Category: Jesus Christ

Peter, the un-photoshopped

Rembrandt_The_Apostle_PeterSomething that often strikes me when reading the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – is their earthiness.  There is something raw, unpolished, and therefore real about these four eye-witness accounts of Jesus Christ.  It has the ring of the genuine.  Their portraits of Christ and the twelve apostles are absolutely not photo-shopped.

One clear instance is the un-photo-shopped Peter.  Peter was hand-picked by Jesus at the very beginning of his three-year ministry.  Peter was a common man.  A fisherman by trade.  Really, had the Savior not singled him out, he would have lived and died a nameless nobody in the backwoods of Judea.  But Jesus changed all that.

Continue reading “Peter, the un-photoshopped”

The best suffering

Here’s a short clip from our last sermon on 1 Peter 3:17-18, “For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing. For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.”

To listen to the entire sermon, click here.

“The body valuable in God’s sight”

“But the proof of the possibility of the resurrection of the flesh I have sufficiently demonstrated, in answer to men of the world. And if the resurrection of the flesh is not found impossible on the principles even of unbelievers, how much more will it be found in accordance with the mind of believers! But following our order, we must now speak with respect to those who think meanly of the flesh, and say that it is not worthy of the resurrection nor of the heavenly economy, because, first, its substance is earth; and besides, because it is full of all wickedness, so that it forces the soul to sin along with it. But these persons seem to be ignorant of the whole work of God, both of the genesis and formation of man at the first, and why the things in the world were made. For does not the word say, Let Us make man in our image, and after our likeness? Genesis 1:26 What kind of man? Manifestly He means fleshly man, For the word says, And God took dust of the earth, and made man. Genesis 2:7 It is evident, therefore, that man made in the image of God was of flesh. Is it not, then, absurd to say, that the flesh made by God in His own image is contemptible, and worth nothing? But that the flesh is with God a precious possession is manifest, first from its being formed by Him, if at least the image is valuable to the former and artist; and besides, its value can be gathered from the creation of the rest of the world. For that on account of which the rest is made, is the most precious of all to the maker.”

-Justin Martyr (100-165 A.D.)

The blessed God

I recently preached on the words of Christ to His faithful servants on the last day, “Enter into the joy of thy Lord.”  This text, among other things, opens up a window into the joy, the happiness, or what some biblical texts speak of as the “blessedness of God” (Rom. 9:5, 1 Tim. 1:11, 6:15).  It is the joy of the Lord.

imagesGod is the self-sufficient One, who enjoys true happiness in and of Himself.  One Swiss Reformed theologian, Benedict Pictet (1655-1724) said of God, “Who would not call God happy, who is in need of nothing, finds comfort in himself, and possesses all things; is free from all evil and filled with all good?”

When Christ speaks to the believer on the last day and ushers him with open arms into “the joy of the Lord,” He is welcoming that believer into the full participation of God’s happiness – at least as far as a creature can possibly sustain in the narrow limits of his being.  What a grand thought.  God wants to share His joy!

Are you, friend, truly happy?  Can you be happy without the blessed God?  Come to Him, then, through Christ – through whom He lavishly pours out joy “unspeakable and full of glory.”

The Spirit & the Bride

wolgemutpleydenwurffFor where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace; but the Spirit is truth. Those, therefore, who do not partake of Him, are neither nourished into life from the mother’s breasts, nor do they enjoy that most limpid fountain which issues from the body of Christ; but they dig for themselves broken cisterns out of earthly trenches, and drink putrid water out of the mire, fleeing from the faith of the Church lest they be convicted; and rejecting the Spirit, that they may not be instructed.

-Irenaeus of Lyons (d. ca. 202)

No adults allowed!

Mark 10:13-16, “And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.”

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Tomorrow, we will be considering this memorable story of Jesus welcoming and blessing the children. First and foremost, we shall see that these little ones do not get “put out” of the adults-only circle of the worthy. No, children are properly citizens of the Kingdom. All who bring their children to Jesus may bring them precisely because theirs is the Kingdom.

But what is more, not only does Jesus’ Kingdom include children. His Kingdom only includes children! Placarded on the gates of this Kingdom, with royal seal affixed, are the words, “no adults allowed.” None who feel adequate before Him, none who feel ‘entitled’ by their long resume of attainments, by their matured and more penetrating minds, by their boasted seniority. Oh no, none of that! Seniority disqualifies from the Kingdom. Only children will receive His saving blessing. Only the inadequate, the insufficient, the undeveloped, and the weak belong. And more, only those who with childlike simplicity receive Jesus as He is – holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners.

I think one of the beauties of this Kingdom mystery lies in the King Himself. He only accepts children because He was a child once. Yes, the Son of God did not become a man fully formed. He didn’t bypass childhood. No, the Lord of all embraced this weakness. And unlike so many adults who forget they were children once, Jesus never forgot. To be sure, there is a natural forgetfulness. Memories fade with time. Yet some of that fading is culpable. How often we forget what it was like to be a child! We can be gruff with children and shoo them away just like the disciples, because we fail to remember our childhoods. We can shut them out because we are in on what is really important. Shame on us.

But not so with Jesus! He got angry at the disciples for shooing away those precious children. Jesus, the childlike One, who was “meek and lowly in heart,” had not forgotten what it was like to be a child. And so with the utmost tenderness, He welcomes them. He takes up their little bodies into his arms, He puts his hand on that disheveled head and blesses.

The precious, one and only

There were three parents, with three precious children.  Only children.

A woman had lost her son, her only son.  As the procession passed, what overwhelming grief she suffered!  To add to the torment, she was a widow.  Stripped not only of her last remaining joy, but her last, flickering ember of hope.

Jairus was a great man and very devout.  But neither his position or piety could prevent the virus.  His dear little daughter, his one and only child, was on the verge of death.  He was desperate.  So as he sought after Jesus, the miracle Healer, time was of the essence.  But the crowds slowed the Master down, and finally the time was up.  His daughter was gone.

Another father came to Jesus.   His one and only son had for years been plagued with a demon, seizing his weak and weary body, convulsing him, and even casting him into the fire.  As the father watched, what agony!  Could Jesus spare his helpless boy?  His one and only son?

Because of Jesus, each precious, ‘one and only’ was spared.  And in sparing them, their poor, tormented parents were spared.

Jesus was also a precious, ‘one and only.’  Not that He was the only child of Joseph and Mary.  He wasn’t.  But He was, is, and evermore shall be, the precious, one and only Son of the heavenly Father.  From eternity, He is “the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”  Yet in infinite love, to lost, undone parents and children, God did not spare His ‘one and only.’  He gave Him, surrendering Him to  the cursed death of the cross, that by such a sacrifice we and our children may be spared for ever.

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Join us this Lord’s Day (Sunday), June 9, as we consider Jesus, the “only begotten Son,” whom the loving Father sent into the world.  “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him” (1 Jn. 4:9).

 

 

The folly of the rod

Reason balks at paradox.  It only believes what it can see.  But it won’t venture out on thin ice.  And it certainly won’t rush forward where certain disappointment and destruction await.  Reason calls that folly.  Madness even.

Faith, on the other hand, revels in paradox.   Where reason fears to tread, faith just laughs and takes the plunge.  But true faith – biblical faith, that is  – is anything but irrational.  It may seem that faith’s ‘blind leap’ is the proof of insanity.  But faith has a little secret that reason doesn’t have.  The secret is the certain conviction of an unseen, yet no less true reality.  “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence [or conviction] of things unseen.”   Both reason and faith work the equation, both do the math.  But both get radically different results, precisely because faith has a secret.

Faith beholds the unseen God.  It hears His voice, inaudible to the natural man.   Faith perceives that He is Reason itself.  He is the One who sits in heaven and laughs at the folly of man’s wisdom and belittles his intellect by intentionally acting and speaking in paradox.  And to faith, that is just perfect.

A beautiful picture of this is Moses’ rod.  “And thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs” (Exodus 4:17).  God chooses a dead, lifeless stick.  Not a golden scepter, mind you.  Nor even a magician’s wand.  But just a plain, ordinary stick!  Pharaoh would laugh.  And he did.  But with that rod, in the hand of Moses’ simple faith, God did His wonders just as He said.  With that rod, He turned the Nile to blood, parted the Red Sea, and then closed its waters as the lid of a mighty crypt.  It sure wasn’t reason that laughed last that day.

When the Messiah came, He was a “root of out of a dry ground.”  He had “no form nor comeliness.”  When men saw Him, “there was no beauty that [they] should behold him.”  Reason was offended at the folly of such a rod.  But faith got the secret.  He was the very Branch of God.  And through Him, God would do wonders.  Just as He said.