouth. Sometimes it's easier to do that when you don't look so good. This opening verse is an excellent manifesto for the Christian life. We could use many, many verses of Scripture to instruct our hearts at the beginning of each day, but for me, this one makes the top of the list.

I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. That would be a wonderful way to start your day every single day. I want to talk about the nature of true praise a little bit based on what we see in this psalm.

True praise of God involves the whole person. Verse 2 makes a wonderful connection between our souls, our inner man, and our bodies, what happens on the outside. David says in verse 2, He says, My soul shall make its boast in the Lord. And then he says, The humble shall hear of it and be glad.

When David says his soul, he's talking about the inward man. He's talking about praising God in his heart. And yet that is something that those around him somehow also hear. That's because David is a whole person.

He lives a life of integrity where that which happens on the inside is displayed on the outside. David's soul is engaged in the worship of God, but that soul praise is manifested in his body. God's praise is continually in his mouth. It's not just something that stays in here in the heart.

Other people can hear his praises. And the same should be true of us. In fact, we can make pretty good judgments about what we boast in in our souls by what praise comes out of our mouth. A week or two ago, we've been watching a lot of World Cup.

I don't even know if you guys care about the World Cup. But we have a few sporting events every few years. I'll cobble together some free trials to different TV services and stuff to watch the World Cup. But I was looking up information about Lionel Messi.

Do you guys know who Lionel Messi is? Okay, good. He's a very famous soccer player. And I was reading about Messi's great accolades, all of the awards he's won, all of the goals he's scored, all of the trophies that he's been given. And I realized as I was telling, I think I was telling my family, oh, did you know this about, you know, about Lionel Messi?

My soul was boasting in Lionel Messi, right? And it was evident because I was wanting to share it with the people around me, how awesome this guy was. But how does Lionel Messi stack up to the Lord God Almighty? Who should our souls boast in?

Whose praise should continually be in our mouths? Channel your praise to the one who is worthy. True praise involves our whole person. It involves our soul, what's going on in here, but that comes out on the outside.

And we can actually see what's going on in here by what's coming out of our mouths. And so we should work to love the Lord in our souls and have that be driving the praise of our mouths and our praising God to other people. The true praise involves both body and soul.

It involves the whole person. But something else we see about true praise that's very related, but from the words of David here, true praise is communal. True praise invites other people into it. David says, the humble shall hear of it and be glad.

And then he cries out, oh, magnify the Lord with me. And let us exalt his name together. We should be praising God to those around us. We, the church, God's people, are a special people brought into existence by God with a purpose.

It's so that we may proclaim the praises of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. That's from 1 Peter chapter 2. It says that God has made us a peculiar, a special people, a unique people in this world. And the purpose of our existence is to proclaim the excellencies of God who calls us out of darkness into light.

We are to be a light to the world by proclaiming out loud the excellencies of God. And we're encouraged in this work in this psalm with the kind promise that the humble shall hear of it and be glad. Now, not everyone you boast in the Lord to will be glad when you do so.

Some will get angry and harden their hearts if you praise the Lord. But the humble will respond. And the humble will rejoice when you call out to God and praise his name. And we're called to boast to everyone.

No matter if they're proud or humble, we praise the name of the Lord. And we let them respond how they will respond. And we look for the humble to respond with gladness. God is worthy of praise no matter what and no matter who we're in the presence of.

God is the maker of everyone that we come into contact with. And it is right and good to proclaim the praises of our maker and of everyone else's maker in their presence. So true praise, it involves the whole person and it is communal. It draws others into it.

And that's what the church is. It's us saying to each other, hey, this is what the purpose of Sunday morning is. It's saying to one another, let us exalt the name of the Lord together. That's our calling as a people.

So this psalm opens with David's commitment to praising the Lord. His personal commitment and his exhortation to everyone who will listen to join him in that praise. But he doesn't stop there. A call to praise someone or something naturally comes with a why attached. Magnify the Lord. Why?

Is he worthy to be praised? Tell me why. There are many reasons why God is worthy of our praises. But this psalm focuses on one main reason that his praise should be continually in our mouths. And here's how I would sum it up.

The Lord Saves Those Who Cry Out to Him

The Lord saves those who cry out to him. The Lord saves those who cry out to him. Who does God save? Let's look at the second part of that.

Who is it that God saves? He saves those who cry out to him. We see this all through this psalm. In verse 4, David says, I sought the Lord and he heard me.

David begins with his personal testimony of God having listened to him. The statement in this psalm is particularly sweet because it's clear that David does not see God's willingness to listen to him as stemming from God's being impressed with David. David doesn't think that God has to listen to him because David's awesome.

David makes no claim here that it is because of his strength or his valor or his courage that God listened to him. He simply proclaims God's graciousness to listen to those who earnestly seek him. And he gives his personal account of experiencing how God listened to him when he cried out.

Verse 6, David says, This poor man, referring to himself, this poor man cried out and the Lord heard him. God is to be praised for the grace he shows by opening his ear to those who call on him. Even and especially when they are poor, which means they have nothing to bring to him.

Now, generally, we're all ashamed to be needy or to be poor. None of us wants to be a beggar who relies on the charity of other people to survive. And it's true that we should provide for ourselves and seek to not be an unnecessary burden to other people.

But you do not get to come to God as anything except a beggar. If mighty King David, who slew his ten thousands, was a poor man to God, then so are you and so am I. We must acknowledge our need to God, which is to say we must come to him humbly, not thinking that he must be impressed with us, but pleading his mercy and his grace.

But we must not only acknowledge our need to God. It's really interesting that David, the Psalms are often very personal, but David, especially in leading God's people, he led the praises of God's people. He organized choirs in Israel for people to give glory to God. Sometimes his Psalms are headed with to the choir director.

So this is a personal Psalm where David's talking about himself, but he's also opening up his weakness to the people of God that he's leading. You even see it in the heading that's here, that he says to everyone, like to the church, to the people of Israel, he says, here's why I wrote this Psalm, because I was terribly afraid and drooling all over myself.

You guys remember that? Yeah, okay. That's when I came to God. I was weak. I was poor. This poor man cried out. And that's what he brings and calls the other people to join in with acknowledging their weakness to God.

But David's not just acknowledging his weakness to God. He's acknowledging it to everyone who's reading this Psalm, even the people of Israel who were underneath him. And we need to acknowledge our need for God, not just to God, but to one another. And the only way to do this is to acknowledge your own weaknesses out loud to other people.

But man, that is scary. But there is great freedom and strength in being honest about how weak you are. If you're unwilling to admit your weakness, you will never cry out for help. And if you don't cry out for help, then God will never hear you.

God saves those who cry out to him. But if we're too proud to cry out, we do not have God's listening ear. Listen to this from Isaiah 40 from the prophet Isaiah. One of the ways we exalt the name of the Lord and his power is by declaring our own weakness and our own need for God to him, to one another, and even to the world.

Now, David uses another word besides poor to describe those who cry out to God. And that is the word righteous. In verse 15, it says, The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their cry. The righteous cry out, is verse 17.

The righteous cry out and the Lord hears. How can both these things be true? That God listens to the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, the needy, and it's the righteous who he listens to. Well, who are the righteous?

The righteous are those who are right with God. It's those who have God's approval. Now, amazingly, we learn in Scripture and in this psalm that this can be those who have a right standing with God can be those who are weak and poor and needy. That can be the same person somehow.

David clearly puts himself in both of these categories, right? He says, This poor man cried out. The righteous cry out and the Lord hears them. David knows his weakness, even his sin.

And yet, he also considers himself righteous in God's sight. We'll come back to that in a minute. But remember, hold that in the back of your mind that the righteous can also be the poor and the needy. What does the Lord do when the righteous cry out to him?

He saves them. He delivers them. He rescues them. We get many words just in this psalm alone for this saving work. And save is one of those words that we can use so much that I think it just becomes... I sometimes edit books and I'll do things like I go through, I do a search and find in a document for every instance of one word.

I remember doing this with the word church one time. And I was just clicking through to check the capitalization of the word church all through a book. And I kept clicking and clicking and seeing church, church, church, church, church, church, church, church. And it just started to look like this nonsense, you know, collection of lines and things.

And I started wondering, wait, is that how that word's even spelled? You know, it just becomes so... your mind just gets kind of numbed to it. That can happen with words, even good scriptural words like the word save. Save. Sometimes we use it so often.

And it's good to have some synonyms in our minds that the Lord saves those who cry out to him. He delivers them. He rescues them. And sometimes we have more vivid picture in our mind of what rescue looks like when we think of someone drowning in the sea.

We think, oh, rescue. Okay, yeah, real danger. Real danger. But what does God save his people from? Well, the Old Testament builds a rich theme of salvation, of rescue, of deliverance for the righteous people of God from beginning to end.

So, starting in Genesis, mankind is saved from being snuffed out after the fall through the birth of a son. God graciously grants Adam and Eve more children because he had promised that a savior would come through their descendants. God saves. He rescues Noah and his family from the flood through the use of a giant boat.

God saves Lot and his daughters from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by sending angels to draw them out of the city that was to be destroyed. Abraham's son Isaac is spared from being sacrificed by God. Israel, that's to say Jacob and his sons, are saved from famine, from dying of hunger, through Joseph ending up in Egypt and saving his own brothers by giving them food.

Israel is saved in the Exodus story from their slavery in Egypt. They're saved from the sentence of death at Passover as the angel of death passes over them. They're saved immediately after that from Pharaoh and his army tracking them down to try to continue enslaving them or even to destroy them.

Israel is saved from hunger, from enemies, and from fiery serpents in the wilderness through God's kindness. When they enter into the promised land, Rahab and her family are saved from being destroyed by the people of Israel, by God. The people of Israel repeatedly are delivered from their enemies in Judges.

Ruth, after Judges, is saved from famine. She and her mother-in-law, Naomi, are saved from famine. And then Ruth is redeemed by Boaz, a man named Boaz, who draws her out of her poverty. And then she becomes the great-great-grandmother of David.

David then is saved from the lion and from the bear, which he says was God's help of him to be saved. And then he has confidence to be saved through God's power from Goliath and from the Philistines. And then we get to this account in David's story where he is saved from Achish, the king of Gath, and from Saul.

David, in this psalm, wants us to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with him, because this is the God who saves. He says that God saved him from all of his fears in verse 4. The Lord delivered me from all my fears. What was David afraid of?

Well, mainly of those who wanted to kill him, of Saul, of the Philistines. Later, David would be afraid of his own son trying to kill him and take the throne away from him. In verse 5, David says that God saves from shame. It says, They looked to him and were radiant, and their faces were not ashamed.

David had much to be ashamed of, both from his own sin and weakness, as well as the shame that comes from the violence of others. And yet when he looked to God and knew God loved him and would take care of him, and that God was not ashamed of him, David had no need to be weighed down by shame.

The Lord was the lifter of his head, as he says in Psalm 3. David says that God saved him from his troubles. This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. David is surely considering his own troubles and dangers, as well as those experienced by the people of Israel and the history leading up to him, of God saving them from slavery, from their enemies.

In verse 9, he says, God saves his people from hunger, from poverty, from thirst. He also saves them from their enemies. Verse 21 says, Evil shall slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous shall be condemned. David trusted God to deliver him from his enemies.

Now we may look at this particular episode and diagnose David as being weak in faith, considering his fear of Achish and the way he dealt with that fear. But what does David see when he looks back on this incident? God graciously delivered him from his enemies. Now sometimes we look good and strong when we're delivered from our enemies.

David did at one point, right? We look at David in a previous episode and say, Man, David was awesome. And we acknowledge that it was his faith in the Lord that delivered him. But sometimes we don't look all that wonderful and courageous, and yet we still end up delivered from our enemies.

And it's still God's work. David sees God's hand at work even as he's weak and faltering in this instance. And he still says, It was God who delivered me from my fears. And look, I really was afraid.

When I fought Goliath, it didn't look like I was afraid. This time it did. Scripture says he was terribly afraid. And God delivered him out of that predicament as well.

Either way, God is to be glorified. Now the New Testament is written against this backdrop of the Old Testament. And it picks up this theme of salvation from the very first chapters of the Gospels. I'm going to read a selection of things from the New Testament here that pick up this theme of salvation.

God did not, this is John 3, 17, God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. John 10, 9, Jesus says, Yeah, I want you to say it. He will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

Matthew 18, 11, The Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. Luke 9, 56 says, The Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. Acts 2, 21, And it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be.

Acts 4, 12 says, And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be. Acts 13, 47 says, I have set you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.

All of the salvation in the Old Testament builds up to and culminates in salvation in Jesus, whose name itself means the Lord saves. That's what the name Jesus literally means. It's the name Joshua in Hebrew, and it means the Lord saves. And what is the salvation that is so desperately needed?

Salvation from what? Well, Matthew 1, we're told, An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, interestingly enough, Do not be afraid to take to you, Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Timothy, It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. We need to be saved from our sins and from the consequences of sin. This salvation from sin and its consequences, namely the wrath of God, is the core of salvation from which all other deliverances or rescues emanate.

After all, what would be the use of being delivered from tribulation or distress, or from persecution, or from famine, or from nakedness, or peril, or sword, or shame? What would be the use of being delivered from those things if we are not saved from the wrath of God and would be finally damned?

Those of you who are in Christ, you are saved from your sins and made righteous, right with God, approved of by God, loved by God. You belong to him. You are his beloved child. Even in your weakness and vulnerability and sin, you are God's and he will take care of you.

It is a trustworthy statement. Christ Jesus came to save sinners. And as God's righteous ones, which is to say ones who have been saved from your sins in Christ, you have many promises of salvation that belong to you in Christ. In fact, the promises of this psalm are yours in Jesus Christ.

And that's because this psalm is actually about Jesus. I want you to look at verses 19 to 20. David writes, Does anybody recognize that from somewhere else in scripture? John 19, the apostle John writes about the crucifixion of Jesus.

It says, And again, another scripture says, God the Father orchestrated the fulfillment of Psalm 34 20 to ensure that we would know that Christ is the righteous one spoken of in Psalm 34. Jesus, far more than David, is the one who cries out to God and is heard by him.

And God preserving Jesus' bones shows us that Christ's death on the cross was not God losing control or even God giving up control, but that God was accomplishing exactly what he intended to accomplish in his righteous servant, which was the salvation of his people from their sins. God kept his bones from being broken, even in the midst of his body being beaten and abused, to show that in Christ we have salvation from our sins.

The Psalms are about Jesus before they are about us. I often find myself, I don't know if you have this struggle when you read scripture, but I will often read the Psalms and it will talk about the righteous man. And I'll try to map it directly onto myself, you know, and see if I can check the boxes, like, am I righteous?

And it's a very frustrating and discouraging experience because you don't get very far without realizing that's not me. This says God blesses the righteous and I'm not righteous. And so that's very discouraging, right? Because then you think this Psalm says God saves the righteous. Here I am. I'm not righteous.

This Psalm is not about me. Well, it's not about you. It's about Christ. You can save yourself a lot of my self-righteous angst if you learn to see Christ in the Psalms first. And then when you see yourself in him by faith, knowing that the righteousness doesn't come from you, but comes from him, then the Psalms do belong to you in Christ.

He is the righteous man whose cries, his righteous cries are heard by God. And if we want to be heard by God, we must be right with God in Christ so that Christ will cry out for us. Hebrews 7 says this. It says that Christ is able to save forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them.

Hebrews also talks about how Jesus, God listens to all of Jesus's prayers. Because when he cries out, he really is righteous and God the Father's ear is completely open to Christ's prayers. Do you think that God the Father responds to Jesus when Jesus cries out to him? Would you rather cry out yourself to God or have Jesus cry out for you?

Jesus cry out for you, right? This is what it means to have Jesus as a priest and a mediator is that we know God listens to Jesus. And scripture teaches us that he will pray for us if we cry out to God in him. This is why we pray in Jesus' name.

Because we don't even have a right to approach God apart from the name of Christ Jesus. Now God's salvation of us in Christ goes beyond the salvation of us from our sins. When Christ is the author of our salvation, as Hebrews refers to him, that salvation of us manifests itself in many other deliverances and rescues as well.

In fact, the deliverances of Psalm 34 do belong to us in Christ. Now what am I talking about? David says that God delivered him from all his fears. What fears has God delivered you from?

What are you afraid of right now that you can give over to God and be free from? How about the fear of being hurt by other people? In Psalm 118, David says, The Lord is on my side. I will not fear.

What can man do to me? This doesn't mean that we will be delivered from all hurt by others, but that we can be free from being controlled by the fear of what other people can do to us. If God is for us, who can stand against us? Christ Jesus died for me.

The worst anyone can do is kill me. And if they do, I get to see Jesus. God can deliver us from our fears through Christ. Faith in Christ can also deliver you from the fear of the wrong people being in power.

This is something that we're very tempted by, right? But think about David. Saul, good person that he liked being in power. No, Achish, he's in a city ruled by the Philistines who want to kill him.

You think David was afraid, right? We too can be delivered from being ruled by a fear of who happens to be in power right now. It is better to trust in the Lord. This is also Psalm 118.

It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. The death of Christ delivers us from the fear of death and the many other fears that go along with it. Fears about our health.

Fears about sickness. Fears about pain. Fears about making the wrong choices about food or about medicine. I praise God. He's really helped us. So my wife had cancer a couple of years ago. And we praise God that he has delivered her from that sickness and that she is well and getting better now.

But we had to make certain choices about what kind of treatment we were going to pursue, right? And you're not a medical researcher yourself and you're just presented with these options from doctors. And you have to make a choice. What toxic chemicals are we going to pump into her body and hope that they do what they're supposed to do, right?

That's something, a very fearful thing to have to do. And we made a choice and there have been things about the results of those toxic chemicals that got pumped into her body that have made us wonder, did we make the right choice? If we had chosen a different path, would it have been easier, right?

Did we make the wrong choice? Is a fear we often live with, but we don't have to. And I praise God that he's helped us to know, you know what? Even if there was a better or easier or more comfortable path we could have chosen, we know that God is even using the pain and the discomfort for our good.

So this path over here might have been easier or more comfortable, but this one is more sanctifying. And God is using it to actually make her and us more like Christ, which is the better path. And you can pursue this path even without having to be afraid or from living in fear.

Are you afraid of pain? Are you afraid that pain is going to last forever? Well, this promise belongs to you in Christ from Revelation 21. God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain for the former things have passed away. God promises in Christ that there will be an end to pain. And along the road, God assures you through Christ's own sharing in real pain.

That's why he came and took on our flesh was to have the fellowship of our sufferings. God assures you in Christ that your pain has purpose to make you more like him. But it's not just fear that this psalm tells us that God's people are delivered from. It says that God delivers us from shame.

It says they looked to him and their faces were radiant. How does the gospel of Jesus Christ deliver you from shame? In the gospel, God tells you in Christ that he is not ashamed of you. He is pleased to call you his son or his daughter.

And Jesus is not ashamed to call you his own brother, his own sister. Because he did everything that was necessary to tear down the wall of guilt and shame that stood between you and God. God delivers us from troubles, from war, from persecution, from famine, from nakedness, from death.

He delivers us from want and lack. Has God provided you what you need in terms of food and clothing? He certainly abundantly provided for us. And he delivers us from our enemies.

What do we know God will do to those who hate the righteous? Which should be a good definition for us if we're trying to even understand what enemies are. Those who hate the righteous. This psalm promises us that they will be destroyed.

If God could preserve Jesus' bones from being broken by the wicked, then he can ensure that the wicked will not go unpunished and that we too will be delivered from the violence of our enemies. We do not have to be afraid.

Living as the Righteous in Christ

One last thing. Being called righteous by God comes with commands and obligations.

Are you right with God in Christ? If you are, then keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.

When you are grounded in the love of God in Christ Jesus, you have nothing to fear. You are free to do things like tell the truth without being afraid of the consequences of telling the truth. Whether it's speaking the truth of God's word or telling the truth of confessing your own sin.

Knowing that God approves of us in Christ gives us the freedom to tell the truth and to turn away from being deceitful. You know no matter what that God has you so you can honor him in how you speak. Jesus himself only ever told the truth. And if we're in him, we should live like him, right?

What motivated Jesus to tell the truth? He had the love and approval of his father and he knew he had that. From the very beginning of his ministry, before he even started publicly teaching, God out of heaven said, this is my beloved son. Jesus lived his life out of the approval of God the Father.

He knew he could speak the truth, God's word, because he knew he belonged to God. We get to live that life in Christ. Knowing that we have God's approval and therefore not afraid to speak the truth. Not a fearful life of trying to earn God's approval through being righteous, but a peaceful one that flows from the knowledge that we already have God's approval in Christ.

Now unlike Christ, we fall into sin, right? Jesus lived perfectly, we do not. But that's the wondrous blessing of Christ's death on the cross. As ones who have God's approval in Christ, we have an advocate in heaven pleading our forgiveness at the throne of grace.

One who is specifically appointed for that purpose, to intercede for us when we sin. God knew he was saving sinners when he saved us. And he knew we would continue to sin even after he saved us. But that did not keep him from following through and saving us.

Sinners who are righteous in Christ acknowledge their sin, repent, and continue on in faith and hope and obedience. We even see that in this psalm. In verse 18 it says, The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart and saves such as have a contrite spirit.

And this is how righteous and poor come together. As Jesus says, blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, right? And those who have a contrite spirit, who come to God confessing their sins and turning away from their sins. That's who God counts as righteous in Christ.

What a blessed verse to be in this psalm, this verse 18, that says he saves such as have a contrite spirit. It's a great relief to be taught even here that the righteousness of God's approval is not through our own perfect keeping of his commandments, but that God is near to those who are sorry for their sins.

He is near to those who trust in Christ's payment for their sins. And then that leads us to obedience and walking in his ways. So with this psalm, I think a good summary is to bless the Lord at all times. God saves those who cry out to him.

That is why he is worthy to be praised. So may our souls boast in God and let his praise continually be in our mouths.

Closing Prayer

Father in heaven, our souls exalt in you.

And we lift up the name of the Lord. We lift up your name and especially the name of your son, Jesus Christ, who is the righteous one who cries out to you. And you always hear his prayers. Lord, we rightly lack confidence that you will hear our prayers because of our sin.

But we know that you listen to Christ. And so as we honor his name and pray to him, we pray that you would hear our prayers and his prayers on our behalf. I pray that you would help us to be willing to acknowledge our weakness and our sin, to tell the truth about you and about ourselves, to our families, to the lost world around us.

May we not be ashamed to confess our own shame and your removal of that shame in Christ. I pray for this church, for Moral Baptist Church, that you would cause it to be a light to this community in northeastern Kansas. I pray that as people think of this church and the people in this church, that they would think of people with radiant faces who delight in the approval of God and Christ.

And they would think of a people who are continually praising your name. Would you strengthen us for the week ahead? Help us to honor you in how we pray and how we live. Would you remove falsehood and lies from our lips?

Grant us truth in the inward man that comes out and how we speak and even how we sing. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.

Scripture: Philippians 2:19-22
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin

Sermon: Like a Child Serving His Father

This is God's word and it is eternally true. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts will be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Now, you might have noticed that our scripture reading was not from the book of Mark.

It is Philippians today. We're taking a break because it's Father's Day, and it is a good opportunity to remember the importance of fatherhood in our own lives, but also in Scripture. And so the text from Philippians came up in our men's study this week. It's a snapshot of the father-son relationship between Paul and Timothy.

And because we're parachuting into this letter of Scripture and you don’t have much context, I want to give you a little background. Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians while in jail. Randy mentioned earlier this morning that Paul wrote much of the New Testament.

Most of the letters are written by Paul. The Philippians had recently sent Paul a gift to help him in his imprisonment. And Paul writes back to tell them that he's thankful for their kindness and to give them instructions on Christian living. In doing this, he sets out three examples of men who serve the Lord well without grumbling.

And one of the examples he gives them is Timothy, who Paul hopes will go and visit the Philippians since Paul can’t because he's in jail.

Spiritual Sonship

Now, it's important to note that Timothy is not Paul's biological son. You understand what I mean when I say biological son. He’s not his issue, his heir, his natural son.

We see throughout Scripture, though, that Timothy is Paul's spiritual son. He's his true spiritual son. And this is interesting. I think we neglect this truth to our detriment—that there are more ways to have a son than just by having a son.

We see this in Philippians 2:22 when Paul says that Timothy served him like a child serving his father. Paul also makes similar references in his letters directly to Timothy.

• “To Timothy, my true child in the faith.”
• “This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son… that by them you fight the good fight.”
• “To Timothy, my beloved son.”

He treats Timothy like a son. He does the same thing in his second letter to Timothy. He opens it, “To Timothy, my beloved son.”

Paul makes it clear that he views Timothy as his son.

Affections Passed Down

And like any true son, that means Paul as father has passed down his affections—not just lessons, not just head knowledge.

This is the way affections are commonly passed down. And what we see is this chain of faithful men with a chain of shared loves.

First, we can go back all the way to the Trinity. Before creation, we see the love of the Father for the Son that preceded all time. Then here, we see that Jesus loved Paul and formed Paul. This is part of Paul’s conversion.

And then Paul loved and formed Timothy. Those affections passed along as part of the inheritance.

These true sons down from the father share their affections in a way that comes all the way to us and our sons today.

Who formed you, you form others.

This is part of the growing and maturing process—passing down our interests, our loves, our affections, who we are. These renewed affections take root in the regenerated hearts of the sons in the faith.

And this was essentially what the prayer was for Lauren earlier—that we would pass on those affections, that love, that care.

True Sons Share the Father’s Heart

And so what we're going to do is look at this passage to see what Paul says about his son, Timothy.

First, Paul mentions that there is no one like him in verse 20. Timothy is a kindred spirit with Paul.

Kindred spirit reminds me of Anne of Green Gables. Anne speaking of her friend—“kindred spirits.” There is alignment at the soul level.

It’s not just people walking around wearing Kansas City Royals shirts. That doesn’t make you a kindred spirit.

A kindred spirit is someone who is motivated on the same levels you are, who has a love and interest in the same kinds of things you do.

Early in our marriage, I would lose my wife to conversations. They would inevitably be about childbirth or cloth diapers. I realized—she had met a kindred spirit.

This kind of alignment of loves you see with fathers and sons.

You can probably think of several things unique to your family that your children, biological or spiritual, replicate because that’s what they see.

That’s what they know.

True Sons Share the Father’s Concerns

Paul and Timothy share their kindred spirit in being genuinely concerned for the welfare of the Philippians.

“I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare.”

What a man truly loves will be shown by what he naturally cares for.

If you genuinely care for something:

• it drives you
• you want to read about it
• hear about it
• talk about it

It overflows from your heart.

Timothy didn’t make the churches his concern just to impress Paul. He didn’t do it for commendation. It mattered to him. He caught that love himself.

He is a son.

And because he's a son, the real fatherly love Paul shows him isn’t performance-based. He loves him and cares for him—not just because he’s doing the thing, but because he sees himself in him. The same concerns drive Timothy.

Children inherit:

• anxieties
• priorities
• burdens

For good and for bad.

We see our children display our strengths—and that’s encouraging. And we see our children display our weaknesses—and that’s disheartening.

Paul sees the other men around Timothy concerned with their own interests—filling their own bank accounts, securing their own farmland, finding the next opportunity. Timothy stands apart.

True Sons Share the Father’s Way of Life

Timothy is a man of proven worth.

Look at verse 21 for comparison: others seek their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus. But you know Timothy’s proven worth.

Timothy had been tested over time. Together with Paul, he endured beatings, rejection, danger.

Paul recounts:

• imprisonments
• beatings beyond number
• lashes
• stonings
• shipwrecks
• dangers everywhere
• daily pressure for the churches

And Timothy stayed by his side through all of it.

In this life, there will be hardships. These are tests.

Sons learn whether the gospel is worth suffering for by watching their fathers.

Sons need to see us suffer to see what we truly love.

Men suffer for what they love:

• hunting in the cold
• waiting overnight for a game system
• working long hours in farming
• sitting in freezing stadiums

Suffering reveals love.

True Sons Share the Father’s Work

Timothy was a front row participant in Paul’s gospel work.

“He served with me in the furtherance of the gospel.”

He:

• worked alongside Paul
• suffered alongside Paul
• learned alongside Paul

Paul put Timothy to work. “Come alongside me—we have work to do.”

The churches had problems. Every church had problems. Paul and Timothy addressed them together.

Sonship and discipleship are not primarily instructional—they are imitative.

You don’t lecture someone into loving something. They observe you loving it.

This is how we see the transference from Paul to Timothy:

• shared mission
• shared burden
• shared suffering
• shared priorities
• shared Christ-centeredness

That is what made them kindred spirits.

When We Don’t Like What We See

This is a great example. But we can’t ignore that our sons reflect more than we want to see.

We see in ourselves—and in our sons and fathers—things we don’t want imitated.

There are two ditches:

• abuse
• abandonment

Abuse is misusing authority.
Abandonment is neglecting responsibility.

Abandonment is more common.

But there is hope—for fathers and for sons.

Because of the church.

Timothy didn’t receive everything from his biological father. He received it from Paul.

You can have more than one father.

This is spiritual fatherhood.

The church is where men step in and step up when fatherhood has failed—passing along redeemed affections, inviting others into work and suffering.

The Source of Fatherhood: The Trinity

We can’t understand this without understanding God.

From before creation, God has existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Father loves and delights in the Son.

“You loved me before the foundation of the world.”

The true Son reflects the Father:

• loves what the Father loves
• does what the Father does

This is how Jesus taught us to pray:

“Our Father… Your will be done…”

We are praying to do the Father’s will.

Final Exhortation

God gives us families so that:

• we shape
• guide
• correct
• love

We fail—but we continue in faith.

We need other men:

• to challenge us
• to expose blind spots
• to strengthen our fatherhood

This is how we form true sons.

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, I pray that we would learn to trust you with our sons…
that we would bring along these young men and young women into the work…
that they would see the gospel is worth suffering for—even our lives.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Scripture: Mark 10:28-34
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin

Sermon: Mark 10:28–31

Scripture Reading

Our scripture for today is Mark chapter 10. We're going to start in verse 28. This is God's word and it is eternally true. Peter began to say to him, behold, we have left everything and followed you.

Jesus said, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms for my sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now. In the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms along with prosecutions and in the age to come eternal life.

But many who are first will be last and the last first. They were on the road going to Jerusalem and Jesus was walking ahead of them and they were amazed and those who followed were fearful. And again, he took the 12 aside and began to tell them where he, what was going to happen to him. saying, behold, we are going up to Jerusalem and the son of man will be delivered to the chief priest and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles and they will mock him and spit on him and scourge him and kill him.

And three days later, he will rise again. This is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts would be pleasing in your sight today. Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

We have to remember that when we pick up and stop on a week to week basis, we're taking what Mark wrote as a single narrative and we're cutting it up. We're chopping it up into pieces, right? And so we come here this morning and it's been a week since we thought about what we heard last week.

And I start with, Peter began to say to him. And it's like we just got parachuted in the middle of nowhere and we have no context, right? Nothing before, nothing after. Now, the good news is since we're going through this section by section, if you think, if you can, if you can remember, we talked, you know, last week we read what just was previous to this and the week before what was previous to that.

But after a few weeks, right? Like it's hard to remember. It's hard to remember what came just before this. And so I just want you to know, when Mark was given the job of writing down the gospel here, right?

He thought about all the accounts that he had heard, everything that he had experienced, and he sat down and made it up himself. He was inspired. These are the words of God through Mark. And so, but we have to see, Mark is explaining things. He's teaching us, not just by his words alone in isolation, but how the whole arc of the book of Mark comes.

How one scene unfolds into another scene. I mean, you've watched movies, right? You don't just watch like one scene of a movie and then move on. They all have an interplay, a connection, an ebb and a flow to them.

And so here, what's the context? What did we just read about? Who did we just read about? You guys remember? Okay, so we're at Peter now.

What happened? Let's go back two weeks ago. Anybody remember what we talked about two weeks ago? Yeah, this is the challenge, right? The rich young ruler, does that ring a bell?

The rich young ruler who went to Jesus and said, I've followed all these commandments. What more do I need to do? And Jesus sent him away sad, right? He said, go and sell everything you have and give to the poor.

And then what happened after that? He went away. Okay. And then two weeks later, actually, two weeks later was when the children came, right? And so we've got this, we've got this set up where Jesus welcomes the children and says, you need to receive the kingdom like one of these children.

And then the rich young ruler comes and he's like, he's self-confident until Jesus says, sell everything and leave. And then Peter says, behold, we have left everything to follow you. So who's Peter really responding to? Where did this come from?

Right? Likely, likely, the disciples are walking along the road talking about Jesus's interaction with the rich young ruler, right? Oh man. Yeah. He told him he needed to go sell everything. And oh, look at us. We, we do that.

We have left behind our houses. We left behind our fathers. We left behind our brothers and sisters and we're following you. So there you go.

That, I need, I need some affirmation. Jesus, when you were saying that to that rich young man, that was, that was kind of like me, right? Like I'm that. Am I good enough? I think I'm good enough.

I think we're good enough. Can you kind of see that that's the context that, that is presented to us here in the gospels? Like Mark wants us to see this connection. Like the fact that these paragraphs are all right next to each other.

These are connected thoughts, connected ideas. Behold, we have left everything and followed you. Jesus's response is where we're going to put most of our attention this morning. Jesus responds, teaching them about the realities of the kingdom.

First to tell them what a follower can expect in this life and the next, and then to show the disciples the real cost of discipleship...

I want you to know what he's not saying. He's not saying that you are going to be rich and powerful and happy and healthy and wise in this life. Like if you listen to our prayer requests, our prayer requests are very normal. That is the normal life.

It's full of trials and hardships and sickness. So how do we take what Jesus says here and we reconcile it with our reality? That's our work this morning. That's our work. Because I didn't read the full sentence.

So just to give some context, there's no one who left these things, but that he will receive a hundred times as much in this present age. So in this life, right, not in the resurrection, but in this present life, he will receive a hundred times houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, and children, and farms, along with persecutions.

So if you listen to a gospel, you know, a health and wellness pastor, prosperity gospel pastor, they're going to skip over that persecutions part, right? Because that's, that's, what does that mean? I thought we were getting the good stuff. But then there's also persecutions.

You know what persecutions are? You guys know what persecutions are? Well, what's that? Lots of unpleasantness. And scripture is full of these types of unpleasantness. You know, you, you think back, there's not many prophets in the Old Testament who lived a good life.

Most of the prophets were thrown out of the temple. They were beaten. They were thrown in jail. They were exiled. They roamed around half naked or maybe completely naked at times. It was a tough life.

Being on God's side was usually a tough life. That's persecution. So then what do we make of this hundred times more in brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers? Is it all bad? Because there's the flip side of this too, right?

This is a less popular church if they're focused on the persecutions because most people don't want to hear about that, right? But there is this like self-affirming like, oh, life is just always bad and it's only going to get worse. And we just need to prepare ourselves for how bad things are going to get, right?

There's like this affirming, depressive type teaching as well. We have to avoid that. We have to see both. You have to see that Jesus says, in this life, in this present age, there's a hundred times more of these things if you leave them for the gospel's sake and for Jesus' sake. And it comes with persecution.

I think we overlook the blessing of this hundred times more fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and houses and farms. It's one of those things that's like so obvious, it's right in front of our face and we forget about it. We ignore it.

Because just look around. Just take one second and look around. Look around. I have one biological sister. I have two adopted brothers and one biological sister.

And yet every morning I come to church on Sunday, Sunday mornings, I come to church and I have 30, 40 brothers and sisters gather together on a regular Sunday morning. We gather together in a house, right? I mean, this is God's house. This is the church house. This is available.

This is one of those things. And guess what? When we do our homeschool group, we meet at Northridge. Northridge is generous with their church house and it's well set up to have a whole bunch of kids, do a whole bunch of classes. You have brothers and sisters who don't gather here every Sunday morning, right?

You know other Christian believers? These are your brothers and your sisters who, for the sake of the gospel, have left behind certain things, difficult things, hard things. And they've pursued fathers and mothers. Anyone who's over 40 years old, you're the fathers and the mothers.

You're the fathers and the mothers to these teenagers or these middle-aged people or, you know, guess what? Teenagers, you're the children. You're the children that the church is blessed with. That by leaving the gospel, because guess what?

There are children who've rejected their parents over their parents' love of God. I just had a really hard conversation with someone where their kids did not want them to take their grandchildren to church with them. Because that is a line too far. They do not want to pass that.

There's parents who won't go to church with their children or have spiritual conversations with their children. Or who just have failed to discipline and train up and give a message of hope to their children. To train them up in righteousness. And so what do they need?

They need church fathers. They need church mothers. How about brothers and sisters? What are brothers and sisters good for besides fighting and quarreling?

It's someone you can rely on. I needed, we had the pews up in the balcony. And we needed to get them down. And I, I mean, Chris and Randy and Kenny and Cave and Ian showed up.

And guess what? I couldn't have done that work by myself. I couldn't have gotten those down. No way. It took all, what, six of us? With ropes and boards and, I mean, it worked.

But you know what it took? It took a team. It took brothers. And then you talk about a lady's lunch at the Moral City building. And I'm like, we could call that a sister's lunch, but then that'd sound weird.

So let's not do that. But there's probably ways in which you are relationally closer to your sisters in Christ than you may well be with your biological sisters. But I think if I would have pressed you for an answer for how God gives you this hundredfold brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers and children.

But let's go to farms. How do you, where are these hundredfold farms that, that, that God has given us? Okay. Yeah. No farms in Antarctica. That is true. The desert.

You know what Old Testament says? It says, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. God.

I don't know if you were around last year. If you were around last summer, we're not quite there yet. We were swimming in apricots last summer. Apricots, however you say it. We were swimming in sweet potatoes. We were swimming in squash. Cabbages, right?

You've heard the joke, like, in the Midwest, you lock your doors in June and July so that no one puts squash in your car.

God provides. What is a farm other than a way to provide? God provides.

And he provides ways through the church, through the ways that we care for one another, through the ways that we provide for one another. And I bring up the, the farm examples, the, the, the, the apricots and the squashes, because it's a tangible, real example of like, you come to church and all of a sudden you have produce.

And it's like, I didn't work for that. I didn't pull the weeds. I didn't. It is just the, it's brothers and sisters caring for one another. It's God providing abundant fruit and abundant harvest.

When we have potlucks, there's an abundance of food. I've never seen it run out. This is the way God provides for one another.

How about houses? I mean, not only do we have the church house here where we gather and we fellowship and we, we eat thousands of millions of houses.

We also have each other's houses, right? That's what Christian hospitality is. Christian hospitality is having a Bible study in Powhatan, having a Bible study in Sabetha, having a Bible study in Seneca.

And it's an open invitation to say, come, come on in. That doesn't happen very often outside the church. Honestly, to be fair, it doesn't happen very often inside the church.

It is, it's a really hard thing to do and to encourage. Because usually what we do is we set a really high bar and, and we make it so that it's really hard.

We think our house has to be spotless and we think our food has to be restaurant quality. Hard inviting someone over to a dirty house and feeding them ramen.

But that's what Christian fellowship is. Sometimes it's just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the floor didn't get swept that morning. And that's okay.

The air conditioner isn't turned up all the way. You know, we all live different.

But for those who have left father and mother and brother and sister and established themselves and said, I want to follow Jesus. I love the gospel more than I love my earthly comforts.

I love the gospel more than I love my blood relatives. I want this. This is hope. This is life. This is the future. This is the only thing I have.

Well, then all of a sudden that makes a church. That makes a church because you know what? We're all standing on the same foundation.

We all love the same thing. We're all, and that doesn't mean you all love green beans or you all love Chinese food or, you know, like we love different things, but we all love the same thing as the most important foundational element for what makes us a church.

That's what joins us together is our love for Jesus, our having been washed clean by his blood. That's it. Everything else is different.

And I pick on Chris a lot for his paragliding thing, paramotor thing, but like I will never do that. We will not go hang out paramotoring.

That's not my thing. I don't shoot guns very much. I'm not very good at it, right? Like there are things that make us who we are that are totally different.

But what unites us is by being washed by Jesus Christ that we can look at our sins honestly and say, yeah, I hurt you. Yeah, I should have called you and I didn't. Yeah, I'm selfish.

I got in a fight with my wife last night. Can you help me out?

And not have to think you're a horrible person. You know you're a horrible person and you know you've been washed clean.

And the only hope you have is in Jesus's righteousness. So that's this age.

That's this age. A hundredfold more with persecutions. And I don't know if I need to explain persecutions. I think you all know that the Christian life comes with persecutions and suffering.

If you're tempted to think I'm talking about a prosperity gospel, health and wellness, come talk to me afterwards. We can talk about persecutions, but we're going to move on.

Verse 30. A hundredfold of houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms.

Actually, I'm not ready to move on from that yet.

Because here's another way we get a hundredfold more.

Have you ever bought a new car? I've never bought a new car. I've always been worried about buying a new car.

Because I think if I bought a new car, I would go crazy over my kids doing anything in the backseat, right?

Like having a sucker, having a, you know, candy wrappers, you know, hail dings, somebody opening their door and popping and denting the side of the car. Like, I think it would just drive me crazy.

But worse than that, you take someone who has it all. Someone who has a hundred houses.

Someone who has all the wealth in the world. And then they get cancer and what happens?

It doesn't matter. They've lost it all. Everything, everything they had, they lose it all.

How tenuous is that life? How fragile is that life?

How difficult is it to enjoy to the fullness what you have when you know all it takes is an accident and it's all gone.

All it takes is a slip and you lose it all.

Bill Gates. I mean, Bill Gates, he, he, before Elon Musk was like the rich, rich man, Bill Gates was the rich, rich man.

And now, now his, his involvement with Epstein, like his reputation has just fallen.

And his, anyway, Jeff Bezos and, and his, you just see the truth of the book of Ecclesiastes.

That these men are just grasping at whatever thing they maybe could hold onto in this life, trying to have some sort of joy and pleasure.

And they're eventually going to get to where Solomon got, where he says, it's just vanity of vanities. Life is a vapor. It's a mist.

The Christian is different. We see our eternal souls and we have this hope, this hope that Jesus talks about here.

And in the age to come, eternal life. That's the source of our hope.

The source of our hope is not just in accumulating things where moth destroys and rust degrades, that, that thieves break in and steal.

That's not our hope. Our hope, the real hope is in the eternal days, the eternal life to come, the coming age.

After death, that, that, that dark veil that we don't see clearly through, but that God's word gives us some hint of what's going to happen.

We have a hope of eternal life, eternal life and glory.

And I was just watching a video and this was, this is a famous chef, which is a funny thing that we have famous chefs these days, but we do.

And he was talking about, about his belief in God and he's got some twisted views of God.

And he goes, I grew up Baptist and, and heaven seems boring. I don't want to go to their heaven because it's just singing.

Well, I've got news for him. Heaven is more than singing.

There is singing involved. So, you know, learn to enjoy singing, but there's more than singing.

There's work, which, you know, might not get you excited either, except it's work. That's just glorious work.

It's good work. It's work that you don't have to fight against the earth for.

Work that's apart from the burdens, the thorns and the thistles, the aching back from lifting the rocks, the, you know, whatever the thing is from the mosquitoes biting your ankles when you're trying to pick blackberries.

It's just joyous work.

Like we, every once in a while you get a glimpse of it in this life, right?

Like you do a project and it goes well and it's like, ah, that was satisfying.

But, you know, usually it's, that was hard and that hurt.

And now I'm hard. Now I'm sore and hurt.

We have an eternal life to look forward to.

And do we understand what that means?

Can we understand what it means to live a thousand years, a million years?

No, we can't. We just, incomprehensible, but it's glorious.

This is our hope.

This is the hope that I hope that Joyce and Julia and Roger and Billy can cling to.

Because I think most of their joy in this life is gone.

There's just not much. There's not much to appreciate. There's not much to comprehend.

It is just difficult.

And I hope, and when I go see them, my goal is to remind them of that hope, of that eternal life, of that, of their eternal soul.

So again, I encourage you to do the same.

Then Jesus warns, this is verse 31, but many who are first will be last and the last first.

Now remember the context. Peter had just said, hey, we're following you.

We did this thing. We're on board. We are church members.

We've signed the covenant. We've been baptized. We sit in the front pew, like pastor says, you know, all these things.

This is, we're in it. We're in it. This is us.

And Jesus says, many who are first will be last and the last first.

And this is, this is a warning.

Kiddos, listen. You can have a great start.

I don't know. Did any of you watch the Kentucky Derby this year?

Is that a thing around here? I don't know.

Okay. Maybe no.

This is going to fall flat if no one watches it.

Okay. All right. Well, you know what the Kentucky Derby is.

It's a horse race, right?

It's a, it's a, it's a round track, an oval track and, and the horses, they start at the same place that they're trying to get across first.

Like it's track, but for horses.

Does that make sense girls? Track, but for horses.

Okay. So there's a starting line.

And, and, and this year there was a thing where all the horses started and they're, they're tromping down the track.

And I don't know how far it is, but it's a, it's a fairly long way.

And they get about halfway along the course around this, around this circle track and there's a horse in dead last.

And right around the halfway mark, this horse wakes up and literally shoots.

If you go at Google search Kentucky Derby at video and you'll see it.

It is amazing to watch.

Last place, last place, last place.

He overtakes everyone and wins.

He just shoots through a crowd and then around the side.

And I listened to the, to the broadcaster.

Let me see if I can find it.

Okay. Here it is.

During the broadcast, the announcer said at the beginning of the front runner of the front runner, right?

Okay. So, you know, cause there's a guy out front and the, in the winners in the very back, but at the front where he says, he has the speed.

Does he have the stamina?

Which the answer was no.

Right?

So it's an incredible, like, it's just a beautiful example of the reality that this is, this happens.

And it's fun because in horse racing, you know, unless if you're a better, maybe it, you know, it, it can actually affect you.

But for me, it's just fun to watch.

But the way this usually is shown is that it's sad because you see a guy who starts off really well, like a young man who's got a lot of potential and he's doing well in school.

Maybe he's, he's a star athlete.

He's a, he's a high academic score.

He's, he sings in the front of the church and then within two years, three years, he falls and he's exposed for being a fraud or he, he drinks too much and he runs his car off the road and he dies.

And this is often where you see these kinds of things, where someone who looks to be first ends up being last.

The same is true on the other side.

Sometimes the last become first.

This, this one's a little more hopeful and more interesting to see.

You see somebody who doesn't look very impressive and then all of a sudden something in their life changes and you start to see goodness, unexpected goodness, unexpected success.

I mean, I think back on my high school childhood friends and I think how many of them that looked really good and really solid and really impressive really turned out to not be any of those things.

And then a couple of the ones who didn't look like much, who made something of themselves, who loved the Lord, who persevered, who stayed by their wife.

That's why this is a warning.

It's a warning.

And again, I guess I think especially for you young folk, you've started well.

You love the Lord, you own a Bible, you read it, you show up at church, you help out.

These are all good things.

But just because you start well doesn't mean you end well.

But guess what?

There's no cutoff line to that.

The Christian life is a life of persevering and moving and continuing.

And you don't get to check out at retirement age.

You don't get to check out when you've had grandchildren.

You don't get to check out until you've fully checked out.

Until death.

Our goal, our mission, our purpose, our striving, our running with endurance and with stamina is, I don't want to say the same because it's not.

Right?

I mean, there's times where you go slower.

There's times when you grow slower.

But the direction, the following Jesus, the learning to shed away the love of this life and the cares of this world, that's the same.

And it goes all the way.

The crowd seemed to have understood that there was some mix of promise and warning.

For there was a mixed reaction.

Read in verse 32.

Jesus was walking on ahead of them and they were amazed.

And those who followed were fearful.

And I looked at this and I thought about it.

I can't really tell which is which, who the different crowds are.

But there was amazement and there was fear.

So he took the disciples aside and he said, Hey, listen, we're going to Jerusalem.

And the son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes.

And they will mock him and spit on him and scourge him and kill him.

And three days later, he will rise again.

So here's the real rebuke to Peter.

Listen, you've left some things.

You followed me.

That's good.

The son of man.

I came down from heaven.

I left the eternal heavenly father.

I came down.

I put on flesh.

And I'm going to die.

I'm going to be mocked and humiliated and beaten.

Not for my own guilt.

Not because Jesus needed any sort of discipline.

Any sort of sanctification.

Any sort of growth.

It's as if Jesus is saying, listen, you've left some things.

I'm leaving it all.

I'm willing to take on perfection and put on sin in order that you should be washed clean.

That's the foundation.

That's the real cost of discipleship.

The rich young man, the disciples, the followers, none of them came anywhere close to what Jesus was going to pay so that we have the opportunity to be a living sacrifice.

So that we have an opportunity to live by faith, to trust and follow in Jesus.

Jesus knew that his death and resurrection were the only proper foundations to acquire a people for himself.

It is by grace alone that Jesus brings this salvation to us.

It is in Christ alone that our hope is found.

It is by faith alone that the believer receives the redemption that God has accomplished.

We don't trust in our works, in our accomplishments, in our generosity, in our ability to obey the law.

It's going back to being those little children who approach Jesus and want to be blessed by him.

It's receiving the kingdom of God as a child.

Not trusting in our own works, our own righteousness, our own sacrifice, but only trusting in Jesus.

Not on the basis of what we've done.

It was for our sake that he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

That's the exchange.

Jesus, sinless Jesus, takes on our sin and what do we get in exchange?

We get his righteousness.

That's how we appear before God.

That's how we stand before God on judgment day.

Not through anything of ourselves.

Only through his mercy and his kindness.

This is the hope of the gospel.

This is the thing for which we can leave it all behind and trust in his promise of a hundredfold.

This is the foundation upon which faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit, perseveres us to the end.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to learn to trust you. Help us to learn to walk in your ways, to not trust ourselves, to not try and build up for ourselves our own kingdom, but to look to you, to come to you with childlike desires, childlike amazement, childlike faith, to say, Father, we need help.

Only you can provide. be with us bless us and keep us we ask this in Jesus name amen

Scripture: Mark 10:17-27
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin

Sermon on Mark 10:17–27

Scripture Reading

Our scripture reading today is Mark chapter 10, verses 17 through 27. This is God's word and it is eternally true. As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to him and knelt before him and asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. Honor your father and mother. And he said to him, Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up. Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, One thing you lack.

Go and sell all you possess and give to the poor. And you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me. But at these words, he was saddened.

And he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property. And Jesus, looking around, said to his disciples, How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus answered again and said to them, Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.

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. They were even more astonished and said to him, Then who can be saved? Looking at them, Jesus said, With people it is impossible, but not with God.

For all things are possible with God.

Opening Prayer

This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in your sight today. Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

Introduction: Context

Well, this is a continuation in the scene that we saw and we talked about last week where Jesus had received the young children, even though the disciples were out there being his bodyguard, saying, No, stay back. And so, in contrast, in contrast to the children, right?

Again, think about in sequence of how Mark's presenting this. You guys all had a week break. Mark's presented this like, right, verse after verse. The children wanted to come to Jesus and the disciples, you know, No, stay back.

But a rich young man comes up. A rich young ruler runs up and the disciples like, right, like part ways. You know, just think about the parting of the Red Sea, right? They're like, Oh, the rich man's here.

The Rich Young Man’s Approach

And this rich man, he runs up to Jesus, right? And then what does he do? And then he kneels down. Like, if a rich man runs to you, I mean, it says something about who he is.

Like, this doesn't seem like a guy who is nonchalant and, you know, kind of indifferent. It's not the kind of guy who woke up Sunday morning and was like, Oh, maybe I'll just stay in bed this morning. He ran to Jesus. I don't know about you, but like, what makes you run?

What? What? You know, let's say that you heard that there was something in Moral Park, Moral City Park here, you know, like four blocks away. What would get you to run four blocks? Tickets to a concert? Free hamburgers? You know, like something?

Would anything get you to run four blocks to try and beat out your neighbors here so that you were the ones who had access to it? So this man saw some value in Jesus, right? Like, he saw something. And then as we talked about this morning at Sunday school, what does he do when he gets to Jesus?

He kneels down. Like, this is good. This looks really good. Jesus is there and he runs to him and he kneels down to him. He shows the homage that we should all give to God.

Outward Honor

And then he says, good teacher, right? Like, he, he, not only does he physically show honor, because sometimes I think we forget that our bodies are made. Like, we were, we were somewhere recently and I saw someone sitting very straight and proper. And I'm like, you know, as opposed to sometimes when, when I'm sitting at my office, right?

Slouch back like this, right? How you present yourself, what you do with your body matters. It, there's a way just, people see that. Like, there's a reason that in, in the, in the army, when people stand at attention, like, it matters how they do it.

It matters how they salute. Like, there are things that matter about how we comport ourself, how we act, what we do with our, with our physical selves. But it's not just, it's not just his body, right? Good teacher, he says.

And so there's, there's some honor showed there, right? Like, it's not, hey man, what, what, what's going on here? It's good teacher, right? And then not just that, but he says, what must I do to inherit eternal life, right?

A Man Who Looks Right

This man is spiritually minded. He cares about the right things. This is, this is an exemplary man, right? Like, if you have daughters, like, this is the kind of man you want to marry your daughter.

He runs to Jesus. He kneels before Jesus. He honors Jesus with his words. He cares about spiritual things, right?

Like, this is a good man from all appearances. From all appearances. He looks like a decent, good Christian man. Someone we'd want to welcome into membership. Someone we'd want to pull in and say, oh, come be a part of us.

You're like us. You desire the same things that we desire.

Jesus’ Response and the Law

Jesus responds to him. Not how I would respond to him, right? Why do you call me good?

You know, we don't have the level of discernment that Jesus has. Jesus sees right to your heart. He knows why you're here. He knows why that, why that man was there that day.

Like, you're not pulling a fast one on Jesus. No one is good except God alone. And then, and if you want eternal life, keep the commandments, right?

And he goes and he lists. Typically, when we talk about the Ten Commandments, there's the first table, and those are the first four commandments. They talk about our man's relationship to God. And then there's the second table. They're the last six commandments.

Those are man's relationship with other men, right? Honor your father and mother. Don't steal. Don't lie. Don't commit adultery. So that's where Jesus goes. He's like, okay, if you want to inherit eternal life, obey the Ten Commandments.

Reasonable, right? That's why God gave us, to show this is what God's expectation of man is. I'm playing fast and loose with a couple things here, so just go with me.

The Man’s Confidence

Because this is where Jesus goes to, right? I mean, the young man, though, wasn't fazed at all, right?

I saw some looks of recognition, like, ah, he's, he's, okay. The young man, though, teacher, I've done these things since I was a baby. Not a baby. A young man. Probably 12 years old. That's, that's what, what the word means there, right?

From my childhood. I have kept these things. I've done them. I'm good. I'm good, right?

So, right? Tell me I'm good. Right? Right? Tell me. I, you said, do these things, and I've checked all those boxes ever since I was a child. So, affirm that I'm good, that I've done all the things, right?

Isn't that what we all want to hear? That you're good? That you've checked all the boxes? That you've done all the things that you have to do? That you've arrived?

That's what this man wanted to hear.

The Exposure of the Heart

Then look at verse 21. Jesus, looking at him, felt a love for him. And feeling this love, he said to him, one more thing. Just one more thing.

Go and sell all that you have and follow me. Sell what you have, give it to the poor, and come follow me.

Jesus was not giving him one final work, one check more that he needed, right? Instead, Jesus is exposing that the man's heart wasn't really with Jesus.

He ran to Jesus. He knelt before Jesus. He affirmed Jesus. He cared about spiritual things. Kind of.

Right? Because what Jesus did by saying, sell all that you have, was to expose an idol in his heart. The idol of all his stuff. He cared more about his possessions, his earthly goods, than he cared about Jesus. And it crushed him. He saw it. He felt some sort of weight of guilt of, can't do that.

You can't ask that of me. I can't do that. And instead of saying, oh, help me. What did he say?

He didn't say anything. At these words he was saddened. And he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.

Jesus’ Teaching on Wealth and Entry into the Kingdom

And I think what hits so hard about this is the man looks like, he looks great, right? I mean, you want to see a man running and kneeling and affirming and caring about spiritual things. Like, that's what we want to see.

And then Jesus unravels him with one question. One more command. You know, it's serious, but it's a simple request, right? Like, and you're going to die. I mean, you can't take these with you. I thought you were concerned about eternal life.

And here, I say to get eternal life, you got to give up this stuff here on earth. And you're going to make a big deal. Like, that's what saddens you? I thought you cared about eternal life.

Now, in case the disciples missed the point of that conversation, Jesus doubles down. And just in case you or I think, okay, it was just that guy's problem. He's not really talking about, because, right, we all want to think he's not really talking about earthly possessions in general.

We all want to find some way to soften this down. And Jesus is going to say, how hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven.

So now the disciples are like, okay, so that man was an example. But Jesus really here is talking about more of a principle. It's a principle that wealth gets in the way of our admittance into the kingdom of God, right?

The young man, here's a young man who looked good, acted good. Jesus saw to his heart. And he made it clear that it's not enough hold on to the things of this earth and add Jesus to it.

Possessions and the Heart

It's not the world, your earthly goods plus Jesus. With this one simple request, Jesus revealed that the man's possessions, he thought he had many possessions, but really his possessions had him. He was bound up in the stuff.

Jesus keeps going, right? How hard it will be for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.

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 Camel and the Needle

Like, this is now the third time he said it. Example, first time. Example, first principle, second principle. Three times overall about how hard it is for a wealthy man to enter the kingdom of God.

How hard is it for a camel to enter the eye of a needle? Do you all know what a needle looks like? Has anybody done sewing and you know what the eye of a needle looks like?

And then, okay, so a needle, let's say the whole needle is this big. And then the eye of the needle, right, is like that big. Okay, give or take.

Now, how about a camel? How many of you have ever seen a camel in real life?

Most, some. How many of you have seen a horse in real life? Or a cow in real life? Anybody seen a cow around here?

Okay. A camel is big. A camel is like horse-sized, cow-sized. So think about that. Like, camel, eye of a needle.

Is this going through this?

No.

Rejecting False Interpretations

Now, again, I said people love to try and find ways to, like, make this easier to hear. And so I've heard sermons, and maybe you have too, where they're like, well, they're not really talking about the eye of a needle. There was a needle gate.

And the camels had a duck to get.

But that's nonsense, right? And the disciples see that it's nonsense. And anyone who reads this whole thing in context would see that that's nonsense.

Because, as soon as Jesus says the thing about the eye of the needle, what do the disciples respond?

The Disciples’ Question

Verse 26. They were even more astonished and said to him, then who can be saved?

Because if they were talking about just a camel ducking down, you wouldn't be astonished by that. Right? You wouldn't say, who can be saved?

Because you're like, oh yeah, that means he's got to duck down a little bit.

No. The whole point of it is, it can't happen.

Then who can be saved? Who can get a camel through the eye of a needle? But then it's not the eye of a needle anymore. Then it's something bigger.

So what's the point of saying it's like a camel going through the eye of a needle? It's virtually impossible. It is practically impossible. It is physically impossible. It is, by all earthly standards, impossible.

And the disciples get it, right? The disciples get it.

The Right Question

Then who can be saved?

This is exactly the right question. And it's almost the same question that the rich man asked.

What shall I do to inherit eternal life? That's what the rich man asked.

And the disciples say, then who can be saved? How? If that's required, if a camel's got to go through the eye of a needle, who can be saved?

How is this possible? What must we do to inherit eternal life?

Contrast: The Rich Man and the Child

This is where we see the beauty of the contrast that Mark's making here between last week's passage with the children and this week's passage with the rich man.

Because the rich man comes and he says, ah, I'm self-satisfied. Everything is going great. I've got all I need.

In fact, not only do I have all I need food-wise, water-wise, servant-wise, possession-wise. Like, I've got it all. I've also, you know, I live a moral life. I'm doing good here.

I don't steal. I don't commit adultery. I don't lie. I honor my mother and father.

What Do They Need?

What does he need? What did that rich man need?

Other than affirmation. Other than the satisfaction of a little bit of doubt in the back of his mind that said, something's off here. Something's not quite right.

Yeah, sorry. Sometimes I ask questions and they're more rhetorical. Sometimes I'm going to wait for a response, but that one was more of a rhetorical one.

It's not always clear.

The rich man thought he was all set. He had it all. He had done it all.

The Needs of a Child

What did he need?

What does a child need?

This is what we talked about last Sunday, so see if you remember. I'll take responses this time.

What does a child need compared to a rich man?

Right? Sometimes they need their diaper changed. Sometimes they need a bottle. Sometimes they need to be picked up and snuggled.

Food, water.

How about everything?

A little child needs literally everything provided for him. A bed. Sometimes they need to be rocked to sleep. Sometimes they need a plug stuck in their mouth.

Right? I mean, there's just all sorts of things that children need opposite of a rich man.

The Self-Sufficient Rich Man

The rich man lives self-satisfied. He doesn't need anything from anyone else, or at least he doesn't think he does. And the rich man is not willing to be made like a little child.

Now, maybe to some extent, right? He does kneel down. And what is kneeling other than putting yourself on the level of a little child?

He was not willing to receive the kingdom of heaven as a child. He would come on his own terms and his own merit.

His possessions gave him a security for his life, and he wasn't willing to upend this security in order to obtain eternal security.

Right? What he had was good enough for this life. He just wanted more on top of that, as opposed to saying, I'm willing to give it all up in this life in order to get the next life.

His only conception of securing his eternal future was the same way he lived in this life. He would achieve it by his merits. He would achieve it through his obedience. He would achieve it by his own sacrifice and his own personal holiness.

Right? Like, that's what we're taught in school. Right? Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. Work hard. Work diligently. You can be anything. Right? If you just put your mind to it and you do the hard work, you can do it all.

Application: Exposure of the Heart

And every day we're at risk of this same error with ourselves and our own spiritual life. With ourselves and our own children.

The most important thing is to look proper, but Jesus sees through how we look. Jesus sees through how we act in public.

Jesus sees children how you treat your parents at home. Jesus sees parents how you treat your children at home. Husbands and wives how you talk to each other behind closed doors.

Jesus sees through the gloss that we put on the outside and he sees through to your heart. He knows who you are.

The Danger of External Religion

So it's not enough to look proper. It's not enough to have a good reputation. It's not enough to come to church.

It's not even enough to run to church and then to kneel down in prayer. It's not enough when you're really protecting your own idols.

Right? The man ostensibly, he made it look like he wanted eternal life, but he also wanted a grasp onto this life. He wanted to keep, you know, one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat.

What happens when you try and do that? Have you guys ever been, you know what I'm talking about, on the dock and on the boat?

Right? Can you imagine a dock? It's, it's secured. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You fall. And then what happens once you fall? You get wet.

Application to Children

Children, listen. You've grown up hearing the scriptures and being expected to live a decent life.

Right? Your parents have given you certain expectations that this is how you should live. This is how you should act. This is how you should talk.

This is how you should present yourself. And that's good. Don't hear me say anything else. That's good.

That's a blessing. It's a blessing to have been raised in the church with expectations. Expectations to read the Bible, to pray to God, to go through the motions.

But you still need God. You still need his mercy. You still need to receive the kingdom of God as a child.

Checking off those boxes of, oh, I read my Bible this morning, mom. Oh, I prayed my prayer this morning, mom. That's not faith. That's not your heart.

That's what this rich young man did.

Application to Adults

And if you're not a child, if you're older, you're not off the hook.

Right? You could have walked with the Lord for decades. You could have attended church with perfect attendance records.

You could have been a deacon or an elder or a deaconess or a pastor. You'd be baptized by immersion.

You could be the chair of the Women's Society. You read your Bible every day. You pick up one of those reading plans and you check off every box.

And again, this is a blessing. These are all good things. Don't hear me knocking them.

But do hear that you still must receive the kingdom of God as a little child.

You don't go and say, because I'm this and I'm that. I'm a Baptist. I'm, you know, all the things.

This is who I am. I'm a Bible reader. I'm a prayer warrior. I'm a all good things.

But if that's where you find your worth, if that's where you find your merit, if that's where you find your identity, right?

Missionaries face the same risk. You can pour out all of your life for the church.

If you don't love the Lord and not willing to receive the kingdom as a little child based on Christ's merit, based on Christ's provision, not based on your own good works, your own good deeds,

tend to look at all that stuff and say, look at all I did for the church. Look at all I did for God and not see that all God's done for you.

Universal Problem of Sin

Try to come to Jesus just like the rich young ruler based on our own good deeds.

The problem is that both Jews and Greeks, every one of us is under sin. There is none righteous.

No, not one. No one who seeks God. All have turned aside and become worthless.

The Purpose of the Law

And so when we hear the law like that man did that day, what should it do?

Should it fill us up with pride and a sense of accomplishment and self-satisfaction?

Or should it cut us to the quick and make us see even more our dependence and our reliance on God and his provision?

In Romans 7, Paul writes,

Seeing the demands of the law must open our eyes to our own sinfulness. The reality of our need for a savior.

Sinful man cannot meet the demands of the law.

And so that means we must avoid self-satisfaction in any domain.

Our morality, our love for God, and especially our self-satisfaction with wealth.

Hope #1: Jesus’ Love

But all is not hopeless.

And there's two points that I'm going to close on that give us reason to have hope here.

Hope in this passage that we must train our hearts and our minds to focus on rather than our own abilities and our desires.

The first one comes from verse 21.

Verse 21 says this, Looking at the rich young ruler, Jesus felt a love for him.

Now, had this man cleaned himself up yet? Had his heart been exposed?

Had his heart been broken? Had he come to know his sinfulness and his need for a savior?

No, he hadn't. And yet, and yet, Jesus felt a love for him.

That should give us hope.

The Kindness of Confrontation

Jesus isn't sitting there thinking, oh, worthless. Oh, sinful. Oh, self-indulgent and conceited and self-satisfied.

True. But he sees a love for us.

And so why, why did Jesus expose this man's sin?

Why did Jesus break this man's heart?

Was it out of judgment and condemnation?

Why did he break this man's heart?

Illustration: The Reckless Driver

Yeah, because he had, he had set his heart on something that was going to lead to death.

He was being a fool. He thought he was self-sufficient all on his own and had no real need of Jesus except to be affirmed.

And what's the kindest thing you can do to a person like that?

You don't want someone who thinks that they're, that they're doing well in this life, that thinks that they're sufficient on their own to continue down their path.

Because what happens?

Right? Like, okay, let's take it out of the spiritual realm. Let's put it something more tangible.

You've got a friend who thinks he's a great driver.

Thinks he's a great driver, right?

And, and he, you know, blows, you know, he's doing 15 over the speed limit.

He's taking turns and pulling his handbrake up as he goes.

So it swerves all around.

He thinks he's, I don't know, who's a good driver? Anybody know?

Woods, okay, great.

Right? He thinks he, he thinks he's a Woods brother.

He knows how to get around corners.

He knows how to cut through traffic.

What's the, what's the kindest thing you can do for that man?

Assuming he's not the Woods brothers.

Tell him he's an idiot.

You can tell him he's not a good driver.

You can, you can not lie to the police when they show up later that day saying, hey, was that you driving like a reckless fool?

Because you, why?

Because you want him to get in trouble?

No, because you want to save his life.

And he doesn't know himself.

He thinks he knows himself, but he doesn't.

And so he's careening towards death and destruction.

Maybe not even his own life.

Maybe he kills someone else.

Loving Confrontation

The kindest thing we were talking about, you know, all scriptures given for reproof and correction.

The kindest thing you can do for someone who's very self-satisfied is to just to pull the rug out from under them and to show them that they have a need in love, right?

I mean, Jesus did it in love.

It's not just to embarrass him.

So he doesn't die.

So he doesn't die and isn't lost.

Hope #2: God’s Power

Jesus' love for this man should be a great comfort to us because it came before any change.

Even when the rich young man preferred his earthly possessions over Jesus, Jesus loved him and loved him enough to confront him and care for him.

The second reason we have reason to hope comes from verses 26 and 27.

When they were even more astonished, the disciples, and they said to him, Then who can be saved?

And looking at them, Jesus said, With man it is impossible, but not with God.

For all things are possible with God.

Final Application and Encouragement

Listen, this is our ultimate comfort because it shows that we can be needy children.

We can not have it all figured out.

We can look at our life and really see what the law demands.

We don't have to lie to ourselves or others and say, I've kept all the demands of the law.

I'm holy. I'm righteous. I'm moral. I'm good.

Right?

Our ultimate comfort is that the salvation that God is working out in your life is only possible because God accomplished it and God is working it out.

That Jesus, when he was nailed to the cross, really accomplished salvation for you.

That you really trust that God is working in you both to will and to want to do his goodwill.

That's powerful.

Conclusion

If God is the one working, then all of a sudden it doesn't depend on fallible, weak, poor Daniel Coughlin.

It depends on God who is faithful and good and merciful and kind.

Right?

The rich young ruler came running, kneeling, speaking all the right words, and he went away empty.

Why?

Because he wouldn't come like a little child.

He wouldn't come empty-handed.

He wanted to bring his own merit, his own goods.

That's the call of Christ for us today.

Not to bring our righteousness, not to bring our merit, certainly not to bring our wealth,

but to come like children with nothing to offer and everything to receive.

With man it is impossible, but not with God.

For all things are possible with God.

This is and should be a great hope and encouragement to us as we really see ourselves.

So take heart.

Don't lose courage.

When you know someone with depression, these are the kind of things, this is the kind of truth, this is the kind of God that we serve.

He's good.

He cares for us.

He's merciful and kind and knows our weaknesses.

And so we come, not trusting in ourselves, but trusting in Christ alone.

Thanks be to God for his grace.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we all have these things that we want to put our confidence in.

Whether it's our goodness or our wealth, our abilities, where we go to church, who we know,

help break us of these idols.

Help break us of these things that we trust in more than we trust in you, Father.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Scripture: Mark 10:13-16
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin

Scripture Reading: Mark 10:13–16

Our scripture reading today is Mark chapter 10, starting in verse 13, just a few short verses. This is God's word and it is eternally true. And they were bringing children to him so that he might touch them. But the disciples rebuked them.

But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, Permit the children to come to me. Do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.

And he took them in his arms and began blessing them, laying his hands on them. This is the word of the Lord.

Opening Prayer

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight. Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Respectable Religion

So like the disciples, we all want to have a respectable religion. No one wants to come in here and be embarrassed. And so there's different ways that we process through that we think about this.

You know, respectable religion. We all have a different mindset of what that is. That might mean that at 10.30 on the dot, the pastor is not fixing the clock. He's up there at the pulpit ready to, you know, ready to go, ready to, ready to, you know, we have order.

And we have, you know, it's like a production, right? If you went to Broadway, like the curtain starts right then and the orchestra starts right now. And there's no, like, hiccups and failures and, you know, sneezes and all the things, right? It is smooth. It flows well. It's orderly.

It could mean that church happens and we never have prayer requests about people passing away and hardness and sin. We only smile and shake each other's hands and, you know, we have our little moment of greeting and then we all go off and we stop that little, you know, we have this, we have a church face.

We have church clothes and church face and we never have problems. We never get into the reality of our lives. That's one way to have respectable religion, right? Because you know what's not respectable religion?

Sin and struggling and problems and depression and illness and all the realities of living this life. Another way to have respectable religion is to have a children's church where all the children go away and we don't see them or hear from them. We adults just gather together and we have our respectable interchange where I respectably deliver the message and you respectably receive the message.

Thank you. That is exactly right, Hudson. There's different versions of this. There's the version of it that as a father, my respectable religion is for my children to all be seated. Like, you know, so they never say anything.

They never do anything. They're seen but not heard. They're respectable, right? It's along the lines of what the disciples had in mind. They love Jesus, right?

The Disciples' Mindset

It's easy to think like, it's easy to get negative on the disciples and see their failures and think that they were like some uniquely bad way to be. But what I want to drive home is that we all have this inclination. Like, you can love Jesus and still want like a level of sanitariness, a level of cleanness.

Like, we're having, you know, even in our Sunday school hour right now, to have mixed ages means necessarily that we're going to have some kids ask questions that the adults are like, oh yeah, I know the answer to that. I've been thinking about that for 40 years. And we're going to have questions that the adults ask and that the kids don't care about and probably won't care about for 30 or 40 years.

I think the disciples wanted to protect Jesus. And they wanted to keep the kids away from Jesus, you know, these small children who are, you know, clamoring up on him, right? Because what happens? I mean, children, I don't know what they ate then. Today it's chocolate chips or, you know, we had donuts this morning for Ian's birthday.

And so Autumn is eating her chocolate-covered donut. And guess what happens when Autumn eats chocolate-covered donuts? Chocolate goes everywhere, right? I mean, they're on her fingers or hands.

She doesn't have the wherewithal, the delicacies of an adult to know how to like hold it right so the chocolate doesn't go everywhere. So I just imagine, right, grubby little kids crawling on Jesus, smearing figs or whatever they ate, right, on his robe. But not just that, right?

I mean, when we talk downstairs, when we talk about, you know, when I'm teaching, you teach to adults typically different than you teach to children, right? There's a level at which I imagine the disciples are saying, you know, Jesus' time here. He is a great teacher. He should be reserved only to interact with the scribes and the Pharisees, right?

These intellectuals who are able to interact with Jesus. And, you know, they're the ones who need the teaching and the correction. The children, you know, let the women teach the children. Let the, you know, let the B team teach the children.

Jesus, his time is valuable. We need to protect and make the most use of Jesus' teaching. And so they said, oh, no, children, you stay away. You go away from Jesus.

Don't waste his time. Don't smear your hand, your grubby little hands on his clothes. Stay away from him.

Insiders and Outsiders

But I think at a different level, at a lower level, this actually exposes the hearts of the disciples.

Because inherent in that concern is we belong, they don't. Like, this is the inner circle. Jesus is ours. We're up there. We've arrived. We're established. We're worthy. The children are not. And this is how it always works with insiders and outsiders.

The insiders always want to protect their insiderness so that they can rise up in power. They can rise up in authority. They can establish, they can use their power. They can use their influence for their own gain, right?

Even if it's just a reputational gain, I'm an insider. You're an outsider. You stay away, little one. You coming in necessarily dilutes my power, right? It lowers, it spreads it out.

Because if anyone can have access to Jesus, even children, then what I have isn't quite so special.

Jesus' Response

Jesus was indignant. He was not happy with the disciples. He commands, let them come to me. Do not hinder them.

They desire their parents. You know, if you think about this, like, you can imagine the parents being like, all right, go on, guys. Go, go see Jesus. And Jesus is ready and willing to receive them and take them in.

And so, tells the disciples, let them come. Do not hinder them. And this is worth considering. Because what Jesus says, and this is why we're only doing just a few short verses today.

The Kingdom of God

What Jesus says about his kingdom changes how the Jews were thinking about the kingdom, or should have changed, how they were thinking about the kingdom, and how we should think about the kingdom. This isn't a new teaching, by the way. The idea that children brought glory to God.

You know, we could go back to Psalm 8. Psalm 8 says this, From the mouth of infants and nursing babes you have established strength, because of your adversaries, to make the enemy and the revengeful cease. From the mouth of infants and nursing babes. So, I mean, we really are talking about Hudson here, right?

I mean, even Autumn is older than that. She can talk. She has ideas. She can express coherently. We're really talking about, like, Hudson's age and younger. Like, where infants and nursing babes, like, they're not articulate.

They're not articulate in a way that we can understand them. But what God tells us is that they still glorify God in their unique, indiscernible ways. It's easy to think, to look at children and say, we can't understand their faith, so they must not have any. It's easy to look at, honestly, the elderly, you know, someone in a nursing home, and think, they can't express themselves.

They can't express their faith. And so what worth do they have? It's easy to think about the worth of another person just based on what they can communicate or do for you. Jesus clearly didn't see that as the case.

Let the children come to me. Don't hinder them. Don't get in their way. Bring them in. Let them come. Let them grow near Christ. It's easy to want to have some sort of level, some sort of, like, requirement for understanding.

Some sort of threshold for this is required for faith. Some educational requirement. Some knowledge requirement. To say, come to Christ. Then what do you do with people who never develop these things? What do you do with the elderly who lose their ability to think clearly and maintain it?

The Nature of the Kingdom

I think the problem with this is wrapped up in our idea of what church is and what the nature of the kingdom of God is. Because those are the words that Jesus uses here. Right? Do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

And then he doubles down and says, truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all. Because what we're tempted to think is that the kingdom of God is something, again, that is all about power and control and order and influence.

Right? I mean, if we go back, let's look at one of the promises of the kingdom of God. This is from Daniel chapter 2. Here it is. So the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy. So the idea, right, the reasonable idea that everyone had is that this kingdom of God that was coming was going to be like every other king, every other nation, every other kingdom.

Right? There'd be a king over it and he would take over by how? How do nations usually take over each other? Right? By war, by political power, by negotiating, by conquering one way or another. And so this was going to be how the kingdom of God came.

Was by power and might and by political influence. We're tempted to want the same thing today. You'll see there's a big push for this idea of Christian nationalism. If you're not on the internet, it's all over the internet and it's probably in other places as well.

But this idea that the church really has been delinquent. The church has failed in its mission because it hasn't exercised political influence. It hasn't established political dominance over the nation. And so the church has failed.

I think that's hard to reconcile with what we read about Jesus and the children here. Right? If the kingdom of God belongs to such as these children, what do we know about the kingdom of God? Is it about power and dominance and control and education? And I mean, is that what you think of when you think of children?

Is that what you think of when you think of infants and newborns?

Childlike Faith

Or, you know. Or let's think about Hudson here. If he has a want, what does he do? If he's hungry, what does he do?

He cries. If he has a bad diaper, what does he do? Okay. If he's stuck in his car seat and he's bored, what does he do? Okay. Have you noticed a trend here? Exactly. What? If he's hungry, he doesn't go make himself a ham sandwich.

If he has to go to the bathroom, he doesn't knock on the door and make sure no one's in there. And climb up himself. If he's in his car seat and he wants to get out, he can't just like, you know, reach in there, unbuckle it, and pull it apart.

What does he do? He's dependent. He cries out because what? Because he knows somebody's going to come around and do something for him eventually. What children do. That's what infants do.

They have one setting. It's, I have a need or desire. I cry. That's how they get someone. That's how they alert others to their needs.

That's how they express themselves. But listen, in that cry is faith. In that cry is faith that there is someone who can help me. And so I cry out.

Crying as Faith

You read stories about orphanages. There's some sad stories. There's some sad stories because eventually if a kid cries out and no one comes to help them long enough, they stop crying. Cry is an expression of faith.

Someone's here. Someone cares for me. Someone can help me. This thing that's uncomfortable. This thing that's bothering me.

I don't know what it is and I don't know what I need, but I need something. So someone help me. That's a childlike faith. That is how the kingdom belongs to such as these.

Listen, we know we have problems. We hurt. We sin. We fail. We fail ourselves. We fail our loved ones. There's a level at which we need to learn to just cry out to God and not have everything figured out beforehand. Right? When Hudson cries out, he doesn't know what he needs.

He's not sat down and thought, oh, my tummy's a little upset. I probably need to eat. It's just, right? Somebody do something. Help me out. Does that seem like the kind of kingdom? It's certainly not like any other nation that we know of.

Right? A nation of people who cry out. A kingdom of people who cry out. Nations aren't established by children. Right? I mean, that's Lord of the flies.

That's scary stuff. You don't want a nation ruled by children. Right? And yet, God says, the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. And unless, unless what? Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.

Dependence on God

This is entirely consistent with Jesus' teaching. Jesus calls us to be dependent. To call out on him and to receive him. Here, this is Matthew 11, verse 25.

At that time, Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and you have revealed them to infants. Infants. Yes, Father, for this way was pleasing in your sight. Hidden from the wise, revealed to the children.

Not respectable religion based on power and control and intelligence. And status. Right? What is it built on? Built on faith. The faith to go to Jesus. The faith to call out.

The faith to trust that a response, a provision will be made, has been made, is capable of being made. That's childlike faith. That's childlike faith. Right? Dependence. Trying out. In simplicity, he doesn't articulate his need. He doesn't understand his caloric intake from the last 12 hours. He doesn't understand.

Right? He just needs food. I'm uncomfortable and I need something. Give it to me. Do the thing. He trusts. There's a childlike faith.

To ask and expressing that asking through crying. I mean, it sounds so stupid to have a sermon basically on crying. But, I mean, it's faith. That's a faithful expression.

Faith is our humble reliance on God. Even without demanding a full understanding. We want to understand first and then have faith afterwards. We want to understand first.

We want to understand why and how. And then only after that, then we obey. That's not the order that God calls us to do things in. He says, come to me.

He says, obey. The understanding comes afterwards. This is who you are. This is who I've made you. This is who I've made you to be.

Come to me.

Faith and Growth

One of the ways that I see this express itself is that we look back on how we started in faith. And we tend to undercut the work that God has done in our lives. We look back on our lives at some weak beginning that we had.

And I just had a conversation with a man this week. So it's on my mind. But we look back and we say, oh, I made a profession of faith in my youth. I said I was a Christian.

Maybe I was baptized as a Christian at that time. But then what happened? I struggled. I backslid. I left the church. I left faith. I mean, this is a really common story.

So what was that first thing? Was that first thing anything real? And I think we have to be careful that totally discounting those starts, even if there was a time of sin, of denial, of backsliding. Because listen, God calls us to faith, not to perfect understanding.

He calls us to faith, which means we cry out. We ask God for help. We ask God for deliverance. We profess our faith in Christ.

And then what does God do for the rest of our life? God sanctifies us. He changes us. He makes us His. And so when we look back and we see that we didn't have understanding or we had a wrong understanding of who God was in the beginning, does that mean we had no faith?

No, it doesn't mean we had no faith. It means that our faith wasn't fully matured. Our faith wasn't coupled with complete understanding. You know what it was?

It was childlike. We didn't have all the knowledge and understanding because you can't start with having all the knowledge and understanding. That's something that God works in you through your life as a Christian. How about the man who turns away, who turns to sin, and then later on he comes back to the Lord?

What do you say about his faith? Well, it doesn't look like it was fully formed, does it? It doesn't look like it was all the way there, right? He returned like a dog to his own vomit and returned to his sin.

But then the Lord in His mercy what? Caused the plant to grow. The plant that looked like it was shriveled and withered and wasn't producing fruit. Well, it turns out, oh, 30 years later, here you go.

It is producing fruit. What do you say to that? Other than praise God for His mercy. Praise God for His grace that what looked like it was dead really had life in it.

A Warning and an Encouragement

Now this isn't, be careful. I'm not saying that if you've ever professed, you know, that you're forever and always, like, this is not a comfort for those who are rebelling against the faith they once professed. You must grow in your faith. You must return. God keeps those who are His.

And it is a scary thing to turn away from the Lord. It is a scary thing to profess faith and then to deny it later on. There is a chance that, like Esau, you will find no opportunity for repentance. But for those who do find an opportunity for repentance, for those who can turn back, is the grace and the mercy of God.

That those seeds that were planted and watered early in life, that looked like, have you ever had a plant that you've had that, like, withered and almost died and you nursed it back to life? It's the same plant, right? But it just revivifies, right? It comes back to life and turns green again and puts buds.

We have a lime tree that we've killed, like, three times. And that somehow is putting out, you know, leaves again and looks like a plant again. I have a corn plant, something kind of like these, at my office that somebody gave me right when my office started. And that has withered up and died and I've cut it back all the way and puts out a new shoot and it's beautiful.

The Shape of Faith

What I want you to see is that if you start with childlike faith, it's not a fully formed thing. It's not a thing that's been fully comprehended, fully understood. And I have a warning for you. If you have a faith that's fully understood and fully comprehended and fits really nicely in this box, God will likely pull you outside of that box.

And it can be scary if you're a very box-like thinker, if you're a very controlled type. God's, the growth that God works in the life of a believer is rarely, I was just helping Ian with math recently, so I'm thinking, is rarely linear, right? It's rarely like this, like this is what an ideal world our life would be, right?

I got to turn on and think about this, right? We start here and you start with faith and then your faith grows over time on like a perfectly straight line and you die where it only goes up. Not how the Christian life works. The Christian life works, you start with innocent, simple, childlike faith.

And some days are hard and some years are hard and some decades are full of trials and God in his mercy sustains those who are his children. There are some who fall away and never come back. You must grow. You can't stay a child. You have to grow in your experience and your understanding.

Otherwise, when the trials come, it's hard. It's harder than it needs to be. But childlike faith is the foundation. That dependence on God, that doesn't change.

But what changes is your growth and your understanding of who God is, what he's done for you, what he's really done for you, who you are, how much you need God. It's still childlike faith because it shows that dependence, that need, that simplicity. It's real. It starts real and immature and it ends real and growing.

Those are, that's what faith is. That's how faith grows. It bears fruit over time.

Baptism

One more things I want to say on this.

Because this comes up in baptism a lot. The question about baptism. You know, if someone was baptized early and then they fell away, do they then need to be baptized again? This conversation comes up a lot.

John 3 says this. Jesus says in John 3, he says, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And then a couple of verses later, The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going.

So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. What we want to do is we want to have God in a nice, neat box that says, Here's the order of things, just like I said, and the graph line just goes up straight. But this denies how the Spirit works.

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit. There are situations, there are circumstances, where your baptism is before your real continuing profession of faith.

Water Baptism and the Baptism of the Spirit

But the correspondence, we have to keep two ideas separate. One is the water baptism itself that happens, right? We fill up the tub with water, you're baptized. That's the baptism by the water.

But there's also the baptism of the Spirit. And those don't always happen at the same moment. In fact, they rarely happen at the same moment. Usually what we're looking for is a profession of faith and an establishment as, Okay, this is, I understand what I believe.

It's a childlike faith, but I have some understanding of who my faith is in, who I am crying out to, and we baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, right? The water baptism signifies the spiritual reality that is true, that the Holy Spirit has washed you clean.

Those don't always correspond, right? Sometimes we baptize you and you fall away. You know, I think about in the last year we've had a baptism. And I don't know what's happened with the man.

He might come back in a year and say, Now I really believe. The Spirit, we have to trust that the Spirit is at work in people who have professed belief. We should call them to account. We should encourage them.

We should warn them. We should draw them back into the church because there is no life for a Christian outside of the church. We want them to be part of this living, growing faith. The Spirit, though, doesn't always work exactly at the same time that the water baptism works.

That's all I want to say about that. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from and where it's going. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit, right? The Spirit of God works in sanctification through the believer's life so that there are times that is spiritual growth and there are times that there are spiritual difficulties, trials.

One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism

But if we believe that he saved us, this is Titus 3, he saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that washes us clean.

The baptism is the sign of that. It's the symbol of it. It's the outward expression of that inward reality. And especially if we believe that there's one Lord and one faith and one baptism, it means we don't need to go back and re-evaluate the beginnings, that we don't have to re-evaluate where we started.

The goal of faith is to be in faith, is to exercise that childlike faith and to continue on. Once you've made a beginning, even if there's stumbling, even if there's backsliding, to continue on in faith. Baptism's power is not limited to the moment it's given. The grace it promises is truly given by the Holy Spirit, and he gives it according to God's will at the time God has appointed.

And so that's why there's still hope for someone who's been baptized and who's left the church. Even someone who's denied faith, that they would repent, that they would come back, that they would be just like my lime tree, right? That it would look dead, that spiritually it would look dead, but that it would show faith, that it would show life, which is the heart of the gospel.

The Heart of the Gospel

It's not that we come to God by strength and maturity and understanding. It's not that we've got it all figured out and then we come to God. It's that God receives us in our need and our dependence and our trust in him. And then he grows that faith.

He takes the children in his arms and what does he do? He touches them. He lays his hand on them. And that was the typical way that blessings were made. Throughout scripture, you'll see this.

Laying on of hands is the transference of a blessing, the giving of a blessing. Jesus receives the weak and he blesses them. It's not the strong, it's the weak, the dependent. So we have to resist looking back on even our own lives and re-evaluating everything, putting up all these, you know, raising the bar of what does it mean to be a Christian?

What does it mean to put your faith in God? What does it mean that we baptize someone on a profession of faith that even if it doesn't continue on that nice linear progression throughout all their life? We need to be careful that we don't hinder those that Christ welcomes, which is the children, which is the, well, those that don't always add to respectable religion.

So we're going to have people that come that swear. We're going to have people that come that stink. We're going to have people that come that are needy and dependent in ways that are uncomfortable. Hopefully we have children that come.

I mean, these are all things, these are all ways in which we are commanded to go and make disciples of all nations. And people don't come to Christ all cleaned up and ready. They come needy. They come smelly. They come sinful. They come confused. Purpose, the threshold is that childlike faith, that dependence, that reaching out to God, that desiring to know who God is, to serve him, to be washed clean.

That's how we come to faith. That's what faith is. The understanding, the cleaning up, the sanctification, the growing in knowledge and understanding, that comes through life, just like it does with children, right? They grow in their ability to feed themselves.

They grow in their ability to clean themselves up. They grow in their ability to live independently and become their own person. That's the goal, but it's not the start. The start is dependence on God, needing to be washed clean by God.

That's what faith is. And so when you hear a baby cry, be reminded, be reminded that that is a call of faith, right?

Romans: The Spirit Intercedes

Let me read one more thing here. I thought I had.

Maybe I don't have it. I don't. You're saved from that. So now I do. Okay. This is the Romans.

I just didn't write down the reference, so I'm sorry. You'll just have to trust me. This is in Romans. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

This is Paul, the Apostle Paul, who wrote the book of Romans, who says, we, we, we, mature Christians, apostles, disciples, those who are trained, we don't know how to pray as we ought. We don't know how to ask for the things that we ought to ask for. We're children.

We're infants. We don't know. But the Spirit, the Spirit himself makes those requests. The Spirit himself is the one who translates, who takes what our groanings are, what our desires are, and he translates them into prayers for us. We don't know how to pray as we ought. So don't be surprised.

Don't be surprised when you don't understand. Don't be surprised when you don't even understand your own heart, your own desires. Trust in God to provide for you. Trust in God to be the real object of your faith and to provide for you.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we desire to be more independent and mature than we are, and that's dangerous. Help us to see our need for you, our dependence on you. Help us to trust in you and to walk in your ways. Help us to not look back and despise our starts and our failings, but to trust in you that you, who began a good work in us, will complete it.

Give us faith and trust in you, Father. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

Scripture: Mark 10:1-12
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin

Sermon: Mark 10:1–12 — Marriage, Divorce, and God's Design

Scripture Reading — Mark 10:1–12

Thank you for your singing. Our scripture today is Mark chapter 10. We're going to read the first 12 verses. This is God's word and it is eternally true.

And they said, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away. But Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and the two shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. In the house, the disciples began questioning him about this again. And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.

And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.

This is the word of the Lord.

Opening Prayer

Heavenly Father, I pray that you would, that the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts would be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

A Hard Teaching — And a Trap

Well, this is a hard teaching. And it's hard on purpose because what were the Pharisees doing? The Pharisees weren't there as eager disciples ready to soak in God's word, right?

They were testing Jesus. But more than testing Jesus, they were trying to get him in trouble. And this, you know, you have to know a little geography in order to really understand what's going on here. And thankfully, there are things like commentaries that help explain the geography because I don't know much of geography in Israel.

Mark gives us the pointer here. He says, getting up, he went from there. He had been teaching in Galilee. And he went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan.

Now, if you were contemporaneous with Mark, you would know just like where that was. It's like, all right, they left Moral and they went over 75 Highway. You'd know we were where? In Sabetha. And so whose jurisdiction would we be under?

We wouldn't be under Attorney Kevin Hill's jurisdiction anymore. We'd be under the Nemaha County attorney, Brad Lippert, right? If you're nerdy like me. You know these things.

Or if we said, oh, we started out in Moral and we drove 10 miles north. You'd know you're not in Governor Kelly's jurisdiction anymore. You're in whoever the leader of Nebraska is, right? What's that? Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And so you'd be subject to different laws.

You'd be subject to different sensitivities, right? We talked about North Korea. And if you cross the border from South Korea into North Korea, your life is going to be vastly different. It's not dissimilar here.

The Perean Region and Herod's Jurisdiction

So where they ended up, and I'm going to get beyond the geography thing here in a minute, but is in the Perean region. And why that's interesting is because the ruler of Perea was King Herod. Do you remember a couple chapters ago when we talked about King Herod and his wife Herodias?

Why did Herod execute John the Baptist? And then you can get into the whole like, oh, because the daughter was dancing and all this stuff. But why did Herodias hate, hate, hate John the Baptist? Yes. Because she left her brother to marry Herod, right?

She left. And what did John the Baptist do? Did he, was he one of these preachers who sat very nicely in his office and only said nice things and never stepped on anyone's toes and only said what itching ears wanted to hear? No, Herod, I'm sorry, John the Baptist was like, you can't have her.

Like, that's wrong. That's wicked. You, you can't do that. And so Herodias hated John the Baptist. So does this give you a little bit of context for why it's so nefarious for the, for the Pharisees to come up to Jesus in King Herod's land and be like, tell us about this divorce thing.

You know, oh, we've heard some teaching. We'd like to hear it again. What do you think about divorce? What's the trap? They're trying to get Herodias against Jesus, right?

It's like, ah, we'll, we'll get, we'll get King Herod to do our dirty work for us. We'll tempt him. We'll test him. We'll trap him. Is he going to tell the truth? And the background of this is that there was, you know, it's always dangerous when I just throw my notes to the wind and I decide to go off script.

The Background — Deuteronomy 24

Deuteronomy 24 says this, this is the background. And if you don't know the background, it's hard to understand what, what the subject of the controversy is. So here's the subject of the controversy. Deuteronomy 24.

When a man takes a wife and marries her and it happens that she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her. And he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out from his house. And she leaves his house and goes and becomes another man's wife. And if the latter husband turns against her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter husband dies who took her to be his wife, then her former husband who sent her away is not allowed to take her again to be his wife since she has been defiled. For that is an abomination before the Lord. You shall not bring sin on the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance.

Now, that's a pretty specific situation, right? A wife leaves. She marries another man. He either dies or sends her away. Can the original husband marry the wife? But that's the context to our verse. Because that's what leads the Pharisees to ask, Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.

Jesus Goes to Creation

Now, Jesus doesn't exactly take their bait. Because he could have dived into all the minutia about permissive, unpermissive, exceptions, no exceptions. But what does Jesus do here? Jesus goes right to creation.

I mean, first he asks, what did Moses command you? Well, and then they say, Moses permitted this. And it's like, well, permission and commands are kind of different things, right? It's like, you might be permitted to do some things. That doesn't necessarily mean you're commanded to do them. Commanded means like a positive instruction. Like, you must do this. Permission is different. Okay, so they respond, right?

Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce. There's two things I want to highlight about how Jesus responds.

Christ's Patience in Teaching

I mean, the first is, he's so patient in teaching. Like, he knows their hearts. He knows their wicked schemes. He knows why they're asking this question. They don't have a sincere heart. It's not like they're sitting here thinking, I want to get married.

And so, or, you know, my wife has done this. And so I want to know if I can get divorced. Like, this is a test. This is a trap.

This is hard-hearted wickedness. This is, we're rejecting your authority, Jesus. We want to get you in trouble. And yet, Jesus teaches them anyway.

He's still willing to go back and talk about creation and give like the foundational building blocks about what marriage is. And this is how we should be. We should take Jesus' example, his great patience. I mean, with our children, right?

How many times do you have to teach your children the same lessons? With your wife, wives with your husbands. How many times do you have to go through the same problems? Going back to the same scriptural teachings, the same truths.

You know, I don't have adult children yet, but I imagine even with your adult children, like, you have some of the same conversations over and over and over again. And probably they have with you over and over again, right? Is this, you know, we're always tempted to want new things, right?

This is why, this is why social media, you have these endless scrolling things, right? There's always something new that will pop up. Like, have you ever tried using Facebook to find the thing that they just showed you a second ago that you scrolled past? And then like, you can never find it again, right?

Because it's always something new. They're always generating new things to like keep your attention going, keep your eyes on whatever they want to show you next. The reality is we need messages reinforced. We need teachings taught over and over and over and over and over and over again.

We don't just learn a thing once and then we instantaneously know it and know how to practice it. We need to keep coming back to it.

The Duty Is Yours — The Results Are God's

And I think the way that you're encouraged by this is knowing that the duty is yours. The duty to do these teachings, the duty to teach these things, the duty to remind people about God's word and his commandment.

That's your duty, your responsibility. Mothers and fathers, it's your responsibility to teach your children the scriptures. To bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Pastors and elders and deacons, it's your responsibility to be part of the reaching and equipping and training and helping.

You know, husbands and wives, your responsibility to sanctify and wash your wife in the water of the word. The result is God's, right? Men plant and water. And who gives the increase?

God gives the increase. And so don't get frustrated. Don't get frustrated. You know, when Pharisees come up and they lay a trap for you, you can be as innocent as a dove in that circumstance. And you can just answer their question.

And you could answer it with the sincerity of God's word. And you don't have to worry about the trap. Listen, people are going to be laying traps for you all the time. Classmates, bitter neighbors, you know, people who want your position, people who just like to watch people fail.

They're going to be laying traps for you all the time. And so should you be wise as serpents? Yes. Should you be as innocent as doves? Yes. And balance is never easy.

But what's always wrong is when you're getting worked up and frustrated over it. Like, God has brought you there for a reason. God has brought you there for your good, for your sanctification, for your training, for your growth. This is what Jesus exemplifies.

And they can't lay a trap for you that God can't undo, that God can't turn around and use for your good, for the good of your children, for the good of your wife, for the good of your family. Like, we need to trust that God is bigger than the traps people set for us.

So with sincerity of heart, as innocent as a dove, we can just lay out Scripture. This is what the honest truth is. This is what Scripture tells. This is the foundation.

Hardness of Heart and Scripture's Accommodation

Because that's exactly where Christ goes with this. I mean, at the end, let's not go to the end yet, let's start in the beginning. When the Pharisees respond that Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away, they were responding to the controversy of the day was between two groups of thought.

There was one set of Jewish teachers that taught. That meant really any inconvenience. Like, there's some commentaries, some Jewish commentaries from the time that it says, if your wife over-salted your food or over-cooked your food, you could write a letter of divorce and send her away.

Right? I mean, that's not much different than no-fault divorce. Right? And honestly, it doesn't even have... Like, you could write... The man wrote the certificate himself.

And so there didn't even have to be a justice involved. So that was on the one extreme. On the other extreme, or the other extreme, the other teaching was that it had to do with some... You know, why she was unpleasing had to do with some moral failure, some breaking of the Ten Commandments, some unfaithfulness.

So that's what they were focused on. Right? Like, any time you ask a question, it's an interesting thing. Any time someone asks you a question, think about what it tells you about them more than you wonder about what they're asking of you. And I don't mean to make, you know, I don't mean to make that sound like you're not going to answer their question.

But when someone asks you a question, especially if it's like a hypothetical question or a challenging question, like, just put yourself in their shoes for a minute and think, why are they asking me that question? Because oftentimes, that'll help you understand what's motivating them, what they're really thinking about, who they are, as much as they really want to know the answer to that question.

Verse 5 — Because of Your Hardness of Heart

But Jesus doesn't take the bait in that regard. Jesus says to them, this is verse 5, Because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. So that gets a little hard, right? Because this is Scripture.

And so we're reading that Moses wrote Scripture that accommodates man's hardness of heart. It's because of his hardness of heart? Does that strike anyone else as strange to think about Scripture being given because of hardness of heart and wickedness? I think it should, all of us.

But it's fairly easy to explain. It did me, at least. And so maybe I'm the strange one. But how much of God's word is not given because of the hardness of our hearts?

I mean, think about all the examples in the Old Testament. I mean, they're all about faithfulness in basically wicked men. You look at all of the examples of godly men. David, a man after God's own heart.

And you see the wickedness in David. And it's real. His lust. His taking what wasn't his, what was another man's. His killing that man in order to keep Bathsheba. How much of Scripture is written so that we will see and understand our own hearts by seeing the wickedness and sinfulness in others?

Divorce, and Moses' permission of divorce, Scripture's permission of divorce, is an accommodation to man's sin.

Before the Fall — God's Design for Marriage

If things were like how they were in creation. Okay, we always have to have this framework in mind whenever I think about Scripture. There's creation before the fall. Before Adam, the fruit that Eve gave him. And he ate of it. And that brought sin and corruption to all of his progeny, all of his seed. And the curse that corrupted all of creation.

So there's before that happened and there's after that happened. And what Jesus does is Jesus takes the Pharisees back to before the fall. He goes, yes, you're talking about this divorce permission which was granted after the fall. But let's go back.

I'm paraphrasing here, right? This is what Jesus actually said. Verse 5.

But Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, before the fall, before sin and the curse, things were different. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh.

That's what was intended from creation. That was what marriage was always supposed to be. A coming together of two to become one. A male and a female in a lifelong monogamous relationship. That was always the intent of marriage. But then sin and the curse.

And so we have divorce. We have this permissive thing that happens. Because guess what? When you marry someone, you know who you marry? You, a sinner, marry a sinner.

They might be a Christian sinner. They might be a redeemed sinner. But you, and listen, we have plenty of younger people in the congregation today. Very young as well.

Probably too young to really grasp onto it. You're going to date someone, and you're going to think they walk on water. You're going to think they are amazing. Spectacular. He would never. She would never. And then, because this is what happens, right?

When you go to a car dealership, they take and they, you know, rub shiny oil all over everything. So everything looks great and smells great. And that's what dating is. It's looking great and smelling great.

And then you get married, and you can go look in my car, and eventually over time, right, what happens? Dust collects, and things get spilt and not exactly cleaned up. And life is real and hard. And so if you're young and unmarried, you need to know that you're going to marry a sinner.

The Purposes of Marriage

And that's intentional, right? God designed marriage before creation to be different. But God has continuing purposes in marriage even after the fall. Good purposes. You've probably been to a wedding ceremony, and they use some version of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.

They might not say it, but just listen to this, and you'll probably be reminded.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together in the sight of God in the presence of these witnesses to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony.

Does that sound familiar? You've heard a minister say those words. Well, that ceremony lists three purposes for marriage. Three purposes in having sinners come together in marriage.

1. Mutual society, help, and comfort — Marriage is given for the mutual society help and comfort that man and woman should have from the other, both in prosperity and adversity. So in good times and in bad, for richer or poorer in sickness and health. That sound familiar?

2. Procreation of children — Marriage is given for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord and to the praise of God.

3. A remedy against sin — Marriage is instituted as a remedy against sin, to avoid fornication, so that those who are married might live in the purity of marriage and keep themselves undefiled as members of Christ's body.

What's lovely about this is it recognizes the reality that we're sinners, that marriage is between two sinners. And so there's this intent here that marriage is for the sanctification one to the other.

A Word to Young People

And so here's the risk that you're going to have as, and again, sorry, I'm getting off, but this young people, you're going to want to think about the person you're marrying as a demigod, as, as, as some, yeah, I know that's weird, as someone perfect, someone glorious, someone without fault or flaw.

And that's going to blind you to ways that you can be helpful to that person. It's going to blind you to ways that you need to be helpful to that person. And, and if you're not thinking about Ron feeding Joyce in the nursing home, that's, if your marriage goes well, that's where you end up.

That's a good marriage. I'm not saying a perfect marriage. That's why we talk about sickness and health, because you're all young and healthy and life seems great. But listen, marriage is tough and people are tough.

The woman that you think is going to be your wife is tough. The man who you think might be your husband is either tougher than you think or weaker than you think, depending on what you're, what you think you want. So get help because in, in the, with a multitude of counselors, there is wisdom.

Seek God's approval. You know, obviously you're, you're a professing Christian. You should only be dating and marrying Christians. Like there's, there's some basic minimal things that go on here, but that's not enough. Pray and ask for God's approval.

Ask for God's guidance and wisdom. And then be careful that you don't expect too much from your husband or your wife. The way, the way marriage works is when you give of yourself for the betterment of your spouse, right? This is real clear for husbands.

Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify it. — Ephesians 5

Husbands are called to do the same, but wives are called to do the same in different ways.

What Jesus Emphasizes — And Why

And so what's interesting is that Jesus doesn't go into detail about what the exceptions are. He says this, he wants to drive home the point that the intent of marriage, the creation purpose of marriage is a lifelong commitment. And he says this:

In the house, the disciples began questioning Jesus about this again. And he said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And she herself divorces her husband and marries another man. She is committing adultery.

There's other scripture that talks about when divorce is permitted. Jesus knew their hearts. He knew who he was talking to. And he didn't go into the details right then and there about that. And this is how scripture works. Scripture isn't a textbook, right?

A textbook is grouped by subject matter. If you've ever looked at like a manual for your car, right? You'll see, you'll look up like the instrument cluster section and it's like every, every light that could possibly go on is listed in order. Scripture is not like that.

Scripture is God's word to man, through man, through various circumstances. Jesus was here in a real conversation with real men and probably women. And this is what he focused on. This is what he emphasized.

Why did he do that? Why did he go into a list of all the exceptions when divorce is permissible? Why did he only talk about divorce leading to adultery? Well, he wanted to reveal the Pharisees' hard hearts that they didn't believe.

He wanted to double down that he wasn't afraid of Herod or Herodias. Here it is. Here is what marriage is. This is why it was created.

Start with the Foundation

Because if you come and you start asking about where the edge cases are, where the borderline is, is this sin, is this sin, is this sin? It's like, no, listen, we need to talk about what the foundational element is. Marriage is intended to be lifelong. Marriage is good. That needs to be this common understanding. That needs to be where we start the conversation.

Then, if need be, we get into the permissive situations. We get into the difficult situations that, you know, the exceptions that prove the rule, not the exceptions that swallow the rule. So there's other scriptures that talk, and we interpret scripture with scripture. And so there's more specific scriptures that talk about what happens in those situations.

That wasn't Jesus' focus that day. It was drilling home to the Pharisees. This is how God created marriage. God created marriage to be lifelong, monogamous, between male and female.

One Flesh — Verse by Verse

Let's just open it up and read it.

"God made them male and female." What does that tell us? Well, he's talking about marriage. So clearly, Adam and Eve, that was marriage, right? And Adam and Eve is the archetype of marriage. It means it's the example of marriage. One man, one woman.

"For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother." So you can't hold on to mommy's apron strings and get married, men. You have to leave father and mother and create your own household. Like that's how new households get created. By men leaving their mom and dad.

"And the two shall become one flesh."

"What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." (Verse 9)

Who's doing the joining here? God's doing the joining, right? So when you get married or when you got married, who did the joining? God does the joining.

Strange to think through the implications of that, right? Marriage is not just about who you like, who makes you happy, who you think you want to live with, make a life with. God joins men and women together in marriage. God instituted marriage for a purpose.

For purposes. And so seek his guidance. Seek his will. Because there's few things in this earthly life that can change your joy, your life, your trajectory, than who you marry. And so seek counsel. Seek your parents' counsel.

If you have wise parents, Christian parents, seek their counsel. Talk to the elders. Talk to me. If you're my children, talk to someone that you trust, other than me, as well. Because it's good to get more than just your parents' advice on things.

This is one of those monumental decisions.

Have Hope

And have hope. Have hope. Even when it's hard. Even when it fails. Have hope. Hope that God is working all things for the good of those who believe in him.

Even when you're hurt by your sin or someone else's sin. Because there's no situation in which our sin doesn't play a role. God is good and God is merciful.

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, marriage is a good thing. Thank you for giving us marriage. Thank you for giving us a way to have community, company, sympathy right in our own households. Thank you for giving us an outlet for our desires and for the creation of godly children. For a man and a woman to come together. To become one flesh.

And Father, there is sin in this world. And there are those of hard hearts who reject you, reject your counsel. And Father, that is our reality. We must deal with it. We must not pretend that we live in a pre-fallen perfect world. That is not the case.

And so give us wisdom as we guide others, as we make decisions, as we select spouses. Hopefully just one spouse. Help us. Help us. Help us to navigate this, Father, for your glory and for our good. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 7:10-16
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin

Sermon Transcript (Mother’s Day)

Text: 1 Corinthians 7

Scripture Reading

Our scripture reading today is 1 Corinthians chapter 7. So if you have a Bible, open it up with me. If you don't have a Bible, there are Bibles in the pews. There should be. If there's not, raise your hand and we'll get you one.

I'm taking a break from Mark this morning because it's Mother's Day, and so we're going to talk about mothers and motherhood. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 7. We're going to start at verse 12. Actually, let's back up. We're going to start at verse 10, so the slides will be wrong.

The slides should be good now—so verse 12:

For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. For otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave.

The brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases. But God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?

This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

Prayer

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redemption. We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Introduction: The Cultural Devaluing of Motherhood

We did this last year, so this is my inclination—to take a break from our normal routine and talk about mothers and fathers on the days that our nation celebrates them.

And it's important because we live at a time where motherhood especially—well, motherhood and fatherhood—are culturally denigrated.

If you are a kid at a school and they ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and you answer “a mother” or “a father,” can you imagine the response?

“Yeah, a mother—and what?”
“A father—and what?”

Like there must be something more.

And so part of what I want to do is restore in your minds the value and the goodness of motherhood.

Because motherhood is good.

Creation Before the Fall (God’s Good Design)

If you haven't read Genesis recently, read Genesis. There’s the creation account and a short window where Adam and Eve are in the garden and life is good—no, very good.

Before the fall, before sin and corruption twist everything.

Gary used that word in Sunday school this morning: twist—bend and corrupt what was meant to be straight.

What’s glorious about this is that these early commands are universal—they apply to all mankind.

So:

• Be fruitful and multiply
• Fill the earth
• Work and rest

Six days of work and one day of rest—that is God’s pattern.

God’s Design of Life

God uniquely equipped Eve and all her daughters to bear children.

He has made men and women biologically different. He plants the seed; she receives the seed—and that’s as far as I’ll go in that.

If God blesses that union:

• A new life begins
• Its DNA is new
• It begins developing immediately

Every one of us started from a single cell.

That one cell—that was you.

This is a glorious thing.

After the Fall: The Problem

But we live after the fall.

The command continues, but so does the curse.

From Romans 5:

Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin—so death spread to all men.

Death spread to all men.

So here’s the tension:

• God says, be fruitful and multiply
• But all are born into sin and death

It almost feels like we are just spreading death.

And yet God reaffirms the command—to Noah and beyond.

We are not to stop having children because of sin or suffering.

The Key Text: 1 Corinthians 7:14

“Otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.”

This speaks to something every mother feels:

You don’t want your children unclean—you want them holy.

Not physically, but spiritually.

The Central Question

What is a Christian mother’s duty toward children born under sin?

Biblical Foundation for Parenting

Genesis 18:19 (Abraham)

• Command his children
• Lead in righteousness and justice

Ephesians 6

• Bring them up in discipline
• In the instruction of the Lord

Scripture consistently calls parents to train their children.

The Unique Situation: Mixed Marriage

1 Corinthians 7 addresses:

• A believing spouse
• An unbelieving spouse

Instruction:

• If they stay → remain
• If they leave → let them leave
• God has called us to peace

Why This Is Hard

Becoming a Christian changes:

• Affections
• Priorities
• Words and thoughts

So Paul says:

If the unbelieving spouse consents to remain...

Because this introduces tension.

The Impact of a Christian Parent

Paul says:

• The unbelieving spouse is sanctified
• The children are holy

A Christian mother is a powerful thing.

If there were no Christian parent, the child would be unclean—but now, holy.

Not saved automatically—but set apart.

What a Christian Mother Does

1. Discipline

• Sin is measured by God’s law
• Not whether the child “got away with it”

2. Instruction

• Teaching Scripture
• Bringing the word of God into the home

3. Prayer

• Praying constantly for her children

4. Formation

• Children imitate what they see
• Habits, attitudes, speech

Even unintentionally—including her sins as well as her faith.

The Difficulty: An Unbelieving Husband

Her duty does not depend on his agreement.

But she must still:

• Pursue peace
• Honor the marriage

Key Principle

Her influence is strongest when:

• She is generally submissive
• But firm in spiritual matters

Example:

“I am taking the children to church.”

This stands out precisely because it is not her general habit to resist.

Why This Matters

Her life shows:

• A higher authority
• A clear line of obedience

She submits—to God.

It is the husband who is out of alignment with God’s design.

Practical Challenges

She must navigate:

• When to teach Scripture
• How to discipline
• Church attendance
• Giving and stewardship

There is no formula.

It requires wisdom.

Warning: Passive Parenting

Some say:

“I don’t want to force my children.”

But this can lead to neglect:

• Not requiring worship
• Not teaching truth
• Early independence in spiritual things

Biblical Warning: Eli

• Knew his sons were wicked
• Did not rebuke them
• Judgment followed

Failure to discipline brings consequences.

Responsibility of Parents

If God gives you children, He calls you to:

• Train them
• Discipline them
• Pray for them
• Model godliness

Neglect risks judgment.

Encouragement: God’s Faithfulness

Philippians 1:6

He who began a good work in you will perfect it.

God is at work in your obedience.

Example: Timothy

• Grandmother Lois
• Mother Eunice
• Father was a Greek

Yet:

• Became a faithful servant
• Partnered with Paul

God produces fruit—even in difficult homes.

Final Exhortation

To Mothers

• Your role is good
• Your work is hard
• Your responsibility matters

You are called to:

• Teach
• Discipline
• Pray
• Model faith

To the Church

• Support families
• Men: act as spiritual fathers

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, strengthen these women to be mothers—to love their children, to love their husbands, and to walk that line.

Give them faith for the tension, the distress, and the conflict. Give them faith to remember your work—that you do work, and that you have worked through the faith of even one believing parent.

Father, we are vessels of your mercy.

It is not that a mother saves her children, or a father saves his children—but you, in your mercy, work through believing parents to care for, teach, and discipline.

How shall they believe if they have not heard?

And so the one who is given care of them most closely has the word and the Spirit.

What a glorious thing.

Give us faith to trust that you are active and good through all of this.

We ask this in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Scripture Reading — Mark 9:38–50

This is God's word, and it is eternally true.

"For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ, truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward.

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than, having your two feet, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good. But if the salt becomes unsalty, with what will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another."

This is the word of the Lord.

Heavenly Father, I pray that you would bless this word, that the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts will be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Man They Didn't Recognize

Our passage this morning — the apostles see a man they didn't know, they didn't recognize, and he was doing the work that they had just struggled to do. We had the transfiguration, and Jesus and some of the disciples come off the mountain. And what were the other disciples doing? They had been trying to cast a demon out of a man, and they weren't able to do it. Jesus does it, and he says, "This one can only come out by prayer."

And then we turn the page, and there's that guy over there. Who's that guy? Who gave him permission to preach God's word? Who gave him permission to cast out demons in Jesus' name?

You ever think you're part of the in crowd for a minute, and then you look, and it turns out somebody else is actually a part of the in crowd? The disciples were there. They were the ones walking around with Jesus. They were the ones hearing his teaching. They were the ones serving the food. And here they are struggling to do this thing, and then this guy shows up and he's able to cast out the demons.

I don't know about you, but that wells up something inside of me — this pride, this desire to be the one that everyone relies on. "I paid my dues, and now that guy's able to cast out demons? What happened?"

Whose Side Were They On?

And so what do the disciples do? They're like, "Hey now, calm down. Who gave you permission? Don't be doing that. Stop." They tried to stop this man from casting out demons.

Now, just think about that for a minute. They tried to stop him from casting out demons. Which means — whose side were they on?

There's a man with a demon. Are demons good or bad? Bad. We're all on the same page — demons bad. There's a man with a demon, and there's another guy who's removing the demon from him. And the disciples walk up and say, "Cut it out."

Whose side are the disciples on? Who does it look like, in that moment? The demon side. Is that the side the disciples should be on? No!

So what was going on in their heads? They weren't concerned with Jesus' kingdom. They weren't concerned with this cosmic conquering of God over Satan. What were they worried about? Themselves. They were worried about their own little kingdom. Their little group. Their control over who's on the in and who's on the out.

And Jesus says, cut it out.

He Who Is Not Against Us Is for Us

Verse 40: "For he who is not against us is for us."

It's like — listen, calm down, guys. He's casting out demons in my name. Don't get worked up about that. That is what we're doing here. I know you don't recognize him, but that's what we're doing.

We know about three things about this guy:

1. He was doing good work — he was casting out demons.
2. He was doing it in Jesus' name — it wasn't like he was casting out demons by the name of a worse demon.
3. He wasn't part of the in crowd — he wasn't part of the disciples' group.

That's all we know about this guy and all we're going to know.

Paul Learned What the Disciples Had Not

But it's not the only time that we hear about something like this in the New Testament. Philippians 1:15 says this — and buckle up, because it's hard to understand sometimes. We're so easily set in our ways. This is what Paul says:

Some, to be sure, are preaching Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives, thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. In this I rejoice.

So what's the difference? Paul had learned something that the disciples at this point had not yet learned, which is — the point is proclaiming Christ. The point is the real presence of the kingdom of God. The point is casting out demons, destroying strongholds. Whatever it takes, God is accomplishing his purposes. He is establishing his kingdom here. He is bringing his kingdom in a very real way.

And the other option is death. We're back to the idea of there being two paths in life. One is a path of life that leads to Christ. The other is a path of death that leads where? To hell. And that's right here in our verse today.

Consider the significance of the phrase, "He who is not against us is for us." There really are only two pathways. You're either against us over here or you're for us. And who is "us"? I don't want you to get the wrong idea — it's not "me and my group." "Us" is Jesus and his church. That is the us. The other path is rebellion and death. What matters is being on the path of life. What matters is following Jesus.

One of the consequences is to be grateful for anyone laboring for Jesus Christ — anyone who is doing the work.

A Severe Warning: Stumbling Blocks

Jesus' warning here is severe. Look at verse 42: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble..."

Now, we don't deal with millstones. So we have to think about this one a little bit. A millstone — and specifically a millstone driven by a donkey here. A grinding stone so heavy that you had to use an animal to move it around. You couldn't move it around yourself. Probably a couple hundred pounds.

So imagine taking a couple-hundred-pound weight and strapping it to your neck and being chucked into the ocean. What happens? Not pleasant. It would be better for a man to be drowned in a horrific manner than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. To interfere with someone on the path of life. And especially someone young in the faith. Someone humble. Someone yearning after Jesus. Someone willing to go cast out a demon in Jesus' name.

What Should Our Focus Be?

Instead, what should our focus be? As a church, we've just had some baptisms recently. What should our focus be when it comes to those young Christians? It should be to help them grow, to help them learn, to help them mature in their faith.

Our church covenant is good on this point. It says — and this is what everyone who's joined the church has covenanted to, agreed to do, contracted to do:

We engage therefore, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, to walk together in Christian love. To strive for the advancement of this church in knowledge and holiness and comfort. We further engage to watch over one another in brotherly love. To remember each other in prayer. To aid each other in sickness and distress. To cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy and speech.

So if we've got somebody who's young in the faith, who's immature, who's humble and willing to learn and grow — what should we be doing? Caring for them. Rachel and Addie Solzenberger are two that were just baptized. And they're not here today. I am glad to hear that my wife stopped in to check on them. That should be something that we're driven and compelled to do — to check in when people go missing. To care for them when people go missing.

And sometimes it's going to be awkward. Sometimes people leave and they're not happy. And yet, what is our responsibility to one another? To make sure that we don't put a stumbling block in someone's way.

Because you know what usually happens in churches? We make each other mad. We annoy each other. We put a stumbling block in the way of somebody else. And you know what happens when they stumble? When they trip over our inconsiderateness? They leave. They just go away. And you never hear from them again.

Chris Dollinghaus and Nathan — I saw Nathan yesterday at the homeschool thing. They've been here for several weeks in a row. Where are they today? I hope someone — and maybe it'll be me, hopefully it'll be me — but I hope someone reaches out to them and just says, "Hey, how you doing? We missed you today." Not like, "Hey, you got a check mark because you weren't there." I'm not into perfect attendance records. I just want to know that we're caring for each other.

Whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble — it would be better for him if a heavy millstone hung around his neck and he had been cast into the sea. We need to be careful. This was a rebuke of the disciples — that they wanted to go squash down the work of the kingdom, the work of proclaiming, the work of driving out demons. And Jesus is like, "No. Listen, you're not getting the picture. You're not getting what's going on here. This is bigger than you. This is bigger than this little group here."

The Eye, the Hand, the Foot: What's Dear to You

And this is serious. This is so much bigger than you that you have to see — one, be careful how you act with other people. But then two, also be careful for yourself. It's not just for others that we need to be concerned about. It's for our own lives, our own bodies. The things as dear to us as our eye.

Can you imagine losing your eye or your hand or your foot? The kingdom of God is so valuable — you should think about it as more dear to you than your hand or your foot or your eye.

And listen, if any one of us had some sort of disease that was hurting your eye or hurting your foot or hurting your hand — would you not go to every doctor to try and figure it out? Would you not persevere in figuring out why? My dad has had trouble because of his diabetes with his hands and his feet. He's had surgeries and seen doctors — it's a lot of work for him to protect his hands and feet. Because what? They're dear to him. What happens if you lose your hands? How do you eat? How do you live? If you lose your feet — think of Deb who hurt her foot. All of a sudden, she just lives right across the street, and it's hard to get places.

So it sounds harsh, right? Cut off your eye. Cut off your foot. Cut off your hand. We came to that kind of church today, huh?

The Grand Canyon

We value the kingdom of God like we value our own body. It wouldn't sound harsh then. Think about war. A man goes off to war and he comes back and he's lost a part of his arm. What would we say? He's lucky he lived. If a mortar goes off right next to him, he's lucky he didn't lose more — his whole life.

If we really looked at this life as the kind of dangerous thing that it is.

I've been thinking and trying to figure out how to integrate this, so go with me — because we're going to get into unexplored territory. Have you ever traveled to the Grand Canyon? I have not, but I've seen pictures of it. You all know what I'm talking about. A giant hole in the ground with a very sharp edge.

We've talked about going, and we have all these children. And I'm like, how do you take a crew of children to the Grand Canyon? Because that's scary to me. It's flat and nice — like the edge of the pulpit here. Flat and nice and you're safe. You can play tag. You can throw a ball, whatever. And then — sudden, instant death right there. If you take one step in the wrong direction, you're dead. That's how I envision the Grand Canyon. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter — that's how I think about it.

I just don't think we think about life like that. I don't think we think of life as dangerous. I think we think of life as very safe — maybe not easy. Sometimes there's hardships. We struggle. I'm not trying to say that we never struggle. But not to the point that we really think, "My foot's causing me to sin. My eye's causing me to sin. I should gouge it out."

Because if we're going to the Grand Canyon, I'd be like, "Hey, kids, listen — you can get this far away from the edge. And any further, I'm going to tear your ear off your head." But would that not be a merciful thing for me to do? If it was between my kid falling to their death?

Should you not rather lose an eye and enter eternal life — be a part of the kingdom of God — than to proudly walk with two good feet into hell? This is the warning that Jesus gives us this morning. Not exaggerating.

Hell: The Unquenchable Fire

And the other thing is — because now we're going to talk about hell. Just in case you are not uncomfortable, we're going to talk about hell. Because this is where Jesus goes in his warning.

I used the pulpit for my demonstration — you're up here and then you fall over the edge. You can see the pulpit. You can envision, you can make that mental connection between what I'm talking about, what I'm demonstrating, and the reality. But how does the Grand Canyon compare with this pulpit? This is what — eight inches, maybe six inches? Versus what — a mile? I don't know how deep the Grand Canyon is. Deep.

Jesus says, reading in verse 47:

"If your eye causes you to stumble, throw it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than, having two eyes, to be cast into hell, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched."

So what do we learn about hell here?

What does it mean that the fire is unquenched? It never goes out. It's insatiable. It's never satisfied. You start a bonfire and you put a certain amount of wood on there and it's going to burn out, turn into embers and coals and then be cold again. One thing we learn here is that hell — it goes on.

"Their worm does not die." What do we learn from that? And this is horrible. Let's not try and sugarcoat it. There is no end to the fire or to the sufferer. Their life — whatever's left of them — does not go away.

Three times the Lord Jesus here speaks of hell. Three times he says the fire is not quenched. If you know anything about Scripture, three times is a way to emphasize something. If you want to know something's true, listen when Scripture says something three times in a row.

We Must Not Hide Our Eyes

So we've got to be careful. We must not hide our eyes and our ears to the fullness of God's word — his warnings as well as his good promises. We must not be ashamed to confess our belief in eternal punishment, because that is what God's word testifies to.

And it's tough. There are all sorts of ways to try and get out of the harshness of God's teaching of hell. And maybe we would be right to be ashamed of this reality — if there was not the boundless mercy in Jesus Christ for all who believe in his name. Maybe we would be right in being ashamed of hell if there was no possibility of hope, of escape, of life.

But there is a mercy. There is a mercy for all who ask in Christ's name.

The Road Into the Canyon

Think about a road — we're going back to the Grand Canyon here. There's a road that goes right into the Grand Canyon. If there was no way to stop, then okay, you don't have to talk about it. But let's say you're in a normal car and there's brakes and you know the road goes straight over the Grand Canyon. If you cared for someone — wouldn't you implore them to stop? Wouldn't you beg them to stop? This is death. There is no hope. You must apply the brakes.

And so in this life, there is an escape. There's a cure. There's a better path. There's a fountain open that washes all sin clean. Therefore, let us boldly and without fear hold to the fact that there is a hell — and implore men, beg them, plead with them to flee from it before it's too late.

The Error of Saying Too Little About Hell

Because this is a problem — an error that we commonly fall into in our modern evangelical church world. We could never say enough about Jesus Christ. We want to keep proclaiming God's love for mankind through Jesus Christ. How he lived a perfect life. How he died and paid the punishment for our sins on the cross. And it feels like we could just talk about Jesus and his goodness all day long.

But it's very possible — and this is the error we fall into — not to say too much about Christ, but to say too little about hell.

Does that make sense? We want to just talk about the goodness, the good things, the hope, the mercy — and we avoid the uncomfortable things. We avoid the punishment and the sin. We avoid even referencing what God saves us from. And it's possible for us even to diminish the fear of hell in our own minds, such that we make peace with our sins and we decide that the eye is more valuable than our soul.

Let that never be.

Complacency and the Call to Flee Sin

When we view ourselves as safe and secure in this life, we become complacent. Now listen — I don't want you to go doubting your salvation. If you've got your trust in the Lord, good. Praise God. Let that continue. But if you look at your life and you've got these sins that keep overwhelming you, keep coming back, that you don't know how to fight or that you've given up on fighting — those are the kind of things, those are the conversations. Bring that to the elders. Bring that to me as your pastor. Be strengthened to overcome those things.

If we become complacent, we see no need for a Savior. We see no need for plucking an eye out, cutting a hand off. We see no need to actively flee from sin.

The Eye, the Hand, the Feet — In Our Day

And listen — cutting a hand off. Just think about what that means in our day and age. The phone. The computer. There are things in our life that cause us to sin.

The feet — where do we go? In Israel and Judaism and Hebrew, they used the organ of the body as a shorthand for the thing itself:

• The eye — the things that you're looking at
• The hands — the things that you're doing
• The feet — the places you're going

Are you going places you shouldn't go? Stop it. Cut it off. You're not going to overcome that just by trying harder, doing better next time. Are you doing things that you shouldn't be doing? Stop it. Cut it off. Are you looking at things that you shouldn't be looking at? Stop it. Cut it off.

There's nothing that's so dear to you that you should love it more than your soul.

So if we really look — if we really see in God's word these warnings about hell, these warnings about eternal punishment, an unquenchable fire — the idea of losing a hand or a foot or an eye doesn't mean that much. If you could go to World War II and come back with only having lost an arm — God is merciful and good. If you could be a rebel against the great high King and you can limp into eternal life, having only lost a foot — praise God for his mercies.

Have Salt in Yourselves and Be at Peace

So let us be careful. Let us live in peace with one another — not seeking great things or striving for preeminence like first place, like it seems the disciples were doing — but rather clothe ourselves in humility and love all who love Christ in sincerity. These things seem simple. But walking in them — there's great reward, and they're certainly avoiding the real risk, the real danger, the real fall, the real tragedy.

So let us put our hope in Christ for this.

Heavenly Father, I pray that we would go forward remembering your goodness and your mercy, that you would strengthen us for walking in your ways, for loving and caring for those who walk in your ways — for all those who proclaim the name of Jesus — that we would be quick to come alongside and help them and comfort them. Give them a glass of water.

That we would watch for putting stumbling blocks in the way of those around us — that if we do, we would see it, and that we could flee from it. We could repent. We could be drawn toward you, Father.

Be merciful to us and kind to us, as you have been to us in Jesus Christ. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Scripture Reading — Mark 9:30–37

This is God's word and it is eternally true.

From there they went out and began to go through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know about it. For he was teaching his disciples and telling them, "The Son of Man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him."

And when he has been killed, he will rise three days later. But they did not understand this statement, and they were afraid to ask him.

They came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house, he began to question them, "What were you discussing on the way?" But they kept silent.

For on the way, they had discussed with one another which of them was the greatest. Sitting down, he called the twelve and said to them, "If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all."

Taking a child, he set him before them. And taking him into his arms, he said to them, "Whoever receives one child like this in my name receives me. And whoever receives me does not receive me, but him who sent me."

This is the word of the Lord.

Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Glory of the Resurrection Through the Humility of the Cross

Our scripture passage today teaches that the glory of the resurrection can only be rightly understood through the humility of the cross — and that life in God's kingdom is marked not by striving for greatness, but by receiving the lowly in faith and in service.

Jesus Teaches on His Death and Resurrection — Again

First, in our passage, it's interesting — and it stands out — that Jesus again teaches on his death and his resurrection. What's this, the third time that we've read this in just a few short verses?

This is a teaching that Jesus — you know, following the arc of Mark, the story arc — Mark spends a lot of time telling us about healings and miracles in the beginning. He's establishing who Jesus is, what his power is. And then we hit the transfiguration, and all of a sudden a lot of Jesus' teaching is more focused on his death and his resurrection. Repeatedly. Over and over again.

And this will tie into the end. But you know who loves to hear stories over and over again? Children. Right? Like, there are books that over the course of my years of parenting — which, you know, my oldest is 16, but if you add up all their ages, I've been a parent for like 90 years. So, right — 16 plus 15 plus 14, all the way down, all the years for each individual child.

There are stories that I have read just dozens and dozens of times. And there are books that we've thrown away because of that — I'm like, I will never read that one again, no. But there are others where it's like, okay, yeah, we're going to keep going back to this story.

Children have an insatiable appetite for stories, for teachings. And Jesus, knowing our weak frame, he goes back to the disciples again and again: Listen, I'm going to suffer. They're going to turn me over. I am going to die. And I am going to rise again.

A Spiritual Problem, Not a Hearing Problem

Now, I'm sure it wasn't that concise. I'm sure it was a teaching — he explained it, he gave significance to it.

And the problem isn't a hearing problem. It's not that they couldn't hear his words. They weren't deaf in the normal sense of the word deaf. The problem wasn't an intellectual problem.

Parents, do you ever get this situation where you're reading something to your kids, and then you stop and you're like, "What did I just say?" And they parrot it back to you exactly — the words that you just said — but they have zero understanding of it? Does that happen in your household as well?

It wasn't an intellectual problem. It wasn't that it just didn't sink in. They heard the words. It was part of the conversation. It was a spiritual problem.

The spiritual problem was that they heard — and I know this is hard, but just think about this — they heard, "I'm going to die. I'm going to be handed over. I'm going to die. And then I'm going to be resurrected." And you know what they thought?

Ooh, I like the sound of a resurrection. That sounds pretty good. Like, that sounds like we're there. This is the end times. Glory is coming.

The Track Meet Illustration

And so, you know, whenever my kids do something, all of a sudden I start preaching about it — those things get integrated in. And so right now we're doing track.

And the way that this has me thinking is: you sign up for the track team, and instead of thinking about, "Oh, I'm going to have practice, and we're going to have town runs, and we're going to do hurdles, and all the hard things that you do" — the sole thought you have when you sign up for track is: I'm going to stand up on that podium and they're going to put a medal on my neck and it's going to be glorious. I am ready for that.

Now we all know that would be foolish. Because what is really the consequence of signing up for track? Running and throwing and the sore muscles and the pain. It's like being pregnant and thinking about, "Oh, it's going to be lovely holding that baby," but then kind of forgetting that there's nine months of difficulty, and then there's the labor.

There's a process to go from point A to point B, and you can't just skip over A because you're really excited for B. You have to do the work to get the results.

The Disciples Were Ready for the Podium

The disciples, though — they were ready for the podium. They had heard Jesus teaching about the resurrection and they thought, Ah, here — we're done.

We should be sympathetic. Jesus says, "I'm going to die. And then there's going to be the resurrection. I'm going to be brought back from the dead." And you know what they thought?

Well, of course, everyone's going to believe then. You can't kill someone and have them be brought back from the dead and not have everyone universally say, "The Savior! Death has been overcome and conquered!"

So this must be the end of all things where everyone comes to believe, everyone bows the knee because Jesus came back from the dead. And so now let's start divvying up and trying to figure out which one of us is going to have the seat of honor next to Jesus at the feast of the bridegroom. We're here at the culmination of all things. We're on the inside. Let's get ready to celebrate.

Pride Swells Up

And then what happens? All of a sudden pride starts to swell up inside of you. I should be the greatest. "Oh no, but I was there with him on the mountain at the transfiguration." "Oh yeah, but I went out — he sent me out and I healed that guy over there. Remember that? So I should be the greatest."

Can you guys with siblings think about how this conversation might go? "Oh no, you don't get the front seat — I get the front seat. I get it. You had it last time. And so I get it this time, and I get the biggest piece of cake because of this." Can you just — I know you don't do this at home — but can you imagine the kind of bickering and quarreling over the best stick or the best seat or the best whatever that the disciples fell into?

This kind of pride can swell up anywhere. Kids, it's easy to pick on you because I have kids and I know what it's like. I had a sister, and so I know that. But it happens in churches too.

"I've been here the longest. I've done the most. I'm the pastor. I'm an elder. I'm a deaconess." All of a sudden these entitlements work their way in. And all of a sudden you get groups — "Oh yeah, over here, this is the Paul group. And over here, this is the Apollos group." And then they start fighting over priorities.

These are the kind of entitlements that need to be addressed and killed. Otherwise, the church is at risk of wandering off the path, just like the disciples did.

Silence Before God

And then an amazing thing happens. Jesus asks what they're talking about, and what do they say? Nothing. They clam up fast.

It's like when God asked Adam in the garden after the fall, "Where are you?" What did Adam do? He hid.

Silence is a defense mechanism. If you want to stay under the radar, use your stealth technology to stay under the radar — you're quiet. But silence before God isn't neutrality.

Why? Why is God unique when it comes to silence? When God asks a question, you know what he knows? The right answer. The real answer.

So why does God ask questions? Why does Jesus say, "What were you discussing on the way?" It is a test. And did they pass? No. No, they did not.

Because silence can be a lie. If you're accused of something and you're talking with God — who knows your heart — you know what you're saying if you stay silent? "I don't want to tell you." That's the best version. But really it's, "I don't think you know, and so I don't want to get in any more trouble than I really am" — which is the denial of what we really know about who God is.

Does God know the secret thoughts of your hearts? Yes. If you go up to the mountain, can you get away from God? If you climb really high? If you get in a submarine and you go down to the bottom of the ocean, can you get away from God? No. Let's say you go out into the middle of the forest — there's no cell phone reception there — can you get away from God? No.

Where is God? Everywhere. God is everywhere. You cannot escape his knowledge. You cannot escape his knowing your thoughts, your heart, your emotions, your feelings, your desires. He knows it. He knows what it was like yesterday and the day before. You can't get away from it. Your silence — that defense mechanism — doesn't work with God.

Sin Is Easy When You're In It

Problem is, sin is so easy when you're in it. Can you imagine the disciples walking along the road doing their little one-upsmanship about who should get the best seat? The easiest thing. But then all of a sudden: "Oh yeah, what were we talking about? Oh — how did we — Jesus is asking me what we were talking about. How could we have descended into such stupidity? He was telling us about his suffering and dying. Did we get so far off track?"

We don't often have God call us out for our sins directly. We don't have the voice of God coming in and convicting us of our sins. But what God has given us is the Holy Spirit. He's given us a conscience, and the Holy Spirit works with our conscience to prick us — to prick our hearts, to convict us of our sins — so that when we start down that path, every once in a while you'll get this little conviction:

• Don't say that to your wife.
• Don't go down that path.
• Don't click that button.
• Don't turn on that radio station — I know where that thought leads.
• Don't sit by that person — I know where that conversation's going to go.
• Don't turn on that TV station — I know the hopelessness.

Maybe it's a word of correction from a friend. A friend told me the story of a man who was gazing at a beautiful woman as he drove his car down the road — and then crashed into the car in front of him. That's a kindness of the Lord. That's a discipline of the Lord. That's a correction. That's a rebuke.

So how do you react to that? How do you react when your conscience is pricked or God's corrective discipline comes and pushes you in a different direction, grabs your attention?

Because there's a stubborn pride in man that when we're caught, we deny the reality of our sin. I think that's what the disciples are doing here. That's why they didn't just immediately say, "Oh yeah, we were pretty impressed with ourselves and we started boasting about who was going to be the best in the kingdom and sit in the best seats."

That stubborn pride — I think it comes from this idea that we think there's an eternal "innocent until proven guilty" standard. So we don't confess our sins. We don't fess up to them. Because if we don't say the words out loud, God can't use them against us in a court later on.

But God knows your sin. He knows your heart. There's no hiding. Even if there was an eternal right to remain silent, it would be of no use — because God knows your bones, your organs, he knows your heart, he knows your secret thoughts.

When God convicts, silence hardens sin. Silence hardens sin. Confession, on the other hand, opens up the means of grace. It's like opening the shades and letting the light come in — that disinfecting light.

So be careful how you respond to being called out for sin. How you respond to God's work in your heart when the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin. You can grow insensitive to the conviction of the Holy Spirit. You can squash those thoughts, those feelings, those convictions. You can push them down and harden yourself to the Holy Spirit.

Last of All, Servant of All

So the disciples stay silent, and Jesus addresses their conversation anyway. It absolutely was a test. They were discussing who was going to be the most important in glory. At a different time, it was an argument over who would sit at Jesus's right hand.

And Jesus says:

"If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all."

This is the heavenly order. And this is what the first of all was going to do. Jesus is the first of all. And he was on his way to the cross. He was on his way to lay down his life, to suffer and die. And he — not just like you and I — he came down from his heavenly throne. So he came down from higher than we have ever been or ever will be. And then he's going lower for us than we can go ourselves.

He's going down to the depths. How? He's going to die. He's going to be buried. That's the ultimate descending — from the heavenly throne to a burial ground.

Jesus is going to be the last and the servant of all as he makes his way to his cross. But the disciples — they don't want the suffering. They don't want to hear about suffering or think about suffering. They're focused on the glory. They want the crown of glory, not the cross.

This is an easy religion to sell. An easy religion to sell is all about the crown, all about the glory, all about the goodness. But it's a superficial religion. Because the reality of the Christian life is that the crown comes after the cross.

They needed to have really heard Jesus's words about being betrayed, his death and his resurrection, and to see that Jesus is preparing himself for that suffering, for that dying. That's what Jesus is committed to — to step down from his seat of glory, the glory that he had before the creation of the earth and everything in it. But they were so focused on what they were going to get, they didn't see the cost. They didn't see what Jesus was willing — was in the process of paying — for them.

The Child: A Picture of Humility

And so Jesus decides a picture is in order. He calls a young child.

Children grow up pretty quick. Pretty quick they're toddling around. But this child is a picture — a contrast with what the disciples were. The disciples are there scheming about who's got the best seat. And then all of a sudden he picks up — what, a one-year-old? — and he holds up the child as a picture of humility to pull their eyes off of their upward mobility.

A child with no status, no resume, no wealth. Just a young child.

Children are a delight and a wonder. Babies are beautiful. But they're not impressive. They're not strong. They're not powerful. They're not rich. I mean, their parents might be, but the child himself — what is a child satisfied with in life? Just about anything.

You can give a child a stick, or a pile of dirt, or a simple toy, milk — a cardboard box — and most children are going to be delighted with the simplest of pleasures. The child is not thinking about being the greatest. He has no capacity to compare himself among others. Our minds are full of thinking what's in it for us and how we've got to earn what we get.

"I Have to Be Right Before I Come"

I was thinking about this because I invited a man to church this week, and his response to me was kind of funny. He said something along the lines of, "Well, you know, I don't want to go to church because I like to work on Sundays, and I know that in the Bible it says that you're supposed to rest on Sundays — rest on the Sabbath. And so I struggle to go to church."

And if you really think about what he said — he wants to be right before he comes to church. Struggles to rest on Sundays. And not like works from 10:30 till noon — over the church hour — but just working in general.

And I'm sympathetic, because:

• We fear rest because rest feels unearned.
• We fear rest because it makes us dependent — and we don't want to trust God.
• We fear rest because we've got so much work to do. So much weight falls on you and me. We can't rest. We can't take time off.

And I try to explain that the gospel invites us to rest because Jesus has already done the work. Jesus does not ask us to first work and then earn our rest. No — we're called to this childlike faith that trusts in the Father's provision for us.

"Come unto me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. Come to me," says Jesus.

And think about it — he just picked a kid out of the crowd and called him up and then holds him in his arms. There is no glory like being just a received child. Just welcomed.

Receiving the Least Is Receiving Christ

There's no glory in receiving a little child either. Loving, teaching, caring for little children — it requires love and faith, because it's selfless. When our love and our faith dry up, everything becomes about ourselves. About me — how I'm growing in influence, how I'm growing in money, how I'm growing in stuff.

And I think this is why our generation isn't having children, but is instead killing the children inside their wombs. Because we've given ourselves over to a selfishness — this life is all about me and what I can accumulate, what I can get. This life is all there is. There's no resurrection. There's no hope for after I die. And so we become consumed with what we need today. I can't sacrifice. I can't pour myself out.

But receiving the least in Jesus's name is receiving Christ. And receiving Christ is not just receiving Christ, but is also receiving the Father — the Father who needs nothing.

Because receiving — that's like hospitality. That's giving a cup of water. That's caring for. How do we care for God the Father, the creator of all things? Work the logic back:

• If you receive the child, you receive Jesus.
• If you receive Jesus, you receive the Father.

So how do we receive the Father? We look at the helpless. We look at the weak. We look at the needy. And we receive them. And receiving them is receiving the creator God who needs nothing.

It's hard to get our minds around. But we see that Jesus wasn't just teaching humility — he was actively walking it out. He was doing it.

And this is what the disciples needed. They failed the test. They couldn't see just from the plain teaching that he needed to die and suffer and be raised again. They needed to experience it. They needed to experience it firsthand.

At the cross, they saw Jesus become the last of all, the servant of all, delivered into the hands of men. They saw him be killed and resurrected on the third day.

Application: Will You Fail the Test?

So what about you? Are you going to fail the test like the disciples did that day? Or are you going to learn from God's word and the examples that the disciples were for us — the example that God provided for us?

• Practice receiving rather than grasping for more.
• Practice resting in God's grace.

Does that sound weird to anyone — to practice resting? It is. And I know a lot of you, and I think it is hard. The idea of practicing resting, dwelling on God's grace.

Resting in God's goodness. Resting in God's grace. I think that's a challenge for a lot of us. Resting on God's day of rest — clearly a challenge for that man I was talking to. Resting in God's provision that is enough for you today.

And not just enough for you — but what if God brings someone into your life who has a need? Is God's provision enough for you to be generous and share? Is God's provision enough for you to care for a little child?

This is more than just head knowledge. And it's more than just desires. This is a childlike contentedness that allows us to receive Christ by receiving the overlooked neighbor, the uncared-for child, any of those who cannot repay, who have no status, who have no loveliness.

Invite someone into your home that cannot host you in return. This kind of one-way giving, one-way generosity.

Children — little guys — you get two pieces of candy and you see another little kid who didn't get any. Let's say you go to a parade. They're throwing out candy or t-shirts or whatever it is, and you grab something and you see the neighbor didn't get one. What do you do? You give it to them. Maybe.

You bigger kids — candy is not really the thing anymore. How about giving your kindness and friendliness to someone who isn't interesting or exciting? Someone who doesn't provide upward social mobility. It takes love and faith to be kind and to be generous with what God has given you.

Conclusion

But we are to learn to live in faith by seeing that Jesus became last of all. He became the servant of all. He was delivered into the hands of man. He was killed. On the third day, he rose again.

And only after the cross did they finally start to understand what God's kingdom is.

This is the foundation for the life of faith and how we receive Christ — by receiving those who cannot repay us, those with no status, no claim except need, by laying down our rights, our dreams, and desires for those around us.

We don't do this to earn our way. We do this because we've seen that Jesus has done it for us — and that in God's kingdom, greatness is not measured by prominence, but by self-sacrificing love. Not by how high we climb, but by how willing we are to lay down ourselves for the good of someone else.

This is our response to the kindness of God in Jesus Christ — that we would not seek to be first, but follow our Savior who came down from his throne, going all the way down to the grave, so that we might be raised with him.

Heavenly Father, help us. Help us to trust you. Help us to see that you went before us, that you go before us, that you provide for us. Not so that we can grow our own kingdom, not so we can establish our own righteousness, not so we can make ourselves right before you — but Father, out of the overflow of your provision to us, enable us, give us tender hearts to be generous, to lay down our lives for our wives and our children and our neighbors, and first and foremost for our love for you.

Father, we need help for this. We need faith and love for this. Fill us with your Holy Spirit, and Father, make us quick to respond to the work of the Holy Spirit in our life — that conviction of sin — for we are weak and we need you to treat us like children sometimes, teaching us that same story over and over and over again until we learn, and until we start to exercise faith and start to grow in it.

So Father, help us to rest in your grace, in your mercy, all for your glory. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Scripture Reading — Mark 9:1–13

This is God's word, and it is eternally true.

And Jesus was saying to them, "Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power."

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John and brought them up on a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his garments became radiant and exceedingly white, as no launderer on earth can whiten them.

Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

For he did not know what to answer, for they became terrified. Then a cloud formed, overshadowing them, and a voice came out of the cloud, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him." All at once, they looked around and saw no one with them anymore, except Jesus alone.

And as they were coming down from the mountain, he gave them orders not to relate to anyone what they had seen until the Son of Man arose from the dead. They seized upon that statement, discussing with one another what rising from the dead meant.

They asked him, saying, "Why is it that the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" And he said to them, "Elijah does come first and restore all things. And yet, how is it written of the Son of Man, that he will suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I say to you that Elijah has indeed come. And they did to him whatever they wished, just as it is written of him."

This is the word of the Lord.

Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Back in Mark: The Kingdom Coming with Power

So our text picks up right after where we left off a few weeks ago. Jesus had been teaching that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the church leaders, be killed, and rise again on the third day — the very things that we were just remembering as we celebrated Easter together and Good Friday. Killed and rose again three days later.

Now, the first verse of chapter 9 feels like it almost is more connected with the previous conversation than what follows it. "And Jesus was saying to them" — doesn't that sound like a continuity of what just came before? So verse 1 really almost belongs in chapter 8, and then verse 2 should pick up chapter 9. But we have the chapter breaks we have.

And so Jesus was saying that the things he was talking about — the kingdom coming with power — would happen before those standing right with him died. So what do we know from that? They would not taste death. If you remember back, you have to put your thinking caps on and remember several weeks ago — Jesus had just said, "Take up your cross." He was talking to them about their deaths. And now he transitions and says, "Truly I say to you, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power."

So it seems safe to believe that actually happened. The people that he was talking to weren't going to die before they were going to see the kingdom of God come with power. And then, as if just to prove that, within six days we get the transfiguration. But not all of them. He takes three disciples with him.

Why Peter, James, and John?

If you notice through Scripture, it's really common that Jesus picks three. It's usually Peter, James, and John. They're kind of the inner circle. Like, there's your best friends and then your good friends and then your acquaintances and then everybody you're connected with on Facebook. The really tight inner circle is Peter, James, and John. And he grabs them and takes them up on the mountain.

Two things that we should see from this setting.

Mountains and Wells: Settings Matter in Scripture

What happens in the Bible at certain places? We joke about one of them in my family. You know, what happens at a well? If the Bible says they were at a well, what's going to happen? Someone's going to get married. Romance happens at wells. What happens on mountains?

Well, more than worship — people meet God. That's what we read in First Kings. Elijah hears God's voice. He goes up to the mountain and he hears God's voice. Where does Moses go when he receives the Ten Commandments? To the mountain. He goes up on the mountain. So if you see people in Scripture going up on the mountain, you know what to expect.

Just like when you watch a movie — when the ominous music starts playing and the scene turns dark, you know the bad guy's going to come on the scene. These are just ways God communicates. God is very familiar with this idea that settings matter. Why did God create mountains and valleys? One of the ways is to teach us something. If you go up, prepare to meet God — at least in Scripture.

Three Witnesses to Establish Fact

So why does he grab three men? Why does he grab Peter, James, and John to bring them up on the mountain? This is the other thing that if you know your Scriptures — what's the significance of bringing three witnesses with you?

This is how in their courts of law they could establish something as a verified fact. Deuteronomy 17:6 — at the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses, even crimes justifying the death penalty could be proved. So if you want to establish something as fact — as it really happened — you grab three witnesses. That's your establishment of fact.

So just by knowing the setting, just knowing that Jesus grabbed three guys and went up to a mountain, what can we expect? That Jesus is going to meet God — he's going to hear from God. And that this is going to have to be testified to later on. There's a reason you gather witnesses. There's a reason sometimes you write things in a letter as opposed to saying things out loud — because you want documented fact. You send something certified mail because you want to be able to prove later on that they got notice. Whereas if you just have a phone call, you can't do that.

The Transfiguration

Verse 2 tells us that Jesus was transfigured. That's a big word. In the Greek, the word is metamorphed. Which — what does that make you think of? Butterflies.

What happens when a butterfly metamorphizes? It goes from a gross worm to a pretty butterfly. Its glory is exposed. It goes from caterpillar-esque — leggy and elongated — and there's some cute caterpillars. But a butterfly? There's a glory of a butterfly. Wings and colors and antennae and — boom — a different thing.

So Jesus is changed from one form to another. Still Jesus. But now what's happening? And if you were here for the Easter service, what does it remind you of? Whiter than snow. When the women got to the tomb, what did they see? It was empty, and there were two angels. And what did the angels have on? Dazzling clothes. The version I read said "dazzling clothes" — it makes me think of an ice skater with sequins. Dazzling. Bright.

Jesus' clothes are described as being so white that the best laundromat in the world couldn't get clothes that white.

Have you seen — they have a black paint these days, and it's the blackest paint ever? They'll take a fork and paint the fork black, then paint the background black. And they'll move the fork in there, and it's indiscernible. You can't see the fork because there's so little light reflecting off of it. It's the opposite of that. This is the whitest, brightest, shiniest thing ever. It's so shiny that the disciples kind of stupefy. They forget what they're doing. Their speech doesn't make sense. They're afraid. They're fearful.

Just imagine that. You walk up the mountain and all of a sudden — you know, today, everybody's got a phone in their pocket that glows. We're used to seeing glowing things. You walk in at home and you turn on your light and your 7,000-watt LED light bulbs shine so much that you can't see anything when they're turned off. Your car headlights shine 17 miles in the distance, they're so bright. We're used to seeing bright, shining things today.

They weren't. If it wasn't the moon or the stars, it was something on fire. They didn't have monitors and screens that just glowed constantly, filling their eyes. You can just imagine — What is going on? This is amazing. This is incredible.

Elijah and Moses Appear

But not just radiating light. Also, Elijah and Moses appear. Now, how did they know it was Elijah and Moses? They're not wearing name tags. I don't know what Elijah looks like. I don't know what Moses looks like. But somehow God made them know that there was Jesus over there conversing with these two guys — and one was Elijah and one was Moses.

Peter's Response: Let's Build Tents

Overwhelmed by the scene, Peter wants to fit this glimpse of power and glory into something that he already knows. Six days earlier, Peter was calling Jesus the Messiah, the Christ. Today, he says, "Rabbi" — teacher. Okay, maybe that doesn't mean anything.

But then Peter says, "Let's make some tents. I got an idea. Let's set up some booths. We'll set up one for you, one for Elijah, and one for Moses. This is the kingdom of God right here. We're going to start by just making little huts for you guys to hang out in. And when people want to come visit and hear the word of God, they'll come up here to this mountain and visit you in this little tent."

Which — God's done that before. God's presence came to earth and was specially present in the tabernacle, specially present in the temple. So it's not unreasonable what Peter's hoping for here. It's just — on the scope of what really is happening — Peter's like, "Oh, yes, great. We're going to go to McDonald's for dinner tonight." It's like, yeah, that's something. But — we're going to go get steak, man. This isn't fast food.

He wants to fit what he sees into something that he already understands, something that's graspable for them. If it was today and we saw that, we'd come up with some sort of natural explanation for what happened. "Oh, he must have used some sort of new detergent." Or, "They didn't actually see other guys. It was just this shared hallucination because they all ate the same mushrooms." We would come up with some sort of convoluted explanation that kept things comfortable, that kept things in the realm of how we can understand them.

Sometimes I worry that I pick on Peter too much. But what I see in Peter is what I see in all of us. We want things to be understandable. We want things to be explainable, within our grasp. Let me say it differently — God scares us. God working scares us. God being involved in our lives in ways that we don't have control over scares us. Just like it scared Peter and the other disciples to see what was going on.

The Father Speaks from the Cloud

Now, God in his mercy protected Peter and James and John by sending a cloud down. This is another thing that God does. When the Ten Commandments were delivered, a thick darkness descended, a thick cloud. God's glory is so overwhelming — his glory and majesty and power.

And so Jesus here, for a moment, reveals some aspect of who he is. His power and his glory through this transfiguration. Most of the time, it was all bundled up and compressed and concentrated down into the person of Jesus. You just look at Jesus, and he looks like a normal person. But here, just for a moment — just a little bit of it — they just got a glimpse of who Jesus really is. And they're afraid.

And then, just like the Father did at Jesus' baptism, he speaks here. And the voice comes out of the cloud and says, "This is my beloved Son."

A Word About the Trinity

In both instances, the Father and Son interact. And we should hear this and take it and be careful about some teaching that's fairly common these days — a teaching of either Unitarianism or Oneness, usually Oneness Pentecostalism. I feel like it's growing in popularity and growing in frequency, so it's worth warning you about.

There's a view that says God can only be one. He could not be three. And he just appears in different ways sometimes. It's called modalism, if you want to be technical about it. It's an old heresy that comes up with new flavors and new ways. What it does is it reduces God from being the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — three persons in one God — and reduces God down to, often, just Jesus. Jesus is God. And sometimes this Jesus-God presents himself as the Father. Sometimes this Jesus-God presents himself as a Son. And sometimes this one God, this one person, Jesus, presents himself as the Holy Spirit. That's this Unitarian Oneness idea.

What it doesn't make sense of is when the Father says, "This is my Son, listen to Him." It doesn't say, "Listen to me down there." There's a difference in person, in communication — not just in role, not just in what they do, but who they are. They're different persons. One God, three different persons. Persons who interact, who do different things, who have different responsibilities.

In salvation, God the Father sent Jesus to go do the work of salvation — of purchasing salvation, of being the sacrifice. And then they send the Holy Spirit out to effectuate that salvation by working in the lives and the hearts of man.

So I just want to clarify that this is a good showing of Trinitarianism — of the different persons within the Godhead. And we should be careful and use discernment when we hear people overemphasizing the oneness of God in a way that actually denies who God has revealed himself to be.

"This Is My Beloved Son"

Now think about the context of when he says, "This is my beloved Son." Jesus is standing there with Elijah and with Moses. And he says, this one — this one is my beloved Son. Does that mean he doesn't love Elijah and doesn't love Moses? No. That would be foolish. So why does he say it? Why does he especially love Jesus?

One — because he's God. He is the Son. He is co-eternal with the Father. They have always existed together. They have always been in fellowship and relationship. Moses and Elijah were created. There was a day before they existed, and then they existed. God made them to be Moses and Elijah.

But there's something more than that, too.

The Law and the Prophets Fulfilled

What did Moses do? A lot of these times, you have to be very familiar with your Bible to understand the rest of the Bible. And this is the glorious thing about these Bible reading programs that get you reading the Scriptures regularly through. You're reading about Elijah, then you're reading the New Testament, then you go back and you read about Elijah, then you read the New Testament — back and forth — because our brains can't get it all in one read-through. We can't get it all with just me standing up here and reading a few verses every week. You have to know Scripture in order to understand Scripture.

Because Moses and Elijah here are real people, but they're also kind of shorthands for ideas. Moses — he's the one who received the law. He got the Ten Commandments. God's people got the Ten Commandments through Moses. Then Elijah — Elijah is one of the most significant and prominent prophets.

And so here we have Jesus with the representative of the law and the representative of the prophets, and God saying, "This is my Son. I love him." And it just fits so nicely in the New Testament idea that Jesus is the fulfillment of the whole Old Testament — both the law and the prophets. And here is Jesus, that fulfillment of it, that beloved Son that both Moses and Elijah helped prepare a people for.

So there is the reality of what's going on, and then there's also the significance of what's going on. And so the cloud comes down, Moses and Elijah disappear, and it's just Jesus there again.

Why the Transfiguration? Why Now?

This isn't the culminating event where the kingdom of God is reestablished and the resurrection has happened and all the powerful people get their own tents and tabernacles. This is just a momentary display of Jesus's power and glory, right here on the cusp of the crucifixion — right before the power of the church to condemn Jesus, the power of the Roman Empire to kill Jesus.

Here is Jesus's power just momentarily displayed. The love of God for his Son momentarily displayed. Why would God do this? Why the timing? Why now?

Part of the answer is to show that Jesus willingly laid down his life — that no one took his life from him, that he had all the power and glory. He didn't need to earn the power and glory. He had it all. He had it all with the Father from before all time.

And he came to earth not to establish his own glory, not to establish his own power, not to establish his own standing with God — but to redeem a people, to redeem God's people, the people that would believe and come to the Lord.

This was always in Jesus. It was just veiled. It was just covered up in the man of Jesus. The transfiguration just showed them what he really was — that glory and that power, that magnificence. And they saw it just for a moment, just enough to be able to testify that it was there with Jesus even before the crucifixion.

What we see here is that Jesus brought enough — but not more than enough — witnesses to establish his power and his glory and his beloved status with the Father, even in the presence of Moses and Elijah. Better than the law, better than the prophets. But because it was a preview, Jesus orders these few witnesses not to say anything. This is a sneak peek of what's to come.

The Disciples' Confusion: "What About Elijah?"

Now, what's interesting is the disciples' reaction. Because Jesus starts telling them, "You can't tell anyone until after the resurrection happens." And so they start talking about, "What's he talking about? This resurrection? Did you hear that right?"

And they're like, "Okay, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, Jesus. We've heard the scribes say that Elijah has to come first before the Son of Man comes in his glory. So how — we don't understand how this resurrection is going to happen if Elijah hasn't come first." They're concerned that Jesus has the order wrong, that Jesus has somehow messed up what's really going to happen here.

And again, I just think this is so normal for mankind. We have our understanding of Scripture — how Scripture should work, how God should do things. And anytime it works differently, anytime God reveals something differently, it's like, "Whoa, I'm sorry. No, that's not the order it's supposed to go in."

We understand exactly how the second coming is supposed to proceed. "Wait, sorry, no, that's not right. That was supposed to happen, and then this." How many times during my lifetime has someone said, "Well, this is the fulfillment of this prophecy, and therefore Jesus' return is going to come on June 16, 1987"? I don't know if that was the exact date, but there have been billboards bought announcing — because "we understand with precision these end-time events" — "Therefore, Jesus will return on this day. You better get ready."

And here's the hard part — because this is the hard part that I have with Peter as well. Peter's like, "All right, awesome. Moses and Elijah — let's build the tents. Let's build the tabernacle. Let's go. This is great." And I'm kind of sympathetic. I'm like, yeah, we should celebrate. This is good. We should be ready for Jesus' return. There is a good element of these bad prophetic interpretations. There's a bit of a good heart to it, a bit of a good desire to honor God, to set up tents and tabernacles, to make this be the worship thing.

But the problem is — what do we do when God tells us it's something different?

And let me say — I don't think there's any part of saying "Jesus definitely will return on XYZ date" that's good. We should not do that. He says that no man knows. And so if no man knows, no man knows.

The Real Problem: Pride and the Desire to Avoid Suffering

So what's man's problem when it comes to seeing God's revelation? It's sin, and it's our pride in particular. It's our pride that says, "I got it figured out. I know exactly how this is going to proceed, and it's going to proceed just the way I think it should."

This happens with conversions as well. How many people see some famous movie actor or rock star get converted and they're like, "Oh yeah, this is what the kingdom of God needs. We need a celebrity. We need famous people to be Christians, and then everyone will want to be a Christian." Or — "I can never imagine that person getting saved because they're too wicked and they're too sinful." Or — "She used to be, he used to be a fill-in-the-blank, whatever the horrible sin of the moment is. They could never be a Christian."

Christian nations come and go. You look at how the gospel spread — the gospel spread in many places that are now ruled exclusively by Islam. We need to have some humility when it comes to how God reveals himself, how God carries out his purposes. We should hope. We should worship. We should pray. We should be ready for Jesus's return. But the idea that we can reduce that down to a spreadsheet — the idea that we can reduce that down to "I know it's not going to happen because this hasn't happened yet" — is hubris and pride.

And it's the same thing that kept catching the disciples by surprise. Jesus had already talked to them about him dying and rising again three days later. And then he starts talking about the resurrection, and they're like, "What's he talking about? Did he just say resurrection again?"

Our Duty Today

What's our duty today? Our duty is to praise the Lord. It's not to figure out all the prerequisites and all the fulfillments.

We were talking about something earlier, and Randy and I disagree on something. And you know what's okay? That's okay. We don't agree. Whether something — you know, a hurricane hit, and someone said that was God's judgment. And some people got worked up about that. Was it God's judgment? I think we can wonder. We can have a conviction. And will we know with perfect clarity? Will we know with perfect certainty? We won't. So we have to have a little bit of humility when we have those conversations.

We have to remember that God is the author of Scripture, and that his being, his mind, his words even — the only way that we understand it, the only way that we're not immediately terrified and killed, is when he, by his grace, covers up his glory by putting a cloud in between us and the true revelation of who he is. We just can't even receive it. We can't even accept it. That's how high he is above us. He condescends. He comes down. And the ultimate coming down is Jesus Christ — putting all that glory into the body of man. And then, boom, at the transfiguration, there is just this tiniest little glimpse of it, and it throws the disciples into a tizzy.

Humility with One Another

Let us have humility with how we come to God. Where God has revealed things clearly, let us cling to them and proclaim them and hold them as true. And where he hasn't, let us exercise humility and grace and compassion with one another as we all stumble through this life trying to figure things out, trying to overcome sin, trying to overcome the defaults that we were raised with — that seeped in through culture and through schooling and through our parents.

We tell our kids all the time — we're just messing you up in different ways than we were messed up. We're pointing you to the truth the best we know how. But you look back on the ways that people used to say things, and they weren't faced with the same kind of trouble that we are faced with now. They had different trouble, and so they had to clarify different things.

This comes up in legal practice all the time — you write something down with an idea in mind. Take the right to bear arms. One of the common objections is, "But they didn't have machine guns at the time. They didn't have rocket launchers. So are arms really arms as we understand them today?" It's a fine question. It's a fair question. And it's a conversation that should happen. But they said "arms" then because that's what they were dealing with. And so we have to use discernment and clarity to look back and try and figure out what was meant before.

The reason I have this in mind is honestly because of our men's study — you look back on some of the confessions of faith, and they talk about Adam and Eve both sinning in the Garden of Eden, and that being the capsule event. And then you look at how our modern culture has taken sex and gender, and we've totally confused everything. Well, you can't look back on things that were written 100 years ago and expect them to have addressed the complications of transgenderism, because that wasn't the conversation.

Now, you can look back on God's Word. Why can you look back on God's Word differently than you can look back on man's word? Because he created us, and he knows all the things — all the controversies that are going to come up. And he chose to write the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek with all the flavors and variations of the words that are used in those languages. And that's how he communicated truth to us.

And so we can look back on God's perfect, unerring, infallible Word — his perfect Word, his perfect communications — and we can look into that even with our 21st-century eyes and try and understand how we should be dealing with problems today.

The Disciples Wanted Glory, Not Suffering

And the real problem is that the disciples were trying to find a way to avoid what Jesus was saying — that now was coming a time of suffering. Because that's what Jesus kept going back to. Now is coming the time for suffering. And they didn't want the suffering to come. They wanted the glory to come.

So this is what Jesus explains again in verses 12 and 13. He says, "You've missed it. Elijah has indeed come." That was John the Baptist. He came, and they killed him too. That's what they do with God's messengers. That's what they're going to do with God's Son.

The Son of Man must suffer and be treated with contempt. That was God's way of bringing in his kingdom. He was going to come gentle and mounted on a donkey before he came in power and in glory. He suffered many things on our behalf so that he might a people redeem.

So it wasn't a time for building tabernacles. It was a time to prepare for suffering. And that's what the disciples missed time and time and time again. And that's what I fear we're too easy to miss as well — that the Christian life is a time of suffering. It's not a time of glory. It's not a time of honor. It's a time of suffering in this life. And to the extent that we run away from that is doing the same thing that Peter did — denying God's plan, denying what God has prepared for his people.

Heavenly Father, I pray that we would lay down our pride. That we would lay down our hubris. Our rebellion. And that when you say it is a time of suffering — and that there will be continued death and suffering — that we would, instead of losing hope, look forward to the glories of the eternal life with you. The reality of the resurrection. The hope of having eternal bodies that no longer are subject to sin and death.

Father, strengthen us for this. Give us faith and hope. And help us not to turn away from the living sacrifice that you have called us to walk — from picking up our cross and following you. We can't do this on our own strength, Father. We need you. And it is a glorious thing that you went before us — that you didn't call us to do something that you haven't done. But you call us to follow you.

So Father, strengthen us for this work. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.