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September 27, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 13:1-8 · Gospel of Mark
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: September 27, 2026
Our sermon today is from Mark 13, the first eight verses. This is the word of the Lord, and it's eternally true. As he was going out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, Teacher, behold, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!
And Jesus said to him, Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left upon another, which will not be torn down. And as he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew were questioning him privately. Tell us when these things will be, and what will be the sign when all these things are going to be fulfilled?
And Jesus began to say to them, see to it that no one misleads you. Many will come in my name, saying, I am he and will mislead many. When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be frightened. Those things must take place, but that is not yet the end.
For nation will rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, there will also be famines. These things are merely the beginning of birth pains. 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, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Perhaps because of all the hospital time, but death and goodbyes are on my mind a lot.
And and reading this passage, it seems like Jesus is saying goodbye to the temple. You know, he when he came to Jerusalem, the first thing he did was he he went in and examined it and saw how people were mistreating it. And so he went in. It's easy to think when he overturns the money changers tables and and creates his cord into a whip.
This is this is anger and and malice and judgment. And it is. It is. Anytime you see something that you love being mistreated, don't you get angry? Shouldn't you get angry? From From man's standpoint though, we tend to we tend to think whatever situation we're in is always gonna last forever.
Right? Like do you do you remember back in high school? You get this sense that you're always gonna be in high school, right? Like there's these adults and they're old, you know, those 40-year-olds, those thirty, you know, those old people there. But you know, this is life, right?
The confines of the high school walls, the bus trips, the sporting events, you stay busy enough and it's easy to think this is what life's always gonna be like. And then and then Lord willing you you grow up a little bit and and you meet someone, you get married and you have kids, right?
And these kids, they demand everything of you, right? There's they need to be diapers changed, they need to be fed, they need to be strapped in the car seats. And so it's like, all right, now this is your world. Like and it's always gonna be this way.
There's always gonna be little ones pulling at your pant legs, and there's always gonna be someone needing something like mouth wiped or bottom wiped or you know something wiped. And then the kids grow up. And I don't know, maybe someday you get out over the idea that life's always going to be like this, but I don't think so.
I think even empty nested with your husband, with your wife, it's like okay, life's always gonna be like this. And then sickness comes. And all of a sudden it doesn't seem like life's always going to be like this anymore. And here's Jesus looking at his temple.
You know, we live, what, 70 years, 80 years? The temple, God's presence. It had been around for so long, Phil read to you out out of of Ezra, that was the building of the second temple, right? The first temple had been destroyed. And the temple is not—it's a little bit like our church buildings, right?
Like we're sitting here in a lovely church building, 100 years old. Right? It's got some history. For America, a hundred-year-old churches is some history. The temple's not like that. The temple, you know, just I want to impress upon you the history of God's presence with his people.
Right? Because if you if you know your scriptures, you know when God created man, God walked with man. With Adam and Eve, God walked through his garden with them. He was physically present with Adam and Eve walking through the garden. But then sin came.
Sin came and it changed our relational nearness to God. Right? God no longer walked with man. What did man do? Man hid from God.
We knew it, God knew it. It was clear there was this relational distance between God and man. But God in his grace didn't leave man on his own, he continued to be present. Right? We can fast forward to Moses.
And Moses is walking through a mountain one day, and there's a bush on fire that won't burn up. And so Moses gets curious and goes and looks at it, and the bush speaks to Moses. The bush speaks to Moses, God speaks to Moses through the bush and says, and gives them instructions, right?
God's presence came to that burning bush, didn't consume it, but was there. Then God speaks through Moses, he speaks through Aaron. They go to Egypt, they pull the people, the Israelites, the Jews, out of the land of Egypt, and they start wandering through the wilderness, and God leads them, right?
Do you remember how he leads them? He leads them by day with a cloud, a pillar of clouds, and then at night with a pillar of fire. And God says, Listen, I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give you my presence in a predictable place. I'm gonna you're gonna build me this tabernacle.
You're gonna build me a place for my special presence, my holiness to rest. And it's going to go with you and be with you. And there's going to be, you know, different areas that different people can go in, all the way to the holy of holies, where my special presence is going to be specially felt.
Especially there. So that's in in the middle of the wilderness wanderings, they build this giant tabernacle structure, portable, modular, but God's presence is going to be there with these people. They are his people, and they carry around the tent of his presence with them. Okay, so they do that for a long time, and then they settle in the in the promised land, and we we we go through the promised land time, you know, the the the establishment in the promised land, and we go all the way through through the kings, through the judges, into the kings, and David sets up his rule.
And he he has his palace in Jerusalem, and he looks and he says, you know, it's not right that I have such a nice house and God lives in a tent. Right? Because while we like to go tenting, we all know that a house is better than a tent.
Okay? And so David has this beautiful house, and and God's dwelling place is this tent. And so he says, God, I'm gonna build you a house. And God says, No, you're not. No, you're a man of war, David.
You don't get to build me a house. But one of your descendants will, and your descendants will rule on the throne over my house for eternity. And so this gets partially fulfilled through Solomon who who builds the temple, the first temple, right? And he cuts these grand stones.
If there's any this might be an overstatement, but there there is some some amount of Solomon that I view like President Trump. Like I can just see him like, all right, it's gonna be this grand beautiful temple, right? Like gold and blocks, and and God gave the instructions, but Solomon carries it out.
And so you have this grand, magnificent temple, right? Worthy of showing off to all the nations. I mean, it is a glorious place. But the people of Israel turn away from the Lord, and God brings his judgment on them and their families, the whole nation of Israel.
And what happens to the temple is it's destroyed. It's destroyed, and the people are sent out, they're scattered away. God removes his glory from the temple and the people are sent out. They're dispersed to the nations.
Right? But God doesn't leave them there. God gathers his people back and, this is what Phil read in Ezra, and the people get permission to rebuild the temple. And did you did you hear? Did you hear what he read?
This always stands out to me. If I find the scripture. So here's they're laying these massive stones. Think of this. Like they've they've come back to Jerusalem, they found the remains of the original temple complex, and they're starting to like rebuild back up. And this is this is their their you know their their celebration the second year the coming to the house of God and they sang praising and giving thanks to the Lord this is Ezra 3 verse 11 saying, for he is good, his loving kindness is upon Israel forever.
And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. So think about this. Just the foundation, right? We haven't even gone to the walls yet.
There's no like fancification going on. It's just the foundation, but we're like big blocks. Have you been to the Capitol building? and gone in through the main entrance where you see like the foundation stones, and you see these giant slabs of like immovable stone. It's still impressive.
This is verse 12. Yet many of the priests and Levites and the heads of fathers' households, the old men who had seen the first temple, they wept with a loud voice when the foundation of the house was laid before their eyes. So they built the second temple and they started worshiping back in the second temple, right?
And God's presence comes back. The temple was rebuilt, and God again established worship there among his returned people. And now here's Jesus walking through it. And he sees he sees the money changers and he sees those selling, buying and selling right there in the temple.
The place that was supposed to be a house of prayer is again, despite being rebuilt, is again turned into just a common marketplace. And here's Jesus. Now the reason that we we read the the the Chalcedonian creed today is because there's just this irony of Jesus, the God-man, the presence of God in man walking through the temple, which was supposed to be the special place of the presence of God.
And people had rejected the worship of God in the temple and they'd rejected the worship of God in flesh through Jesus Christ. And here's Jesus knowing that the the days of temple are over. The days of needing sacrifices, right? Because the tabernacle system and the and the and the temple, they were made for the sacrifice system, right?
All of this was pointing forward to the ultimate sacrifice needed in Jesus Christ. And so here is Jesus Christ come to earth, born of Mary, put on flesh, incarnate word of God, and he is going to be the final ultimate sacrifice. No more forward-pointing sacrifices are needed.
And he looks at the temple and he knows what's coming. He knows the judgment coming. Jesus knows that the temple is going to be overthrown such that not one stone is left upon another. And about 40 years later, this came to pass.
Right? Jesus was crucified. The veil of the temple was torn in two. But the destruction, the judgment coming on Israel was not yet complete. The temple, 40 years later, was totally destroyed. Its walls and its towers were torn down.
And you can read the account of this in a non-biblical book called Josephus, The History of Josephus. And he is a Jew, not a Christian, a Jew who lived through that time and wrote the history of the destruction of the temple. But at this time, right, the disciples sitting there, sitting on on the mount across from the temple, looking at it could they they couldn't fathom like all the changes that were gonna take place all the changes of of the whole sacrifice system of of of the rejection by and large, of the Jews, of Jesus being the Messiah, of him being the resurrected Lord and King.
You see, they were a lot like us. They were enamored. They were captivated by the beauty and the glory and the majesty of the system that they had, of the buildings that they had, of the power, and even though they were under the Roman government, like they still had their own semi-autonomous nation that they had there.
Just like we are, right? It's easy to be captivated by big buildings, by success, by fanciness. Like you ever look at a book and you're like, ooh, that looks like an important book, because it it's, you know, it just looks good. Right? Or you drive by a church, a church builds a brand new building, and it's like, oh, they must be successful.
Or you watch them online and they've got fancy, you know, ever like it's easy to get caught up by bigness, fanciness, even oldness. it's it's not uncommon for people to love churches for something other than the word, something other than the fellowship, be it the robes or the incense or the sac the way they do the sacraments, the way they play their music, the number of instruments they have, the the lack of instruments they have, right?
Like you have conversations with other people who call themselves Christians and and you start to hear all the ways we care more about the the the circumstances of worship than the object of worship. Does that make sense? the the the beauty of the building, the beauty of the worship, the beauty of the music, the and it cuts both ways, right?
It's either the power of the organ or it's the complete absence and the the the soul voices of man. Right? There's there's all these ways that we put our our preferences as what should be the really important thing. Just like just like the disciples walking through the temple and being like, what a beautiful, can you imagine this is so beautiful it's like Jesus had just gone through and flipped things over and kicked people out and they're sitting there just being stunned by the beauty of the stones.
We're getting to a point in Mark of prophecy, and here we see Jesus trying to disentangle the disciples for the disciples, the destruction of the temple, the coming of Christ's kingdom and its reality, and the end of all things, right? Because Jesus knows what's coming, and he doesn't want his disciples to put their hearts and their trust in the wrong things.
The church building was the wrong thing. And as we look into these prophecies, starting this week and continuing on for the next couple, we'll see that some things are really clear and easy to understand. Some of the things that Jesus is warning them against, super clear. Don't put your trust in this temple because guess what, guys?
It ain't gonna be here for long. Okay, so don't be so captivated by its beauty. You have to see through what this religion is, what this kingdom is. It's not about the temple.
Other things that Jesus starts to warn about are not quite so clear. And this is where it's it's gonna it's gonna get interesting in the next couple weeks. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna on the clear things, we're gonna be very clear, and on the not so clear things, we're we're I'm I'm probably not gonna add a whole lot of clarity, right?
Because it's not clear. What is clear though is that when Jesus said the temple is going to be knocked down, it was. It was destroyed. It's clear that Jesus knew that this was going to take place. And so part of Jesus' prophecy here is to warn the disciples about what was going to happen during their lifetimes.
It's easy for us to read some of these prophecies and try and put it all right now in in in our lifetime, but we have to realize that Jesus was speaking to real people about real events that were really happening in their lifetimes. But then where it gets interesting is there's also these, like echoes is the wrong word, but there's these ways in which these are types and anti-types of things that are going to happen throughout history culminating in the end.
The end of all things, the day of judgment. And this is, as the disciples pressed him, they pressed him to tell us the signs of these things That are gonna happen, we start to see this like this mixture of things that are in the present and things that are in the future.
Right? Jesus says, You should expect false teachers. And some of you are going to believe them. Many, this is verse six. Many will come in my name saying, I am he and will mislead many.
And will mislead many. Which means we have to be careful. We have to be careful as a church because guess what? There is deception. There are false teachers.
There are people who falsely claim the name of Christ to deceive you. So you have to use discernment. You have to use scripture. You have to be guided through more than just someone coming in the name of the Lord.
Jesus warns we are not to be led by false messiahs. Jesus also says, you're going to hear about wars and rumors of wars, and you're not to be frightened or misled by wars or rumors of wars. Why is that the case? Because you know think about think about your nation being overthrown by a war.
Think about your nation overthrowing another nation in war. You know, either one of two things are gonna happen. Either you're going to be frightened and misled into thinking that, oh, this is the end of the world when it's only the end of your nation, or you are going to be frightened and misled that, or misled, that you are the conquering nation, that somehow you are the same thing as the kingdom of God, which is also dangerous and also able to be misled.
Like there's wars and rumors of wars have real consequences on real nations, and we've lived with such security in the United States, I worry that we've we underestimate how significant the reality, the daily reality, the life-changing reality of wars are. Jesus says you should expect to hear about earthquakes.
Don't be frightened or misled about earthquakes. Again, we don't have a whole lot of earthquakes here in Kansas. But you can imagine, right? All of a sudden there's like an earthquake, and all the buildings around you fall down, and the earth opens up over there, and there's a new mountain range over there and and like that's that's a little disconcerting that that is that's that's my land changing my nation changes my temple changes my land changes how about famines?
What causes famines? Well, pests or weather, right? So I don't have any food. The weather's changed. The climate's changed. You hear anybody talking about the end of the world from climate change lately? Like it's easy to be frightened and misled by these kind of things, by the world changing all around you.
No, he says, wars and earthquakes, famines, and false Christs are merely the beginning of the birth pains. You guys ever been around or had a child? it takes some time, right? and what's what's what's difficult is is not predictable, right?
Sometimes labor goes fast, sometimes labor goes slow. You don't always know. Jesus doesn't say that these events are unimportant, earthquakes, famines, false Christs, but he says they're not reliable calendars of the end. They are reasons to remain watchful and faithful, not reasons to surrender to panic or speculation.
We know, for instance, that it takes nine months for a baby to be born, and even then, like there's days or weeks, and you know, sometimes at least weeks, where you just don't know if if if things are gonna happen or not. How long the birth pains of heaven of the kingdom of heaven are for, we don't know.
And anyone who tells you that they do know is a liar. Just like saying goodbye to a loved one who seems to be at the end of their life, though, we know there will be an end. Right? We know that it is appointed unto man a day to die and then the judgment.
But there's so much we don't know. Will this treatment work? Will they get out of the hospital? Will he have the strength to hold on for days or weeks or months or years?
You see, the time of the temple has passed away. We know that has happened. The time of sacrifices and temple worship is no more. God Himself did not change, but the way He dwelt with His people reached its fulfillment in Christ, and Christ going up to be with the Father, and the Holy Spirit coming in and dwelling within us.
We no longer draw near through an earthly sanctuary and repeated animal sacrifices. Through the blood of Christ, our great high priest, believers now draw near to God, and by the Spirit they are transformed into Christ's image. Listen to how the apostle Peter wrote to the Corinthians. This is 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 12 through 18.
Therefore, having such a hope, we use great boldness in our speech, and are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face, so the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away, but their minds were hardened. For until this very day of the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ.
But to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. But whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
This is the benefit of the new covenant. That we approach the glory of the Lord directly through Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ, we are being transformed day by day, growing in holiness and glory and transformed into the image of Christ our Savior. Growing in holiness and glory is a truer mark of the true church than any sort of building or program or fancy technology, having our minds and our hearts set free from worries about war and famines and earthquakes, not that we're set free from the reality of them, but we're set free from the anxiety and the deception of them.
Learning to trust the true and living God, knowing that liberty is in Christ, freedom from condemnation, freedom to see our sin and our guilt and our shame and to repent and to turn away from it, to pursue those things that are good and holy and true, to know our true Savior, so that we're not deceived by false prophets.
And so, brothers and sisters, don't put your trust in things that look permanent but aren't. Right? Buildings fall down. This building one day is gonna fall down. I don't know what day, hopefully not anytime soon. This building is going to fall down nations rise and fall we just celebrated 250 years. That doesn't mean we're guaranteed another 250 years.
Nations rise and fall. Wars come, earthquakes strike, famines afflict, false teachers appear and promise secret knowledge. But Jesus Christ isn't shaken. The one who foretold the fall of the temple also went willingly to the cross, rose from the dead and now reigns at the Father's right hand forever.
Therefore don't be misled and don't be frightened. Don't trust in stones. Don't trust in institutions. Don't trust in teachers who claim to know what Christ has not revealed.
Instead, trust Christ, hear his word, and remain faithful in worship and prayer and repentance and love for one another. And when the world appears to be coming apart, which it does on a fairly regular basis. Remember that these things are not evidence that Christ has lost control. They are the beginning of the birth pains, and the king is bringing his kingdom to its appointed fullness.
This is our confidence and our hope, and this is this is what Jesus is bringing about. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to not put our confidence in things that change, things that look permanent. Help us to see beyond ourselves. For the young men and women, help them to have a perspective beyond their years.
Father, it is it is a joyful thing to have young children, young adults, middle age adults, and those who are elderly, all worshiping and fellowshipping together because it it brings us out of the immediacy of our circumstances. Help us to see and honor those who have gone before us.
Help us to see that this state of life that we're in right now will not last, and that there is a day coming. There is a day appointed a man to die, and then the judgment. And so, Father, give us this kind of gravity, this kind of perspective.
Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Heavenly Father, we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Carl, would you lead us in?
September 13, 2026 · Daniel J. Coughlin · Mark 12:28-34 · Gospel of Mark
Speaker: Daniel J. Coughlin
Date: September 13, 2026
Our scripture reading is from the book of Mark. Mark chapter 12, verse 28, is where we're going to start through 34. This is God's word and it is eternally true. One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that he had answered them well, asked him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?”
Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” The scribe said to him, “Right, teacher, you have truly stated that he is one, and there is no one else besides him, and to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbour as himself is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that, no one would venture to ask him any more questions. 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, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
You've probably heard a young child, I'm thinking like a three year old, say, I can do it myself. Like when they go to put their shoes on and they're on the wrong feet but they think they can tie it, or if you've got a full gallon of milk and they've got a bowl of cereal and they try and pour the milk themselves, right?
I can do it myself. It's a natural part and a good part of children growing up, right? We want them to. If they couldn't do those things, if they couldn't learn how to do those things, we'd have a problem. The problem is sometimes we get stuck there.
Sometimes we get stuck in the I can do it myself mentality. And we never want to let anyone else help us. And that's dangerous. That's a different kind of developmental problem, right? Never wanting to do anything yourself is a problem, and then always wanting to do everything on your own and never getting help, never admitting that you need help, is the flip side of that problem.
The scribe captures this in the realm of religion well. He comes up to Jesus and he says, What's the most important thing I have to do? And in most of our life, this is exactly the right question, right? What's the most important?
When you wake up in the morning, you have to think, what's the most important thing I have to do. You make decisions. You can't do everything. You can't be everything for everyone. You have to decide what are you gonna do, right?
If you have a job and you get there, you probably have some sort of a task list or a checklist. You've got tools to put in the truck, you've got emails to respond to, you've got breakfast to make. Like we all have the to-do mentality because that's how we live.
Most of our life is I've got something to do and I need to do it. Alright, kids, you wake up, you gotta brush your teeth, you gotta pack your backpack, you've got to be ready for the school bus when it comes, otherwise they honk at you and and make you know, make you run out the door.
It's if for you it's me yelling to you to wake up, right? We're used to doing these things. We're used to earning our keep, to earn our paycheck. That's how we keep the lights on.
And so that's what the scribe wants to know. He wants to know what do I need to do? Tell me what I need to do. What's the greatest commandment?
What do I need to do? And Jesus doesn't make up something new and catchy. As the reason Phil read Deuteronomy 6 is because Jesus quotes Deuteronomy
Did you know that was from the Old Testament? and I bring this up because it's such a common misperception that the idea of loving God and God loving man is like some new thing in the New Testament. It's not. It's not. You are to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.
And the second part, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, comes from Leviticus, which is also in the Old Testament, right? So these ideas. Anytime you have so scripture talks about the law, the law of God, the law of Moses, the commandments of God. There's different ways to summarize them.
One of the most famous is the ten, the summary of ten, right? The ten commandments. You guys have heard of the ten commandments, you're aware of the ten commandments, right? Okay, good. this is a this is a further summation, right? These are two. The two is a way to sum up the ten, which is a way to sum up kind of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, because a lot of that is just explaining the Ten Commandments, what they are, how they work.
But so you see the relationship. With the Ten Commandments, you have the first four are the ways that we're supposed to love God. The last six are the ways we're supposed to love our neighbor. And so you see that these are just different summaries.
Like you can take a whole book and you can summarize it into ten points. And then when pressed, you can take ten points and you can summarize it into two points. The first four of the Ten Commandments, though, are about how we're to love God. This is just explaining what that relationship is supposed to be.
What is our duty towards God? What is our duty to love God? And the first says that these are just unpacking the ways in which we are to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our strength. Right?
This is an exclusive relationship. There is one God and only one God, and you must worship him. With the negative comes the positive as well. You're to have no other gods before him, which means you're to have one.
And because it's before him, and he can see all things, he can see the mountains, he can see the depths, he can see into your heart, he can see into your brain, that means it's all inclusive, right? We have no secrecy of private worship in our minds that we can have other gods before God.
And so he says, No, you will worship me in word and in prayer and in song. You're not going to put up images. You're not going to build statues. You're not going to draw your eyes to the images of things that you're going to be tempted to worship.
Because as people saw this horrific event, they spoke God's name. Not in reverence, but in maybe in reverence. I don't know. I, the context was, you know, I had no context. But you know how this is. when you have, I mean, right at the construction site, I mean you hear people use God's name in vain all the time.
You stub your toe and you hear people swear, right? You know what swearing is, you know what taking the Lord's name in vain is. You say God or Jesus, not out of reverence, not out of love, not out of fear, but out of anger, out of carelessness. That's taking the name of the Lord in vain.
We are not to abuse holy things for profane purposes. That's the third commandment.
Isn't that a strange thing? Like there are some strange things. Right? That comes from the creation. Right? God created all things in six days and on the seventh day he rested and he gave that to us as a pattern, as an enduring pattern that we were supposed to replicate.
We have a day where we put aside our work, our labors, our concerns, and we exercise our trust in God. That is a unique thing about being made in the image of God and having his word is that we are supposed to rest, which also means we're supposed to work, right?
And the ratio of our work to our rest should be six to one. That is a healthy, good, if you rest six days and work one day, that is not a healthy way to live. You are to work six days and work looks different if you're, you know, four.
If you're four, right? Work looks different. If you're nine, work starts to get harder, right? And oh, you have to work all that work you have to do, writing all these papers, right? And as you grow, work changes.
Going to school is work. And then you do work after school too. And then you grow and you have your own household, right? And you work. And then your work becomes kind of going to doctor's appointments and trying to juggle all that and care for grandkids.
And you know, there work changes, but it's still work. This is how we love the Lord our God. This is how the Ten Commandments summarizes what we're supposed to do. It explains what it means to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
And then the next six commandments explain how you're supposed to love your neighbor as yourself. Right? The fifth commandment in in the order in the list is that you're supposed to honor those in authority over you, your fathers and your mothers. Well, your fathers and your mothers in the household, of course, right?
You're supposed to honor your father and your mother. But also in the government, right? You have police officers, you have administrative agencies, you have code enforcers. You have people who are over you. how about the tax appraiser?
If we want to you know put a fine point on it, right? No one wants to honor the tax appraiser, and yet, they have been given authority. They have an office to fulfill. And the same thing in the church, right?
Pastors and elders have an office, have responsibilities. We are to honor them as church fathers, as city fathers, as father fathers. And then the list continues. And a lot of these are obvious how they're loving our neighbor.
We must be active in resisting any implication that it is justified, it is worthy of empathizing, it is always selfishness. It is always wicked to kill. Now, there are situations where like the government has the death penalty, and then when men are sent to war and they have to exercise that responsibility.
But to voluntarily take the life of someone is always wicked and is always subject to moral judgments. God will repay evil. And a government that works well is to punish evil and to reward good. So if you ever hear someone saying that something justifies killing and really, you work out the logic of the pro-choice movement and the abortion rights advocates.
And no wonder we have such confusion among our society about a mother killing her children. Like it is, if if you're not following the news, there's a court case that is exposing a lot of evil and a lot of wicked hearts. And so we shouldn't take for granted that thou shalt not kill is something that is not going to be pushed back upon.
That's the sixth commandment.
It means keeping intimate sexual thoughts and behavior restricted to the marriage relationship. Thoughts and behavior.
You're honest in your dealings. You're not stealing from your boss. You're not faking how many hours you're working. That's stealing.
This is the way you protect your own name and protect the good name of your neighbor. You're honest.
Right? Because it's easy. If I say love God and love your neighbor, what do you say? Sure, yeah, great, got it. But then you start to expand this out and you start to put a finer point on it, and you start to feel the weight that this is how you love God, and this is what it means to love your neighbor.
And Jesus confirms these are the greatest commands, right? The first is God, and the second is your fellow man. That's the there's a reason for the order. There's a reason that if the first table of the commandments is about loving God and the second table, right, if you think about it double-sided paper, right?
If the front side is about God and the backside is about our neighbor because there's a priority there. The priority is God, God first, neighbor second. And what's interesting is that unlike the other interchanges, right, we've been going through this for a couple weeks now, and there's a fly that's being really bothersome. unlike the these other confrontations that Jesus has had, this one doesn't seem to be confrontational, right?
Jesus tells him about you know these two commandments and the scribe agrees and so it's like well this feels different than the other ones right the other ones were confrontational. The scribe agrees and adds properly that to love God and to love neighbor is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.
Right?
And Jesus sees that he gives an intelligent answer. Finally, someone responds intelligently, right? Because scripture does testify to this, Scripture testifies that obedience is better than sacrifice. Probably most especially well known in Israel's history when Samuel rebuked Saul for not wiping out the Amalekites.
Right? And he took back some of the leaders, he took back some of the spoils of war, and when Samuel calls him out he's like, Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm just gonna I'm gonna I brought them here. I didn't kill them like you told me to. I just brought them here so I can offer them as a sacrifice.
Doesn't that sound nice? So okay, that was I guess we're gonna be done, right? Because this seems settled. You know, they're in agreement.
Like all of a sudden, where did this scribe come from who agrees? And Jesus is Jesus, I guess Jesus is confirming that we must obey all the Ten Commandments in order to be saved. Does that sound right? Jesus says this at the very end: you are not far from the kingdom of God.
That sounds like a good thing, right? You can hear that. Like you're you're getting pretty close. You're warm, right? Do you ever play that game with your kids?
You're oh getting warmer, getting warmer, getting hot. Jesus says, you're not far from the kingdom of God. And I think this is more of a warning than it looks like at first glance. There is danger in being not far from the kingdom of God.
The danger is being satisfied outside of the kingdom. Being close enough to it that you feel good about yourself, but not actually in the kingdom of God. Because you see, the commandments have a purpose in our salvation. They don't show the checklist of things that you need to do to be saved.
What they're there for is to crush you, to crush you under the weight of the commandments. So that you look and you say, I could never. I couldn't possibly. Right? If you know Pilgrim's Progress, right? it's it's Christian coming to realize there's this burden on his back, and it's weighing him down, so he can't do anything.
The commandments are not a comfort. The commandments show us our need of a savior. Right? If you heard the commandments and you thought, oh, I'm doing pretty good, you didn't hear the commandments and the problem is not the commandments themselves, it's not the law, right? The law is perfect, the law is holy, the law is just, the law is good.
We could study the law every day for the rest of our lives and be better for it. So what's the problem? The problem is us. The problem is you.
The problem is, there has not been a day that any man since the fall has ever kept the commandments of God. Except Jesus. We break the commandments daily. The commandments show us our guilt. And yet, like a moth to a deadly flame, we love checklists.
And we keep wanting to reduce religion to a list of things that we need to do, right? Read our Bibles, go to church, say our prayers, right? We want a to-do list. We want a checklist that feels comfortable and doable.
And that's what it sounds like the scribe's wanting here. It's like, what do I need to do? What are the commandments? What's the most important one?
That's the one I need to focus on first, and then I'll just focus on the next most important one.
But God's commandments are to show us our guilt and bring us. That's how they bring us nearer to the kingdom of God, right? When we see our guilt, we're like, okay, what do I do now?
Like, I can't. I can't work my way out of this, and yet that just means I'm left guilty. So what it does is it brings you to the cusp of knowing you need a savior. Our guilt reveals our need of a Savior. Our guilt shows us that we could never earn our place as a son.
Right? Look at the scribe. You see, sometimes we break the commandments without even knowing it, right? Here's the scribe talking to Jesus saying, Oh yeah, good teacher, good job. You know, who is Jesus?
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. What should the scribe have done? Because God is standing before him. What should the scribe have done?
Bowed down? I mean, respond like Isaiah did, I am a man of unclean lips. Like, oh forgive me, Father, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the scribe's sitting there asking him trivia questions. He sinned against God. This is the Sun in the flesh, standing before him and, does he honor his father and mother?
Does he honor the authority before him? Instead of questioning Jesus by the law, the scribe should have been laying down his claim to rights, asking to follow Jesus, but we don't see that. It looks like the scribe is content to know that he has a right understanding of the law.
Which is our risk too, it's our danger too, right? Because just like the law can be misused, so can grace. We can look wonder at grace, we can study grace, we can dissect grace, we can track, you know, God's grace through the Old Testament and the New Testament, and we can have this great understanding of what God's law is and what God's grace is and yet never be partakers of God's grace.
You can study and study and study and never come to grasp it yourself, to be the beneficiary of it yourself. Right? The danger is that you're always trying to earn God's grace. But that doesn't work, right? I'm thinking of Bill, your poster.
Right? Grace is unmerited favor. How can you ever work to earn something that is unmerited? Right? It's a contradiction. And so, as you work, as you think, as you think about what God's commandments are, do you care about them because you're trying to do them in order to earn God's favor, or do you care about them because you see God has been favorable toward you and you want to behave and act and be how you were created?
You want to grow in holiness because of what God has done for you, not in order that God will do something for you in the future.
A ticket to God's kingdom is always by grace and through faith. That's why adoption is such a glorious picture of salvation, right?
Or even sonship in general, right? What son has to consent to his conception? It doesn't even make sense, right? What child, you know, the conception happens before the child comes along.
There's no consent, there's no opting in. All the things that brought you to be happened before you could do a thing. Right? Even with adoption, most adoptions, the child doesn't get a say in the adoption. The judge gets a say, the parents get a say, the biological parents and the adoptive parents, but the child what?
There you go. It's a little more complicated than that. But it's it's essentially a thing that happens to them, not a thing that they opt into, which just reinforces the concept that sons don't earn their way to sonship. Servants are the ones who have to earn their way.
Employees earn their way. Slaves earn their way. Sons work from identity, from love as part of the training of the Father to the Son in love. You don't serve your father in order to become a son, you serve your father, because you're the son.
And this is what it means to be a partaker of God's grace. That we see daily our failures, that you see your sins, you see your shortcomings, you see the ways you fail, and instead of slinking away in shame, you remember God's mercies and God's grace. We remember that we're beloved.
We are loved by the Father. And so the hard part though is that we have to lay aside the thought that we're here by our own rights, that we deserve to be here, that we've earned our place. We have to remember that we're here because of God's kindness and God's mercy.
What that does is it just changes us. It changes us because all of a sudden we're not outside of the kingdom hoping to get in, hoping to earn our way in. We're inside the kingdom carrying out the will of the Father on earth as it is in heaven.
We learn to be thankful. We learn to be grateful. We see that the power of Satan to humiliate us and to accuse us is diminished. And it doesn't mean that our sins are better, our sins are worse, but we're washed clean.
We have a clean conscience. We come knowing that the burden of our sins, the weight of our sins, doesn't press us down into hell. We rest in the comfort and confidence of the work of Jesus Christ, his one-time sacrifice, paying the price for all of our sins.
Right? And that's the irony of how the scribe responds. He goes, Oh, you're right, obedience is better than sacrifice. And there's the sacrifice that all of the sacrifices were pointed to standing before him. To be a partaker of God's grace means to rest in the goodness of the Heavenly Father, that He is able to save us to the uttermost, and that we rest in the presence and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, that he's at work in us to perfect our salvation, to help us to see sin, all the ways that we fail to keep God's commandments and that instead of seeing that and then saying, “Guilty, guilty, punished, removed,” it's working in our hearts and working in our minds and working in our behavior to overcome that sin, to turn away from it, and saying, such were some of you, but you've been washed and you've been cleansed and you have been justified.
That is the hope. That's how we are partakers. Not by lying to ourselves or lying to others about our perfections, but of seeing the grace and the mercy of God in our life on a daily basis. This is the normal, daily, repentant life of a Christian.
And so my warning is: don't settle for proximity to the kingdom. Don't settle for being close, but outside the kingdom of God. No, our comfort and our joy is to be found present in God's kingdom, covered by God's love, washed by Christ's sacrifice.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, help us to see the ways we're tempted to settle for close enough.
Help us to see the ways that we're tempted to reject your grace and your mercy and instead to try and be good enough, to try and claim our position before you by right instead of by your grace, work in us humble gratitude that we might see and experience the mercy that you've shown us in Jesus Christ.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
September 6, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 12:18-27 · Gospel of Mark
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: 09/06/2026
Our scripture reading today for the sermon is Mark chapter 12, verse 18. And this continues the challenges that Jesus faced as he was in Jerusalem from one group, one party after another.
So today we're going to hear about the Sadducees, and you don't need to know much about the Sadducees, except that they were like our modern-day skeptics, our modernists.
Have you heard of the Jefferson Bible? Do you guys know what that is? You history buffs? No, the Jefferson Bible?
A little bit. Okay.
So what Jefferson did was he took an X-Acto knife, before there were X-Acto knives, and he cut out all the places where there were miracles and angels and resurrections and anything weird, anything creepy, anything that was out of the normal.
You see, he liked Jesus. He liked the words Jesus spoke. He liked the teachings that Jesus taught. Basically, he was a modern-day Sadducee.
Okay? And we have those all over the place now.
I grew up going to a United Methodist church, and it was not uncommon for people to like Jesus' teachings. They liked the teaching of care for your neighbor. They liked the teaching of be nice, be moral.
Which is funny because we're immoral, right?
Morality and good behavior is an easy sell, right? Everyone wants our kids to grow up and be nice and to be good and to be successful and to be smart.
But then Phil goes and reads about dry bones connecting to bones and sinews growing over them and flesh covering the sinews.
And you tell someone you believe that, and all of a sudden you're not in the running for class president anymore.
You believe that Jesus raised from the dead Himself. He was resurrected. Isn't that a little creepy?
You believe that a flood came down and washed away all but Noah and his family in an ark.
Now, isn't that a little much?
How about angels? How about demons? How about miracles? How about water being turned into wine? How about demons being cast out? Healings?
Isn't that all a little weird?
It's all a little weird.
Thank you, Ren. You're honest. I would take that over anything.
You see, the Sadducees, like us, were very comfortable with moral teachings, goodness, laws, and right behavior. But when you get into angels and demons and resurrections and miracles like that, we like to think that's a modernist view.
It's not.
The Sadducees were right there alongside Jesus. He was doing the miracles, and they were denying that miracles exist. They were denying that the supernatural exists.
And it goes side by side with religion, right?
You want all the good living and the moral decisions, but you remove anything supernatural.
So that's what you need to know about the Sadducees. They're not really as different as we like to think. They're not really as far off.
You have Christian neighbors who are Sadducees, modern-day Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, who view this life as all there is, and like Jesus as a good moral teacher.
And honestly, you and I even tend to sink into that level sometimes. We like to think about just right living, and we forget the messiness of this whole spiritual realm that God has revealed to us through His Word.
So we're going to read the Scriptures now. This is God's Word, and it is eternally true.
Some Sadducees, who say that there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and began questioning Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves behind a wife and leaves no children, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother.
There were seven brothers, and the first took a wife and died leaving no children. The second one married her and died, leaving behind no children, and the third likewise.
And so all seven left no children. Last of all, the woman died also.
In the resurrection, when they rise again, which one's wife will she be? For all seven had married her.”
Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?
For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are greatly mistaken.
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. O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Part of the reason why we avoid thinking about things like angels and demons and the resurrection and even death is because it goes outside of our control. We like things that are within our control.
Death is one of those things. It's the ultimate loss of control.
I think this is part of the reason the Sadducees rejected resurrection and angels and miracles and things like that. It's because they couldn't control it. They couldn't study it. They couldn't see it. They had to take someone else's word for it.
It's easier to think about death being just a physical cessation. Like you're alive and then you're no more. And that's easier for us to get our minds around than thinking about the resurrection of the dead.
Resurrection means that someone who dies and is buried in the ground is fully brought back to life.
The Sadducees had developed their own method of studying God's Word. They read it, but they pulled all the power, all the supernatural significance out, and they only focused on the teachings, on the rules and the laws.
They had pulled all the power out of it.
Think about a scientist with a moth board. You can study some parts of a dead moth in very fine detail, but what do you lose when you study a dead moth?
You lose life.
And that's what the Sadducees did. They took all of the life, all of the power, out of the Scriptures.
They had come up with a hypothetical, a gotcha question.
Then they ask:
“Of the seven brothers, who gets the woman in the resurrection?”
Jesus doesn't take the bait.
“Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?”
Jesus also addresses something assumed by the question itself: marriage is between one man and one woman. The entire dilemma only works because everyone involved already understood that one woman cannot be married to multiple men.
Jesus goes to Exodus 3 and the burning bush.
Key Verse:
“I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
Jesus points to a passage the Sadducees knew well.
His conclusion is simple:
“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
And He also answers the practical question.
In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage.
That's difficult for us to understand because our entire experience of life is shaped by marriage, family, and procreation.
Think about a tadpole.
Then it becomes a frog.
Could a tadpole fathom what that would be like?
No.
In the same way, we cannot fully fathom the resurrection.
We are like tadpoles trying to imagine life as glorified resurrected people.
Jesus identified the Sadducees' problem:
They did not understand the Scriptures or the power of God.
How do you approach God's Word?
Do your feelings get to decide what in God's Word is true?
Does your understanding get to decide what in God's Word is true?
That is what the Jefferson Bible did. That is what the Sadducees did.
In contrast, God's Word says:
“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
All Scripture.
So what do we do when Scripture makes us uncomfortable?
The Holy Spirit is the One who opens our eyes and minds and hearts to receive God's Word as truth.
The Scriptures are not merely helpful teachings or wise insights.
They are God's Word with divine authority.
We are to:
Not the other way around.
The Bible ends with a warning in Revelation 22:18-19.
We are not to add to God's Word.
We are not to take away from God's Word.
And there is more than one way to take away from God's Word.
We need to be more careful than the Sadducees were.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I pray that we would have a high view of Your authority, Your love, and Your provision.
But also that we would see Your warnings and that we would not be proud and arrogant, thinking that our understanding and our feelings have more weight and authority than Your Word, the Word of God.
The Word You have given us as Your revelation of who You are and what You require of mankind.
Heavenly Father, with that conviction, I pray that we would take seriously our opportunity to read and hear and study and understand and memorize Your Word, not as a dead moth pinned to a corkboard, but as Your living and powerful Word, given for our correction and our reproof, that we might be equipped and ready for every good work.
Mature men and women of God.
I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
August 30, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 12:13-17 · Gospel of Mark
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: 08/30/2026
Our sermon today is from the book of Mark, chapter 12, verses 13 through 17. If you have a Bible, please open with me, or open your app on your phone or however you do Bible things these days. It's also up on the screen if you want to follow along.
This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true.
Then they sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to him in order to trap him in a statement. They came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are truthful and defer to no one, for you are not partial to any but teach the way of God in truth.
Is it lawful to pay a poll tax to Caesar or not? Shall we pay or shall we not pay? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at. They brought one, and he said to them, Whose likeness and inscription is this?
And they said to him, Caesar's. And Jesus said to them, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they were amazed at him.
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, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
All right, I want a show of hands. Who likes paying taxes?
Yeah, Ava raised her hand.
Who does not pay taxes, or at least hasn't yet? So that was my expectation is that none of you likes to pay taxes. It was a fairly safe venture there. The government is not like a charity. We're talking about, you know, World Vision and Compassion International. And, you know, it's an opt-in.
If you want to sponsor one of their children, you do it because they have told you that they're gonna be good stewards of your funds, right? 86% of the funds are gonna go. And you're gonna do it because you see the need. Taxes aren't like that.
Taxes are: you must pay taxes, and if you don't pay taxes, someone from the government will pay you a visit and charge you penalties, and it's not a pleasant process. And guess what? It hasn't been for a long time. Like, no one's really ever loved paying taxes.
You do it because there's some authority over you that said you must pay this.
Taxes are exactly where Jesus' enemies choose to attack him here. If you notice in the beginning, verse 13 it says, then they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to him. So we have kind of three parties who are all colluding and coordinating in this attack, this test of Jesus.
The “they” is the Jewish leaders, right? We were just reading about them, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. They were the ones who were challenging Jesus just a minute ago in our previous verses. And so, you know, that line of attack failed.
So what are we gonna do? I got an idea. Let's get the very strict religious types, those who say that you have to follow every law exactly to the jot and tittle and their extension of it, their protectiveness of it. Right? The Pharisees were always the ones who were trying to make the law as strict as possible on everyone.
But we're gonna take them, and then we're going to go over here and we're going to grab the Herodians. Do you guys remember who Herod is? Herod is the ruler. He was a half-breed.
He was half Jewish, half not, half Gentile. He had made his peace with Rome such that there was a Herod who ruled over the Jews. And this was the way that Rome kept the rebellious Jewish community in check was through the Herod. And there were different Herods.
That's not really relevant to this. The point is Herods were not a religious people. They were a politically powerful, influential people. And so the Herodians were those who followed Herod, who aligned themselves with Herod, who knew that they could be powerful, not because they were going to take the law and they were going to make sure everyone knew exactly what the requirements of the law was—that was the Pharisees.
They were over here on this other side and said, we're with Herod, whatever he does. He can marry his ex-sister-in-law, he can chop off John the Baptist's head, whatever. We're in his camp, we're on his side. That's where our power comes from.
And so do you see the dynamic at play here? Were these guys good friends in general? No, it doesn't make any sense, right? I mean, you have the super religious and you have the super compromised political power here.
What brings those together? Well, a mutual enemy in Jesus. Right? Because Jesus both undermines the authority of the Pharisees, these keepers of the law, these holders of the law, these appliers of the law, and then Jesus, who had been preaching and teaching, and John the Baptist, who had been talking about the coming of this kingdom—what does Herod get worried about?
Well, he gets worried about a coming king, right? That's kind of intimidating. If you're the ruler and you hear this, there's this king coming. Well, do you guys remember what did they write on the cross that hung above Jesus' head?
King of the Jews. King of the Jews, right? Right? This was not lost on the Herodians, this political upheaval, this political threat, political turmoil. So we have this strange alliance.
Politics makes strange bedfellows, right? Isn't that a saying? There's probably a couple other ways to say that too. So the Jewish leaders seek an opportunity to trap Jesus and they send these two parties out to him with, you know, a fairly straightforward question:
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or is it not?
And so here's the trick, here's the trap, right? If he says no, it's not lawful to pay taxes, the crowd is gonna do what? They're gonna cheer, right? Because if I told you today that you had a religious reason not to pay taxes, I mean, you'd be excited, right?
When you file your tax return, you just say, Pastor Daniel says, I don't have to. Right? Jesus says, I don't have to pay taxes. The crowd'll go crazy. But the Herodians, what are the Herodians gonna do?
They're gonna march over to Herod and they're gonna report, this guy's leading a rebellion. He's telling your people not to pay you taxes. And that's gonna get the government worked up, right? But then what if he says, yes, it is lawful to pay taxes?
How does the crowd react to that? Meh, I thought we were coming to you for bread and wine and free taxes. The Pharisees then win because they stay in power. They didn't want to pay taxes.
They're the ones who were really worked up about the fact that Caesar's image was on the coin. Right? And then they can point to Jesus as being sullied, as being dirtied by filthy money, and then they get their attack in.
So either way, it's a lose-lose situation. Whether Jesus says yes or Jesus says no, it's lose-lose.
What's interesting is while the Jewish leaders think that they're testing Jesus with this dilemma, Jesus instead reveals what's going on really with all three of these groups. Right? The kingdom of heaven that Jesus brings is revolutionary.
It is a real kingdom. But not in the simplified sense that all his enemies thought. Right? The foundation of the kingdom of heaven is spiritual. It's not a one-to-one political replacement.
Like, it's not that you're either in the kingdom of Rome or you're in the kingdom of heaven. It's not that you're in the nation of the United States of America or you're in the kingdom of heaven. There's a dual citizenship here that creates a tension that really man has felt ever since the kingdom was presented.
Right? I mean, you can look back. I'm reading a book right now on the crusades and how Rome, the Roman Catholic Church and the governments of those times, how they interacted. Or you could have arrived at church before me this morning and gotten this tract.
Somebody left some tracts in front of our church this morning. And I don't know if you guys know what tracts are. There are things you can hand out to explain what Christianity is. Well, this one caught my attention because of what the sermon was this morning.
And again, no joke, this was in the door this morning. And I'm just gonna read you a little bit of it because I want you to see that this is still something we struggle with today. The tension between what are our responsibilities to God and what are our responsibilities to man is an ongoing spiritual, religious, theological struggle.
And I'm gonna get to this, but how many of you remember what is it now? Six years ago when COVID started happening? All of a sudden, there was conflict between the church and the state in a way that I had never seen in my entire life, right? With churches saying, well, now everyone needs to, you know—or sorry, with the state saying everyone needs to stay this far apart, or you know, and we're in Nemaha County, Brown County, it was fairly tame here.
But in a lot of places, they told churches they couldn't meet at all. And so it's like a lot of churches had to struggle through the reality for the first time of what do we do when the government says you can't. I have friends who were at a church and their local government said you can't sing.
Because singing is, you know, blasting out viral particles. And they had to struggle with that. They had to work through that. It wasn't easy, it wasn't pretty. People got it wrong on both sides. And so this is a real struggle.
This is a real struggle that pops up every once in a while in the United States of America, and in fact, you'll hear sometimes—actually, you'll hear in this pamphlet—it called the separation of church and state. And so some people get—well, I'm gonna read this. The title is called “Two Kingdoms,” and I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but I want you to read this and feel the tension.
Some questions are in order, so they talk about Jesus' kingdom and the earthly kingdom. Some questions are in order. How can a Christian vote in both voting booths? You talk about—that's kind of irrelevant.
I'm gonna skip that. Let's go on here down to here.
The Christian has dual citizenship, earthly and heavenly. However, his highest loyalty is to the heavenly, and he will not transgress the laws of the heavenly in order to please the earthly. At the same time, though, he will gladly honor the laws of the earthly, insofar as there is no conflict with the heavenly.
So far so good, does that make sense? Like if there's a conflict between what the government tells you and what God tells you, are we to obey man or God?
God. Okay, that's clear enough.
Thus, to obey driving speed limit set by Caesar is to honor both his heavenly and his earthly citizenship. But to carry a sword or to vote for one to carry a sword violates the charter of the heavenly domain. Christians are indeed a holy nation of kings and priests, their God.
And then I'm going to skip a little bit and read this next paragraph:
If the Christian joins the army, votes, or holds political office, then Christians are of this world. And if their vote puts a fellow believer in a political office and he remains in the church, then beware, for the church, the world is now in the church. It won't be long until the church no longer meets the biblical description of a pure and holy bride. It has become Babylon the Great, the den of every unclean and hateful bird.
And I could keep reading, but do you see where this is going? Like this little pamphlet here from a publisher that I otherwise generally have a good opinion of, what are they worried about?
If you vote or hold office or go into the military, you're not a Christian, is what they're arguing. Like, you can't do those things and be a follower of Christ. Do you see the tension? The tension is how much of are you affiliated with the heavenly kingdom and how much are you affiliated with the earthly kingdom?
Can you have any part of the earthly kingdom and still be a part of—and so what they're arguing for, and I read that not to say that I agree with this, but to show you that we still live in a land where there is this conflict.
Like, we've not figured this out. We've not figured it out in a way that everyone is agreed, that all Christians are agreed. So their argument is: if you're any part of the earthly kingdom, you are not at all a part of the heavenly kingdom. Is that what Jesus is teaching here?
Well, he's not.
No, this is Rod and Staff Publishers. And again, usually they have some decent stuff out. So that's why when I saw this, I was curious, and they seem Anabaptist. And so what the Anabaptists believe is that the earthly kingdom is corrupt and wicked and the kingdom of Satan.
But that's not what Scripture teaches. That's not what Scripture teaches.
And so we're gonna get there. Jesus says, Bring me a coin. And if you have—you guys all know what a dollar bill looks like, right? So let's pretend, or a penny.
Do you know—have you all seen a penny? They still make them these days. Whose face is on a penny?
Lincoln. Lincoln. Right? Do you guys know who Abraham Lincoln is? Was he president? Right? So just like in our day, they had the image of their earthly rulers on their money.
We've got George Washington on the $1 bill. We've got Jackson on the 20? Okay, I'm not gonna stretch any more than that because, obviously, I don't know my dollar bills that well. The point is why do coins, why do dollars, why does our money have the image of our earthly rulers on them?
It's because they control it, right? I mean, who prints the dollar bills? Who guarantees that the dollar bill has value? It's the earthly government, right?
And so it's no surprise that we put the images of our earthly rulers on our currency. But with that image comes a claim of rights. Right? So the government today has the same sort of claim of right to taxes as Caesar did back then. Right?
If you're transacting financial transactions, what are you going to pay? If you go to the grocery store—well, that's not a good example. You go to the—where do you pay taxes these days? You go to a farm supply, you go to the gas station and buy your gas, what are you gonna pay?
Taxes. If you get paid, if you work a job, if you look at your pay stub, do you get all the money that you are paid? Let's say you make ten dollars an hour. Do you get ten dollars an hour? No. Some portion of that goes to the government before it even comes into your hands, and then at the end of the year, if you make enough money, you have to report that back to the government, and then you have to settle up however much you really owe.
Do you only have to pay taxes if you approve of your government? Do you only pay taxes to good governors, to good presidents, or do you have to pay taxes all the time?
The Herod in Jesus' time was—or Caesar, let's use Caesar. Was Caesar a good ruler?
Was he a godly man? Would you have voted for Caesar? Would you have voted for Herod? Would you have voted for the man who killed John the Baptist?
No, right? And yet, here's Jesus saying, it's his money. You gotta give it back to him. Like, this is who your governor is. This is who your ruler is.
You have to pay that portion back. He demands it. And it's got his picture on it. So really, that's no surprise.
Because I feel like oftentimes we get so wrapped up in politics that we think our life would just be better if the right guy was president, if the right people get nominated to the Supreme Court in Kansas or the United States.
Like, oh, wouldn't life be so much better if only the Republicans had a supermajority in Congress? Right? Oh, wouldn't life be so much better if this president got elected instead of that president got elected. And there's some truth to it, right? Our life is easier with some political solutions and it's harder with other ones.
Just like theirs was, right? Except they didn't have a vote. They had to take what they got.
Or maybe you're like the Pharisees and you want a spiritual religious reason to justify your rebellion against the authorities that God has given us, right? You don't want to pay taxes, you don't want to wear a seatbelt, you don't wanna drive under the speed limit, right?
There's all the ways that the government is burdensome to us. And wouldn't it be nice to have a religious reason that we could just exempt ourselves from all these things.
But then there's others, and maybe this is some of you, maybe you're like the Herodians. You know that the civil government is always going to be corrupt and so you've made peace with that.
And you're just going to align yourself with whoever brings home the bacon for you the best. And you're not so worried about their personal corruption. You just care about, you know, is the economy going to work well? Is everyone gonna be happy?
It's the path to power.
Jesus' teaching doesn't end on pointing out that Caesar's image is on the coin. He continues and he says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. Right? And so this is clear enough.
The coin literally has Caesar's image on it, right? So the coin is clearly something that should be paid to, rendered to Caesar. So there's no concerns with that. No concerns with paying the bills in our pocket that have, you know, Franklin's image on them, Washington's image on them, paying that back to the government.
We don't have any sort of religious argument for that.
But what about the second part? What about where Jesus says, render to God the things that are God's? What's the analogy? What should you be thinking of when Jesus just made the argument the coin has Caesar's image on it, so the things that are God's should go to God? What's the analogy?
What is the thing that belongs to God? What is the thing that has God's image stamped upon it?
Man. Right? Ron's pointing to himself, right? Adam was created in the image of God, right?
In all creation, all of Adam's children, all who flowed out of Adam, Eve, and all of their children, what are we all created in? We're all created in the image of God.
And so if the coin should be paid to Caesar because it's got Caesar's image on it, what does that mean for man?
What is Jesus saying when he says, render to God the things that are God's? It's you and I. It's you and you and you and you. What does that mean? You pay taxes on yourself to God? What is Jesus saying?
Render to God the things that are God's.
What do you owe to God?
Your soul. Your soul. Your worship, your obedience, your life, your breath, your talents. All of these things we owe to God.
You know, you look at the Ten Commandments and you see all the you shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make unto thee any graven image. And it's easy to think about all of those worship commands in the negative, all the things that you should not do.
But implicit in them and explicit in Deuteronomy 6, for example, is that you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength. That is the universal command to all of mankind. Everyone who's been stamped with the image of God owes God what?
All their heart, all our lives, all of your days, all of your worship, all of your praise. Just like Caesar had a claim on the coin that bore his image, God has a claim on you, your soul, your body, your mind, your thoughts, your affections, your hearts, the things that you desire, they're God's.
God has a claim on all that because He's your creator. He's the one that stamped His image on you. Every man, not just those of us who are gathered here on Sunday mornings, even the people who don't come to church, all mankind owes God full obedience, complete worship, allegiance.
Now, the struggle is that doesn't alleviate our duty to our earthly kingdoms. And I use the word kingdoms just because there's continuity there. Obviously, we don't live in a kingdom, but we live in a nation. We live in a nation with rules, with governors.
Sometimes wicked, sometimes very wicked, sometimes mildly wicked, every once in a while good, decent men. But for the most part, corrupt, wicked, self-serving, and yet established by God.
This is where we continue to struggle. Because God gave us these authorities.
God established authorities over us. He didn't let every man go do what was right in his own eyes, right? Because have you ever read the book of Judges? That goes poorly every time.
Whenever men get to do whatever's right in their own eyes, they don't have rulers, they don't have authorities over them. They just turn into their own wicked sinfulness and things get really bad really fast. And so eventually people cry out, they say, give us a leader, put someone over us, we need someone to guide us.
And so God has established authorities. He's given authority in the civil government, right? We have a federal government, we have state governments. He's given authorities in the church.
We have elders, we have pastors, we have authority structure inherent in the church. And he's given authority structure in the family. We have mothers and we have fathers to rule over the family. And the hard part, buckle up, is that the ordinary life of a Christian is one of submission.
And so women bristle and men bristle, right? Because no one wants to be told to submit. And yet, we read in Romans, this is chapter 12, verse 18: if possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.
And then a few verses later in Romans 13:
Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil.
Which means our normal posture is submission to our earthly authorities.
And that's kind of like telling you to pay your taxes. Nobody wants to hear that, right? We want to hear that sometimes we're right and they're wrong, and so we should stand up for our rights.
We should stand up for ourselves.
The hard part is even if we accept this premise of the dual nationality, right, we still get into trouble because sometimes those authorities come into contact. We saw a little bit of it in this pamphlet. Sometimes the civil government tells us to disobey God.
So what do we do then? That's where everyone wants to go, right? We all want to hear, well, what about the exceptional case? When should the wife disobey her husband?
When should the elders revolt against the pastor? When should the nation go against the president? When should we overturn and, you know, pack the Supreme Court?
We should proceed carefully when we see conflict between what God has told us to do and what the government tells us to do.
There are times when disobedience is right. But I think we should pass it through at least a three-step filter.
The Pharisees—I'm sorry, yeah, the Pharisees and the Herodians—they came to Jesus with a trap, right?
This wasn't a real conflict between what God has said and what Caesar demanded, right? Caesar says, pay us taxes, and God has not said don't pay taxes. And so what should you do in that case? Well, that's easy. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.
So you pay your taxes, right? That is a false dilemma. Some of these are going to be false dilemmas that are brought to you by people trying to trap you.
And guess what? In the day of the internet and social media, there are all sorts of people trying to trap you, to make you look foolish, to make you make bad decisions.
And so they're imposing on you false dilemmas, false choices that you don't need to fall for. They're not really a conflict between God's commands and what's going on in the government world.
Now, there are some, but there are many that are not. Some of them are just a trap.
And if you look and you saw—I just saw a statistic that Twitter, X, whatever they call it these days, they found like tens of thousands of these Chinese bots that really mostly their purpose was just to agitate people.
Well, guess what? That's happening on your Facebook feed every day.
When you log into Facebook, there are things that are like fake articles just to agitate you, just to get you worked up, just to get you riled up and opposed to things, and it happens with the news, it happens. This is real. These traps are real.
And we live in an interesting time when they can be targeted right to you, targeted based on what you're already susceptible to.
So be very careful.
Alright, that's the first filter. Is this a trap? That's the first question.
Is the conflict between what the government's telling me to do that I don't like and what God's telling me to do—is it really God, or is it just really what I like, what I prefer?
Because we have lots of preferences, and preferences aren't wrong. It's just easier to mix our personal preferences up with the commands of God and to elevate our personal preferences and pretend like God told us to do this thing.
And so the conflict in that situation is really just about your sinful pride and you having to kill your preferences in order to submit yourself to the earthly authority that God has put over you.
So this is the warning that we need to be careful that our personal individual rebellion—it doesn't honor God to say, no, I'm gonna stick with my preferences, even if the government tells me something that I don't want to do.
Alright, and the third and the last one is:
And you might think it's related to the first one, but this is more objective. I'm talking here about really studying the Scriptures, praying, praying for peace, praying for a way out of conflict, seeking godly counsel, some third party.
I have a good friend, a dear friend, who decided that he was going to do something in rebellion to the government. And he made the decision very privately and it was bad for his family. He made a decision that had legal consequences. It was an act of rebellion, and he had to pay the price for that for 20 years, and it was a heavy price.
There are times when you have to make hard decisions. There's times when you have to take on heavy consequences. Don't do those without counsel and without guidance.
And if you're 20, definitely talk to somebody who's over 40. That doesn't mean that there's not sloth and laziness of us elder people who have made too much peace with the wickedness of our world. And young people, you want to set things right.
It's good. It's a good desire. But temper your desire with wisdom and experience, and learn to do things strategically, not rashly.
Study the Scriptures, pray for wisdom and seek peace, and get godly counsel. Only then, only once you've passed through all three of these filters, should a Christian conclude that disobedience to his government is necessary.
This is how we keep our prideful, rebellious spirits in check.
You bear the image of God. You owe him your worship, your obedience, and that obedience extends to the government that He's put in place over us. And that's where it gets hard because the government is really accountable to God as a first stop.
You know, our governors, our pastors, your husbands, your parents, they are accountable to God. Their failures—are their failures accountable to God? You don't have to correct them every time. You can submit to things that are even unwise, not to things that are sinful, but to things that are unwise.
Not forgetting that they belong to God just like you do. They're accountable to God just like you are. And God is the one who's put these authorities in place. This is where it's not fun.
It's like paying taxes. Submitting to authority. Taxes is just one way to submit to authority.
And Jesus says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.
Don't forget then that you belong to God, and it comes with a claim.
Remember to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength. That's your duty.
And don't think that we're going to resolve all the conflict between church and state, between bad authorities, which really do exist, right?
And don't fall into every trap of supposed conflict between Scripture and the government because there are many people laying many traps for unwary Christians.
We need the collective mind. We need the guidance and the wisdom of those who have gone before us.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father. We live in this conflict. We live in this world, and we pray that we would not be found to be of this world.
And where that line is requires wisdom. Father, there are many Christians here who have struggled with this over the past 2,000 years, and we continue to struggle with this today.
So help us, help us to strive to live at peace with all men, inasmuch as it concerns us that we would do so, that we would set down our rights, that we would set aside our preferences, and that we would submit to the authorities that you've placed over us.
Give us the grace to do this. Be merciful to us when we fail. Help us to trust in your governance and your guidance. That, Father, whatever happens in this next election will not be a surprise to you.
And that regardless of who's in office, that you hold the hearts of our rulers in your hands. You guide them for your good pleasure.
Father, help us to grow in our trust and our submission to you and the authorities that you've put in our lives. Father, we need strength for this.
This is not our natural disposition. This is not our natural desire. Help us to grow in this, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Then they sent some of the Pharisees and the Herodians to him in order to trap him in a statement. They came and said to him, Teacher, we know that you are truthful and defer to no one, for you are not partial to any but teach the way of God in truth.
Is it lawful to pay a poll tax to Caesar or not? Shall we pay or shall we not pay Pay? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at they brought one, and he said to them Whose likeness and inscription is this?
And they said to him Caesar's And Jesus said to them render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. And they were amazed at him. 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, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, I want a show of hands. Who likes paying taxes? Yeah, Ava raised her hand.
Who does not pay taxes, or at least hasn't yet. So that's that was my expectation is that none of you likes to pay taxes. it was a fairly safe venture there. the government is not like a charity. We're talking about, you know World Vision and Compassion International. and you know, they it's an opt-in.
If you want to sponsor one of their children, like you do it because they have told you that they're gonna be good stewards of your funds, right? 86% of of the funds are gonna go. And you're gonna do it because you see the need. Taxes aren't like that.
Taxes are you must pay taxes, and if you don't pay taxes, someone from the government will pay you a visit and you know charge you penalties and and it's not a pleasant process. and guess what? It hasn't been for a long time. Like no one's really ever loved paying taxes.
You do it because there's some authority over you that said you must pay this. Taxes are exactly where Jesus' enemies choose to attack him here. If you notice in the beginning, verse 13 it says, then they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to him. So we have kind of three parties who are all colluding and coordinating in this attack, this test of Jesus.
The they is the Jewish leaders, right? We were just reading about them, the chief priests and the scribes and and the elders. They were the ones who were challenging Jesus just a minute ago in our in our previous verses. and and so you know that line of attack failed.
So what are we gonna do? I got an idea. Let's get the very strict religious types, those who you know say that you have to follow every law exactly to the jot and tittle and and their extension of it, their protectiveness of it. Right? The Pharisees, the Pharisees were always the ones who were trying to make the law as strict as possible on everyone.
But we're gonna take them, and then we're going to go over here and we're going to grab the Herodians. Do you guys remember who Herod is? Herod is the ruler. He was he was a half-breed.
He was half Jewish, half not half Gentile, he had made his peace with Rome such that they there was a Herod who ruled over the Jews. And this was this was the way that Rome kept the rebellious Jewish community in check was through the Herod. And there were different Herods.
That's not really relevant to this. The point is Herods were not a religious people. They were a politically powerful, influential people. And so the Herodians were those who followed Herod, who aligned themselves with Herod, who knew that they could be powerful, not because they were going to take the law and they were going to make sure everyone knew exactly what the requirements of the law was, that was the Pharisees.
They were over here on this other side and said, we're with Herod, whatever he does. He can marry his ex-sister-in-law, he can chop off John the Baptist's head, whatever. We're on his camp, we're on his side. That's where our power comes from.
And so do you see the dynamic at play here. Were these guys good friends in general? No, it doesn't make any sense, right? I mean the you have the super religious and you have the super compromised political power here.
What brings those together? Well, a mutual enemy in Jesus. Right? Because Jesus both undermines the authority of the Pharisees, the these keepers of the law, these holders of the law, these appliers of the law, and then Jesus, who had been preaching and teaching, and John the Baptist, who had been talking about the coming of this kingdom, what does Herod get worried about?
Well, he gets worried about a coming king, right? That's kind of intimidating. If you're the ruler and you hear this, there's this king coming. Well, do you guys remember what did they write on the cross that hung above Jesus' head.
King of the Jews. King of the Jews, right? Right? This was not lost on the Herodians, this political upheaval, this political threat, political turmoil. So we have this strange alliance.
Politics makes strange bedfellows, right? Isn't that a saying? There's probably a couple other ways to say that too. So the Jewish leaders seek an opportunity to trap Jesus and they send these two parties out to him with you know a fairly straightforward question: Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or is it not?
And so here's the trick, here's the trap, right? If he says no, it's not lawful to pay taxes, the crowd is gonna is gonna do what? They're gonna cheer, right? Because if I told you today that you had a religious reason not to pay taxes, I mean, you'd be excited, right?
You just when you to file your tax return, you just says, Pastor Daniel says, I don't have to. Right? Jesus says, I don't have to pay taxes. The crowd'll go crazy. But the Herodians, what are the Herodians gonna do?
They're gonna march over to Herod and they're gonna report, this guy's leading a rebellion. He's telling your people not to pay you taxes. And that's gonna get the government worked up, right? But then what if he says, yes, it is lawful to pay taxes?
How does the crowd react to that? Meh, I thought we were coming to you for bread and wine and free taxes. The Pharisees then win because they stay in power. They didn't want to pay taxes.
They're the ones who were really worked up about the fact that Caesar's image was on was on the coin. Right? And then they can point to Jesus as being as being sullied, as being dirtied by, by filthy money, and then they you know they get their attack in.
So either way, it's a lose-lose situation. Whether Jesus says yes or Jesus says no, it's lose-lose. What's interesting is while the Jewish leaders think that they're testing Jesus with this dilemma, Jesus instead reveals what's going on really with all three of these groups. Right? The kingdom of heaven that Jesus brings is revolutionary.
It is a real kingdom. But not in the simplified sense that all his enemies thought. Right? The foundation of the kingdom of heaven is spiritual. It's not a one-to-one political replacement.
Like it's not that you're either in the kingdom of Rome or you're in the kingdom of heaven. It's not that you're in the nation of the United States of America or you're in the kingdom of heaven. There's a dual citizenship here that creates a tension that really man has felt ever since the kingdom was presented.
Right? I mean, you can look back, you can look back, I'm reading a book right now on the crusades and and how how Rome, the Roman Catholic Church and the governments of those times, how they interacted. Or you could have arrived at church before me this morning and gotten this tract.
Somebody left some tracks in front of our our church this morning. And I don't know if you you guys know what tracks are. There are things you can hand out to explain what Christianity is. Well this one caught my attention because of what we what the sermon was this morning.
And again, no joke, this was in the door this morning. And I'm just gonna read you a little bit of it because I want you to see that this is still something we struggle with today. The tension between what are our responsibilities to God and what are our responsibilities to man is an ongoing spiritual, religious, theological struggle.
And I'm gonna get to this, but how many of you remember what is it now? Six years ago when COVID started happening? All of a sudden, there was conflict between the church and the state in a way that I had never seen in my entire life, right? With churches saying, well, now everyone needs to, you know, or sorry, with the state saying everyone needs to stay this far apart, or you know, and we're in Nimaha County, Brown County, it was fairly tame here.
But in a lot of places, like they told churches they couldn't meet at all. And so it's like a lot of churches had a struggle through the reality for the first time of what do we do when the government says you can't. I have friends who were at a church and their local government said you can't sing.
Because singing is, you know, blasting out viral particles. And and they had to struggle with that. They had to work through that. It wasn't easy, it wasn't pretty. people got it wrong on both sides. and so this is a real struggle.
This is a real struggle that pops up every once in a while in the United States of America, and in fact, you'll hear sometimes actu,ally you'll hear in this pamphlet, it called the separation of church and state. and so some people get well I'm gonna read this. the the title is called Two Kingdoms, and I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but I want I want you to read this and feel the tension.
Some questions are in order, so they they talk about Jesus' kingdom and the earthly kingdom. Some questions are in order. How can a Christian vote in both voting booths? You talk about that's kind of irrelevant.
I'm gonna skip that. Let's give on here down to here. The Christian has dual citizenship, earthly and heavenly. However, his highest loyalty is to the heavenly, and he will not transgress the laws of the heavenly in, order to please the earthly.
At the same time, though, he will gladly honor the laws of the earthly, insofar as there is no conflict with the heavenly. So far so good, does that make sense? Like if if there's a conflict between what the government tells you and what God tells you, are we to obey man or God?
God. Okay, that's clear enough. At the same time, though, Thus, to obey driving speed limit set by Caesar is to honor both his heavenly and his earthly citizenship. But to carry a sword or to vote for one to carry a sword violates the charter of the heavenly domain.
Christians are indeed a holy nation of kings and priests, their God. And then I'm going to skip a little bit and read this next parag If the Christian joins the army, votes, or holds political office, then Christians are of this world. And if their vote puts a fellow believer in a political office and he remains in the church, then beware, for the church, the world is now in the church.
It won't be long until the church no longer meets the biblical description of a pure and holy bride. It has become Babylon the Great, the den of every unclean and hateful bird. And I could keep reading, but do you see where this is going? Like this little this little pamphlet here from a publisher that I otherwise generally have a good opinion of, what are they worried about?
If you vote or hold office or go into the military, you're not a Christian, is what they're arguing. Like you can't do those things and be a follower of Christ. Do you see the tension? The tension is how much of are you affiliated with the heavenly kingdom and, how much are you affiliated with the earthly kingdom?
Can you have any part of the earthly kingdom and still be a part of and so what they're arguing for, and and I I read that not to say that I agree with this, but to show you that we still live in a land where there is this conflict.
Like we've not figured this out. We've not figured it out in a way that everyone is agreed, that all Christians are agreed. So their argument is: if you're any part of the earthly kingdom, you are not at all a part of the heavenly kingdom. Is that what Jesus is teaching here?
Well, he's not. no, this is Rod and Staff Publishers. And again, usually they have some decent stuff out. So that's why when I saw this, I was curious, and then they are they they seem Anabaptist, and and and so what the Anabaptists believe is that the earthly kingdom is corrupt and wicked and and the king the this the kingdom of Satan.
But that's not what scripture teaches. That's not what scripture teaches. And we're so we're gonna get there Jesus says, Bring me a coin. and if you have you you guys all know what a dollar bill looks like, right? So let's pretend or a penny.
Do you know have you all seen a penny? They still make them these days. whose whose face is on a penny? Lincoln. Lincoln. Right? Do you guys know who Abraham Lincoln is? Was he president? Right? So just like in our day, they had the image of their earthly rulers on their money.
We've got George Washington on the $1 bill. We've got Jackson on the 20? Okay, I'm not gonna stretch any more than that because I I obviously I don't know my dollar bills that well. the point is why why do why do coins, why do dollars, why does our money have the image of our earthly rulers on them?
It's because they control it, right? I mean, the who prints the dollar bills? Who guarantees that the dollar bill has value? it's the earthly government, right?
And so it's no surprise that that we put the images of our earthly rulers on those on our currency. But with that image comes a claim of rights. Right? So the government today has the same sort of claim of right to taxes as Caesar did back then. Right?
If you're transacting financial transactions, what are you going to pay? If you go to the to the grocery store, well that's not a good example. You go to the where do you pay taxes these days? Because you go to a farm supply, you go to the gas station and buy your gas, what are you gonna pay?
Taxes. If you get paid, if you work a job, if you look at your pay stub, what do you get all the money that you are paid? Let's say you make ten dollars an hour. Do you get ten dollars an hour? No. Some portion of that goes to the government before it even comes into your hands, and then at the end of the year, if you make enough money, you have to report that back to the government, and then you have to settle up however much that you really owe.
Do you only have to pay taxes if you approve of your government? Do you only pay taxes to good governors, to good presidents, or do you have to pay taxes all the time. The Herod in Jesus' time was, or Caesar, let's let's use Caesar. Was Caesar a good ruler?
Was he a godly man? Would you have voted for Caesar? Would you have voted for Herod? Would you have voted for the man who killed John the Baptist?
No, right? And yet, here's Jesus saying, it's his money. You got to give it back to him. Like the this is who your governor is. This is who your ruler is.
You have to pay that portion back. He demands it. and it's it's got his picture on it. So really that's no surprise. Because I feel like our oftentimes we get so wrapped up in politics that we think our life would just be better if the right guy was president, if the right people get nominated to the Supreme Court in Kansas or the United States.
Like, oh, wouldn't life be so much better if only the Republicans had a supermajority in Congress? Right? Oh, wouldn't life be so much better if this president got elected instead of that president got elected. And there's some truth to it, right? Our life is easier with some political solutions and it's harder with other ones.
Just like theirs was, right? Except they didn't have a vote. they had to take what they got. Or maybe you're like the Pharisees and and you want a spiritual religious reason to justify your rebellion against the authorities that God has given us, right? You don't want to pay taxes, you don't wear want to wear a seatbelt, you don't wanna drive under theit speed lim, right?
There's all the ways that that the government is burdensome to us. And wouldn't it be nice to have a religious reason that we could just exempt ourselves from all these things. But then there's others, and maybe this is some of you, maybe you're like the Herodians. You know that the civil government is always going to be corrupt and so you've made peace with that.
And you're just going to align yourself with whoever brings home the bacon for you the best. And you're not so worried about their personal corruption. You just care about, you know, is the economy going to work well? Is everyone gonna be happy?
It's the path to power. Jesus' teaching doesn't end on pointing out that Caesar's image is on the coin. He continues and he says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. Right? And so this is this is clear enough.
The coin literally has Caesar's image on it, right? So the coin is clearly something that should be paid to, rendered to Caesar. So there's there's no there's no concerns with that. No concerns with paying the bills in our pocket that that have you know Franklin's image on them, Washington's image on them, paying that back to the government.
We don't have a great any sort of religious argument for that. But what about the second part? What about where Jesus says, render to gods the things that are gods? What's the analogy? What should you be thinking of when Jesus just made the argument the coin has got has Caesar's images on it, so the things that are gods should go to gods.'s What what's the analogy?
What is the thing that belongs to God? What is the thing that has God's image stamped upon it? Man. Right? Ron's pointing to himself, right? Adam was created in the image of God, right?
In all creation, all of Adam's children, all who flowed out of Adam, Eve, and all of their children, what what are we all created in? We're all created in the image of God. And so if the coin should be paid to Caesar because it's got Caesar's image on it, what does that mean for man?
What is Jesus saying when he says, render to God the things that are God's? It's you and I. It's you and you and you and you What does that mean? You pay taxes on yourself to God? what is Jesus saying?
Render to God the things that are God's. What do you owe to God? Your soul. Your soul. Your worship, your obedience, your life, your breath, your talents. All of these things we owe to God.
You know, you you look at the Ten Commandments and you see all the you shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make unto thee any grave an image. And it's easy to think about all of those worship commands in the negative, all the things that you should not do.
But implicit in them and explicit in in Deuteronomy 6, for example, is that you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength. That is the universal command to all of mankind. Everyone who's been stamped with the image of God owes God what?
All their heart, all our lives, all of your days, all of your worship, all of your praise. Just like Caesar had a claim on the coin that bared his image, God has a claim on you, your soul, your body, your mind, your thoughts, your affections, your hearts, the things that you desire, they're God's.
God has a claim on all that because He's your creator. He's the one that stamped His image on you. Every man, not just Just those of us who are gathered here on Sunday mornings, E the people who don't come to church, all mankind owes God full obedience, complete worship, allegiance.
Now, the struggle is that doesn't alleviate our duty to our earthly Earthly kingdoms. And I use the word kingdoms just because there's continuity there. Obviously, we don't live in a kingdom, but we live in a nation. We live in a nation with rules, with governors.
Sometimes wicked, sometimes very wicked, sometimes mildly wicked, every once in a while good, decent men. But for the most part, corrupt, wicked, self-serving, and yet established by God. This is where we continue to struggle. Because God gave us these authorities.
God established authorities over us. He didn't let every man go do what was right in his own eyes, right? Because have you ever read the book of Judges? That goes poorly every time.
Whenever men get to do whatever's right in their own eyes, they don't have rulers, they don't have authorities over them. They just turn into their own win wicked sinfulness and and and things get really bad really fast. And so eventually people cry out, they say, give us a leader, put someone over us, we need someone to guide us.
And so God has established authorities. He's given authority in the in the civil government, right? We have a federal government, we have state governments. He's given authorities in the church.
We have elders, we have pastors, we have authority structure inherent in the church. And he's given authority structure in the family. We have mothers and we have fathers to rule over the family. And the hard part, buckle up, is that the ordinary life of a Christian is one of submission.
And so women bristle and men bristle, right? Because no one wants to be told to submit. And yet, we read in Romans, this is chapter 12, verse 18, if possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. And then a few verses later in Romans 13, every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.
For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Which means our normal posture is submission to our earthly authorities And that's kind of like telling you to pay your taxes. Nobody wants to hear that, right? We want to hear that sometimes we're right and they're wrong, and so we should we should stand up for our rights.
We should stand up for ourselves. The hard part is even if we accept this premise of the dual nationality, right, we still get into trouble because sometimes those authorities come into contact. We saw a little bit of it in this pamphlet. Sometimes the civil government tells us to disobey God.
So what do we do then? That's where everyone wants to go, right? Every you we all want to hear, well, what what about the exceptional case? When should the wife disobey her husband?
When should the elders revolt against the pastor? When should the nation go against the president? When should we overturn and and you know pack the Supreme Court? We should proceed carefully when we see conflict between what God has told us to do and what the government tells us to do.
There are times when disobedience is right. but I think we should we should pass it through at least a three-step filter. The first of which is we should ask ourselves: is this a trap? Right? The Pharisees, I'm sorry. Yeah, the Pharisees and the Herodians, they came to Jesus with a trap, right?
This wasn't a real conflict between what God has said and what and what Caesar demanded, right? Caesar says, pay us taxes, and God has not said don't pay taxes. And so what should you do in that case? Well, that's easy. Render unto Caesar's what that which is Caesar's.
So you pay your taxes, right? That is a false dilemma. Some of these are going to be false dilemmas that are brought to you by people trying to trap you. And guess what? In the day of the internet and social media, there are all sorts of people trying to trap you, to make you look foolish, to make you make bad decisions.
And so they're imposing on you false dilemmas, false choices that you don't need to fall for. They're not really a conflict between God's commands and and what's going on in the government world. Now, there are some, but there are many that are not. Some of them are just a trap.
And if you look and you saw, I just saw a statistic that Twitter, X, whatever they call it these days, they found like tens of thousands of these Chinese bots that really their mostly their purpose was just to agitate people. Well, guess what? That's happening on your Facebook feed every day.
When you log into Facebook, there are things that are like fake articles just to agitate you, just to get you worked up, just to get you riled up and opposed to things, and it happens With the news, it happens. This is real. These traps are real. And they're it we live in an interesting time when they can be targeted right to you, targeted based on what you're already susceptible to.
So be very careful. Alright, that's the first filter. Is this a trap? That's the first question.
The second question is, is this just my personal preference or is this really God's command? Is the conflict between what the government's telling me to do that I don't like and what God's telling me to do, is it really God, or is it just really what I like, what I prefer?
Because we have lots of preferences, and preferences aren't wrong. It's just easier to mix our personal preferences up with the commands of God and to elevate our personal preferences and pretend like God told us to do this thing. And so the conflict in that situation is really just about your sinful pride and you having to kill your preferences in order to submit yourself to the earthly authority that God has put over you.
So So this is the warning that we need to be careful that our personal individual rebellion, it doesn't honor God to say, no, I'm gonna stick with my preferences, even if the government tells me something that I don't want to do. Alright, and the third and the last one is: Is the conflict really about obedience to God?
And you might think it's related to the first one, but this is more objective. I'm talking here about really studying the scriptures, praying, praying for peace, praying for a way out of conflict, seeking godly counsel, some third party. I have a I have a good friend, a dear friend, who decided that he was going to do something in rebellion to the government.
And he he made the decision very privately and it was it was bad for his family. He made a decision that had legal consequences. It was an act of rebellion, and he had to pay the price for that for 20 years, and it was a heavy price. There are times when you have to make hard decisions.
There's times when you have to take on heavy consequences. Don't do those without counsel and without guidance. And if you're 20, definitely talk to somebody who's over 40. That doesn't mean that that there's not sloth and laziness of of of us elder people who have made too much peace with with the wickedness of our world. and young people, you want to set things right.
It's good. It's a good desire. But temper your desire with wisdom and experience, and learn to do things strategically, not rashly. Study the scriptures, pray for wisdom and seek peace, and get godly counsel. Only then, only once you've passed through all three of these filters, should a Christian conclude that disobedience to his government is necessary.
This is how we keep our prideful rebellion Rebellion spirits in check. You bear the image of God. You owe him your worship, your obedience, and that obedience extends to the government that He's put in place over us. And that's where it gets hard because the government is really accountable to God as a first stop.
You know, our governors, our pastors, your husbands, your parents, they are accountable to God. Their failures are their failures accountable to God? You don't have to correct them every time. You can submit to things that are even unwise, not to things that are sinful, but to things that are unwise.
Not forgetting that they belong to God just like you do. They're accountable to God just like you are. And God is the one who's put these authorities in place. This is where it's not fun.
It's like paying taxes. Submitting to authority. Taxes is just one way to submit to authority. And Jesus says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's. Don't forget then that you belong to God, and it comes with a claim.
Remember to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength. That's your duty. And don't think that we're going to resolve all the conflict between church and state between bad authorities, which really do exist, right? And don't fall into every trap of supposed conflict between Scripture and the government because there are many people laying many traps for unweary Christians.
We need the collective mind. We need the guidance and the wisdom of those who have gone before us. Let's pray. Heavenly Father. We live in this conflict. We live in in this world, and we pray that we would not be found to be of this world.
And where that line is requires wisdom. Father, there are many Christians here who have struggled this with this over the past 2,000 years, and we continue to struggle with this today. So help us, help us to strive to live at peace with all men, inasmuch as it concerns us that we would do so, that we would set down our rights, that we would set aside our preferences, and that we would submit to the authorities that you've placed over us.
Give us the grace to do this. Be merciful to us when we fail. Help us to trust in your governance and your guidance. That, Father, whatever happens in this next election will not be a surprise to you.
And that regardless of who's in office, that you hold the hearts of our rulers in your hands. You guide them for your good pleasure. Father, help us to grow in our trust and our submission to you and the authorities that you've put in our lives. Father, we need strength for this.
This is not this is not her natural disposition. This is not our natural desire. Help us to grow in this, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
August 23, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 12:1-12 · Gospel of Mark
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: 23 August 2026
Our sermon today is from the book of Mark. this is in the New Testament, in the Gospels, very beginning of the New Testament. Over halfway through your Bible if you have one or want to open up your Bible. Open with me to Mark chapter 12. Or you can follow along on the screen.
This is God's word and it is eternally true. And he began to speak to them in parables. A man planted a vineyard and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the wine press, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine growers and went on a journey.
At the harvest time he sent a slave to the vine growers in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine growers. They took him and beat him and sent him away empty handed. Again he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head and treated him shamefully, and he sent another, and that one they killed.
And so with many others, beating some and killing others, he had one more to send a beloved son. He sent him last of all to them, saying, They will respect my son. But those vine growers said to one another, This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.
They took him and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come out of the vineyard. I'm sorry, he will come and destroy the vine growers and will give the vineyard to others.
Have you not even read this Scripture? The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
And they were seeking to seize him, and yet they feared the people, for they understood that he spoke the parable against them, and so they left him and went away.
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, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Well, I want us to remember where we are in the Gospel of Mark, because this is not a text that just fell down in one separate chunk, right?
This happened as part of a progression of a narrative, of a progression of events. And this is we're not to the culmination of it yet, but we're we're moving in that direction. If you remember back at the beginning of chapter 11, Jesus had just come to Jerusalem, right?
This is Palm Sunday. You've probably all had a Palm Sunday service or celebration at some place or another, right? With waving palm branches and shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna, right? The crowd as Jesus came, the crowd welcomed Jesus in as king, as someone coming to take his kingdom here on earth.
Jesus, though, goes to the temple and inspects it and finds it wanting and curses the fig tree, comes to the temple the next day, and what does he do? Tosses over the money changers' tables, right? Makes himself a whip of cords and drives out the people who were profaning his sanctuary.
The place that was supposed to be a place of prayer for all the nations, they had turned into a money changer's table and were selling sheep for the for the sacrifice. Right? and so there's a couple ways to respond when someone throws tables over, right? You can either see what they're doing or you can you can challenge them right and so the the chief priests and the scribes and the elders they come up against jesus and they say, who gave you the right to do this?
Who told you that you could come into our temple and throw these tables over? Who gave you the right to come clean this place up? Right, they weren't attacking what he did. They were attacking something something foundational.
Who we have this authority. This is our this is our temple, this is our place of worship. Who gave you the right to come and tell us what we should do with it? And Jesus answers them with a question.
He doesn't he doesn't directly answer them. He says, I'll answer your question if you answer mine. You tell me what John, whether John the Baptist, whether his baptism was of man or was of God. And what do the chief priests and the and the Pharisees and the scribes do, the elders.
They look around and they're like, We're gonna lose this battle because all these people over here, they all really like John. They were all real like John was a a a big deal to them. Jesus, remember, they just sang his praises as he walked in. It's like, well, maybe the direct challenge here isn't going to work.
We're going to have to go an indirect route. And so what do they do? Do they answer? They don't answer. And so Jesus says, Neither will I answer you. And then he goes right into this parable, right?
So it's important that you know the context because the scribes and the chief priests and the elders just attacked Jesus' authority. Right? Who gave you permission to try and clean up our temple? Okay, this is important. The parable parables in general are stories with points.
Right? A parable isn't just a story. It isn't just like you know what an analogy is. An analogy is something that like there's point-to-point coordination between the the the thing itself and and the the story being told. A parable is a little different than that.
A parable usually has one point to it. Now this one is a parable with some analogy into it.
The point is this though. Jesus is the beloved Son, sent by the Father.
He's doing more than just identifying who he is, though. He's exposing a pattern that runs through all of the history of Israel. God graciously provides for his people. God patiently and persistently calls them to him, asking for fruit of their of their life.
You know, I've set you up here. you then return to me glory. You return to me praise. But sinful man seeks to keep God's gifts without his authority, right? They want to do their own thing.
They want all the benefits and none of the costs. They want all the benefits but none of the responsibilities.
The Father sending the Son is both the ultimate act of grace and the ultimate call to repentance. The word ultimate is a great word because it means the highest, it also means the last.
Right? This is the call for repentance. Because next comes the judgment.
Before Jesus exposes the wickedness of the tenants, though, he first draws attention to the generosity of the owner. See how the man who planted the garden shows us the father.
The vineyard in Scripture is typically God's chosen people, his kingdom. The man is God the Father. And then the the chief priests and the scribes and the elders, they're the the tenants. They're the the vineyard owners.
It's important to kind of have this concept in mind, otherwise the parable loses its focus.
The chief priests and the scribes and the elders would have understood specifically God setting them up in this vineyard as Israel's deliverance from Egypt and the provision of the promised land. Right? What do the spies find when they get to the promised land?
When they go spy out the promised land, what do they bring back? They bring back a giant cluster of of grapes. What do you use in a vineyard? Grapes, right? So the connection here it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, right?
This is the vineyard. This is the promised land. God drives out Israel's enemies before them, provides them this lush land filled with with olives and grapes and everything they could need.
Look at how Jesus describes the work that God did.
He:
You just need to come in here and do the work. It's ready for business. And so he selects these vineyard workers and he places them in this prepared vineyard. This is a completely outfitted vineyard.
Now, the rent it out part is key though, right? Because does he transfer full ownership to these vineyard workers? Is he like, okay, you're gonna buy it from me, I'm going to sell it to you. It's going to be yours.
No, he doesn't, right? It these they're tenants. They're tenant farmers. God planted the vineyard, not the tenants. Who built the wall?
God built the wall, not the tenants. Who built the tower? God built the tower, not the tenants, right? Are you seeing the pattern here?
Everything that they came to enjoy came from God. Their job was to work it. Their job was to work it and give a portion of it back to God. Right? That was the arrangement.
The problem, interestingly, isn't incompetence. It's not that the vineyard went to weeds. The problem isn't that that they just failed to show up to do their job. The problem shows up when the messenger comes, the slave comes, and says, okay, now you have to share a portion of the produce to the owner.
That's when the problem happens. At some point, it seems that the vineyard owners forgot that they were stewards on behalf of God. They were stewards on behalf of the owner, that they were just the tenants, they weren't the owner, that they had a duty to do the work, but they didn't get all of the profits from the work that they did.
They had to share a portion of it back.
Now, think about it. So the first slave arrives, and he says, you know, hey guys, you have to give the produce. And the tenants kick them out.
What could the owner have done at that point? What would you do? Let's say let's say you're a landowner and and you enter a crop share with a farmer. and at the end of the year he had a good harvest and he says, I've decided not to pay you this year.
What's your instinct? Yeah. You give them the boot, right? You know, you call the police, maybe. Is that what God is that what this owner does? And it's hard not to keep switching back between God and the owner.
But is that what the owner does here? What does the owner do? He sends someone else, and someone else, and someone else. This is the patient and persistent love of God.
The owner doesn't stop at the first rebellious rebuke from the farmers. He initiates again. He sends another servant and another and another and many others.
I'm hammering this point because it's common for us to view the God of the Old Testament as a judgmental harsh God, one that none of us would want any dealings with.
And that's false. It's false. Just as a as as to get going, that's false. But that's also completely contrary to how Jesus views God's treatment of Israel through the Old Testament. Is it a harsh, exacting, ungracious, unmerciful God of the Old Testament? No, absolutely not. Here's Jesus explaining the patient persistence of the love of the Father that we should see through the whole Old Testament.
Israel rejected the prophets time and time again. And God kept sending them messengers to bring them back, to call them back, to call them to repentance. Even after his servants are repeatedly rejected, he acts again.
This isn't merely ownership.
This isn't merely, you know, a landowner owning land. This is fatherly responsibility. This is the kind of persistent patient love that fathers must show in our households. This kind of sacrificial initiative, this seeking out and laying aside of those of yourself for the benefit of those under your care, despite rejection and protestations.
Okay?
Men, listen, you must love and care for your wife and your children for their good, regardless of how they react to you. They might be, you may have married a prickly woman that doesn't excuse you from loving her that doesn't excuse you from initiating intentionally thoughtfully looking out, finding ways to care for her.
You can't build a house, build a marriage, and build up children without this kind of patient, persistent, self-sacrificial love because honestly, those in your care are often going to act just like the tenant farmers do, right? Ungrateful, unwilling to show gratitude for your hard work. It doesn't excuse you from loving.
It doesn't excuse you from initiating love.
Not just receiving it, not just reciprocating it, right? You know what the word reciprocate means? If you reciprocate love, you give back what you receive.
Right? And so if your wife loves you, you love her back. Is that what we see with the father here? Is it reciprocating love? Is it responsive love?
It's initiating love. God's the one that starts it. He's the one that sends the messengers, sends messenger after messenger after messenger.
These vineyard workers, they reject God's message though.
Now, we're gonna have to do some work here because what we're translating is the church leaders of the Old Testament, right?
The temple leaders, the the priests, the chief priests, the Pharisees, the scribes, but not in like one little picture of time. We're talking about, you know, God's chosen people through all of history. So who are God's chosen people today? It's the church. Right? It's those who profess faith.
This has always been who God's people are. But there's always this visible and invisible mix of how you know who God's people are. Because not all Israel is Israel, just like not everyone who signs the church membership rolls is in the church.
But we should look at the vineyard workers and we should we should associate ourselves with them. We should see ourselves in them. That's the only way we take this warning seriously for what it is. Because we see the hardness of heart in rebellious mankind through these vineyard workers.
We see those who want to keep the benefit of the Heavenly Father without his authority. and this is this is our temptation if we're not careful. If we don't if, we reject God's warning.
So why do they attack the servants? They could have ignored them.
They could have just sent them away empty-handed, but they go a step above, right? They wound the servants. They beat them, they wound them in the head, they kill them.
I think it's because every servant is a reminder that the vineyard belongs to someone else.
Right? It's that reminder, that persistent reminder that what you're claiming as your own isn't really your own. And who do we hate more than the messenger of a bad message. I mean, besides the owner himself. And yet God persists in sending messengers, sending prophets, each time God doing this initiatory work.
You can imagine the vineyard workers thinking something along the lines of, well, we did all the hard work here. Why does he entitled to any of that? Right? And I'm not, I don't want to get into economic theories here, so we're not going to. Only suffice it to say that we like to think very highly of ourselves.
We look at our lives and we see how we're gifted, what kind of things we're good at, And we forget that the word gifted in there means that we received it from someone else. Right?
We are gifted to live in a land with religious liberties. We are gifted to have grown up in northeast Kansas, which is a relatively speaking, a fairly affluent area.
We are gifted that there's not much starvation going on. It's hard to find someone who's literally starving to death around here. We have so many gifts, and if I called them privileges, you'd probably prickle. But we do. We live under the privilege of our forefathers, men and women who've sacrificed themselves, so that we can have a better standard of living, so that we can have more freedoms and more liberties.
And then we take it for granted and, we think: you know, we've we've got this figured out. we don't need to worry about all that stuff.
In a way, we're just like the vineyard workers, right? they got dropped into a place where there were towers and walls and and wine presses and vats, and it was all ready to go.
And they're like, Alright, aren't we glad we have all this? Good job, guys. we really we really did a lot of work to to put ourselves into this great position that we're in, that we're now a productive wine press.
They took something God gave them and, they treated it like their own possession, and so they forgot to be grateful.
They looked to themselves. They were self-centered and self-ish. And what happened with the nation of Israel is easy to happen here in America in the 21st century with our modern evangelical churches, right? It's easy to look back and think, oh, we've come this far, we we don't need to look with gratitude on the history.
We don't need to look with gratitude on the past.
The Old Testament is filled with warnings, accounts of Israel forgetting their dependence on God. What would happen is God would send one of his prophets to wake him up to say, Hey, what are you doing? You're going after you're marrying foreign women who worship false idols?
Stop that. You're giving your affection, your love to other gods other than me. Hey, you're killing your babies to enrich yourself. Stop that. What you I've not asked for that. Don't do that. And so he sends prophet after prophet with these messages of stop.
You are worshiping the wrong gods. you've gone to self-centeredness, selfishness, you've forgotten who I am.
Do you think that was a popular message? Is that how you build a megachurch these days? is is with you know hard preaching, calling, alerting people to their sins, showing them their sinfulness.
Is that is that how you know does that draw people in? It didn't work like that in the Old Testament. Anyone familiar with the scriptures of the Old Testament knows how the prophets were treated. They were not celebrity pastors, in case you're not and if I'm ruining a surprise for you, they they were not.
Elijah was hunted by King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, and he watched many of his fellow prophets be hunted and killed. Jeremiah was thrown into a muddy cistern to starve, beaten and placed into the stocks. He faced constant death threats and rejection. Zechariah, the son of Barakiah, was murdered between the temple altar and the sanctuary, like they didn't even let him get out of the church before they struck him down.
This is what the masses did. This is what the church did to the prophets.
This is the hardness of man's heart. Instead of responding with gratitude, we respond with possessiveness.
The chosen blessed people of God are supposed to be the willing bride, right? Receiving with joy the affections of the groom, but instead of a willingness to properly receive and respond to God's initiating actions, she's looking in every other direction for where her next meal is gonna come from.
The chosen blessed people of God are to be grateful tenants, happy to do the work that God gave them, happy to return a portion of their revenue back to the God who settled the way for them, who provided you know the strength, the land, the towers, the defense.
All of it, all of the gifts, grateful for their share, not greedily demanding it all.
And still God's patience had not yet met its climax. Because like a good husband, like a good father, like a good owner, God continues to patiently and persistently initiate his love towards his people.
Jesus says that the vineyard workers, though they beat and killed the prophets, now here is the Son. Right? God's patience should astonish us his mercy, his grace. That though one servant was beaten, another killed, more rejected, he sends another and another, and ultimately he sends his son carrying the full authority of the Father.
What a chance to repent. Jesus confronts them in their wicked scheme with his with his identity as the Son, being sent from God the Father another initiatory act of love, one more opportunity to submit to love, one more chance to do what was their good and reasonable service.
And what's crazy, what should shock us and appall us is verse 12. Because it's easy to think that it's a parable and it was confusing and they didn't get it. But they did. They understood. Look at verse 12. They were seeking to seize him, Jesus, and yet they feared the people, for they understood that he spoke the parable against them.
Now sometimes Scripture is hard. Hard to understand. I hear we don't know exactly who the they is. It was at least the scribes and the elders and and the Pharisees, right? At least they, but the crowd as well?
Its seem like the crowd may well have known too that Jesus was poking the scribes and the elders and the Pharisees.
The tenants in Jesus' parable knew too. Right? This is the heir, come, let us kill him. The rebellion is deliberate.
It's right there. They understood what was going on.
The tragedy is understanding without repentance, right? At that point, they harden their hearts. Jesus lays it out.
Your father's killed the prophets. And here I am, the son, calling you to the same thing. Turn to me, receive my love, accept it, see your wickedness, see your sinfulness, see your rebellion. And they refused. They preferred their position of authority over Jesus' authority, over God's authority.
They refused to turn from their self Self-protective ways because they feared the crowd. They feared man and not God. They feared the crowd was turning against them. And what happens to their authority if the crowd turns against them?
Boom, right? They're eliminated, nothing left.
The leaders, the builders, they follow in the footsteps of their fathers who had rejected, beaten, and killed the prophets. To maintain their positions, there's only one thing they have left to do. It's to kill the Son.
Jesus lays it out for them in his parable.
Now we can read this and think, whoa, those guys were wicked. But that's not valuable to us. The way that this Scripture is valuable to us is if we read this text as a warning.
A warning to not neglect God's invitation to repent and follow Jesus. Do not count the Lord's patience as neglect. He is not slow on his promises of judgment. Every call to repentance is a mercy from God.
Every call to turn from our ways, our secret plans of wickedness, of sin, of rebellion, of rejecting God's authority. Listen, because God's mercy, it has a limit. God's patience has a limit.
Listen to this from 2 Chronicles 36.
The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, until there was no remedy.
Now listen, you look at the history of the church. Where did the church first flourish? Was the Middle East, North Africa? What's that region like now?
Is that a safe place to be a Christian? It is not.
Look at the trajectory of Europe. Europe, where the Protestant Reformation took hold, where the Holy Roman Empire was often led by by religious Christian authorities. You see the trajectory that Europe's on?
Look at the United States. A nation built established on religious freedoms. What's our trajectory? We can look at this from a national perspective, and we can see our ingratitude. We can see our ingratitude as a nation, and it should convict us.
It should bring us to a national repentance.
But even more importantly, the warning should come to us individually. You, you You have received the blessings of God. You have received every breath in your lungs, every beat of your heart, every sustaining meal that you've received is a blessing from God for which you owe Him praise.
It is your good and reasonable service to praise the Lord. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That is why you were created. You are aware of your falling short of the glory of God, and there is still time to repent.
There is still time to turn away from the selfishness, the self-centeredness, the wickedness. This is a day of grace. This is a glorious opportunity to love the Lord your God, to turn to him and to know him.
And in particular, men, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, you have the duty to show the initiating love of the father to your wife and to your children, to patiently and persistently initiate love towards them.
Men of God cannot be passive. We must see this as we look at who God reveals Himself to be here, To see their needs, to give yourself sacrificially to care for them.
And women, you have the responsibility to show the joyful, receptive, submissive response to that love.
Unlike the tenant farmers who were selfish and seeking security from any other avenue, every other avenue, you are to delight in the imperfect love you receive from your husband. This is one of the ways that you get to uniquely exemplify the church as the bride of Christ. Right?
There's ways in which men and women are unique in the ways that we get to reflect God and reflect His plan of salvation.
Children. We have lots of children today, and I'm delighted for that. When we finish up, I'm gonna call you up because our baptismal is low.
I'd like you guys all to come kind of stand sit around here and you'll have a much better view. Not yet, in a little bit. But listen, kiddos, you've grown up in the church with a Christian family, you've received the blessing of hearing God's word. You've received the blessing, get this, of discipline, of being punished for having violated God's commands.
That is a blessing for which you should be grateful. And I know that's hard to wrap your brain around, right? When the cell phone gets taken away from you, when when your bottom gets spanked, when you get sent to your room, when you get denied privileges, like you think those things are hard and bad, and I'm here to tell you those things are a blessing from God, and you should be grateful for that.
Hard to do, huh? Okay.
You have a duty to respond to this training. You have a duty to be grateful for being disciplined. That is your good and reasonable response to being brought up in Christian community with biblical teaching.
So, did I miss anyone? I got men and women and children. Some of you may have gotten double double dipped. Listen, this is serious.
There is a day appointed unto man to die And then the judgment. And if there's anything that we can let the last year of local untimely deaths remind us of, it's that we are not guaranteed tomorrow. And so the only reasonable response is to give God what he's owed.
Give him the glory and honor that is due him. That's your responsibility. Repent from your sins, repent from your selfishness, and turn to the Lord.
And if you have questions on how to do that, talk to me, talk to Dylan, talk to Randy. We can help.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, this is a call to repentance. This is a call to turn away from our selfishness and our self-centeredness. And it doesn't matter if we are a church leader, it doesn't matter if we're an elder. It does matter. The standards are higher.
The judgment is greater. Help us, Father. Give us hearts to see, give us ears to hear, eyes to see. Give us your spirit that we might see our wicked rebellion and we might turn to you, so that we might have help to deal with it. Help to deal with our sinful selfishness.
Give us faith to see that there's a better way. Faith to see that walking in your ways is better than walking in our own ways. Faith to see that we can confess our sins without being destroyed. Help us in this, Father.
Give us faith. Prepare us for the baptisms that we have ahead. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
All right. Would those who are going to be baptized, please prepare yourselves as we sing. We're going to sing two songs to give them a minute to get ready and and then we'll we'll be going here.
Watch this now. We're gonna sing Jesus Cast a look on me it would Would be in your bulletin. Sorry, we might have run out of bulletins, but hopefully we have enough that and I don't know this song, so somebody's gonna have to help me. I don't know if it's gonna be up here or not, maybe not.
Jesus cast a look on me Me, give me sweet simplicity, make me poor, and keep me low Seeking only thee to know all that feeds my busy pride cast it evermore aside, bid my will to thine submit, lay me humbly at thy feet, make me like a little child O of my strength and wisdom's voice.
Seeing only in thy light, walking only in thy leaning on thy loving breast, where a weary soul can rest, feeling well the peace of God from his past in this posture, let me live And Hosanna's daily give at this temper let me die And Hosanna's ever cross.
Okay, the next one is Be Thou My Vision also in your bulletin, I believe it's also page three seventy-four of your hymnal.
Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, not be all else to me save that thou art thou my best thought by day or by night waking or sleeping thy presence, my life be thou my vision and thou my true word I ever with thee and thou with me, Lord, thou my great father, I thy true son thou in me dwelling, and I with thee one Be thou my battle shield sword for the fight, Be thou my dignity, thou my delight thou my soul shelter raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise thou my inheritance now and always thou and thou only first in my heart, I king of heaven, my treasure, thou art High King of heaven, my victory won may I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Sun heart of my own heart whatever befall still be my vision, O Ruler of all Thank you, you may be seated.
All right, kiddos, you want to come up? And everyone else can't. Well, yeah, we let's be patient. All right. First I want to tell you a little bit about baptism.
Jesus commands the church to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded. He said in Matthew 28. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. To repent and be baptized is a divine command.
Baptism is a sacrament. That means that the washing with water is visible, right? There's actually can you guys testify? There's water here. They're actually gonna get wet.
Right? It's an external sign of an invisible reality. The invisible reality is our union with Christ, being washed from our sins and newness with of life in Christ. But baptism isn't merely a sign, it is also a seal. Not a seal meaning all those who are baptized are saved.
Rather, it is a seal in that we see God's grace in the faithful submission of a believer to be baptized. Baptism is also a means of grace by which the person being baptized and all who observed it are improved. You should remember that you too were washed and cleansed with Christ in newness of life.
So to those who are going to be baptized, we have them lined up against the wall there. Like we're gonna execute them. You are loved by the Lord. And we, your fellow disciples, love you.
God has been gracious to you. Don't doubt any longer. Trust the Lord who began this work of faith in your life will continue it. He will be faithful to complete the work that He began in you.
Come in repentance of your sins and confess your faith by answering the following questions. You ready? You're going to answer yes, or I do.
Do you believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life.
Do you acknowledge yourself to be a sinner who has turned to Christ in repentance, trusting in God's mercy alone for your salvation?
Do you receive the Bible as the very Word of God, without error, teaching the only way of salvation?
Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Savior of sinners, and do you receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he is offered in the gospel?
And do you promise in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit that you will live in a way that honors Christ at home, in church, and in the world?
And lastly, do you promise to support the worship and work of the church, to submit to its biblical discipline, and to strive for its purity, unity, and peace.
Alright, and then this is for the congregation. Do you welcome these disciples and promise by your fellowship to strengthen their ties with the household of God? If so, say we do. All right.
The Lord Jesus Christ instituted baptism as a covenant sign and seal for his church.
He uses it not only for the solemn admission of people who are baptized into the visible church, but also to show his death and burial and resurrection. That's what that's we baptize by immersion into the water. The Lord uses baptism to portray to us that we and our children are conceived and born in sin and we need to be cleansed.
He uses it to witness and to seal to us the remission of sins, and I'm worried one of you is going to fall in the water. So hold off on dipping your hands. Baptism with water signifies and seals cleansing from sin by the blood and spirit of Christ, together with our death unto sin and our resurrection unto newness of life, by virtue of the death and resurrection of Christ, because these gifts of salvation are the gracious provision of the triune God, who is pleased to claim us as his very own.
In baptism, the Lord puts his name on us and claims us as his own and summons us to assume the obligations of being in a covenant relationship with him. He calls us to believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, to renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh, and to walk humbly with God in newness of life.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, God of all grace, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, commanded this holy sacrament, washing with water to signify and seal heavenly realities. We ask that you set apart this water from a common use to the sacred use that you have appointed in baptism. We pray that your mercy would be sealed upon those baptized, and that they would be united with Christ in his death and resurrection, and that they would die to their sins and live in newness of life and righteousness.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Yeah, if you want to stand up, welcome. I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. We're going to take a step forward.
Ready? Turn around face that way. All right. Nathan Dollinghouse, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You're not as tall, I'm not gonna have to worry about smacking your head on the top of this. I think it's over.
Michaela Rosenberger, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All right, Simone. Thank you very much for the first time. And Simone, I know your middle name, so I'm gonna use that too. Alright, ready? Simone Jubilee Codwin, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
All right.
Are you all here? Based on your confession of faith, I admit you to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper and the fellowship of Christ Church. Now you must diligently continue in the faith. This isn't a one-time thing, we talked about that already.
In all humility, rely on the means of grace that God has provided, especially His Word and the sacraments and prayer. Do not neglect to gather with the saints so that you would not be deceived by sin's deception. And rest in Jesus' faithfulness. Rest in his goodness, knowing that he promised that if you confess Christ before men, he will confess you before the Father.
To the church here, remember that you too were once newly grafted into Christ's church. You are responsible to love and strengthen your new brothers and sisters here. Be patient and gentle, but don't neglect opportunities to help them grow.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you that you have set your seal upon those baptized and all your children who have been received as members of your church.
Children of God, we are branches that you have newly grafted into Christ. Make us grow and produce fruit in the Holy Spirit for your glory and honor. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
August 2, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 11:22-25 · Gospel of Mark
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: 2 August 2026
Well, as you've heard, we spent our week down in Missouri, and several of you were like, I wonder what of this week's gonna make it into the sermon, right? So I don't want to disappoint anyone, and so I'm gonna give you a picture. Ren, you ready for this? Because you come into the story here.
So we're taking this trip, and the float trip is a big part of it. Most people have their own kayaks, but Michaela's there and she's got her double kayak, and she's got one of her two kids there. Then I'm in a canoe, a big old canoe. I've got my youngest Autumn, who's how old are you?
Four. Four.
And then either Wren or Cruz, they kind of took turns who got to be with mom for a minute and who had to be with Pastor Daniel. Just to give you some idea of the physics of what happens in a canoe when there's, you know, a 45-year-old man in the back and two tiny little girls in the front: the canoe rode like this the whole way, right? And so that's how we went down the river.
For the most part, you know, it's Missouri. It's not whitewater rapids. It was just a fairly calm, enjoyable little float. Until the end, where we came around this curve, and I got used to seeking out the deep water, right? Because I wanted to, you know, I didn't have to get out of the canoe and push it. And so, you know, I shot for the deep water.
It turns out at this one particular bend, as the water was deep, there was also a log just wonk right in front of it, just below the surface. And so what happens when you hit a log, you know, the canoe came along it right up against it. Because I was weighing us down, we couldn't get over it, we couldn't get around it. And so if you would have seen Wren's face, she was not terribly, you know, my canoe Uber rating was really low. She was not at all convinced that this was going to end well.
As opposed to Autumn. Now, Autumn was just sitting there like this was just any normal day, and things were going swimmingly. I mean, part of it might just be that Ren knew the risk of what was about to happen. But I think a bigger part of it was that Autumn was in a canoe with her dad. And she had faith that she was gonna be okay. Like this is just, this was good. Ren needed some experience to learn that it was going to be okay.
And we were okay, right? We made it through. Everybody's here. We're good. You didn't even get wet.
I mean, that's how good it went. I got wet. They didn't get wet.
But the point is not my heroics or my poor canoe skills. The point is it's a picture of faith. And it is a picture of how we should feel with God.
Okay? Because Jesus used pictures of the things around him. Let me be more particular with that. Jesus used pictures of the things around him. He used examples. He used real things. They lived life together, and they saw and experienced the same kinds of things.
That's what our scripture reading is today. It's a picture. And it's a picture that follows the picture of the fig tree that we talked about last week, right? The fig tree was there. Now it was there intentionally. Jesus knew, you know, the fig tree was there. And we talked last week about how the fig leaves were significant, right? That was what Adam and Eve used to try and cover the shame of their sin. And here Jesus uses this picture of a fig tree and the cursing of a fig tree to show the problem with Israel, the problem with the temple.
The temple, instead of being a house of prayer where the nations could gather together and pray and worship God and learn about the Creator of the universe, the temple had become this place of commerce, this place of money changing, this den of robbers. Wasn't at all what it was meant for.
So Jesus curses it. And the fig tree withers, but doesn't just wither like, you know, when the Japanese beetles get at your trees. It withered from the roots up. And so it was dead dead.
That's not the only picture though. Jesus, explaining what was happening, says to the disciples:
Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain,
Now you have to place yourself there. He's talking about like a particular mountain, right? They're seeing a mountain, and he's talking about that.
Whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted to you.
Now this passage is abused. And so we can't avoid talking about the modern abuse of this passage. There is a prosperity gospel, there is a name it and claim it teaching that says, You, Chris, you, Ian, whatever you want. You name it and you claim it, you believe that you have it, and God will give it to you.
Is that what Jesus is saying here? He's not, right?
You're not God. God is the one who says, let there be light, and what happens? There's light. Daniel Coughlin does not get to say let there be light and there's light. I don't get to say let there be a Porsche outside and there's a Porsche, right? The name and claim it thing is false. It is a false promise. It is something to puff you up and make you feel like you're a little God.
No, Jesus roots his instructions from the beginning as requiring faith in God.
Faith in God. Have faith in God. It's a command. It's an imperative. Have faith in God.
Not have faith in Daniel Coughlin, not have faith in Deb Hurst, not have faith in who you are and your desires and your wants and that those are the things that you should have. Have faith in God.
Also, not have faith in your faith. This one's a little trickier, right? You can kind of see not have faith in yourself. But the other thing that we tend to do is we tend to reduce faith to having faith in our faith, like I need to believe. And if I just believed more, then things would be better. If I just believed more, we wouldn't have this sickness. If I just believed more, I would, you know, I would get the things I want. The person that you are evangelizing, they would come to faith. You know, your husband, your wife would change their ways, they'd put their socks in their hamper, or, you know, they would come to faith or they would love you or they would come to terms with hardships and sacrifice of normal life, normal married life.
Jesus looks at the mountain and says, Whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and cast into the sea. Do they want to move the mountain? Why offer that?
Right? I mean, you can see, hopefully you can see, that when you walk with your children, when you talk with your children, when you canoe down a river, when you're having people over for dinner, everything becomes a testimony of faith. Everything becomes a teaching opportunity.
So, you know, you look at a mountain, you're like, oh yeah, that wood can't just move that very easily, right? As we were driving down to Montauk, you know, they were driving through the hills of Missouri, right? And did you notice how many times they had to carve out the hills so that the highway could go through?
And you see those steep embankments on either side to show you. I mean, like somebody did a lot of work to that, to move a tiny little bit of that mountain. And they probably used, you know, big bulldozers and excavators and, you know, explosives. I don't know what else you use to move a mountain like that, but like serious equipment.
Interestingly, King Herod the Great did something like that right around the time, just a few years before Jesus would have been walking through there. He built his fortress, his Herodian fortress, and in order to build the fortress, he had slaves move a mountain. Like they extended this base so that his fortress could extend out over the mountain. And apparently, really cool. So I just imagine that as Jesus was walking with his disciples, he saw that and was like, oh, you know, here's this is faith.
Faith to move a mountain. Faith, not just to move it, like, you know, 40 feet this way. Faith to throw it into that ocean over there. Faith to do that just with a word.
That's something only God can do.
And if you know your Old Testament prophecies well, which there's a lot of them, and so this is an easy one to overlook, Zechariah prophesied this:
Behold, the day is coming for the Lord when the spoil taken from you,
This is Old Testament, right? This is hundreds of years before Jesus.
When the spoil taken from you will be divided among you, for I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle and the city will be captured, and the houses plundered and the women ravished, and half the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city.
Then the Lord will go forth and fight against those nations, as when he fights on a day of battle.
In that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north, and the other half will move toward the south.
You will flee by the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains will reach to Azel. Yes, you will flee just as you fled before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah, King of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come and all the holy ones with him and listen.
And the Lord will be king over all the earth. In that day the Lord will be the only one, and his name the only one.
Listen, fig leaves have significance through scripture. Moving mountains has significance in scripture. And if we don't, if we're not aware of the Old Testament, if we haven't read it and have it seeped in our mind, this is why we have the reading plans out back, these images should come to mind. For the disciples, these images came to mind. Moving mountains is significant.
Moving mountains is cosmically significant of establishing God's kingdom here on earth.
Just like the fig tree, just like the fig leaves. That was no accident that Adam and Eve were the ones sewing fig leaves to cover their shame, right? Fig leaves, moving mountains. Jesus is using the very things right around them. Herod moving mountains to build his fortress, to build his little earthly kingdom. Jesus is using these images, these illustrations, just like the picture of the canoe with the two little girls in there. These are all images. Images that we should see, pictures of faith, pictures of real spiritual things.
Listen, from the fall all the way to the King coming in glory, at all times God remains in power. God remains the heavenly Father. Jesus exhibited some of this power by cursing the fig tree and showing the judgment coming on the Jews for the rejection of the Son of God when he came to his own people and they rejected him. And now Jesus tells his disciples what this means for them and what this means for the church.
Right? It sounds so simple. Have faith in God. Have faith in God. But have you ever spelled a word so many times that it started to look wrong when you looked at it? Like you start to look at such a simple thing and you're like, that can't possibly, like what does that mean? That's the kind of phrase have faith in God means.
It's easy to say. It's easy to put it on a slogan. We could put it on that little, it's not corkboard, but you know, whatever that little letterboard is out front of the church, right? Have faith in God. That'd be a nice little slogan. And probably if you told all your neighbors, have faith in God, what would they say? Yeah, that sounds all right.
Have faith in God.
But if you really think about that phrase and you see how Jesus starts to explain it, it's a lot more difficult than that. You must believe in God. You must believe in God even when life is tough.
Listen. Faith is the expectation and full assurance that God will provide whatever you need. Whatever you need.
Believers, you must have confidence in God's power, in His wisdom, in his desire to do good for you, and his ability to carry that out. This is what it means to have faith in God. It means to trust God. No matter the circumstances, you choose to trust that God is in control. No matter how lonely you are, how scared, how angry, you trust that the Good Father is working all things for the good of those who believe in him.
Now, there are plenty of times we don't easily see God working all things for our good. In fact, there are some times where we decidedly are convinced that God is not working for our good. He's working against us.
So we ask:
And part of our problem is we don't ask, or we ask with wrong motives. James 4 talks about that. Here though, Jesus instructs his disciples and us that we must ask in faith, in believing faith. You must believe God is who he says he is, you must believe that God is able to do all that he pleases, and that he will faithfully give what is according to his good will and for your good.
This is why Jesus starts with have faith in God. Not have faith in yourselves, not have faith in your desires, not have faith in your faith. Right? The power is not in us. The power is in the God who is to be believed.
Jesus doesn't say that you get whatever you want as long as you ask for it in Jesus' name, some formula. He's not a vending machine where you put your prayer in and you push the specific button of the thing that you want and it comes out. The foundation is having faith in God. And the privilege is that as a child of that God, as a son, or as a daughter, you get the good benefits of that.
God is a good father. This is the comfort of riding in the canoe, knowing that your good Father is there, that you trust, taking you along with you. He's caring for you, protecting you, saving you, making you holy. This is life, right? Life isn't easy. Life is getting slammed into a tree. Life is hitting rocks and dragging and having to get out and walk alongside, right? Life is hard and complicated and full of suffering and full of trials.
And that's the Christian life. It's also the non-Christian life. It's just that you don't have hope of a good father who's working all those good things for your good. We have the comfort of knowing that even weak faith saves because our salvation does not depend on the strength of our grip on God, but God's ability to work in our lives despite our weak faith.
It is God's faithfulness that we trust in, not our own faithfulness.
Now, we can also look and say, are we asking for the right things? Because God doesn't give us our wicked, selfish desires. No, he's a good father.
And just like your earthly father wouldn't give his young son a hand grenade to play with, right? And I say that, and you laugh, but I mean, how many of our kids have cell phones that can access things even more deadly than hand grenades? How many of us carry those things around and don't keep the pin in the slot. I don't really know how hand grenades work, but that's my assumption. It's something to do with pins, because I watch movies.
Good fathers don't give their children things that kill them. And we should be careful what we give our children. So too, our heavenly Father is not going to give you your wicked desires.
On the contrary, if you want to grow in grace and in the knowledge of your Lord Jesus Christ, or if you want to make progress in your religion and become a strong Christian, independent young man in the faith, not a baby in spiritual matters, then pray daily for faith and watch your faith with jealous watchfulness, right? I mean, there are things we can work with diligence to improve ourselves by the power of the Holy Spirit, according to God's word.
If you want to see faith multiply, if you want to see the nation come to repentance, if you want to see revival in our area, well, pray daily for the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Pray. Ask God. These are good things that God can give, will give, that we should pray with belief, asking for. Right?
God is faithful. God is powerful. You do not have the strength in your belief. Your strength is the strength of God according to the character of God.
But faith isn't the only problem here with our asking. Another problem is our lack of forgiveness. Faith is essential, so is forgiveness. You must remember that you stand before God only because you've been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ. Otherwise God does not hear your prayers.
In Christ you've been forgiven. You've been forgiven your many trespasses, your many debts, your sins of words and thoughts and actions, your sins before you were a believer, and your sins once you profess faith. And Jesus warns of this absolute necessity that we have a forgiving spirit towards others, especially when we come to the Father and ask for things.
We have no right to look for mercy from God if we're not ready to extend mercy ourselves to our neighbors, to our spouse, to our children, to our parents. This is how Jesus taught us to pray. Do you know it?
Father, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Or maybe you learned it:
Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Or maybe you learned it:
Father, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Do you see the connection? Whether it's debts or trespasses or sins? It's forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us.
If you've been forgiven much, and if you've been forgiven, you've been forgiven much. If you've been forgiven much, then you must be quick to forgive others.
Do you know what it is to have a forgiving spirit? Can you forgive the hurts and slights and injuries that you receive from people, especially the ones that you love, the ones who are closest to you because they're always the ones that we're stepping on the toes of, right? They're always the ones when you're crammed in the backseat of a car for a six, seven hour trip and you know you're in the middle seat, the worst seat. And there's all this elbow poking and it's the ones that we're closest to that we always end up hurting the most.
They're the ones that we need to have the grace to forgive, the ability to forgive. Can you pass over a transgression? Can you pardon an offense? Can you see someone sin against you and not be self-righteous? If not, where is your Christianity? If you cannot, why should you wonder that your soul does not grow in holiness?
Listen, Jesus moved immediately from teaching about prayer and faith to forgiveness because unforgiveness reveals a heart that has forgotten the grace that it has received. If you truly trust in God, you can see your desperate sinful condition. You know how much you've been forgiven, how much forgiveness you need, because you see how you fail to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your strength on a daily, hourly, minute by minute basis.
You know you're not good. You know you're not good enough. So stop carrying on the pretense. Stop making a show of your righteousness and thinking that the other person is the only one at fault.
I mean, how many times have you gotten in a fight, in a quarrel, and you can see with perfect clarity the wrong the other committed, and you know all the reasons why you were right in what you said and what you did. How often do we flip that on its head and we listen to the feedback of the people around us who observe us. Of all the ways we fail, of all the ways we misspeak, of all the ways we're selfish without even seeing our own selfishness.
I mean, you know how much you've been forgiven, if you know how much other people have to overlook problems in your life, in your behavior, with your words. Well, then all of a sudden it's a little bit easier, a little bit easier to forgive others when they make similar mistakes, when they commit similar transgressions and sins.
God's free forgiveness is our only entitlement to eternal life in the world to come. God's free forgiveness in Jesus Christ is the defining characteristic of the Christian religion. We are a religion of scandalous grace, scandalous mercy. It is by grace that we've been saved, not because we cleaned ourselves up, but because Jesus washes us clean. Because it's not because of our own righteousness, it's that Jesus' righteousness is credited to our account.
After teaching the disciples the Lord's Prayer, you know what Jesus says afterwards? He doubles down on this truth. He gives this promise:
For if you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly father will also forgive you.
And then he gives this warning:
But if you do not forgive others, then your father will not forgive your transgressions.
You must heed this warning. You must remind yourself, express gratitude and value the forgiveness that you've received from God. You must see that your faith in God is appropriate. He is not only your creator, he's also your redeemer, he is the good Father. He knows how to give you what you need to make you suitable for His eternal heavenly kingdom.
This is so much more than your own desires, your own wants. He knows better for you. He knows your groanings. And even when you think you know what you need, when you think you know what you want, he knows better. What you really need, what you really, you really need to be ready for his kingdom.
This is because God is a good Father. The same Father who sent His Son to die for your sins, the same Father who forgave your unpayable debt, the same Father who hears your prayers, the same Father who's working all things together for the good of those who believe in him, so trust him.
Or said more simply, have faith in God. Have faith in God. Pray to him. Forgive as you have been forgiven. And rest in the care of your heavenly Father, who knows exactly what you need and never fails his children. Never.
Men fail. Women fail. God does not fail. He is worthy of our trust. Let us learn to grow on that.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, I pray that we would remember how much we've been forgiven, and that we would forgive others, that we remember your goodness, your faithfulness through all the generations, and that we would have faith in God.
This sounds like such a simple thing, and yet our faith is so easily upset, so easily thrown off balance, so easily tipped over and dunked in the river. Father, as a church, let us see in each other this need, this need for forgiveness, this need for knowledge of who you are and your goodness and your mercy and your faithfulness.
Father, draw us close to you and strengthen us. Strengthen us for this work. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
July 19, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 11:1-11 · Gospel of Mark
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: 2026-07-19
Our scripture reading today is Mark chapter 11, the first 11 verses. You might recognize this. We read it for Palm Sunday. Do you guys, do you kiddos remember what you did in Sunday school on Palm Sunday?
Does the word palm ring a bell? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the moment? What'd you hold up? Palm leaves. Yeah, good job. Good job, girls. Good job. So, do you remember that? Palm leaves? You waved them in the air, the little green, greenery, fern-like greenery.
All right. This is where we're at in the book of Mark now. We've made it to Jesus' triumphal entry. This is God's word, and it is eternally true.
As they approached Jerusalem at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them: Go into the village opposite you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there on which no one yet has ever sat.
Untie it and bring it here. And if anyone says to you, why are you doing this? you say, The Lord has need of it, and immediately He will send it back here. They went away and found a colt tied to the door outside the street, and they untied it, and some of the bystanders were saying to them, What are you doing untying the colt?
And they spoke to them just as Jesus had told them, and they gave them permission. They brought the colt to Jesus and put their coats on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their coats on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they had cut from the fields.
Those who went in front and those who followed were shouting, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our Father David. Hosanna in the highest.
Jesus entered Jerusalem and came into the temple. And after looking around at everything, he left for Bethany with the twelve, since it was already late,
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, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
All right, if I were to ask about your children or your grandchildren, what would you likely do after I asked about them? Tell me about them. What do you have for children, grandchildren?
You'd probably pull out your phone, right? And you'd show me a picture. You'd show me some, you know, some smiling picture of the last time you all got together, some family reunion. In the old days, you might have had a flip book or, you know, something, you know, up people's wallets in the old days were really fat because they'd carried around like 12 pictures, right?
School pictures, things like that. Or, you know, if it's at your house, you might say, oh, come over here, come to the stairwell, and then here's a picture of when we were all together last. And pictures, it would be some snapshot in time, right? It would be, it'd be some, you know, maybe your children were young and they were riding their bikes or, you know, they were out, and you just planted some trees, and so they were out, and the trees are all about as tall as your kids, right?
Or maybe you were at Disney World, and some special, you know, some special event, some thing that you did, some Boy Scout camping trip or, you know, some snapshot of life. And what it does is it shows a part of you that I can't see normally, right? It's like, oh, yeah, we are, my family, we all got together and we did this thing.
And it reveals something about your interests, right? And maybe it just reveals something about your age, right? There you are in front of your old 1950s car, or you know, your hair was the style of the 80s. You know, and for you kids, you don't understand that, but you know, you're, you're, you know, you'll see, you'll look back on your styles now, the clothes that you have to buy, because that's all the store sells.
And things will change. And you'll be like, I can't believe I wore that. I can't believe I did my hair like that. I can't believe that I rode planes through the sky.
And, you know, that's my picture that I have, right? But when you show someone your picture, they learn something about you other than just who you are today, they see more, they see who you were, and then if, they're really thoughtful, they'll see, oh, I wonder how they got to this point.
Church here in Mark 11 is a picture of your Savior. And it's an interesting, unique picture. Now, clearly, it's not a photograph, right?
Don't open your Bible up and expect to see a photograph of Jesus because they didn't have those. And any painting of Jesus, be very, very, very suspicious of. Because paintings, images of Jesus, have a way of telling more about the artist who made the painting than they do about who Jesus is.
Because we don't have much for what Jesus looked like. That seems like a very unimportant thing in Scripture's opinion, in God's opinion, of what his word is. We know he was stricken and smitten, and he was not much to look at. But other than that, the style of his hair, we know nothing about.
It's all conjecture. It's all, it's, he likely did not glow like a lot of paintings have him. He didn't have a halo that doesn't fit how Scripture talks about him. So, how does Scripture give us pictures? Well, here's a picture of an event, right?
Here's an event, and if you stop and see the scene, you see a glimpse of who Jesus has always been and what He became for our benefit. Mark gives us this picture, and the picture is full of tension, not like relational tension, like sometimes you see the relational tension.
You see the scribes and the Pharisees, and you can feel the tension of their hatred for who Jesus is. That's not what we have here. The tension's different. It's a tension in who Jesus is, what Jesus is. Right? Because you have at the same time:
That's the tension, and it's a tension that is drawn out from our normal thinking of authority and our normal thinking of humility. Like normally, when we think about a humble man, you're probably not thinking about someone who exercises great authority. And if you think about someone who exercises great authority, you're probably not thinking of a humble man, right?
Let's, our president is a good example. And we can like Donald Trump, but we can also see, you would not reasonably describe him as a humble man, right? Is that fair? Any pushback on that? So, authority and humility is, there's a tension, and it's a tension that we feel as mankind because, you know, for us guys, these are kind of opposite, these can tend to be opposite sides of the ditch, right?
We can either be really big on authority and we're domineering and we're, you know, we're aggressive, and we're going to pound you into the dirt if you cross us. That's what we think of as authority, right? Or you can be humble in kind of a gross way, right?
You can be always agreeable to everyone. You can never have an opinion. You can be. I'm trying to think of a good word for it. You know how a reed just blows in the wind?
You know, whichever way the wind blows, you're so humble, you have no opinions. You're so humble, you have no preferences. You're so humble that you don't matter. You're not interesting. You're the exact opposite of the domineering authoritarian.
And yet, somehow gloriously, there's this embodiment of man in Jesus Christ that is both humble and authoritative. So let's see that. Let's see how he is humble and authoritative all at the same time and see what we can learn from that.
Almost everything in this passage happens because Jesus commands it.
See how specifically Jesus describes a colt. You will see a colt tied there. Everything happens just as Jesus says. He knows a colt's history.
No one has ever sat on him. He knows the potential objections from the men who are in town. Tell them the Lord has need of it. And Jesus gives the confidence in his authority that they're going to respond.
He will send it back here immediately. You're not going to, you're just going to tell them the Lord has need of it, and that's enough. Clearly, Jesus is not the victim here. He's not found himself in a desperate situation where, oh, I need a colt.
I don't have wheels. I left. This happened to me recently. I was setting up at a swim meet, and Cabe and I drove separate cars. I went home with him, and we left a car there.
But when I got home, I do what I always do, which is I take the keys out of my pocket and I set them down. And then we got back. And guess what? I did not have. I did not have the keys to my car, which was still there.
So, and I parked right where the coffee truck needed to be. So, anyway, it was a disaster and an embarrassment. That's not what happened to Jesus. Jesus didn't forget the keys to his colt at home, right?
He had the colt there. It wasn't his colt, it was this other man's colt. But whose colt was it really? I mean, we have to see that all of our possessions, we didn't go create these things on our own.
We didn't come create our own authority, create our own rights. We're stewards of God's goods, of the things that He's put in our charge. And so there's a real sense in which Jesus had the right to this colt. It was not a big ask.
He's not a victim being swept along by powers outside of His control. He is on the way to the cross and he knows he's on the way to the cross. And he is, as we're going to see, he's ratcheting up his exposure. He's ratcheting up how much people are seeing, how much he's engaging the powers.
You know, previously, every time a crowd was coming around, he would find ways to remove himself, right? He'd cross over to the other side of the lake. He would go up into the mountains, and often the crowds would follow him there. But it was like almost a cat and mouse game, right?
Where he was getting away, he was telling people not to tell about him, he was avoiding the big dramatic entries. As we get to this last days of Jesus' life, it's less and less like that. He has embraced the publicity. All the way up to the crucifixion, none of this is an accident.
Jesus is going into Jerusalem intentionally, and his hour is almost here. Part of Jesus' kingly authority as a second is his authority over all creation, over all possessions of man. The response is simple. Jesus doesn't give a long, like, a long explanation: I'm the creator, I'm this, I'm that.
He tells his disciples just to say, the Lord has need of it. Go get it and tell him the Lord has need of it. Simple and remarkable. Jesus doesn't negotiate, he doesn't explain. He just sends the messenger.
He doesn't even go himself. I am Jesus and I need this. He sends his children, right? He sends his children to go get what he needs.
And the permission is granted. The colt belongs to another man, but ultimately it belongs to the Lord, which is a subtle reminder that every possession we have is only temporarily entrusted to us. It's hard not to think of the Childresses, but our homes, our money, our businesses, our farms, our time, that's a big one.
Our children, that's another big one. All belong ultimately to the king. Whenever the Lord has need of something, the proper answer is the same: it's yours already. Of course, the Lord has need of it, the Lord can use it.
The problem is, we like our possessions, and more importantly, we like our control over our possessions. We want our homes to require no maintenance, right? Every time something breaks in our home, we have a toilet that seems to the wax ring seems to never work. I don't know what the deal is, it's been replaced three or four times, and I hate it.
It drives me bonkers. I want it to just work. And yet, one of the ways the Lord keeps me humble is that when I have a hundred things to do, He sends some disaster my way that I have to deal with immediately because it's a gross thing and it needs to be dealt with immediately.
We want our money to never run out in a bank account. We never want to get that overdrawn balance. We want our cars never to have a flat tire. We want it to start every time we turn the key, right?
That is, and if it doesn't, it's frustrating. We want control. We want control of our businesses and our farms. We want them to always be successful and without conflict or controversy. And when there is conflict or controversy, what do we think?
Why did this happen to me? Why today? Oh, how often do we think, ah, the Lord is training my heart, the Lord is training His or her heart. Usually we're focused on woe is me. We want to use our time as we see fit, which means an unexpected guest, a drop-in visitor, especially a chatty one, or maybe we live in the opposite life, and it's loneliness, and no one stops in to visit, and we wish someone would stop in to visit, and it's watching the clock tick and the hours tick by, and the phone doesn't ring, and no one stops in.
There's different stages of life, and different ways for us to be annoyed at our control or our lack of control. And then with our children, we want them to be happy and healthy and smart, wise, useful, not annoying or needy or whiny or sick, and never needing discipline.
Think about the owner of this colt, right? He had every reason to object. What? Who? Who wants my colt? Who are you to tell me the Lord wants my colt?
Oh, that's my new colt, and no one's trained it yet, so it would be unsafe for you to take my colt, right? Like you could think of all the ways that the owner could make objections. How different are we? We readily confess that everything belongs to God, but our faith is often revealed when He lays claim to our possessions, when He lays claim to our tiny little areas of control.
Our homes, our finances, our work, our farms, our time, even our children are not ours ultimately. We're stewards, we have responsibilities for them, but it's a subordinate responsibility, subordinate to the Lord. And nothing exposes the difference between our profession of faith and our reality of what we really believe than when the Lord makes a claim as to what is really his.
When Jesus mounts the colt and enters, the crowd cries, Hosanna, which doesn't mean much to us these days. We don't have a lot of significance there. This is pulled out of Psalm 118, and it basically means save us now. That was the original cry.
It's Hebrew, sounds like Hosanna, means save us now. It began as a prayer. This is Psalm 118. You'll recognize several of these passages.
I'm gonna read Psalm 118, a couple of verses here.
Open to me the gates of righteousness, I shall enter through them, I shall give thanks to the Lord This is the gate of the Lord. The righteous will enter through it. I shall give thanks to you, for you have answered me, and you have become my salvation.
The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our sight. This is the day which the Lord has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it. O Lord, do save, we beseech you. Oh Lord, we beseech you, do send prosperity. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.
We have blessed you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and He has given us light. Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I give thanks to you.
You are my God, I extol you. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his loving kindness is everlasting.
This is where it started. Save us now. It's Hebrew is Hoshiach.
So you can see how Hoshi-na became Hosanna. They continue: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Save us now, blessed, blessed one who comes in the name of the Lord. Save us now, blessed one that's coming with the kingdom of our Father David.
These are royal declarations, these are covenantal claims. Here comes the Savior and the King. And what does Jesus do? He rides on, seated on his colt, colt covered in coats, coats on the ground, palms on the ground, being worshipped as God, being worshipped as the fulfillment of God's promises, what do angels do when man starts to worship them?
Whoa, whoa, whoa, get up, get up. What are you doing? You don't worship me. I'm an angel. I'm created like you are.
How about men? What do men do when men fall down and worship them? What do righteous, godly men do? It's the same thing. Get up. Don't worship me. What are you? You worship God. You don't worship me.
Only God is proper to receive worship, not the angels, not man. So, what do we see in Jesus? As he rides on his colt, being praised, as blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the bringer of salvation, the coming, the one who brings the kingdom of David.
Does Jesus object? No. Why? Because he's the proper object of worship. Now, this is where non-Christian religions get off. We were talking at Sunday school about, you know, where do you draw the line? Where do you draw the line between a church that you have fellowship, people who profess faith that you have fellowship with, and who you don't.
Well, the nature of Jesus is one of those lines. It has to be. It's our prime distinctive between Mormonism and Islam: who is Jesus? And is Jesus the proper object of the worship of mankind?
If he is, all of a sudden he's not man, he is God. And that's what we see here. We see as God, Jesus deserves the praise. He is the proper recipient of worship.
And as God, he enters into the temple in Jerusalem, right? This is who Jesus is. He is the King of kings and the Lord of Lords. He is begotten of the Father, not made.
He is different than mankind. And that's why he's worthy of praise and deserving of praise. And then, look what happens when he gets to the temple. It's almost anticlimactic. Here it is, verse 11.
Jesus entered Jerusalem and came into the temple.
Right? Do you remember what James and John were asking for? Oh, when you set up your throne, I want to sit on your right hand and on your left. When you come into the temple, right?
Like this is God coming to his temple, what does he do?
And after looking around at everything, he left.
He left? Do you see? Now, he doesn't stay gone, right? We're going to get to one of the things that he does, but right, this is God coming into his temple.
This is what you've done for me. This is what you've done. This is my home. This is my special place of presence.
This is what you were commanded to do and prepare for Jesus, for God. And Jesus walks in, he looks around, and he leaves. And he doesn't just leave the temple, he leaves Jerusalem. It's not time. It's not time for him to sit down as an earthly king.
Here we see that God has come to inspect his house. The temple doesn't belong to the priest, it doesn't belong to the Sanhedrin. It belongs to God. And the next day, he will begin cleansing it.
But first, he just surveys it. That's his authority.
Where do we see humility in this verse? In these verses. We can look at the borrowed colt. Everything about his entrance is humble, right?
He doesn't arrive on a war horse. Is that how should a king walk come in, right? I mean, shouldn't he come in and, you know, Air Force One or some giant steam engine train thing? Sorry, that came out weird.
You know, some symbol of power and might, right? What's that? A chariot, yes, yes. Or, you know, an armored limousine, or what's the Popemobile, where he's got, you know, the big, the big bulletproof casing around, right? Like that. How about a military escort?
Shouldn't the, shouldn't the king of the universe have a military escort as he goes into town? And shouldn't he gather all the kings in front of him to like kneel down and show his authority over, he doesn't. He borrows an animal. The regular citizens throw, you know, whatever they can find, the palm branches, but the creator of the world's riding on a borrowed beast, a beast of burden.
And this fits the pattern of Jesus' whole life. What did Jesus own here in this life?
We get so caught up in our accumulating things, protecting things, maintaining things. We've got to do some of that. But here's the Lord of all creation willingly living among us with almost no earthly possessions.
Let that inform the value we place on things of this world. Maintenance is good, it's necessary. We need to maintain things, but how much more should we have our mindset, our heart set on things of eternal value and eternal glory? I told, we had an elders' meeting this week, and I told, you know, it was what, almost three hours?
But I looked back and we spent probably 60-70% of it just talking about pastoral care issues. People here in the church, people that, you know, like the Childresses that we're doing outreach to, that's what I want us to focus on. You know, we're about to have a business meeting.
We have to talk about business, right? We have to have financial reports. We have to maintain the building we have. We have to replace the sidewalk because it's fallen apart.
Like, there's things that we have to do as good stewards of the things that God has entrusted us. But what we don't want to do is make that the most important thing. Because if that's the case, we're not a church any longer. We are just the social club that we want to try and avoid being.
We've got to attend to the practical things of life, but that should not be our focus. It must not be our focus. And if we're going to draw swords against each other, it definitely should not be over the color of the carpet or the color of the walls or the, you know, the practical things.
It's got to be about eternal, things of eternal value. This church has lasted 100 years. Is that not an incredible thing? I mean, do you ever just, like, every once in a while, this just dawns on me.
I look around and I'm like, these walls are 100 years old. That's an incredible thing. They probably won't last another hundred. I mean, just realistically, maybe.
And, you know, we live in America and in the history of worldly time scales, of, you know, our history is pretty short. Like, you go to Europe and you go see things that are like 400 or 500 years old. I've not, you know, but that's what I understand.
You go to the Middle East, though, and you're looking at things that are like 1500, 2,000 years old. You're like, wow, this is incredible. 100 years old. It takes our maintenance, but not our focus. This is not where the focus of our purpose is.
The focus of the church is to care for souls. It's to proclaim the good news of the gospel and to care for souls. The Lord of all creation willingly lived among us with almost no possessions. It should just inform us.
Enjoy the things that we have. Use them, but don't let your life center around those things. We also see humility in that he deliberately chose a colt. This fulfills Zechariah 9, which I read earlier.
Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey.
Right? The crowds, the disciples even, expected liberation from Rome. They expected Jesus to enter Jerusalem as the king riding a war horse as someone ready for conquest. But here Jesus comes to deliver them, not from Rome.
And pay attention to this because there's a bunch of Christian influencers these days who want us to be delivered from the Democrats, immigration, you know, whatever the political problem of the day is. Jesus did not come to deliver us from political troubles. We are going to have political troubles.
It's going to continue to be a battle. Jesus came to deliver us from something much worse. He came to deliver us from sin and death. He does not enter as a warrior prepared to kill his enemies, not this time.
He enters as the Savior prepared to suffer and die for his enemies. This is the picture of who our Savior is. This is the picture of who we needed our Savior to be.
And then, you know, we talked about the crowd shouting, Hosanna, Hosanna, save us now, save us now, right?
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. What's the crowd going to be shouting in a week? Crucify him! Crucify him! The fickleness of the crowd. Listen, don't be surprised if you see people who are worshiping Jesus one day and condemning him a week later.
It is the fickleness of the crowd. Jesus accepts their worship, he knows their hearts. He rode through that crowd, he knew exactly what was going on, and yet he continued towards the cross. He's not sustained by their approval.
He knows exactly what's in their hearts as he walks through. And his true humility is he continues walking the path that was set down before him by him and the Father before time began? This is the plan of salvation. This was his intention.
This was the path that he was going down, and this was his authority and his humility to choose to walk down it and to walk down it.
The crowd is right that Jesus is king, but they're wrong about the kind of kingdom he came to establish. They wanted a political victory.
Jesus came for redemption. They wanted a throne. Jesus came for a cross. They wanted Rome defeated, but Jesus comes to defeat sin and death.
The tragedy of Palm Sunday is not that the crowd praised Jesus, it's that they praised him based on their false image of who he was. They praised him because of what they wanted. They wanted a king who had served their agenda, but he came to establish God's kingdom, the kingdom of God.
Which, you know, and this is the question that I've been driving at through all of these examples: do we welcome Jesus as He truly is, or only as we want him to be? Do we only want Jesus who keeps us healthy? Do we only want Jesus who keeps us clean and good-looking?
Do we only want Jesus who wants the best for us and is willing to bless us in this life? A Jesus who approves of our healthy life and approves of our successful businesses and approves of how we use our free time? Or do we acknowledge Jesus as King, who has authority over our possessions, authority over our plans, authority over our time, authority over our worship, authority over our children?
The crowd spread their cloaks before him. We're willing to spread out our Sunday mornings from 10:30 to 11:45 and don't push it past 11:45, right? Maybe that's pushing it. We're willing to give up swearing and cursing and you know, dirty living, but what about the sins we really like?
What about the respectable sins? Are we willing to give up the respectable sins, the hidden sins? Because that's what a king demands. A king demands fruit, as we'll see next week.
He's the Creator, He's the Lord. Church Mark gives us a picture of God and His Son Jesus that's worth more than a thousand words. It's a picture of who Jesus is, his authority and his humility perfectly balanced in Jesus Christ. The king arrives with his absolute authority.
Every person, every possession, every act of worship, the temple itself belongs to Jesus. Yet the king comes clothed in humility. He rides a borrowed colt. He comes in peace.
He receives rejection for who he really is, what he's really accomplishing. He walks into his temple and sees how it's been marred, to see how it's been misused. And within a few days, he will march not to a throne, but to a cross. This is your Savior.
This is your king, the sovereign king who humbled himself to save sinners. Because he humbled himself, God highly exalted him. So, what do we do? Well, we say, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
But we say it knowing who Jesus really is. Save us, O Lord, not from our inconvenience, not from your control and your sovereignty, not from the government that annoys us and takes too much of our money and property taxes. He saves us from sin and death and condemnation.
That is what the church is gathered for. He saves us from ourselves, from our sinful desires, from our selfishness, our self-centeredness, our wickedness. Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Save us now, O God, is what we pray.
Let's pray, Heavenly Father, you've revealed yourself to us. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Help us to see how you have come not to satisfy our every desires, not to grant us our every wish, not to set us on chairs right next to your throne.
You've come to redeem us, to redeem a people for your good pleasure and for your glory and for your honor. Help us to submit our lives more than just Sunday mornings. Help us to submit all of our lives, all of our desires, all of our efforts at control, that we would trust you and we would know you and we would serve you.
Help us to do this. Help us to see past our earthly possessions and to submit our lives to you, Father. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
July 12, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 10:46-52 · Gospel of Mark
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: Sunday, Jul 12, 2026 at 10:30 AM
Our Bible reading today is Mark chapter 10, verses 46 through 52. It'll be on the screen, but if you have a Bible and you want to open it up, we are in Mark's Gospel in the New Testament, second book of the New Testament, the Gospels. So we are working our way through Mark and we're getting there.
We'll be done sooner than later. So this is Mark 10:46 through 52. This is God's word, and it is eternally true.
Then they came to Jericho, and as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, a blind beggar named Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, was sitting by the road.
When he heard that it was Jesus the Nazarene, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And many were sternly telling him to be quiet. But he kept crying out all the more, Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said, Call him here.
So they called the blind man, saying to him, Take courage, stand up, he's calling for you. Throwing aside his cloak, he jumped up and came to Jesus. And answering him, Jesus said, What do you want me to do for you?
And the blind man said to him, Rabboni, I want to regain my sight.
And Jesus said to him, Go, your faith has made you well. Immediately he regained his sight and began following him on the road. 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 will be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer.
We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Now, if you're just here for the first time, this is, we're picking up, you know, Scripture is one of those things. You have to read it in context. You have to read in order because there's an author.
There's the human author, and there's the Holy Spirit. And together, they make God's Word God's Word, right?
It's got, this has the flavor of Mark in it. And Mark is thinking through all the stories that he's heard about Jesus' time of preaching and teaching and healing and walking.
And Jesus and the Holy Spirit worked together by God's providence to set these events up in ways that they work together. And so we just were talking about how James and John they wanted Jesus to do what for them?
Did they want to have their eyes open so that they could see?
No. What did James and John, Jesus' inner circle, want?
They wanted power, right?
They wanted the best seats in the house, right?
Right up here, right?
That no one ever takes. I keep, you know, I keep inviting y'all, and no one comes up here to take these seats. That's what James and John wanted. They wanted the seats of power.
They wanted to be right there, vice president, senate president, and rule over Jesus's earthly kingdom. And then immediately we transition. You know, Jesus says, I've given my life as a ransom for the many. And we transition to what?
The blind beggar, Bartimaeus. The blind beggar. What do you think of when you think of a blind beggar?
Do you have a mental picture?
Have you driven through Topeka recently, or Kansas City, or Chicago, or wherever you drive through?
Have you seen the street corner beggars?
Well, they all have a sign, right?
Usually kind of disheveled. I want you just not to hear these words.
I want you to see this image of Jesus walking with a throng of people, right?
He exits, they're coming into Jericho, and there's a large crowd with him, right?
Who are these people?
Who are the people?
Who's the large crowd around Jesus?
It's not his enemies, these are the people who are really excited about Jesus and his teaching and maybe his healings and definitely his bread making, right?
His fish multiplication. These are people who Jesus, who are attracted to Jesus and form this crowd around Jesus to go with him.
And here's a blind beggar. We often hear that when someone loses one of their senses, their other senses get activated, right?
So, if you're blind, you know, I think it'd be hard for us to read Braille, right?
Because we can see and it's easier for us to interact that way.
But if you're limited there, then your hearing's attuned or your sense of touch is attuned, so you can, you can easier, you can better sense these other senses. And there is a sense in which we see that in Bartimaeus. He is blind, and yet he sees something that the rest of the crowd doesn't see.
This is deliberately placed just after James and John, and their focus on what he can do. They had walked with Jesus for years, they had seen him, you know, heal the sick, calm the sea, cast out demons, raise the dead. They had eaten the bread that he made and the fish that he multiplied.
And yet they were still arguing about these places of honor. They wanted thrones, they wanted glory. They're still thinking in earthly terms. And then you see, I'm pointing at the ground, right?
Because, I mean, that's where a blind beggar lays, right?
He lays by the side of the road. The contrast is striking and it's intentional. The disciples can see physically, but spiritually they're nearsighted.
They're missing some really important things. And Bartimaeus, on the other hand, he can't see nothing. And yet he can see spiritually. He's got discernment. He's heard, right?
In contrast with the disciples, he's heard about Jesus' miracles, maybe.
He's heard about Jesus' reputation as being a healer, but it's all secondhand knowledge, right?
He couldn't have seen any of this, he didn't experience it himself. He just heard rumors. And as Jesus passes by, he cries out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.
Son of David's an interesting title, it's a messianic title. The Son of David was the promised king, the heir to David's throne, the one sent by God to save his people. And then notice what he asked for. He doesn't ask for riches, he doesn't ask for power, he doesn't even ask for justice or fairness.
We were talking about fairness last night. So, you know, he doesn't ask for justice. Oh, I was born blind and I deserve to have eyes. He asks for mercy.
The cry for mercy runs throughout the entire story of redemption. When Adam and Eve sinned, God would have been perfectly just to have taken their lives that day. Instead, he showed them mercy and promised him a deliverer that was going to be born of woman. When God instructed Moses to build the tabernacle, the very center of Israel's worship was the mercy seat.
Right?
There was the ark, there was the tabernacle, there was the Holy of Holies, there was the ark, and on top of the ark was the mercy seat. And over top of the mercy seat were the angels with their wings extended to cover and protect the mercy seat.
And God's presence was there at the mercy seat. God spoke to Moses and Aaron from the mercy seat. In fact, the Israelite priests were instructed that they couldn't even enter there without spreading blood on the mercy seat, because they were sinful men. And for a sinful man to approach the presence of God without an acknowledgement of sin, without the atonement of blood, would have been, well, more than an offense would have been sacrilege.
Every sacrifice, every priest, every day of atonement preached the same message: sinners survive only by the mercy of God. And Bartimaeus testified to this. He did not come demanding his rights. He came pleading for mercy.
And this is one of those parts. I always look for the tension, the friction in the verse. We all have a tendency, a natural tendency, to think we're doing pretty well, right?
To compare ourselves with others.
We remember our good works. You know, we point to our church attendance or our baptism or our good works. Maybe we point to our family name or our morality or the service that we've done, and we think, All right, I'm pretty good. You know, I come from a good family, go to church every week, I try and do good.
Like like, I'm doing all right. The problem is, God's standard is not our neighbor, He's not even the person sitting across from you in the pew. God's standard is His perfect holiness, His perfect righteousness. Many of us feel healthy spiritually the same way we feel healthy physically.
I just had a physical, my annual checkup with my doctor, and she reminds me how unhealthy I am. She does blood work that shows me things that I, you know, I can only see kind of indirectly. And she's like, listen, this needs to get addressed. Like, you think you're doing well, you're not doing well.
This is going to catch up with you, and this is going to be a problem. That's how life is for us spiritually, too. We need to be confronted with Scripture that says, Listen, brother, sister in Christ, you are not doing as well as you think you are. Here are problems, here are concerns, here is the ways that you have been deceived by sin in thinking that you live righteously and you are falling short of the glory of God.
Not to shame, not to say you're unworthy, but to say, listen, this is your duty as a Christian, is to love the Lord, is to kill your sin, is to cast off these wicked desires. We have the opportunity to do that, to confront one another in love, not in condemnation, not to throw each other aside.
We were talking about the body at Sunday school today, the body of the church, and how it doesn't make sense for the hand to say to the eye, pluck you out, right?
Because what happens?
Is a hand very good if you're blind?
How do you find the doorknob, you know, if you, if you're walking around blind?
You, the body is meant to work together, to work together for the good of the rest of the body, not for its destruction. Our spiritual condition is worse than blindness. Blindness is a difficulty, right?
We talked about how you could close your eyes and walk through the building.
It would be hard, but you could, you know, with a cane or enough stumbling, you could eventually get through the building. Sin, on the other hand, is fatal. And until we understand our natural condition, we don't cry out for mercy. The question that probably Bartimaeus had was: would anyone listen?
I've mentioned it before, but I've heard, I've read accounts of orphaned babies in Russia. And you know how a baby cries and it's annoying at night, you know, three in the morning, Hudson wakes up and he cries out and you have to get out of bed to go change a diaper or feed him.
Well, did you know that a baby would eventually stop crying if no one ever responded?
There are babies, these aren't like purposeful experiments, these are just wicked, cruel situations in which when babies are neglected, seriously neglected, they stop crying. They stop with any expectation that help will come.
And here's Bartimaeus, blind. I heard a rumor. It's an assumption. We don't have the text of that, but the assumption is he heard some sort of talk about who this Jesus was. Otherwise, he's crying out to Jesus, son of David, with the question: would anyone listen?
And the surprise, the twist here is that it's not that Jesus listened or didn't listen. What does the crowd do?
This is striking. The crowd starts off, they sternly told him to shut up. Hey, we're trying to hear something here, man.
You're annoying me with all this have mercy on me calling. The very people surrounding Jesus tried to silence Bartimaeus' call for help. The man who was desperately seeking mercy, help, was told just be quiet, just stay down there. You know, maybe they flicked him a couple coins.
The very people surrounding Jesus became a barrier to someone trying to get at Jesus. Can we transition from 2,000 years ago to today and think about how that might look?
The people closest to Christ, trying to keep a needy sinner away from him. Bartimaeus refused to be silenced.
Look at verse 48. He kept crying out all the more. Why?
Well, because genuine faith is persistent. Genuine faith sees its need and won't be deterred.
Bartimaeus knew he was blind and he knew he couldn't heal himself. That's self-obvious, self-evident. He knew that if Jesus passed by without hearing him, he would remain as exactly as he was in his state of desperation. And his state of desperation made him persistent. I need help.
I need help. Help is here. I need you. I need you, son of David. I need you. Have mercy on me. This is often how God works. Many people never seek Christ because they never become desperate enough to realize their need.
They're comfortable, they're self-sufficient, they think they're doing fine. Others are shamed by the crowd into not coming to Jesus, thinking that they have to clean themselves up before they can come. They have to look pretty. They have to wear their church clothes.
They have to, you know, they have to have stopped sinning for maybe a week or two before they come to church. How's that working out for y'all?
Bartimaeus knew better. He knew that Jesus wasn't merely helpful. Jesus was necessary. And the church, this is not like a one-time thing.
The church history is filled with this. The prophets were told to keep quiet, they were thrown in jail, they were kicked out of the city. They were shamed and persecuted. The apostles were commanded not to even speak in Jesus' name.
Moral men with high respectability, even professing Christians, have pressured faithful Christians in every generation to keep their convictions private, to moderate their witness. Hey, you wanna go out to the Brown County Courthouse?
No, no, no, no, no. Read your Bible at home.
This softens uncomfortable truths of Scripture. Scripture often puts us in uncomfortable situations. It's always easier to go with the crowd and turn away from the wounded and the fringe. It's always easier to remain silent than to speak up.
It's always easier to compromise than to stand firm. Just think about, you know, okay, you can think about yourself, don't do this. You can think about yourself as Jesus, right, in this account, of the healer, the one desired, the one trying to be attracted to. You can think about yourself as Bartimaeus.
That's helpful, right?
Our desperate need for salvation, our desperate need to be healed. But probably the better place for all of us to think about ourselves is think about being in that crowd. Do we want to seek approval or do we want to be faithful?
It's easy to go along with the crowd, but faith doesn't ultimately take its cues from the crowd.
Notice how quickly the crowd changes, too. You can't read this passage without being struck by this. A moment earlier, they're like, hey, man, shut up. Be quiet. We don't want to hear your pleadings, your crawlings.
None of that. And then, as soon as Jesus stops and calls for him, the crowd changes, right?
Oh, hey, get up, get up, come on, let's go. He's calling you, come on. It's like the fickleness of the crowd.
I don't want to call it a sea change because I'm not a hopeful man generally. But there was a politician being interviewed in England recently, and he was asked about his changing positions on transgenderism. And so he used to be an advocate for LGBTQ, you know, all the rights for people to, for a man to identify as a woman and to be treated as a woman.
So, this was, you know, he wasn't, he was a proponent of this, he was an advocate of this, and he was on an interview. This was a BBC, it was, it was a pretty high-visibility interview. And he's totally changed his position. Now he thinks, you know, men are men and women should be protected.
Women's spaces should be protected from men being in those spaces. And the interviewer is like, What changed?
Like, did your understanding change?
And you know what changed?
He's starting to sense that the crowd is moving this direction. And so, all of a sudden, in order for him to maintain his power, what does he need to do?
He needs to move with the crowd, right?
This is, influencers are great at this.
If you want to be an influencer, you're basically a surfer. So a surfer has to watch a wave and they have to know where the wave's going. I'm not a surfer, but this is my understanding of surfing, right?
Okay, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, right?
You have to see the wave, you have to know where the wave's moving to and when it's going to break, and you have to be at the right point on the wave in order to catch it and go with it. That's what an influencer is, right?
The word influencer is not a great word because they're as much influenced as they are an influencer.
They're trying to see, okay, what seems to be the thing right now, and how do I stay just on the cusp, just on the cutting edge of the wave, so that I can ride it and spread my influence, right?
Scripture warns against the dangers of the crowd. This is Exodus 23, 2.
You shall not follow the masses in doing evil. Now, as we're thinking about this, remember, we are just on the cusp of the triumphal entry, where the crowd's saying, Hosanna, Hosanna, praise the Lord, the king has arrived. And then what's going to happen within days of the triumphal entry?
Crucify him! Crucify him! Do you see the fickleness of the crowd?
Right here with their response to Bartimaeus, we see it like instantaneously change. The crowd is fickle, the truth is not. Christ is not. This is why you must never build your faith on public approval, public opinion, religious trends, cultural respectability, or the approval of others.
There is one solid foundation to build upon, and it is Jesus Christ and his everlasting truth. Because what happens is, you try and change, and you try and go with the crowd, and what happens?
You end up on a foundation of sinking sand, and what happens to the house?
We live in a time where there's tremendous pressure to make Christianity respectable, respectable enough to be academic, respectable enough for political power, respectable enough for our neighbors, respectable enough that no one feels uncomfortable, especially not the person that you invited to be with you at church or to come into your home or to be at Morrill Days or sees you at the Brown County Courthouse.
That's one of the advantages of being a blind beggar: you already don't have power. The problem with power is the temptation to try and keep it. Bartimaeus was not concerned with being respectable, he's lying on the road. I mean, can you imagine trying to get dressed, being blind?
Imagine trying to eat, being blind?
Like, you're just covered in junk. Imagine trying to clean yourself up, do your hair in the morning. His concern was mercy, and a man who knows he needs mercy is hard to silence.
Because what does he have to lose?
There is a holy desperation in genuine faith. When a sinner understands his need and sees Christ as his only hope, the opinions of the crowd lose their power. The crowd can shout, the crowd can ridicule you, it can exclude you and say you can't be a part of our cool group, our runners group, our social media, Facebook moms group, our little homeschooling clique, our, you know, whatever it is, the crowd may pressure and threaten, but faith keeps on crying out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.
That persistence isn't just stubbornness, it's the fruit of believing that Christ alone can save. Who else should we go to?
You have the words of eternal life. And as soon as Jesus calls to him, Bartimaeus throws aside his cloak and jumps up.
And isn't that just a glorious thing?
Here's Jesus, the servant's offer. What do you want me to do for you?
And Jesus stops, and everyone else stops, and everyone else goes along, and Jesus opens up the door and says, Okay, what does mercy look like to you?
You want mercy?
What does mercy look like?
Teacher, master, he says, Rabboni. I want to regain my sight. And what happens is immediately he regains his sight.
It's always fascinating to see how Jesus works. Sometimes his healings are slow, sometimes they're remote. Here, go, your faith has made you well. And what happens next?
Go, your faith has made you well. And Bartimaeus begins following him on the road. Bartimaeus doesn't just receive the gift and return to his old life. He doesn't, I mean, we don't even hear that he goes and gets his coat that he threw off.
Maybe he did. Mercy leads to discipleship. If you receive mercy, if you receive help, then it would be wicked ingratitude to return to your old way of living. I think this is the most frustrating thing in counseling men and women, is to help them through a difficult situation and see them immediately return to their wicked way of living.
And they never say it like that, right?
They're never like, oh, I'm returning to my wickedness. They're like, oh, now thanks. I'm all patched up and buttoned up, and now I'm going to go back.
And you're like, no, listen, that was, you needed that, but there's more. Like, Bartimaeus got his sight restored, but that's not it. He doesn't just need his sight restored. What does he need?
He needs a new heart. He needs a new life. He needs to follow Jesus. What a disappointment Bartimaeus would have been if he would have just gone and picked up his cloak, laid back down, and said, Alms for the poor, I need some contribution.
Someone help me, right?
We would remember Bartimaeus very differently if that's what we saw, but we don't. His new sight led to following Jesus. We read about this consequence of faith in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 14 through 15.
The love of Christ controls us, that they who might live no longer, live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf. This is the new life. Have you received mercy? Then the love of Christ controls you.
The drive to know and follow and serve Jesus compels you. If Jesus has this power, this compassion, this mercy, if we really believe He does, who wouldn't follow him?
And so, what I see here, and what you should see in this passage, is Bartimaeus illustrates this simple pattern.
This religion thing is nice, but keep it in order, right?
You know, religion is what you do on Sunday morning. That's enough. Don't bring it into, you know, caring for your grandchild. Don't bring it into caring for your children.
Don't, you know, you should go and maybe spend an hour at church. That's enough. Don't be weird. Don't talk about that religious talk here. You know, you go do your religious thing and then you come hang out with us. We're going to play video games.
We're going to play board games together. True faith cries for mercy. True faith receives Christ's transforming work and then what?
And then follows Jesus afterwards.
This is the Christian life. The evidence of genuine faith is not perfection, it's reorientation, it's a change of allegiance. This is repentance. Repentance is to, instead of going this way, you turn and you follow Jesus. Instead of going your own way, of which there are 359 degrees, right?
Let's say Jesus is here at degree zero. You all know degrees. Sometimes I take for granted some things. I have kids going through math.
And so I think about weird things like degrees, right?
But then, if you go in a circle, there's 360 degrees, of which one of them is pointed towards Jesus. One of them is oriented towards Jesus. And there's all sorts of ways for us to be pointed in different directions.
The Christian life is a life spent following Jesus. That is discipleship. That following, that flows out of the recognition of God's mercy. Seeing the faith of Bartimaeus should make us persist in faith. It reminds us to keep crying out to Christ for mercy and to see that while the crowd may change and our circumstances may change, Jesus doesn't change.
He is the rock. Jesus hears those who call out to him for mercy.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would humble us, that instead of seeing ourselves as good and good enough, instead of seeing us as, instead of seeing myself as someone to go along with the crowd, that we would cling to Christ and let the crowd go their own way.
That to have Christ and to be rejected by man is eternal life. That the glories of our heavenly home, the glories of being an adopted son, the glories of being washed clean and having Christ's righteousness credited to our account are so much greater than a life where we are the star and popular, and surrounded by friends, friends who are fickle, whose love is really for themselves.
The crowd builds on the crowd's own energy. And how often the crowds turn to wickedness and evil. Father, let us persevere in faith, keeping you as the head, the head of the church, this body of which we are members. Let us work together, building each other up, loving each other, and clinging to the cross.
Help us, Father, in this. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.
July 5, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 10:35-45 · Gospel of Mark
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Date: Sunday, Jul 5, 2026 at 10:30 AM
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
June 28, 2026 · Alex McNeilly · Psalm 34 · Visiting Pastor
Scripture: Psalm 34
Speaker: Alex McNeilly
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.
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.
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?
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. 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.
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.
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.
June 21, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Philippians 2:19-22 · Father's Day
Scripture: Philippians 2:19-22
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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:
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.
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:
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:
Suffering reveals love.
Timothy was a front row participant in Paul’s gospel work.
“He served with me in the furtherance of the gospel.”
He:
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:
That is what made them kindred spirits.
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 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.
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:
This is how Jesus taught us to pray:
“Our Father… Your will be done…”
We are praying to do the Father’s will.
God gives us families so that:
We fail—but we continue in faith.
We need other men:
This is how we form true sons.
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.
June 14, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 10:28-34 · Gospel of Mark
Scripture: Mark 10:28-34
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
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
June 7, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 10:17-27 · Gospel of Mark
Scripture: Mark 10:17-27
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
May 31, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 10:13-16 · Gospel of Mark
Scripture: Mark 10:13-16
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
May 17, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 10:1-12 · Gospel of Mark
Scripture: Mark 10:1-12
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
May 10, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · 1 Corinthians 7:10-16 · Mother's Day
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 7:10-16
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin
Text: 1 Corinthians 7
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.
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.
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.
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:
Six days of work and one day of rest—that is God’s pattern.
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:
Every one of us started from a single cell.
That one cell—that was you.
This is a glorious thing.
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:
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.
“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.
What is a Christian mother’s duty toward children born under sin?
Scripture consistently calls parents to train their children.
1 Corinthians 7 addresses:
Becoming a Christian changes:
So Paul says:
If the unbelieving spouse consents to remain...
Because this introduces tension.
Paul says:
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.
Even unintentionally—including her sins as well as her faith.
Her duty does not depend on his agreement.
But she must still:
Her influence is strongest when:
Example:
“I am taking the children to church.”
This stands out precisely because it is not her general habit to resist.
Her life shows:
She submits—to God.
It is the husband who is out of alignment with God’s design.
She must navigate:
There is no formula.
It requires wisdom.
Some say:
“I don’t want to force my children.”
But this can lead to neglect:
Failure to discipline brings consequences.
If God gives you children, He calls you to:
Neglect risks judgment.
He who began a good work in you will perfect it.
God is at work in your obedience.
Yet:
God produces fruit—even in difficult homes.
You are called to:
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.
May 3, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 9:38–50 · Gospel of Mark
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.
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?"
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.
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:
That's all we know about this guy and all we're going to know.
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.
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.
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."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
April 26, 2026 · Daniel Coughlin · Mark 9:30–37 · Gospel of Mark
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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 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:
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.
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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
April 12, 2026 · Mark 9:1-13 · Gospel of Mark
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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.
November 2, 2025 · Pastor Max Curell · Ephesians 4:1-6 · Ordination
Speaker: Pastor Max Curell
Date: November 2, 2025
Thank you. Good morning. How's everyone today? My name is Max Curell. I'm from Bloomington, Indiana. I'm one of the pastors at Trinity Reformed Church there. We have quite a history with the Coughlins.
Not as much history as you have, but we do have a long history with them. It's a real privilege for me to be able to speak to you this morning and to share from God's Word with you. I've got to meet some people already today, and that's been good.
Have you met anyone new today? Anyone meet anyone new today? It's going to be easy today because there are a lot of people here that are guests. It's difficult for me to meet new people, as I don't know if you have that same problem. I always have a little bit of difficulty just cold turkey meeting people.
Not simple. It would be a lot nicer if I knew I had something in common with them that I could start right off with. I met David, and I found out that he grew up on a farm, a dairy farm, which made it easy for me. Then we started talking dairy farms.
You might go to a convention of plumbers and you would say, "I've got something in common with all these guys. I can talk about plumbing," or a homeschooling convention, or whatever kind of thing you might be at. It would be easy to sit down and talk to people.
But here we are today, a very diverse group of people from a lot of different places, a lot of different backgrounds. And we are here meeting together, connecting, and we are groups of God's people who have come together in this place. This is what gives us an advantage.
We may be from Kansas, we may be from Indiana, or other foreign, exotic parts, but if we share in Jesus Christ, we have something significant in common. And this morning I chose a text from Ephesians chapter 4 because I wanted to talk about things that we all have in common. I hope that we all have in common.
It's a text that's full of a lot of things, and you could hover on just one word. It's short verses, but just one word in any part of the text you could hover on for a long time. I'm not going to hover on them for a long time.
But you could, so if I don't say the thing that you're looking for today, I'm sorry. We can talk about it later. That'd be great. There's just so much packed into these six verses of God's Word.
Paul begins it by referencing his imprisonment for the gospel. He was in prison for preaching Jesus Christ to Jews and to Gentiles. And so this is one of what are called the prison epistles, where he wrote epistles to Ephesians, to Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon while he was there in prison. And he had some time because he was in prison.
So let's read together God's Word from Ephesians 4, starting with verse 1.
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you this morning for your Word, for this particular word from you.
Father, we ask this morning that you would open our eyes and our hearts to understand your Word, and that through it we might find life in Jesus Christ, and that we might be changed for following you more specifically, more directly, more wholly with our lives. Help us, O Lord, and thank you, we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
So Paul says, "I therefore urge you." And pastors always want to say, whenever you read "therefore," you want to find out what it's there for. "I therefore urge you."
This "therefore" is talking about the first three chapters of the letter that are expounding on the blessings derived from us being in Christ.
He says in Ephesians 1:3:
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places."
"In Christ" is a theme throughout the New Testament. We did a summer Sunday school class about this theme at our church. It was a great time because it was all about the reality of being in Christ, what theologians call union with Christ, that we are united to Him. And it was a wonderful time.
All through the New Testament, you find these words. If you don't believe me, go home, get on your phone app of your Bible, and do a search for "in Christ," the words "in Christ," and you'll see that it's dozens and dozens of times it's talked about.
It was just a common reality. It was something that they understood of themselves more than they understood the name of being Christians. They understood themselves as being the people in the primitive or early church. They understood themselves as being the people who were in Christ. This is something that's true of everyone who belongs to Jesus Christ.
And this idea of spiritual union is so important. It is profoundly important. And I have some I call "old dead guys." They're like old theologians that have been gone for a long time, but we like to read the old dead guys because they say a lot of really good things, right?
They're dead, but they're not. They're with God now, right? But a lot of them talk about this idea of spiritual union. And one of them says:
"It is now very generally neglected. The expression spiritual union is unknown in most professing Christian circles. And even where it is employed, it is given such a protracted meaning as to take in only a fragment of its precious truth."
Protracted means it's like deferred. It's a deferred meaning. It's understood to be in the future.
We're all thinking about our union with Christ being something for heaven. That's what it's all about. When he's saying, no, this is something we can believe and enjoy and understand now, knowing that we can taste and see right now that God is good, as it says in First Peter, or that we may partake in and taste of God's glory now.
Have you guys ever sung that song, "It Is Joy Unspeakable and Full of Glory"? Is that something they've ever sung here? Maybe that's too, I don't know, that must be too Michigan. That's my background.
Joy unspeakable and full of glory, full of glory, full of glory.
Joy unspeakable and full of glory.
And the half has never yet been told.
Okay? But it's something that we understand now.
First Peter 1:8 says:
"Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him, and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory."
This is what we have.
Another one of those guys named Matthew Henry said:
"There is much of heaven and the future glory in the present joys of improved Christians. Their faith removes the causes of sorrow and affords the best reasons for joy."
So here in chapter 4, the apostle marks a transition from those things that we have from God into some things, exhortations of how we should live, how we should comport ourselves since we are in Jesus Christ. How should we then live?
It says, "I urge you." I was thinking about this word, "urging," and we don't think about urging. Have you urged anyone to do anything this week? Have you done any urging?
We do a lot of general kinds of calls to people, right? But urging is not a general kind of anonymous call to something. One might invite a friend to an event, but that's very different from pleading with them, urging that they be there.
There's an intimate pleading involved in what Paul is saying because he feels a sense of responsibility for the people that he's writing to. And what does he urge them to do? He urges them to walk in a manner worthy of the calling. This is a common theme in Paul's epistles.
Common theme about urging men to walk worthily, worthily.
I asked my wife when we were driving over through, I can't remember where we were. We were in Missouri, yeah. It was in Missouri, not Illinois. I asked her, "Do you think that people in the church today urge people to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord?"
We had a long talk about whether we thought people urge one another to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. I won't tell you how the talk went.
I can say this: We all in the church do a lot of urging. We do a lot of urging people to do things. I'm not sure how much urging we do to get them to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, but we do a lot of urging to walk in some manner, right?
Christians are supposed to accommodate themselves to the gospel and the glory to which they're called. This is our vocation. This accommodating oneself to the gospel is what Paul goes on to talk about as he goes into verse 2.
He says you're supposed to do this with humility. You have humility. And he's about to go, in the book of Ephesians, in the rest of chapter 4, he's about to talk about gifts that God gives to the church.
And he does this in other passages of Scripture where he talks about gifts. But he starts off by saying, "Hey, have humility," because you don't want to go into the idea of gifts as a proud group of people.
He says this in First Corinthians because the Corinthians were a proud group of people, and they were in a lot of trouble because they were proud about their own gifts and they were lording it over other ones in the church with their gifts.
He says the same thing in Romans 12, just before he talks about God giving gifts. He says:
"For by the grace given to me I say to every one among you, that he should not think of himself more highly than he ought to think."
Don't think of yourself as exalted. Paul talks then about these assignments of gifts.
I enjoy sometimes in worship services looking over the congregation back home and just watching people as they worship. Because it's interesting to see. I have the privilege of knowing a lot about the people in our church.
I know a lot of the things that they've come from. I know a lot of the things that they're going through now. I know a lot of their pain, and I watch them as they're worshiping. And it's wonderful to see them be self-forgetful. They're just there, loving God, and they're not noticing the people around.
There are exceptions. There are people who will be noticing people around them, but for the most part, they're self-forgetful, and they're just saying to themselves, "I'm just happy to be here. I'm just happy to be here. God made me alive in Jesus Christ. It's a privilege for me to be here."
They're not trying to see themselves as set apart with some kind of superiority. There is a great humility in the realization that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, as it says in Galatians, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. We are all one in Jesus Christ.
We have this thing in common. Remember, here's a bunch of people. Here we are near Sabetha, right? Now I know where these places are. I was on Google.
I looked at this church building from Google Street Maps. You can read the building dedication stone in the front of the church using Google Street Maps, right? But from all of these places, here we are together. What do we have in common?
Well, if we are Christians, if we have received the benefit of Jesus Christ, we have in common God's salvation of us through Jesus Christ. Nobody should be superior. Nobody's better. We are all one in Christ Jesus. Humility helps us to just be happy to be here.
We're just happy to be here.
He goes on. He says, "And gentleness," or meekness, "with patience." Meekness is a quality of mild-manneredness and self-control. Mild-manneredness and self-control.
It can be for men or for women. They even talk about this being a characteristic of animals, animals that are trained. If you ever worked with horses, you know that horses are very powerful. You don't want to take any advantages and make any assumptions about horses when you're working with them because they're powerful creatures.
But you know that horses, when they approach a man, if they approach a man and they are not wild, and they trust that man or woman, they approach them, they have what's understood to be this idea of meekness, gentleness.
We all of us have the ability to be lording and coming on strong, but this isn't that characteristic. This is a gentleness where we're not approaching in aggression. If you've ever trained an animal, you should understand this isn't how you train an animal. But it's certainly not how God's people should act toward one another, with aggression.
But he says, when you do it, do it with patience. Not just being meek, but be meek for a long time.
It's interesting. I'm not a big Greek and Hebrew scholar, but this is an easy thing to see in Greek and Hebrew. In the Greek, right here, when it talks about patience, the literal words really can be translated, "take long breaths."
Because when we get anxious, we go. But if we're not anxious and we're patient, we're probably breathing.
In the Hebrew, it's different. It literally is translated in some places, "having a long nose." Well, why? Because if someone is impatient, what happens when someone is impatient and they get angry is that their nose flares and turns red and can be fiery. So to be patient is to have a nose that doesn't get red fast. Okay?
We're supposed to be meek toward one another with patience.
It takes patience to live together with other people. It takes patience because we're sinful and we're not perfect. We're moving forward. Gentleness with patience.
Then he says, "bearing with one another in love."
We have groups that meet in homes back home, and it's a place for family atmosphere, the kind of "I know you well" kind of relationships in the church, right?
And so when we have these groups, people will meet together and they'll be in a group for six to nine months, and then sometimes they'll come and say, "You know, I'm kind of tired. I'd like to try some new people." And we try to encourage them not to stop now and try new people.
Why? Well, because after six to nine months, you really get to know some people, and they really get to know you, and they're getting on your nerves, and you're getting on their nerves. And finally, there's an opportunity for some real work to be done in your life. And at that time, what do you want to do?
You want to skip off and find somebody else, right?
Well, this commitment to bearing with one another in love is like that. We want to shoulder the weight of relationship and responsibility for one another in love. And that means going through some things that might not be easy with that person, or they might be going through something that might not be easy that's represented by us.
And so we do this with love, joined together with love, bearing with one another in love, urging one another on in the faith.
Verse 3 says that we should be "eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." And "above all these things put on love," Colossians 3:14 says, "which binds everything together in perfect harmony."
The unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
In this sentence, Paul will tie together the attributes, the accommodations of our living worthy in the gospel to which we've been called. He's tying that together with the rest of the passage, to the truths around which the Spirit arranges us in unity.
So here's how we should act. And this unity should come to us. We have the Spirit who's living in us. This unity should come to us.
Now we should act this way, according to the gospel, walking in a way worthy of the gospel. Now here are the things that we confess together, the things that we, this is one of those places where I'm saying these words. It's one and two words, but they represent so much, and I can only say just a little bit about each one.
Verse 4: There is one body and one Spirit.
We are one body in Jesus Christ. This is God's church, His invisible church. Those people who are believers in Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter if they're from Indiana or from Kansas, from wherever, it doesn't matter.
They are one. We are in Christ. We're not many bodies. We are one body. There are not many spirits.
There is the one Holy Spirit that dwells in that one body.
And Jesus talks about this in John 17 in His high priestly prayer. He says in verse 21:
"I pray that they may all be one, all of us, all of us, Bloomington, Indiana, Morrill, Sabetha, Kansas, all one. I pray that they will all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are one, I in them, You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me."
This is a huge, huge prayer made by Christ concerning the church, its unity, and the life together of its people.
That they may become perfectly one. This is meant to be a testimony to the world that the Father sent the Son and loved His church as His own child, Jesus Christ. This is for us. We are united with God in Jesus Christ.
This is again part of that theme of union with Christ. Have you ever thought to yourself, "I am united to God. I am in God. I am in Jesus Christ"?
He said, "That they may be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us." Have you thought about yourself being in God? You're in God, united to Him, united to God within Jesus Christ.
C. S. Lewis said, "Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever?"
Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? But this is what Jesus prayed for the church, that they would be one. There is one body, one Spirit.
Just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.
We all hope for things, don't we? We could go through this room and think, well, what is it that we would hope for most? And I think over time, as we would talk, we would come to a biblical understanding of what we all hope for the most. If we asked one another and talked together, we would distill it down.
And we would decide that what we really hope is that we hope for that day when we'll be present with the Lord. It should be what we hope for. It should be what we hope for more than anything we hope for in this world. We should be hoping for the day to be present with the Lord.
This is the hope. We hope.
"Blessed be the God," it says in 1 Peter 1, "blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you."
Finally, he says:
"Though you've not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not now see Him," as we read earlier, "you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
We have a great hope.
Romans 8 says that the creation groans because it's oppressed by the situation of sin and the fall. And then it says that we ourselves groan inwardly as we eagerly wait for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. This is our hope, the great hope that belongs to our call.
We hope for one day being done with this body. This body causes me a lot of problems. It's the result of sin. This body is contaminated.
It causes me lots of problems. God's made me a promise: He's going to give me a new body. That I will be with Him and I'll have a new body. And I live in the hope for that day, but not just for the new body.
That's just like, what? The side dish, right? No, I'll be present with God. I will be present with God, enjoying Him, fully enjoying Him, without distraction.
There's one Lord. One Lord Jesus Christ. He's the head of the church. Every benefit flows from Christ.
The Puritans used to like to create charts to show how God did the salvation and the damnation of men. There were orders of salvation and damnation, and one of those Puritans did this. It's a chart called The Order and Causes of Salvation and Damnation. It was done by a man named William Perkins.
And what he does, you see this chart, it's just a visual chart, literally, it's a chart. And right down the center of that chart is a spine. And that spine is Jesus Christ.
And every single benefit that God gives to His people, every single one, comes directly from Jesus Christ. There is no benefit that does not come from Jesus Christ.
Nothing:
Nothing comes to us from God that is a good gift that doesn't come to us through Jesus Christ. Okay? There isn't any à la carte. "I'll take a little of this."
There's a single meal. And we see this actually demonstrated when we take communion, when we have the Lord's Supper. We realize that nothing comes to us except through Jesus Christ.
There's a single meal for us in Jesus Christ. He is the vine; we are the branches. Every ounce of energy, every ounce of life, every benefit from God the Father comes and flows through Him. He is the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Him.
There is one Lord.
There's one faith. Romans says, Romans 3, well, all through Romans, it talks about our faith in Jesus Christ that brings us righteousness. No one is righteous by the works of the law.
I was speaking with a young college student a couple of weeks ago. It was after IU won their last football game at home. Downtown, some guys had been talking with him. They brought him over to talk to me. We were sitting on a bench.
He was telling me about how he had come to IU to study, how when he left home he had gone to church, how he was working hard to please God, and how he had kind of stopped working to please God, and how he was miserable. And he had been crying for like, as he talked, he had been crying in front of others, but he was sitting with me, crying with me for 10 minutes, just crying about his life and where he was.
And I tried to explain to him what it says in Second Corinthians 5:21:
"For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."
I was trying to explain to him the righteousness that God gives us as a gift through Jesus Christ.
He just holds this righteousness out in Jesus Christ. Here, look at this. And I said to him, "It sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?" Because all he was talking about was how he was working, how he was working, how he was working.
And he looked at me and he's shaking his head. "Yeah, that sounds too good to be true." That God would give this as a gift to you. But this is the faith that we have.
We have faith in God, in Jesus Christ, and the offer and the gift of Jesus Christ for salvation. This is where our righteousness comes. By faith, we are given righteousness.
One faith.
One baptism. There's one baptism. It has a lot of applications in our lives.
That we are baptized with water, but that isn't going to save us. None of us will be saved just because we got baptized with water.
If we're not baptized and filled with God's Holy Spirit, if we don't receive the Spirit of life, we won't have any salvation. This is the baptism that is of the highest importance, the reality of baptism in that God actually gives us His Holy Spirit and makes us alive through Him.
There's one baptism: Indiana, Kansas. We have all these things in common. Yes, we grew up on a dairy farm. That's not important, though.
What we have in common are these realities, these things from God that we gather around and order our lives.
There is one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Matthew Henry says:
"One God who owns all the true members of the church for His children. He's the Father of all such by special relation, as He is the Father of all men by creation. He is above all, by His essence and with respect to the glorious perfections of His nature. And as He has dominion over all creatures and especially over His church, and through all, by His providence upholding and governing them, and in you all, in all believers, in whom He dwells as His holy temple by His Spirit and special grace."
This is God.
Romans 11:33:
"Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, how inscrutable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor, or who has given a gift to Him that he might be repaid? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever."
Forever and ever.
Did you grow up singing the song "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know"? Do they sing that in Kansas?
Okay. So I'll ask you, what about the Father? What about the Father? Jesus says in that high priestly prayer that He wants the church to know that the Father loves them even as He loves Jesus Himself. What about the Father?
I ask people this question. I read a book recently and it actually outlined this question. I ask people this question once in a while now:
Did Jesus die because the Father loves us, or does the Father love us because Jesus died?
Now, did Jesus die because the Father loves us, or does the Father love us because Jesus died?
You might make an argument that both are true in some way, but right on the surface, though, immediately you should have thought of a couple of verses. Right? John 3:16, you probably thought, "For God so loved the world that He gave His Son."
I find in conversation with many people that they're sure in their heads that Jesus died because the Father loves them. But I also find that when I probe a little into their convictions of their hearts, they're not nearly as sure that the Father actually loves them.
And I've thought a lot about why. And I think it's a lot to do with this idea of one faith. It's a lot to do with the reality that people have a befuddled view of their justification. Down inside they're mixed up. They're confused between working to earn Christ as opposed to resting in Christ.
And this becomes a constant problem with them. They just:
And you say, well, do we consciously think that? Well, I don't think we do a lot of times. I think unconsciously in our hearts, we really think that we're going to get God's approval by things we do.
Even though we know that Jesus Christ is a gift from a Father who loves to give His Son to save sinners, we still do this. And what happens because of it is we have the problem of perhaps never really experiencing what the psalmist calls the joy of God's salvation.
It sounds too good to be true, but it's still true that God has done this because He loves us.
We don't have a "Father Loves Me, This I Know" song, do we? But I think the Scripture is filled with it. The Father loves me. The Father loves me.
And this is why we have the ability to have justification in Jesus Christ and salvation.
So, brothers and sisters, how do we maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace today? How do Max from Indiana and David from Morrill, how do we do this?
Well, God's Word shows us how we do it. We live lives worthy of the calling to which we've been called, worthy of the gospel that we have received. This is how we live together. And it's beautiful.
Is it possible? Is it possible? Forget about the Indiana people, they're all going to go home.
Is it possible for the Morrill and Sabetha people to work this way? Right? This is what Paul says. "I urge you. I urge you." This is very, very important.
Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we've been called. Rehearse our shared participation in Jesus Christ and reflect on all the benefits that flow from Him.
So whether we're, you know, I was looking at state nicknames, people in the states. The Hoosiers are Indiana, you know the Hoosiers, and the Jayhawkers are Kansas, you know the Jayhawkers.
If you try to figure out where the name comes from in Indiana, good luck, because the best possible scenario isn't very flattering.
At least with the Jayhawkers, there was some gunpowder involved. Right?
But we're here today, whether from Indiana or from Kansas, joined through the Coughlins, right? Well, no, I'm schnookering you. That's only the occasion that brings us together.
We're here because we're joined through the great mystery of Jesus Christ and His bride. That's why we're here today. Okay? And this is what we celebrate together. This is what we know together.
Let us therefore together maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Would you pray with me?
Father, we pray that You would make these words come into us deeply, that we would be challenged to love and patience, long-suffering, caring for one another, bearing one another's burdens, and that we would do so seeing the way in which You have provided for us in Jesus Christ, seeing the ways that we have agreed together in the truths that You have put forth before us, living together in love, so that we may be a testimony to the world of Your absolute magnificence.
We pray and thank You, and pray this in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
November 2, 2025 · Pastor Tim Bayly · John 21:15-17 · Ordination
Speaker: Pastor Tim Bayly
Date: November 2, 2025
Date: Sep 23, 2026 at 9:07 PM
Our scripture text this afternoon. I wrote morning. Our scripture text this afternoon is John chapter twenty-one, verses fifteen to seventeen. So if you have a smartphone or a Bible, you may look at it.
If you don't, you can just listen.
It's very interesting to think back that in the church they never followed along in a Bible. It was audible. And you don't think about that, but I often feel that people listen more closely when they're not looking at the text. And so it's not an it's not come it's it's not a problem for us not to come with Bibles, but I appreciate it if you have one.
This is John chapter twenty one, verses twelve to seventeen. This is the word of God, and it is eternally true. So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? When our daughter, our firstborn, was probably three, two, about three probably, one day I looked at her and I said, Hey Heather, who do you love more, mommy or daddy?
And she sat there and she looked at me. She looked at her mother. That's a bad question. That's kind of what Jesus is saying here.
Do you love me more than these? He said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, Tend my lambs. He said to him again a second time, Simon, son of John, do you love me?
He said to him, Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, Shepherd my sheep. He said to him the third time, Simon, son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, Do you love me?
And he said to him, Lord, you know all things. You know that I love you. Jesus said to him, Tend my sheep. ## Opening Prayer
Let's pray.
Father God, we are very, very self deceived.
We're oppressed by the flattery of socials, by advertising. Some of us are oppressed are flattered by our wives. And Father, we are weak, we are sinful. And so each time we come to the Word, we're convicted anew of our need for the work of the Holy Spirit to make us holy.
We want, Father, to give your Son glory here in this church, in our homes, in our marriages, and so we ask now that the words of my mouth and the meditation of every heart here will be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. We ask this in Jesus' name.
Amen. ## Tend My Lambs, Shepherd My Sheep
If I were to write a book on the pastorate to which Dr. Daniel Coughlin is being ordained today. I would title the book Tend My Lambs or I would title it Shepherd My Sheep, and it's basically the same statement. Tend My Lamb, Shepherd My Sheep.
You know, you could say, tend my ewes, tend my rams, tend my lambs, shepherd my sheep.
It doesn't really matter which title to choose, the meaning is clear either way. And so here we have an exchange between Peter and Jesus. And when was this exchange happening? When did it happen?
Well, shortly after Jesus was raised from the dead by his Father, God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, that's when it happened. Jesus had just risen from the dead. But how had Jesus died? Well, he died on a Roman cross outside the city of Jerusalem, and he had been nailed to that cross by Roman soldiers whose governor had given the command.
Why had that governor given the command? Well, he gave the command because the Jews had hounded him. Abo killing Jesus until he gave in and did the deed. The Jews, along with their elders and their priests and their scribes, had been in a rage crying out to Pilate to crucify Jesus.
And Pilate knew why. We read in the Gospel of Mark that Pilate knew Jesus was innocent. Pilate knew Jesus was innocent. And that the Jews and their elders and religious leaders wanted him dead because they were jealous of him.
We read in Mark 15, verse 10 about Pilate, it says, For he was aware that the chief priests had handed him over because of envy. Jesus had done many, many things that showed he worked in and with the power of God, healing the lame, giving sight to the blind, curing the lepers, feeding the five thousand with a couple fish and loaves of bread, calming the storm, casting out demons, and raising the dead, and cleansing the temple.
But at the center of it all was his preaching. Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God and repentance. Corrupt religious leaders always hate repentance. I never realized that until I was writing this sermon.
But if you're a corrupt religious leader, you don't want the consciences of your people awakened. It's inconvenient. It's messy. They come to you crying for 20 minutes.
Did you hear Max this morning? And you can't manage that with Mass and last rites and indulgences.
How do you manage a conscience that's afflicted and that is mourning? What do you do? You tell them, well, go get baptized and then take the Lord’s Supper. It does not cut it.
A wounded conscience that is deeply aware that it has offended God and will be judged for that has to be healed with the blood of Jesus. And religious leaders don't want to be dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit. I would often say to my congregation, you know, what you really want me to do as your pastor is to protect you from the Holy Spirit.
And if you don't understand that, you don't understand the deviousness of your heart. The Holy Spirit never protects our pride. Any of you ever met the Holy Spirit? Was it when you were at the height of your pride and you were able to keep your pride?
You know, I think of the times when I'm most aware of the work of God in my heart through his Holy Spirit. And it's the times when I am absolutely unaware of myself. I'm not thinking about how I look, you know, because usually I don't look good when the when God is working with me.
Usually I'm confessing my sin. And what a relief it is to do that. And so here Jesus was calling men and women to come under conviction of sin. What do you think the Sermon on the Mount was?
The Sermon on the Mount was Jesus taking the law that they knew and then saying it's much worse than you thought it was, because you heard that you shall not commit adultery. Any of you old enough to remember when Jimmy Carter talked about this in Playboy magazine? You know, they're asking him about his his you know his faithfulness to his wife and stuff.
And he says, Well, you know, I have to admit I've committed adultery many times in my life, and I'm ashamed to admit, but I have looked on women with lust. And I just, I think I was in high school at the time. And I just thought, how wonderful to have the holiness of God proclaimed by a candidate for the presidency, confessing his sexual sin.
Jesus went through the Sermon on the Mount. You've heard it said that you shall not commit adultery. I say to you, a man that looks on a woman with lust in his eyes has committed adultery in his heart. Jesus didn't come to make things lighter for us, he came to make them heavier.
Jesus came to drive us to the point of despair about the sinfulness of our hearts. And then those people came to him and said, help. And that was the act of faith which converted them from dead to resurrected, that gave them new life. That was how they were born again, as they despaired of ever doing enough to make themselves good enough for God, and they came to Jesus and had faith in Jesus' righteousness.
And so of course the priests, of course the pastors, of course the elders hated Jesus. So the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees and everybody were. They were all the religious leaders. Of course they hated Jesus, because everywhere he went, there were thousands and thousands.
When he went down by the shore, there wasn't enough space for him to stand, so he had to get out in the boat and go out on the water. It was the only way he had space to stand and teach. His mother and his brothers came to see him in the house.
Remember that? They couldn't get in the house, couldn't get near, so they sent a message in. Jesus' entire life was people who were burdened with sin and sickness and disease and demons. They brought it all to him.
And you know the thing that was the summit, the top, when he dealt with a person, was not when he healed them.
You know that. It was when he said, Your sins are forgiven. It's so beautiful to see Jesus with people allowing them to bring their sins to him. And so the religious leaders saw all the thousands, they saw Jesus able to stop storms, raise the dead, you know, cleanse lepers, and they hated him.
And they hated him, and they hated him and hated him and hated him. The established religious leaders. And so Pilate at the very end, he says, well, he hasn't done anything wrong. It's just envy.
You know, he was a government worker.
He knew what was going on with the masses, you know. And so he said, you know, let me give you let me give you Jesus. no, no, we'll take the guy that was bringing in the kingdom of God with an insurrection. Barabbas. That's why Barabbas was going to be executed.
You know, that he was going to bring in the kingdom of God. Oh, yes, oh yeah, buddy. And so he said, You want me to give you Jesus? They said, No, give us Barabbas.
And they started yelling. And it was the religious leaders that got them to yell. They wanted the blood of Jesus. The Jews and their leaders, both, okay, not just the leaders.
And so they screamed, they cried out, they shouted, crucify him, crucify him. And Pilate gave in to them, and he sent Jesus outside the city to be crucified. But three days later, God raised his only begotten son from the dead. That was the last word.
And now here he was on the shore of the Sea of Galilee serving breakfast he had cooked to a few of his disciples whom he'd called in from the lake where they were fishing. Do you guys remember the sweet thing about that scene? You know, Jesus has been killed, now he's resurrected, and they see him on the shore.
Do you remember what happens? I always love this. Any of you, any of you remember kids? Do you remember what happens?
They're out in the boat fishing, they haven't caught anything, and so they see Jesus. And do you remember what happens? Come on. Huh?
What? Somebody speak up a Yeah, I know he's talking, I can't hear him. Yes, cast your net on the right side.
Yeah, very good. and of course they cast it on the other side and there were no—how many? Two hundred? A lot. Yeah, a lot.
It almost sank the boat.
But do you remember what else happened? You do based remember. They like the it was Jesus. Yeah, but come on.
It should be a full. You're letting me down. Do you remember? Someone jumped in.
Yes! And who was the song? Of course! Peter!
It's irrepressible! He's like he's like he's like Maria, the sound of music, he's like Tiggering.
Like Tigger in Winnie the Pooh. bounce, bounce, you know. Peter sees Jesus, and can you imagine how he felt? You'll hear a little bit of that. And so Peter jumps out of the boat.
But what does he do before he jumps out? He takes off his cloak and jumps into the water because he's going to get there before the other disciples go back. I just look people. It's like he stops.
And so he's a man. He's not a woman. That's so sad. Let's speak dignified.
But not either. He's not dignified, he whips off his coat and he just jumps into the water because he wants to be with Jesus. Now it gets more interesting.
At the end of breakfast, Jesus gets the fish. Jesus catches the fish. They catch them. They bring them in.
Jesus cooks the fish.
At the end of breakfast, what happens is that three times Jesus asked Peter if he loves him. Okay? And if you listen to people preaching on this text, you will hear them telling you that the reason that Peter that the reason he asked him three times, he used three different words, and then Peter uses different words, and they'll go off and off about this word for love and that word for love and the other word for love.
And there's some difference between the words. But the English word love is a good translation of all the words. Okay? It's okay that it just says love every time.
Instead of focusing on the words changing and then going back to the previous word, they come back to the words for love and then they repeat them.
Let's focus on Jesus' repetition of the question. The question. Peter, do you love me? If your father or husband asked you if you loved him, and then if he repeated the question three times, what would you know? Well, certainly you wouldn't just think, but you would know that he was trying to make a point.
And that point would be that your love was in question. Right? You don't ask somebody if they love you three times in a row unless you're not quite sure. And you know, I want to say I didn't write this down, but do you know how vulnerable a pastor is when he cares for you as his flock?
That is the currency of pastoral ministry is that the pastor is endlessly putting himself in a position that you can reject him. And that you're not rejecting him, but you're rejecting his master who sent him to you. And so here Jesus is obviously indicating to Peter the wound that Peter gave to him.
And so he was asking three times, and if you were the one that your dad or your wife or your husband was asking three times, do you love me? You would do everything you could to heal the breach in your relationship, and you would keep answering, yes, honey, yes, honey, I love you.
I do love you. yes, you know me, you know I love you. And every time that Jesus repeated this question, you would repeat your answer if you were Peter. You would know what you had done. You would know how you had hurt Jesus, how you had sinned against him, you would know why he wanted you to tell him that you loved him.
Telling him over and over again, you would feel his hurt, his pain, you would feel it acutely. And you would hear him putting his pain on display. And you would wish you had never sinned against him. Now, what had Peter done to hurt Jesus?
What sin had he committed against Jesus? Well, just before Jesus' crucifixion, Peter had been eating at a table with Jesus and the other disciples, when Jesus had announced to them all that one of them was going to betray him. And all the disciples by responding saying, no, it's not going to be me.
Not me. Mark 14, beginning with verse 18, as they were reclining at the table and eating, Jesus said, Truly I say to you that one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me. And they began to be grieved and to say to him one by one, surely not I. It was inconceivable to them that they could do so, that they would do so.
But it was particularly inconceivable to Peter that he would do so. He was the stalwart one. He was their leader. He was the one who had first confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the Most High God.
He was the one who had served as their spokesman, time after time, including at one of the most crucial critical moments that many of the followers of Jesus had turned away from him and left. We read that a particular moment when Jesus talked to them about his body and blood, it says that many of his followers left him at that time.
And after that Jesus turned to his disciples to ask them plaintively, do you remember what he asked them? Kids? Any of you remember? Do you know your Bibles?
Come on, do you remember?
Oh no. No, I don't remember. I was a man who might remember. But I'm trying to get you the spirits.
Do you remember? Any of you remember?
Do you remember? Jesus said to the disciples, Are you going to leave me too? Do you remember what I said about the vulnerability of ministry? Are you going to leave me too?
You remember when the apostle Paul says in Galatians, if I become your enemy by telling you the truth.
Isn't that a beautiful statement of the Apostle Paul? If I become your enemy by telling you the truth. In John 6, 67 to 69, so Jesus said to the twelve, You do not want to go away also, do you? And who do you think it was that answered him?
Huh? Come on, tell me. Lower yourself. Yeah right on dude.
Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.
We have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God. Now listen, if you're a disciple of Christ today, you have joined Peter in this cry. Lord, if we were to leave you, to whom shall we go. You alone have the words of eternal life, and we have put our faith in you alone.
And so Peter was the stalwart one. Peter was the leader. Peter was the strong man. Peter was the faithful one who didn't quiver or flinch.
When others held back, Peter jumped forward. Peter jumped in the water. Later, after Jesus announced that one of them would betray him in the upper room, and they all had denied it. They sang a hymn, and then they went out to the Mount of Olives.
And out there on the Mount of Olives we read that Jesus addressed the issue again. It says in Matthew 26:30–35 after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, You will all fall away because of me this night.
For it is written I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered. But after I have been raised I will go ahead of you to Galilee. But who do you think said it? Who do you think said it?
Come on. Peter. Peter.
Peter. But Peter said to him, even though all may fall away because of you, I will never fall away. Jesus said to him, Truly I say to you, that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny me three times. Three times.
But Peter wasn't done, was he?
When Peter dug a hole, it was a deep hole. And so Peter then says, Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And all the disciples said the same thing too. Oh my goodness.
Now we begin to understand this exchange between Jesus and Peter, don't we?
Three times. Do you love me? No. Oh my goodness.
Jesus didn't say to him, I told you so. He just asked him three times, which is just a little bit short of I told you so, you know. Now listen, here's where I get deadly.
Okay? I have a point. And I want to say to you that like you and me, Peter is so very sure of himself. Peter is so sure of himself.
Peter knows his commitments, he knows his faith, he knows his strength. never, Lord, impossible.
Even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. Oh yes, we know ourselves, don't we? We are so very strong. Jesus doesn't need to worry about us.
We're a superior woman. Look at our children, they tell you how superior we are as a mother. We are a godly woman. I'm a strong man.
I have godly children. I am a godly man. God doesn't need to worry about me. I'm good to go.
And so what came of it all? Well, all the disciples fell away. Jesus was arrested. He was placed in bonds, and all his disciples abandoned him.
That's what happened. You see, we really don't know ourselves.
And that's why Jesus sends us pastors. We don't know ourselves. And socials are not gonna help us know ourselves. Because the purpose of socials are to flatter us in our particular sphere of conviction.
And you can find endless spheres of conviction on socials, and each one you go in, and if that's your area, you will be flattered because everybody else will tell you things that you really agree with. That's flattery. I am not telling any of you what you agree with right now.
Not one of you. I know that. I'm trying to do that. And that's the nature of the word of God.
God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts, as high as the heavens are above the earth.
And every single time we read the Bible, if we read the Bible with eyes that see and ears that hear, it always goes against our grain. Because we're not God. And pastors bring us the Word of God in a way that convicts us of sin and calls us to repentance.
Day after day, when they preach to us, that's what they do. That's what John the Baptist did. John the Baptist came preaching what? Flattery?
He came preaching repentance.
What did Jesus come preaching? He came preaching that the kingdom of God was upon us. Therefore, repent. We are called to repentance.
That is an act of faith.
And I tell people: you want to know what the happiest moments of a pastor's life are? There's nothing that makes a pastor happier than when someone comes to him and confesses their sin. It's just such a joy. And you say, well, you're kind of perverted, you know, why is it a joy?
You just, you know, are you are you a sadist? You know, do you want people in pain? You like people coming to you and crying? And the answer is yes.
I want people coming to me and crying. Do you know that pastors generally can't stand doing weddings and are happy to do funerals? This is basically true. I mean, I can Daniel can't tell you that yet, but in a couple years he'll tell me.
It's true, isn't it? Do you know why we don't like doing weddings? We don't like doing weddings because the hopes and fears of all the years are met at you that moment. I mean, and especially the bride's mother. oh, every pastor has stories of bride's mothers.
I always used to bring my rehearsals to it to the beginning by saying, Now, listen, all of you, whatever the bride says to me, that's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to listen to any of the rest of you. You want me to be talked to, ask the bride to talk to me.
And of course I was saying that for whom? The bride's father? No. You know?
And so at weddings, there's pride, there's unbelievable demonstrations of wealth, there's demonstrations of relations and friends out the wazoo. I mean, some of the weddings, they go out the side door on each side.
There's so many of them, you know, and it's hoopla, and it's it's the little kids, and it's oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And all the pastor has to do is say the words and shut up. Because this is the moment we've all been waiting for. But listen, that's not the way it is at a funeral, although it oh my goodness, don't even get me started on funerals today.
For the first couple of decades of my ministry, funerals were sober. And there was fear of God, and there was humility. And so The work of a minister is to preach the word of God in such a way that it brings you to humility and meekness and to you confessing your sin.
And you have sin. You have sin. Just because you're teenagers doesn't mean that you get let off the hook, you know, well, you know you're a wow at this for few years we won't we won't ask you to repent of this You will commit service service because reading an article this last week about a Muslim woman or a woman who lived in a Muslim society, she wrote a book about the evil eye in a Muslim society.
Any of you ever heard about the evil eye and this is fascinating because she talks about how women live under the terror of the evil eye and so I'm thinking what's evil eye was it like something on the top of the high food of the tower something. And the evil eye is the jealousy of other women.
And that woman they're afraid will cast a spell on the spirit of jealo And I was sort of shocked and I read that you really doesn't have a link is their own sisters and their own family. The family will try to ruin their life because they're jealous that their sister is crazy.
Or maybe she's the oldest. no, no, no, you have any problems with that. Tell me, this is not a problem. Just walk. And you know, when we get old and we die, when our parents die, pastors are there, and you know what pastors observe when a parent dies?
That jealousy is still there. And a lot of times the fighting over money and the fighting over property and furniture is just a surrogate for the envy and jealousy that has corrupted the relationships of the brothers and sisters their whole life. Pastors come to you pleading with you to admit who you are, to admit what your motivations are, to admit, to say to you why you just said that thing you shouldn't have said, and to say, bring that sin to Jesus.
Jesus came for sinners. And so if pastors don't confront you with your sin, if they don't admonish you, if they don't rebuke you. know what? You'll sing about Jesus, you'll talk about Jesus, you'll belong to a church that belongs to Jesus, but you'll never bring your sin to Jesus.
You won't do it without a pastor. And I have spent my life watching Christians who are certain that they're superior to their pastor, and they know themselves. The whole time I'm preparing to preach today, I don't have this in the sermon, but I'm just remembering this guy that Max and I went to confront about a serious sin in his life.
We went out to the back screen porch, remember this? And we gently tried to say to him, Do you know why you are and I won't go into the things, but they're not good. Do you know why you're treating your wife this way? Are you with me?
Do you know why you're this at work? Do you know why? And it was because of his sin. And so we finally said it's because of this sin.
And he got furious with us. And he said, I know myself. And we said to him, No, you don't know yourself. You don't know yourself.
And that was really the end of our relationship with him. And about a year and a half ago, he killed himself. It is serious business to ask a pastor to care for you. And that pastor will see you in a way you don't see yourself.
And he will speak to you about what he sees, or his wife will. And it's so irritating to have a wife talk to you if you're another woman, because woman thine name is jealous. But that's the nature of the church. And if we love Jesus, if we're united with Jesus, we will be united to his church and under the care of his shepherds.
And so, Peter, he keeps saying, you know I love you, and now I want us to focus on the other thing that said three times, which is not you know I love you. Peter was adamant that he had not was not going to abandon Jesus, and we read in Matthew 26, Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard when Jesus was arrested, and a servant girl came to him and said, You too were with Jesus the Galilean.
But Peter denied it before all of them, saying, I don't know what you're talking about. And when he had gone out to the gateway, another servant girl, a servant girl, you know, very intimidating, a servant girl saw him and said to him, and to those who were around him, this man was with Jesus of Nazareth.
And again, Peter denied it with an oath, you know. I just love that. With an oath, you know, wasn't sufficient to say no. He had to swear with an oath.
I don't know the man. A little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter,Surely you too are one of them, for even the way you talk gives you away. And then he began to curse and swear. I don't know the man.
And immediately a rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said, before a rooster crows, you will deny me three times. And he went out and wept bitterly. Peter, do you love me?
Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? The first time he says, yes, Jesus says, tend my lambs. The second time, Jesus says, Shepherd my sheep.
And the third time, he says, Tend my sheep. ## Love for Jesus Means Tending His Sheep
So what is for Daniel? What is love for Jesus? Love for Jesus is he's heard the call.
He doesn't need you. Doesn't need me. Daniel, before he ever came to Bloomington, loved the sheep. I know because I talked to him before he moved to Bloomington, and I was just so moved, really.
There have been a couple of men that have come to the pastors college and talking to them before they came, they told of their grief over the lack of care for the sheep that they knew.
And Daniel said, I just want to learn to be a shepherd to people who have no shepherd. Do you remember what Jesus said over and over again when he looked at the crowds? Jesus said what? Do you remember this?
The Bible tells us, give me a second to turn my page.
It's 71, my fingers jump up and down. Mark 6, verse 34, when Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd, and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep, without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things. And then in Matthew 9, 36 to 38, seeing the people, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.
And then Jesus said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. And so an ordination of service is a time when we take a man that God has called to shepherd his sheep.
And we lay our hands on him in behalf of all of you as a congregation, and we call down the Holy Spirit to fill him and to give him faith to do the hard work that he has to do. And that's why I would call the book Tend My Sheep, because that's what a pastor does.
Any of you ever cared for livestock ever? Cows or goats or livestock. So for a short period of time I worked on it a goat farm. We milked 50 goats by hand, you know.
And do you know what's true of somebody that cares for for a flock? Don't talk! The man that cares for a flock smells of the flock. Okay.
And that's true of pastors. And that's the sign you can have a vision.
He's not sin at all. And it doesn't need anything on, more than stuff. And he's always overstead. Daniel loves Jesus.
Because he loves Jesus, he loves that's all this is.
That's all it is. So when we order him all the things falling down the power of the Holy Spirit to his idol, and to give him the ability to be honored to sheep at hard work. There's a big description password. And yet you update.
I remember going to a barn with one of my near men at my first church. And as we walk by the roads in the stanchion, he says, watch out for that one. That one will flip you with its tail, and then another one will step on your feet. You knew his cows.
And some of you will flip or his wife with your tail. And some of you will step on his toes. And some of you will protect him. You'll go out and jump off a cliff, you know, sheep.
And so I just wanted to give you a picture of Jesus’ love for Christians. That when he went to heaven, he appointed men who would with their wives carry people. And I want you to love him because I love him. Even if we don't love Jesus, you better love Daniel because I love him.
I might love that. Now that's a joke. ## Closing Prayer
Father, we thank you for the service. We thank you for the privilege that we have of acting in your behalf and calling down your power on Daniel to tend your sheep.
May he be faithful in that, and may he have a flock that loves him for his work, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
November 2, 2025 · Tim Wegener · Hebrews 13:17 · Ordination
Speaker: Tim Wegener
Date: 2025-11-02
I'd like you to give me a little bit of an indulgence here. Not the kind from the Pope. We'll get to that, actually. I see a number of gray hairs out there.
There's a very select group of people in this world that gets to call me Gramps. And I have a daughter that played on that. She had some of her daughters, my granddaughters, whom she wanted to learn church history this year. And she came to me and said, “Dad, would you teach my girls church history?”
Now, that wasn't my plan for the year. But they're my granddaughters. And because it really doesn't take that much extra, I've got some students here, over here in the front row, that are in that same class.
The church is over 2,000 years old. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can look and see how things have been done in the past.
So at this time I'm going to ask some questions to Daniel. And then I'm going to ask some questions to you.
Now, the questions we use are over a hundred years old. I don't know if you've ever read old books, but sometimes it sounds odd, or it's just a little hard to read. Now, when it comes to Daniel, I'm not worried about that because he went to school to learn how to speak Old English, if you will.
For the rest of us, one of the other things that we're going to get to this week in church history is God's Word in the vernacular, God's Word in everyday speech. And so, when it comes to your questions, I'm going to try to update them to the way we speak today.
And there'll be four of those. Okay. So Daniel, would you come here? Actually, right about there. So there are eight questions for Daniel and four questions for you all.
Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as originally given, to be the infallible Word of God, which is the only infallible rule of faith and practice?
Daniel: I do.
Do you sincerely receive and adopt the Confession of Faith, Catechisms, and Doctrinal Declarations of this church as the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures? And do you further promise that, if at any time you find yourself out of accord with these fundamentals, you will, on your own initiative, make known to your Presbytery the change that has taken place in your views since the assumption of these ordination vows?
Daniel: I do, and I will.
Thank you.
Do you approve of the government and discipline of Evangel Presbytery as being in conformity with the general principles of biblical polity?
Daniel: I do.
Do you promise subjection to your brethren?
Daniel: I do.
Have you, so far as you know your own heart, been induced to seek the office of this holy ministry for the love of God and a sincere desire to promote His glory in the Gospel of His Son?
Daniel: Yes, I have.
Do you promise to be zealous and faithful in maintaining the truths of the Gospel and the purity and peace and unity of the church, whatever persecutions or opposition may arise on that account?
Do you engage to be faithful and diligent in the exercise of your duties as a Christian minister and a minister of the Gospel, whether personal or relational, private or public, and to endeavor by the grace of God to adorn the profession of the Gospel in your manner of life and to walk with exemplary piety before the flock of God over whom He has made you an overseer?
Daniel: I do.
Are you now willing to take charge of this church, agreeable to your declaration when accepting the call?
Daniel: I am.
Do you, relying on God's strength, promise to discharge its duties as a pastor?
Daniel: I do.
Now these questions are for you, the people of the church. And I want to paraphrase them just a little bit.
One of them, actually, I want to just ask if you'll obey a verse of Scripture.
Will you have Daniel Coughlin as your minister here at this church?
I want to read a verse out of Hebrews, the thirteenth chapter, and ask if you will obey this. In verse seventeen it says:
“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will give an account. Let them do so with joy and not with groaning. For that would be of no advantage to you.”
Hebrews 13:17
If so, say, “We will.”
Do you promise to be an encouragement to Daniel? To assist him in the work that he's doing? And with meekness to understand the instruction that he gives?
If so, say, “We will.”
And lastly, do you agree now to help Daniel financially the way you said you would in his call?
If so, say, “We will.”
Okay. Now we have a charge.