Gospel Prism

Introduction

Thus far, we have learned that God is our gracious Father, who through the work of His Son Jesus Christ, has adopted us into His family.  Because of such love and grace, He loves to hear His children in prayer, when we address Him as our Father.  He also desires for us to long for Him, to yearn for His Kingdom to come, and to want that more than any other desire we might have.  And next week, we’ll cover the part about our requests and petitions, what usually takes over our prayers and consumes most of Christians’ prayers.  But I hope you can see how the first two parts set the parameters for requests.  You cannot pray to God asking for things if you don’t know who He is.  And you cannot pray to God asking for things if you don’t actually want the Giver before the gifts.  And this week, we learn that you cannot pray to God asking for things unless you realize that His will must be accomplished first, here on earth as it is in heaven.  Anything less will actually undermine our love and desire for our Father.

So what does it mean to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”?  I like the way J. I. Packer describes this prayer:

Here more clearly than anywhere the purpose of prayer becomes plain: not to make God do my will (which is practicing magic), but to bring my will into line with his (which is what it means to practice true religion).[1]

And the biblical record makes this clear, that such a prayer ultimately means that we 1) Accept God’s plans, 2) Abide in God’s Word, and 3) Align our prayers with Jesus.

ACCEPT

So first, praying ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ means accepting that what God has planned is for your absolute greatest delight.  Again, just as a reminder, I am combining this exposition on the Lord’s Prayer from Luke 11 and Matthew 6:9-13 and this part of the Lord’s Prayer which comes from Matt 6:10.  Of course, this flows directly from our understanding of God as ‘our Father.”  It means trusting God with our lives completely, knowing that He really is a Father who will always act in our ultimate best interest.  And we’ll cover this in greater detail next week, especially as we examine verses 11-13: “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; 12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Most Christians do not have a problem with God being in control, per se.  The Bible makes every effort to show God is ultimately in control with texts like Proverbs 19:21: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand,” or Lamentations 3:37: “Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has commanded it?” or Revelation 3:7: “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.”  Knowing that God is in control is critical to how we respond to difficult circumstances, and how we pray during such times.  Jerry Bridges tells the story of a military chaplain friend whose job was put into serious jeopardy because he had confronted the chief of chaplains, who was attempting to do something illegal.  The chief responded by writing a critical report against Jerry’s friend.  Scripture seems clear that God allowed this act of injustice to happen to Jerry’s friend, as much as God allowed Satan to inflict Job with all sorts of terrible things and as Lamentations 3:37 tells us, nothing can ultimately come to pass unless the Lord has commanded it.

Think of your own lives.  You’ve probably lived long enough (and if this hasn’t happened to you yet, it will one day) where someone has unjustly wronged you: a friend turning her back on you because of a slight that was not your fault, a coach who overlook your gifts only to choose his less talented son to be in the starting lineup, a boss who is looking out only for his own reputation and places the blame on you even though he was the one at fault, etc.  How do we cope with such injustices?  Do we seek revenge, or is it quite possible that even though there is real pain and anguish, knowing that God is still in control and out for our good can be the greatest comfort we can have during such times?

Many of you might not wrestle with whether God is sovereign, but you might be tempted to think God is not loving or good because He is sovereign.  After all, if God is sovereign and in control, then why do bad things happen?  Why did an earthquake happen in Haiti killing so many people (and if there is anything that seems to be ‘an act of God’, it would be an earthquake)?  Why do good people get cancer?  Why do families trusting in God and serving Him lose their jobs and have to scramble to make it?  These are very difficult questions, but the one thing that we must never forget is that God is not evil or the author of evil.  He loves His people and desires the absolute best for them.  John reminds us that “God is love” (1 John 4:8).  That is, God’s nature is perfectly loving and perfectly good.  So it cannot be that such events happen in our lives because God has erred or He’s evil or He’s good only part of the times.

Instead, the Bible teaches us a very different story.  It reminds us that prior to Adam and Eve’s turning from God, there were no earthquakes, or death, or suffering.  Creation was not groaning as Romans 8:22 tells us.  But when sin entered the world, so too did the wages of sin, which according to Romans 6:23 is death and all of its consequences.  The idolatry of the self has ruled the world ever since, and we no longer want God’s Kingdom at all, but our own.  And so as long as we remain in this world, there will always be sin and there will always be the wages of sin.  So here is the question, is God still in control even when there is sin and Satan reigning here?  And the answer is absolutely yes!  God is sovereign and control and even sin and Satan must submit ultimately His will.  And as we see in Joseph’s life, when sin (Joseph, his brother, Potiphar, Potiphar’s wife) and Satan think they rule the day, ultimately God’s plans cannot be thwarted as Joseph declared to his brothers in Genesis 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”  And do you see the purpose in God’s good, it was to save His people.  God always has in mind the keeping of His promises and the salvation of His people.  Thus, the Bible teaches us that though suffering and death came into the world through sin, God is still in control and cause even use sin, sinners, and Satan for His ultimate glory and our ultimate joy.  He is not powerless against evil, far from it.

We see this in David, where David’s sin of adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of Bathsheba’s husband Uriah was a terrible story of David’s arrogance and self-centeredness, worthy of the worst condemnation.  And yet, it was out of that evil relationship, God would use the son of David and Bathsheba, Solomon out of all David’s other sons, to carry out His plan to save the world from sin, since Jesus came from the descendency of Solomon.  In a broken world filled with sin, there is something in adversity that the Lord sanctifies us as we trust in Him.  If we pray for faith, He brings us a situation where we have to trust in Him so we can grow in faith.  If we pray for patience, we are placed into positions of patience.  If we pray for more love, we are given unloving people to love.  If we pray that we would be more empathetic, gracious, kind, merciful, tender-hearted to Him to others, guess what?  We are given circumstances upon which we learn how to grow to develop such characteristics.  And we are given such circumstances ultimately because our natural, sinful tendency is to believe that we don’t need God in our lives.  Some of our greatest times of trust in Christ and growth as a Christian are often our most difficult and painful ones.  As Moses tells the people of Israel why they had to wander in the desert those many years in Deut 8:2-3:

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. 3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Without the wandering, they would have never believed God led them.  They would have believed it was all their own effort which led them to the Promised Land.  Left to their own, humanity will worship the self before it trusts in God.

What do you think would be God’s greatest judgment upon your life?  Would it be cancer?  Job loss?  Hair loss?  Bankruptcy?  Foreclosure?  Disastrous earthquake?  Death of a loved one?  Or would it be eternal punishment?  It is because the Father loves you that He will do whatever it takes to call you to Himself, even if it means making sure you wake up from you self-worship.  That’s why Romans 2:4 reminds us that “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.”  It is kind of God to even bring disaster in our lives if that is how we come to trust in Him.  It is His mercy to do so.  And through such suffering and adversity, you will come to know God’s grace and love and joy in a way that you might never know should you have prayed only that your personal will be done.  And so, we believe with Scripture that joy in this world is fleeting, but with Him, as Psalm 16:11 proclaims, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”  And for this reason, Jesus tells His disciples that rather than rejoicing that even demons are subject to them, far greater, “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20)

The “Your will be done prayer” guards us from the ‘name it, claim it’ mentality.  That is, all we need to do is to ask God for something and He will give it to us and if He doesn’t give it to us, it’s because we haven’t asked hard enough or with enough faith.  As if to say that we have to convince our capricious God to listen to us because He is inclined to think otherwise.  This simply is not the biblical idea of how and why God listens to us pray.  Sometimes, within God’s sovereign will, He decides not to heal (as He did with Paul’s thorn in the flesh or as He decided with David and Bathsheba’s first child) regardless of how hard we pray or how much faith we have in God that He can heal.  Sometimes, God will still hold His ground and allow us to face the consequences for sin (as He did when He did not allow Moses to enter the Promised Land because of his actions at the waters of Meribah) regardless of how close you are to God, how long you have walked with Him.  And ‘Your will be done’ prayers remind us that prayer is about getting not that which is good for us, but rather, that which is best for us, God’s best.

ABIDE

Second, praying ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ means abiding in God’s Word so that our motives in our requests will be God-glorifying and ultimately satisfying.  Jesus tells us in John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”  Abiding in God’s Word is not simply the reading of the Bible, or the knowledge of certain doctrine, or the listening to sermons.  Abiding here means that one’s whole character and worldview and relationship to others is being transformed by the faith, obedience, and trust in God’s Word as the grid upon which one lives.  It’s the yielding and surrender of one’s personal ideals and agenda for the sake of Christ.  And as one experiences this transformation, then requests in prayer will be spoken in God’s will.

Think of it this way.  The more a husband and wife grow in love for one another, biblically maturing in grace, trying to outdo one another in love, where the husband strives to love his wife as Christ loved the church and the wife strives to submit to her husband, the more their actions will coincide with their will for one another.  I know for many wives, they long for their husbands to cherish them, to consider them, to keep them in mind.  But this will not happen unless we are so deeply enthralled by our spouses, that we can actually predict their response, know their hearts, and desires, and wills, that our response will always be in accordance to their will.  In other words, if I am cherishing my wife, listening to her speak, caring for her proactively, most likely my actions of love for her will be exactly what she desires.  But if I spend no time with her, I am wrapped up more in what I want than what she desires, I am consumed by what is pressing to me (flipping on Sports Center to chill, eating first because I’m hungry, etc.), doesn’t it make sense that I have no idea what she really wants from me?  And so on her birthday, when I buy her a George Foreman Grill so she can make really great sandwiches for me, doesn’t it make sense when she throws the gift down, leaves crying, and slams the door shut.

If our wives deserve more from us, how much more our Father in heaven who has given us His own Son to pay the punishment for our sins?  If our requests are apart from His Word, we will only pray prayers which we think and believe is best for me, without even considering God’s glory.  And just like the husband who stands bewildered and upset and frustrated and confused by his wife’s response as he stands alone with his George Foreman grill, so too, when we come with self-centered desires before God, we do not have the ultimate joy we long for.  That’s why James makes it so clear that God sometimes answers our prayers with, “No,” as he tells us in James 4:2-3: “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”  Wrong motives from a self-centered heart keeps us from experiencing joy in prayer.

And so when we pray, especially when we are petitioning God for help, we must always consider our motives.  We should ask ourselves, “Do I care more about the outcome (healing, marriage, job, reconciliation, comforts) than God’s glory or my own sanctification?”  Also, “Does God’s Word really support my desires, or am I simply forcing God’s Word to get what I really want?”  I shared with you the story of when Shua and I were considering dating.  I ‘prayed and fasted’ the whole summer asking God essentially to bless what I really wanted, the beginning of our relationship.  It sounded ‘spiritual’ to so say I was fasting and praying to discern God’s will.  But instead, what I was really doing was asking God to rubberstamp what I had already decided, that I want this relationship whether it would be a God-honoring one or not.  And so many people pray this way.  They pray that God would bless a relationship or a new job or the start of a new business that ‘has to be from God because all the cards fell into place’ or the Super Bowl victory because a Christian threw the winning touchdown or the winning of the lottery to support Christian ministries or the entrance into grad school as a means to serve God.  But oh how our motives can be simply from our desire to have or our coveting of what others have.  We must be self-suspicious as we ask God for things.  And the way we will grow in our prayers, in praying prayers that are in His will, is when we are regularly striving to abide in His Word.

ALIGN

Lastly, praying ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ means aligning our prayers with the same trust as our Lord Jesus had in our Father.  As Jesus does in the Lord’s Prayer, He continually provides us a model for us to pray in the Father’s will.  We see this clearly in Matthew 26:39, 42: “And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”  And again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”  No one can imagine what Jesus must have been facing as He prepared to die for us.  Jesus was not a masochist.  He didn’t ‘want’ to suffer and die.  His prayer makes it so clear that this choice was one of pain and anguish.  This was hard for Him.  Why?  Because He would physically bear the pain of crucifixion, an indescribable pain that cannot be understood by most of us.  I wince at a hang nail or a canker sore, how much more being nailed to a cross for the purpose of maximum torture.  But it didn’t stop there.  His eternal sweet fellowship with the Father would be separated.  Think of saying goodbye to someone you love, perhaps even forever.  Well that feeling of loss and grief is there because we are created in God’s image, reflecting the communion of the Triune God, Father, Son, Spirit.  We were made like Him, to enjoy relationship, to need relationship.  But Jesus would no longer have this relationship.  He was to be forsaken by the One who loved Him most.  And then, He would bear the crushing weight of every sin of ours, past, present, and future.

Think of a sin you commit, anger to a loved one.  Think of the pain, the anxiety, the frustration, that that one bit of anger could cause.  Think of the separation that is faced when you are angry at another.  That sin was borne by Jesus, the weight of the sin, the punishment of sin, the guilt of sin, the consequences of sin.  According to 2 Cor 5:21 which says: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” Jesus was made to “be sin” so that we might be able to enter the family of God.  And then to top it all off, He knew that by accepting the will of the Father, His friends would betray Him and abandon Him, the world would scoff at Him and mock Him, He would be tried and convicted by a kangaroo court without any sense of justice, and He would simply remain silent without defense throughout the process.  But though Jesus did not ‘want’ to suffer and die, He willingly yielded to the Father’s will

Jesus tells us why He did this in John 6:38-40: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. 40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”  He did this for the greater joy of allowing sinners to enter Paradise with Him in fellowship with the Eternal Father.  And so Hebrews 12:2 comments: “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”  As terrible as the cross was, the end result of the work of Christ is astounding joy for sinners like you and me.  And for this reason, even the evil of the cross was taken up with joy by Jesus.  And it was for this reason that the Father was willing to crush His own Son and put Him to grief according to Isaiah 53:10.

Conclusion

How can we face all of the peaks and valleys of life without being swamped over?  How can we pray without feeling either too confident that I control how God reacts to me or feeling as though prayer is utterly worthless because God does not respond the way I believe He should?  The only way is by knowing that God’s will done in our lives is the best possible outcome for us.  And how do we know this to be true?  Because the Bible teaches us that even though sin, sinners, and Satan attempted to thwart God’s plan of salvation, the cross is a stark reminder that no matter how much evil forces tries to defeat God, it never can.  The cross is God’s eternal reminder that what man intends for evil, God can and does use it for His glory and our joy and satisfaction.

And so praying, ‘Father, Your will be done’ is a prayer that understands who He is as Father, what it cost the Father to become our Father, a longing for the Father to come through His Son, and a deep trust that He will never let us down no matter how difficult the circumstances might be.  That in Christ, no matter what happens, there is still hope and joy.  So this week is a week of prayer and fasting.  May I give you a few exhortations about prayer and fasting:

1.         Trade Good for Best

Food, Coffee, Internet/Web/PHONE, TV, Movies, Sports: TV/Radio/Fantasy, Exercise,   Physical Intimacy (Husband and Wives Only)

2.         Email about Prayer requests – Please send prayer requests so we can pray for you   (PUBLIC)  (prayer@wellspringsg.org)

3.         Morning Prayers (Tues-Wed, Office 6:30a, Sat different homes!)

4.         Prayer and Worship at Sam and Shua’s Place (Tuesday, 8:30p)

5.         Fasting – Alameda County Food Bank

John Wesley wrote a prayer that surrendered to the will of the Father and may you pray this prayer this week as you fast and pray:

I am no longer my own, but yours.  Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low for you; let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing.  I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.[2]

[2] Quoted from Phil Ryken, When You Pray, 102.

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say:

(Luke 11:1-4)

Introduction

This past week, Justin sent me an article from CNN.com on the movie Avatar entitled, “Audiences experience ‘Avatar’ blues.”[1] The article expressed the emotions of some moviegoers who were leaving the movie theatre depressed and disillusioned.  One Avatar fan noted:

I wasn’t depressed myself.  In fact the movie made me happy.  But I can understand why it made people depressed.  The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don’t have here on Earth.  I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed.

Another moviegoer said:

When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning…It just seems so … meaningless. I still don’t really see any reason to keep … doing things at all. I live in a dying world.

When Justin sent me this link, he had in his subject line, “A generation expressing its desire for heaven and need for Christ,” and I think he described the situation well.  Everyone is looking for something better, something or someone that gives them meaning and purpose to life.  Which is the very reason why so many people escape from ‘reality’ through entertainments: movies, TV shows, video games, shopping, etc.  These things seemingly make our lives better, make them appear to be better than they truly are.  Voyeurism will always be a human pastime because we want to vicariously live through the lives of celebrities, and it’s this very reason why reality shows are still the top money-makers on television.  We want something more for ourselves.

Thus, human beings will always long for something more because we were made for something far greater.  And this is exactly why Augustine stated these famous words in his sermon from Job 28:1-28:

Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we men, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you – we also carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.[2]

And this is also why Jesus tells us to pray for the Father’s Kingdom to come.  All of humanity longs for more.  But how much more then do the Father’s children long for the presence of their Kingly Father to come fully and restore the Kingdom and all that was supposed to be?  This should be our prayer.  And so when we pray, ‘Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven,’ we are praying that we proclaim the Kingdom, that we seek after the Kingdom, and that we yearn for the Kingdom.  So I’d like to talk about these three desires that flow from a ‘kingdom come’ prayer.

Proclaim (Mark 1:15; Luke 17:21; Matt 21:5)

When we pray to the Father, ‘Your kingdom come,’ we are acknowledging that His Kingdom has been proclaimed to all the world already.  It is a statement of what has already taken place and we see this throughout the Gospels.  When Jesus began His earthly ministry, He proclaimed these words in Mark 1:15: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”  The kingdom of God was not something far away, it had begun with Jesus.  In Luke 17:21, Jesus says the same thing to His disciples when He says: ‘…for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.”  And by this, He was speaking of Himself.  Christ’s life, work, and ministry was a sign to the world that God’s Kingdom has come.  And finally in Matthew 21:5, when Jesus entered into Jerusalem and all of the people laid palm branches down declaring that the King had come, Matthew comments that Jesus’ coming was in what Zechariah prophesied: “Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.”

Thus, praying the Lord’s prayer that the Father’s Kingdom come, is nothing short of a Christ-exalting, majestic kingly prayer that proclaims Christ as Lord of all the earth and the center of all things.  My friends, did you ever realize that when you say the Lord’s prayer, you are making a proclamation to yourself and to those around you that you have a king, a sovereign upon wish you want to honor and cherish and obey?  And whether people realize it or not, people long to worship and honor somebody, even as they might cringe at the thought of such an idea.  This is why there are even celebrities in the first place.  This is why people worshipped Michael Jackson or zealously campaigned for President Obama or stand on line overnight for anything Steve Jobs thinks of.  People love to adore heroes, love to cheer on the good guys in movies, love to cherish country and flag, love to fawn over new toys, cars, houses.  People look for role models to follow and others to admire.  We can even become obsessed over a new relationship as boyfriend or girlfriend, or over-effusive in our love to our spouse catering to his or her every whim, or succumbing to the wishes of overbearing parents, all because we long to place our hope, our love, our loyalty, our fealty in something or someone.  As long as human beings live, there will be such longing.

Thus, when we pray ‘your Kingdom come,’ we are making a bold statement to our souls and to all who could hear that NO ONE is deserving of the love, worship, and honor that the King of Kings, Jesus Christ deserves.  He becomes our first priority, the filter upon which we view life.

And we must never forget what it took to usher in this kingdom.  John records for us Jesus’ conversation with Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who would sentence Jesus to his death.  In addressing the Jewish leaders’ accusations against Jesus as a self-made king of the Jews, Pilate asks, “Are you the King of the Jews?… Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done?” (John 18:35)  And then Jesus responds with this telling statement: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”  In other words, for the Kingdom of Christ to come, Jesus would need to make sure that no one would fight for Him in the way the world generally fights for a kingdom.  It’s for this reason that Jesus stops Peter from fighting those who were trying to arrest Him (John 18:10-11).  Isaiah prophesied as to how the King would usher in His Kingdom: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” (Isa 53:7).  Jesus’ Kingdom was not of this world because the world and its ways (self-righteousness, envy, physical power, revenge, boasting) could never save anyone and never bring lasting joy.  But it would be through the death that Jesus would die for our sins, that would be the means by which Jesus’ Kingdom would come and peace between the Father and sinners would reign eternally.  Or again, as Isaiah so beautifully describes: “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isa 53:5)

So when we pray, ‘Your Kingdom come,’ we’re praying, ‘Lord, use me and mold me as your loyal and loving subject.  I want to follow you wherever you will go.’  If you have ever watched a movie where a king or leader leads his battle into war, from Braveheart to Return of the King to Kenneth Branaugh in Henry V to the movie Elizabeth, they always have that one scene where the king is on a horse in front of the frightened, weary band of soldiers.  And the king gives a rousing speech and suddenly you see the spirit perk and heads begin the lift and backs straighten.  Suddenly the ragtag band looks like a vibrant army ready to follow their king even to their death, because they so believe in the power and strength and dignity of their king.  Well, to say ‘Your Kingdom come’ is a declaration that you understand who Jesus is, what He has done for you by saving you from sin, and your desire in light of that reality, to follow Him wherever He should lead you, even if it means as we learned in Luke 9:23 to bear your own cross.

Yearn

Also, when we pray to the Father, ‘Your kingdom come,’ we are expressing what is at the core of our hearts, that we yearn for the Father and His Kingdom above all else.  And imbedded in this prayer is the idea that though we believe the kingdom has been established through Christ, it has not been fully completed.  We are still longing for the Kingdom to come so that Christ is exalted before all as Paul tells us in Philippians 2:9-11: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  He reminds us also in Rom 8:22-23 that what we have now is not how it will be: “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”  And so we yearn for more.

For example, when you look at the pictures of the earthquake victims, or you consider the poor around the world, or perhaps there is suffering in your own life, or any difficulty at all, do you ever pray, ‘Your Kingdom come.’  Do you ever pray or think, “Lord, please come back now, if only you would return, then all things would be made new.”  The groanings of creation, the sin, the suffering, the tragedies, the hardships, the sinfulness of others, the sinfulness  your own soul, doesn’t that lead you to want it all to end?  For Avatar viewers, they want it to end and so they consider suicide assuming that is better than what is here and now.  But for Christians, we have a living hope as Peter reminds us.  Or as Paul asks us to consider in 2 Cor 4:17: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”  To pray, ‘your Kingdom come,’ is to be a yearner for this eternal weight of glory beyond comparison.

But something keeps us from yearning, and it is the settling for personal, little kingdoms.  It is determining that I am the king of my little kingdom and everything in this world, my spouse, my friends, my parents, my siblings, my boss, my colleagues, fellow church members, the grocery clerk, dmv personnel, etc., all have a job, and that is to serve me.  And so my natural inclination is to maintain my kingdom and if any usurpers (people who ask me to change my schedule, difficult people to deal with, different types of people in the church, a spouse who is ‘demanding’ of me to change, etc.) come my way, they are banished from my kingdom.

And of course, like any kingdom, there are the enablers of kings, ‘subjects’ who coddle the king to make him feel he is deserving.  When I was growing up my mother did everything for me.  She washed, ironed all of my clothes.  She made my lunch every time.  She laid out the clothing that I should wear, almost all the way through high school.  And when I was sick, she would make my favorite foods while I put my feet up.  And I accepted it.  In fact, I felt entitled to it.  Well, after I married Shua, guess what?  I was still the king.  My wife was not my helper, she was my servant.  If my mom should serve me as I believe I should be served, shouldn’t my wife.  And so one day, when I was sick, Shua, being the gracious person that she is, made me a soup to care for me.  When she put it out on front of me, I said to her, “Honey, this looks great.  But you know, my mother makes this really great soup for me when I’m sick.  Do you think you could call her to get the recipe?”  Let me just say, deservedly so, it was a long and quiet night.

This is just one story of so many, that perhaps many of us have.  We believe that we are entitled to and deserve respect and worship.  We believe that we are entitled to comfort and a life free of trouble and that when trouble comes, God must be punishing us because of our sins (the very argument Job’s friends wrongly made towards job).  When we think this way, we cannot pray, “Jesus, Your Kingdom come.”  We don’t want God’s Kingdom.  We want our own.  But oh how dreadful our own kingdom truly is.  How lonely?  How dreary and drab?  It’s a life of abuse and entitlement and self-centeredness where joys are utterly fleeting. Because the more you live as the king of your own kingdom, the more you force people to love you and care for you and make you their king, the further you push people away from yourself, and the more isolated you become.  No one likes to talk to a person who only talks about his accomplishments and goals and dreams.  We become a person of burned bridges and broken relationships.  This is the very reason why as people grow older, as they age, they have less friends around them.  Entitlement and the personal kingdom mentality becomes even more entrenched.  There comes the strong feeling of, “Ok, I’ve served people my whole life, now it’s Me-Time.”

Thus, no one enjoys a cantankerous old man or woman.  No one No one enjoys being around a child who throws tantrums regularly, where the parents give in to his every whim each time.  No one enjoys the beauty queen who can’t stop looking in the mirror.  No one enjoys the man who can help but spout off all of his accomplishments, while degrading others.  Being the king of a little kingdom is a very lonely place.  C. S. Lewis tells the story of Eustace Scrubb in the book The Voyage of the Dawn Trader.  He was a difficult boy, one that most of us would veer far away from simply because of his narcissistic tendencies.  He refused to work and help out when everyone else was busy working.  One night he found a great treasure in a cave.  Dreaming of how he would spend his new wealth, he fell asleep.  When he awoke, he had found himself turned into a dragon.  Lewis notes, “Sleeping on a dragon’s hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself.”[3] It’s what Adam and Eve started in the Garden long ago.  They thought their personal kingdom would be better than what God offered them.  But as Eustace Scrubb also came to see, Adam and Eve woke up and suddenly realized that they were naked and they felt ashamed.  They saw that they were alone and empty and they were terribly and tragically lacking what they had, joy in God.  May you yearn for what you can never lose when you are in Christ or as what missionary/martyr Jim Eliot so beautifully wrote: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”  And so my friends, yearn for the Kingdom.

And there is no greater expression of such yearning for the Kingdom to fully come than prayer and fasting.  Prayer teaches us that we trust the Lord in all things.  That salvation and our lives and anything else is best left in His hands.  After all, if Jesus Himself who is God prays to the Father and makes it His priority to do so, how much more should we do the same.  We pray not just because we need things from Him to make it through each day.  We pray to Him because we long to see Him come to make all things new.  We pray to Him because we long to be with Him.  Jesus says in John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”  Notice that we pray because we love Him, because we love abiding in Him.  Prayer is a natural outcome of wanting to be with Him.

Also, fasting is a further expression of what prayer’s longing for Christ and His Kingdom.  It reminds us that living for our own little kingdoms is terrible futile and meaningless.  John Piper describes this sentiment well:

If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestations of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied.  It is because you have nibbled so long at the table of the world.  Your soul is stuffed with small things, and there is no room for the great.  God did not create you for this.  There is an appetite for God.  And it can be awakened.[4]

It creates not merely hunger to food, but hunger for God, a homesickness for where we are meant to be eternally.  And so Jesus Himself told all who listened to Him in the plains: “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.” (Luke 6:21)

And so, as we consider fasting and praying the last week of January, may you remember this prayer, “Your Kingdom come!”  Paul and John remind the church to have this same prayer always so long as we live in this world:  May you love the Lord’s appearing: “Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.” (2 Tim 4:8) and may along with John, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

[2] http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/621/Our_Heart_is_Restless_St_Augustine.html

[3] Quoted from Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods, 122.

[4] John Piper, Hunger for God, 23.

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” 2 And he said to them, “When you pray, say:

Introduction

Every January since we have existed as a church, we have taken this month to emphasize the vital place prayer has in our lives as believers of Christ both individually and corporately.  This month is no exception.  And as I shared last week, one of the blessings of preaching through a book of Scripture is that we get to see how the text providentially speaks to our present circumstances.  So it is with great joy and excitement that we begin this 5-week journey through the Lord’s prayer and its many truths not only about prayer, but about the God we pray to.

Verses 1-2 give us the context for this prayer.  Verse 1 says: “Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”  After all of Jesus’ busyness, continuously surrounded by different people who are in need of Him, He goes away to pray.  I have to imagine that His disciples were watching Him pray, or had seen Him pray before because there was something about Jesus’ prayer, whether it was the sincerity and depth of His face and posture, or perhaps the few words the disciples caught, that made them sense that their prayers were quite different than Jesus’ prayers.  In fact, it was so different that they believed they needed to be taught anew to pray.  After all, it wasn’t as though the disciples had never prayed before.  They were Jews.  They were used to hearing prayers spoken at the synagogue or in their homes or at great Feasts such as the Passover.  But when they saw Jesus pray, they saw something so compelling that they wanted the same thing.  And it is in this request that we too learn how to pray.

Also, there are two versions of the Lord’s Prayer, one in Matthew 6 as a part of the Sermon on the Mount and the one here in Luke 11.  Most scholars believe this is the same prayer taught in two different instances for differing circumstances.  But as you’ll see, outside a few differences, they’re virtually the same prayer.  And so I’ll be drawing from both accounts in Matthew and Luke for the next few weeks.

It is my hope that as you learn from Jesus how to pray, you will be richly blessed not only in knowing how to pray, but in knowing just how good and gracious the God you pray to truly is.  And so in verse 2, Jesus tells them, “When you pray, say…”

Prayer to Our Father

First, when we pray, we must pray to “our Father.” I have been trying to teach our kids how to pray because.  And one of the things that I had noticed about their prayers was how they began their prayers.  They would say, “Dear God…”  The funny thing is that we had never taught them to pray that way.  Somewhere they had picked that up.  And you could almost sense the detachment of their prayers from God, as if they were doing nothing more than writing a letter to some far off deity.  Perhaps that’s your prayer as well.  Has prayer become nothing more than a formula.  Do you even know why you pray the way you pray?  I have heard people call God all sorts of things in prayer, from Dear God to Father Lord to Father Lord Jesus to Father Lord God Jesus Christ.  Perhaps we all need to learn how to pray from Jesus.

We see that Luke doesn’t include the pronoun ‘our’ but Matthew does (Matt 6:9) and Matthew’s version is the one that we have learned.  The disciples had continually heard Jesus refer to God as His Father.  And the Gospel of John reveals how often Jesus called God Father, which must have really startled them at first.  After this was the same God of the Old Testament, the God that appeared to Moses on Mt. Sinai.  This same God was so holy that Moses could not view His face and live.  This is the God who rescued the Israelites from the Egyptians and parted the great Red Sea.  This was the God who rescued Jonah by commanding a large fish to keep him safe.  The was the same God whose mere words spoke the universe into existence.  He was the God of their great ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  He was the same God whose name was so holy, that the Hebrew language did not even give His Name vowels so that His name would be unpronounceable.  And now Jesus was calling Him Father?  How could this be?

This was Jesus’ picture of His relationship as the second person of the Trinity.  Jesus is not some sort of deity that co-exists with God.  He is not an angel like Michael or Gabriel.  He is not a prophet or patriarch.  No, He is God incarnate.  As John tells us in John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  Jesus as the Son of God is the revelation of the fullness of the Father and all of His glory.  The claim Jesus is making by this first line of the prayer is mind-boggling for all of His disciples.  But as wondrous as this first claim is, there is something even more spectacular, and it is the pronoun ‘our’ in Matthew 6:9.

Jesus tells us that not only is the God of the universe His Father, but He says we should pray as though He is OUR Father as well.  There is nothing more marvelous than this statement and it is every reason why prayer is such a powerful weapon for the Christian.  Why is this so?  Because when we pray to God as our Father, we are praying as those who are adopted into His family.  We are not mere servants of God.  Paul reminds us of this in Galatians 4:6-7: “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”  And because we are praying as sons and daughters of God, He will hear us.  Jesus tells us so in Matthew 7:9-11: “Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

Also, when we pray to God as our Father, we are praying as those who are loved by God as much as Jesus is loved by God.  J. I. Packer puts it well when he says: “In some families containing natural and adopted children the former are favored above the latter, but no such defect mars the fatherhood of God.”[1] That is, God does not love us second to His Son.  His adoptive love is perfect and so when He loves His adopted children, He loves us with the love He has for His Son.  Thus, when we pray to God as OUR Father, we pray to Him as one who loves us in this way.

When we pray to God as our Father, we are praying together as part of His family.  He is not only MY Father, He is OUR Father.  It’s every reason why we should not only pray alone, but we should pray for one another and with one another.  We should treasure praying together and asking people for our prayers.  I am so excited that so many of you have been doing this.  You have been asking people for prayer, and I want to commend you to do so even more.  In fact, I would like to let you know of something we are going to begin this year.  If you are interested in having people pray for you, you can email prayer@wellspringsg.org and you will have people pray for you weekly.

Also, when we pray to God as our Father, we pray as ones who have been brought into God’s family through the work of God’s Son Jesus Christ.  We must never forget that it took Jesus’ work on the cross for sinners to be brought into His family.  Again, Paul tells us in Gal 4:4-5: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”  Jesus died on the cross to make sure that when we pray, God would love to hear our prayers, no matter how faulty, how measly those prayers are.  Do you know that your prayers are not accepted by God because of how good you are?  If this were the case, when would God ever hear your prayers?  Isn’t it funny how there are times we feel we can go to God with our prayers because we’re ‘doing well with Him’ and are ‘holy enough’ for God to listen to us?  This simply means we think we are far better than we think we are.  And conversely, let us not make the mistake of thinking that we can’t go to God because we are angry or depressed or have failed to read God’s Word that day or have yelled our parents or have been impatient with our children.  This is why theologian Graeme Goldsworthy says:

Whenever and however we fail, we have an advocate to take our place and plead our cause.  He does this on the basis of his own righteousness, not on the basis of our fervor or piety…In Christ we cannot be condemned as inadequate or ‘failed’ pray-ers.  I should not think, because I don’t pray as I ought, that God is less inclined to listen to me than he is to listen to some great prayer warrior.”[2]

Do you see?  God listens to your prayer because of Jesus and what He is done for you.  Because God has brought you into His family through His Son’s blood, and therefore, He listens to your prayers.  And so, let us say OUR FATHER with thankfulness and boldness and delight.  Oh how good God has been to us that we can come to Him with such prayer.

Prayer to Our Father In Heaven

Second, we must pray to our Father who is in heaven which is found in Matthew’s version.  This little prepositional phrase  speaks so much about the character and nature of our Father.  As Paul tells the Athenians in Acts 17, “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” (Acts 17:24-25)  God in heaven means God is absolutely in control over all things.  He was not made by anyone and His greatness knows no end.  Do you know how important it is to know that your Father is in heaven, that He is great and above all else?  Well, if God were not such, then why pray to Him?  Why should we pray to our Father when we go through suffering if He is powerless against sin, against Satan, against suffering?  A child will bury his face in his father’s chest when something frightens him.  One time my son Jack was on the monkey bars, hanging from them, realizing that he couldn’t make it across.  He hung there and called out my name.  He didn’t call his sisters names.  He called mine.  He knew that I was strong enough to help him.  Knowing your Father is in heaven should give you comfort and confidence when you pray.  You should know that there is no such thing as something that God is unable to do.  God is mighty and the fact that He resides in heaven is a reminder to us that He reigns Supreme.  And oh how we need to remember this when we pray.  We must never forget that we are not speaking to merely to our pal, our teacher, or even our earthly father.  We have to realize that this is the God who is powerful and mighty, robed with splendor.  Or as Psalm 50:1-6 so beautifully describes our Father:

The Mighty One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting. 2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.  3 Our God comes; he does not keep silence;  before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest. 4 He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people: 5 “Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!” 6 The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge!

Prayer to Our Father’s Name to Be Holy

Finally, we must pray to our Father who is in heaven whose name is to be holy. Notice that this is not merely stating the fact that God is holy, but rather, Jesus’ prayer tells us that we should ask God to hallow or make holy His name.  In other words, “Father, reveal yourself to be the holy One you are to myself and to all the world.”  Psalm 83:18 has the same sentiment: “[Let the world know] that they may know that you alone, whose name is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth.”  This is not to say that God’s name isn’t already holy.  But the Father’s children want all the world to hallow His name.  Think of how often God’s name is taken in vain in this world.  God’s name is representative of who He is.  And so when His name is defamed, God is made to be nothing more than any one of us.  He becomes ordinary and truly not a God in heaven.  And so to hallow God’s name is too long for God to be worshipped and glorified as the Father that He is.

Think of it this way, if you know how precious it is to call God your Father, if you know what it took for you to even consider God to be Your Father, and you know how great your Father truly is in heaven, then more than anything you need, any petition or request, your greatest request will be that God this same God who has been beyond description to you, would be made holy and glorified throughout the whole world.  Worshipping such a God will be such a delight, that you will want God to glorify Himself more than anything else.  This is why Jesus spoke this similar prayer in John 17:1: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.”  Children of the Father who pray to Him desire God to glorify Himself, to hallow His own name.

Phil Ryken illustrates this sentiment this way: The story is told of a wise and benevolent king who was loved and honored by all his subjects.  One morning each week he opened his throne room to the general public.  On that morning he would hear grievances and listen to petitions, making himself available to meet the needs of his people.  There was one man who faithfully came to see the king week after week.  Yet he never bothered the king with a single complaint or request.  He simply stood at the back of the throne room.  After a while this began to puzzle the king.  Who was this man who came every week?  And why did he come, if not to ask for help?

One day the king summoned the man to approach his throne and inquired after his business, “Your majesty,” the man said, “when I was a young man I committed a crime and I was sentenced to death.  Yet as I was dragged through the streets to the gallows, I saw you riding on your horse and I cried out for mercy.  Since I was such a young man you granted me a royal pardon and commanded me to be released. That is why I come to stand in your presence every week.  I do not come to ask for anything.  What more could I ask for?  You have already given me my life and my freedom.  I come only to pay you , to homage, to honor you as your devoted servant.”[3]

And so when we pray, ‘hallowed be Your Name,’ we are saying essentially that we are so enamored by God’s grace, by God’s character, by God’s holiness, that we want nothing more than God to be glorified in our lives and in this world.  And it is one thing that we will do forever, to join with all of the heavenly host as John records in Revelation 4:8 saying: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”  Hallowing the Father’s Name is joining to sing heaven’s song.

Conclusion

Oh what a privilege it is to pray, despite ourselves, despite our sin, our faulty, lacking, prayers.  And so when Jesus says, “When you pray, say…” how many of us are so thankful to pray to such a God who would love us in this way?  This is why prayer is so precious and we must never forget it.  In this month of prayer, I want remind you of the different ways we will be praying to our Father in heaven whose name is to be holy:

1.         Saturday Morning Prayer

2.         Fast and Famine (1/31 – Fasting (food-duration, media, tech, etc.; Food Collection)

3.         Missions Prayer

4.         Praise and Prayer

[2] Graeme Goldsworthy, Prayer and the Knowledge of God, 50.

[3] Phil Ryken, When You Pray, 70-71.

?

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. 39 And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. 40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

(Luke 10:38-42)

Introduction

In this new year, I couldn’t have planned for a better text to preach from than this one.  As you make your new year’s resolutions, eat less, exercise more, read the Bible more, serve God more, pray harder, be more gracious and kind to your family, etc., this passage of Luke provides an excellent blueprint as to how to address the many different circumstances of life, especially in the midst of to-do lists and on-going busyness.

Like last week’s passage, I am sure many of you are familiar with this story of Martha and Mary.  And if you’re not, I am sure that you are at least familiar with the idea of Martha and Mary.  Some of you are sitting here listening to Martha and saying, “That’s me.”  And some are watching Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus saying, “That’s me, and I would have gotten yelled at by my sister too.”  Usually, Martha gets a bad rap because of this passage.  But if you look closely, Jesus isn’t showing favorites and He isn’t being too harsh.  Instead, as He has done throughout the Gospel of Luke, He is showing Martha and us that He cares about our actions, but they must be actions that flow out of a heart that loves Him and desires Him more than anything else.  So let’s look at the two sisters, first Martha.

Martha

Let me tell you a little about Martha.  Martha was genuinely hospitable.  After all, she ‘welcomed him into her house.’  This was Martha’s home that she owned.  She probably was not married, since there is no mention of a husband.  And given Martha’s diligence, she probably was very capable and able to provide in some fashion, even in a day when it would have been difficult for women to provide for themselves.  So Jesus was warmly welcomed into her home as her guest.  And there seems to be no doubt that Martha genuinely wanted to serve Jesus with every good intention of making his time with them to be something special.

Perhaps that’s when Martha’s to-do list was.  The shopping needed to be done.  The rooms needed to be cleaned as quickly as possible, made sure that everything was in its proper place.  The food would need to be prepared perfectly, displayed beautifully.  The good dishes and silverware would need to be pulled out.  The floors dusted and mopped.  The welcome mat beaten to clean it of the dust.  The tablecloths readied.  You get the picture.  Martha was going to make sure that this dinner was going to be a special one.  And we cannot dismiss the fact that thus far, people were rejecting Jesus continually (the Samaritans, His own disciples) and some were even trying to entrap Him (the lawyer).  So Martha’s hospitality was clearly a sign that she did want to honor Jesus.  But there are four sins that are revealed in Martha’s heart.  And what you have to realize is that these sins do not come from the same heart of the lawyer who was trying to ‘get’ Jesus or the Samaritans who wanted nothing to do with Him.  No, this was coming from a woman who initially had very good motives and intentions to be a blessing to Jesus.  And yet from this heart came these four sins.  So what were they?

The first sin is the sin of distraction in verse 40, “But Martha was distracted with much serving.”  The word ‘distracted’ originally meant to be ‘pulled or dragged away.’[1] So Martha’s heart wanted to serve Jesus with joy and with gladness, but her heart was being pulled away from doing so.  There was an internal struggle going on (perhaps you know this struggle) where she wanted to serve with a happy heart, but she was being dragged away by an unsettling feeling of frustration.  The ‘much serving’ was from a desire to bless Jesus, but she was so caught up in her list of things to do, in her focus on being a ‘good host,’ her desire to ‘be hospitable,’ that she had been pulled away from the reason as to why she even welcomed Jesus in the first place, to be a blessing to Jesus and to receive blessings from Him.

That’s when the second sin kicks in, the sin of self pity in verse 40.  The battle’s over.  She’s been dragged and put up with Mary’s ‘laziness’ long enough.  And so “she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?’”  I could just imagine, Martha’s in the kitchen, running around like a chicken without a head, trying to put on the perfect dinner, sweating, running, anxious, while Jesus is in the other room talking with her little sister no less.  Maybe she was having a conversation like this with herself: “Who did she think she was?  I’m the older sister after all.  It should be me in there talking to Jesus and Mary cooking the dinner.  But someone has to cook the dinner!  The least she could do is come in and help.  The nerve of her.  The nerve of Him.  Doesn’t he have any sense?”  I could imagine her clanging the pans and pots a little louder, trying to drop hints to the two of them, but to no avail.  And so, she’s finally had it and says, “Lord, don’t you care.”  You can hear the pouting, the self-pity.  She serving ALONE.  She’s doing all the work.  She’s the only one who is truly hospitable, because true hospitality, in Martha’s eyes, means hospitality on her terms, great dinner, perfect layout, beautiful house, etc.  She wanted Martha Stewart hospitality at its finest, because ultimately, she wanted to hear Jesus tell her, “Martha, you did a great job.  Everything looked great.  You are a great person, a great cook, a great interior designer, a great home maker.”

Do you see how evil sin can be, how quickly it leads from one sin to another?  Do you see how terrible sin within us is that it can take such a wonderful desire, to bless Christ, and turn it into something so despicable?  She wanted to serve Jesus from her heart genuinely.  And yet, as she served she lost sight of who she was serving.  She began to focus more on the service than on the One she served.  And when she was distracted in this way, she felt sorry for herself.  My dear friends, oh how this applies to so many areas of our lives.  It applies to hospitality.  So many of you have been so hospitable.  But beware, that when you open your home to fellow church members, to your homegroup, to friends, to your extended family, to a stranger even, your motive  could have been out of genuine love and desire to honor Christ.  But when the idea of serving has now turned into the reality of serving, beware that you do not become so distracted by what you feel you need to do to make the time in the way you have determined it should be, that you have lost sight as to whom you serve in the first place.  That ultimately you serve the Lord, not even those whom you have over.

But of course this also applies to serving in different ministries of the church, or serving the local community, or serving the Lord on missions teams.  There will always be circumstances in any opportunity of service that will make serving difficult.  It is idealistic to think that serving will come without some sort of sacrifice.  Some of you have decided to serve the Gospel Train and some have even been serving 6 months consecutively missing 6 months of corporate worship so that children can hear the Gospel.  And perhaps as you do so, you might be thinking that the kids will respond to you quickly, and that the parents will deeply appreciate what you do, and the church will always bless you perfectly.  But suddenly you find that the kids aren’t responding the way you though they would.  The parents aren’t as engaged with you in teaching ‘their’ kids about the Gospel.  Suddenly, there is the urge to be pulled away from why you serve these kids, that you love Christ and want them to love Him, and slowly you’re being dragged away to self-pity, “Lord, do you not care…”  “I am serving ALONE.”  Every act of love towards a neighbor will have these temptations of distraction and self-pity.  But it doesn’t stop there.

Martha’s third sin was the sin of anger in verse 40, “Tell her then to help me.”  Notice in this sentence there are two people to blame for Martha’s predicament, Mary and Jesus.  The imperative could read YOU tell her then to help me.  It’s as if she’s saying to Jesus, “Jesus, you’re the reason Mary isn’t helping and why it’s taking so long for dinner.  So you go and fix this by telling Mary to do what she is supposed to be doing.”  Maybe we might not say this to Jesus, but I am sure many of us would have thought these same words.  You see, distraction and self-pity have the effect of creating anger, frustration, and resentment.  James comments that anger flows from a heart that does not get what one wants: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel.” (James 4:1-2)  Martha had a picture of what the evening would be like.  She would welcome Jesus and she and Mary would work hard to make the food just right and the place would look beautiful.  Jesus would come, enjoy the meal and the warmth of the home, and then leave feeling refreshed.  But Mary and Jesus were ruining everything.  She wrongly believed they were destroying her desire to be hospitable, her desire to serve, her joy in serving.  She was having a war in her soul because as James said, she desired and did not have [the situation she dreamt of, idolatry].

Martha’s anger had blinded her from seeing what Jesus wanted from her all along, simply her heart.  It’s what he wanted from the would be followers in chapter 9, from his disciples, the Samaritans, the lawyer.  For the first time in a while, Jesus finally found a person who simply wanted Jesus for who He was in Mary, and Martha could not see that.  In her self-righteousness, serving Jesus meant doing it Martha’s way, and unless Mary, Jesus, and others conformed to this, they would receive her anger and resentment.  This of course leads to Martha’s final sin, the sin of anxiety. Jesus points this out in verse 41.  If Martha was only there to hear Jesus say on the mountainside when He said: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” (Matt 6:25)  The reality is that God takes care of everything that we need according to Matt 6:31-32: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.”  In Martha’s distraction, self-pity, anger, she will never be free from anxiety.  She’s always concerned with how things are going.  When she invites Jesus over, she begins to worry about her menu, what she needs to do, how she will get it all done.  When Mary doesn’t help out, she’s even more worried about how she’ll get it all done, and she’s anxious about what Jesus will think of her as a hostess.  I bet you after Jesus left, she continued to struggle with worry about whether Jesus forgave her from saying what she said.  She probably thought, “Great, now Jesus thinks I’m selfish and control-freak.”  And I’m sure in the end, she could have easily thought, “You know, this all started when I invited Jesus over.  Next time, I think I’ll spare myself from heartache and skip the invitation.”  Oh how easily we can miss out on being a means of grace by not dealing with the reality that hospitality, service, and ministry is not the issue, but our hearts are.  Anxiety is our attempt to control our own lives and our failure to relinquish all situations to Christ.  John Newton puts it well:

How happy are they who can resign all to him, see his hand in every dispensation, and believe that he chooses better for them than they possibly could for themselves.[2]

Martha’s act of service was not her problem, not at all.  Remember, the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Serving was the outflow of a heart that genuinely had inherited eternal life.  Surely, Jesus was not gently rebuking Martha because she was working hard to be a good host.  Instead, it was that her serving was more focused on what she was giving to Jesus and doing for Jesus than why she was serving Jesus.  She became distracted from what serving Christ is ultimately about, wanting to be with Him in relationship.  And how easily this can and does happen to us as well.  So how does Jesus respond to Martha’s demand?  He responds with a picture of Mary.

Mary

Mary doesn’t say anything in the passage, but we know this about her: she ‘sat at the Lord’s feet and ‘listened to his teaching’ (v. 39).  Again, we need to remember the immediate context.  In Luke 9:37-43, Jesus casts out a demon from a child and the crowd and the man is described by Jesus as a ‘faithless and twisted generation’ who still don’t believe in Him.  In 9:46-48, His disciples are arguing over who is the greatest.  In 9:51-55, the Samaritan village rejects Him because He’s on his way to Jerusalem and James and John, his inner circle of disciples, want to abuse their authority as disciples.  In 9:57-62, some would-be disciples want to follow Him on their terms.  In 10:25, a lawyer is trying to trap Him.  The reality was that Jesus was continuously surrounded by people who ultimately did not care for Him.  They were there to use Him, to get what they could from Him and then get out.  But Mary was there to soak in everything Jesus said.  In other words, His Word was life to her and she didn’t want to miss out, something contrasted by most of the people Jesus had encountered thus far, including Mary’s own sister.

Jesus’ teaching mattered to Mary and most likely the Word of God as revealed through God’s Son, Jesus Christ was the ‘one thing’ in verse 42 that is necessary.  In fact, the very phrase ‘good portion’ means ‘right meal.’  Jesus essentially told Satan these very words in his attempt to tempt Jesus in Matt 4:4: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”  John tells us in John 1:1 that Jesus was the Word of God incarnate.  And this will never be taken away from her because this good portion, God’s Word, is an expression of God Himself as Psalm 73:25-26 tells us: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  Commentator David Gooding explains why this good portion is exactly what Mary desired and Martha needed and what we all need: “Amid all life’s duties and necessities there is one supreme necessity which must always be given priority, and which, if circumstances compel us to choose, must be chosen to the exclusion of all others.  That supreme necessity is to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen to his word.  It must be so.”[3]

Thus, the most important thing a follower of Christ can do is to sit at His feet and listen to His Word and act on them.  It’s what Mary came to realize and it is what Martha needed to do as well.  This new year, please consider once again what it means to sit at the Lord’s feet.  You could DO so many things and think that you love Him.  Like the lawyer trying to trap Jesus in 10:25, maybe you are still wondering, “What can I DO for Him?”  But perhaps there is nothing more vital to your faith in Christ than this ONE thing, that you would desire to know His Word.  This is what is absolutely necessary for you and for me.

Conclusion

It’s important to realize that in Jesus’ response to Martha, He neither condemns Mary or Martha.  Martha is not rebuked for serving.  And Jesus doesn’t tell Mary to go in and help Martha.  Again, Jesus is not telling Martha that she need not serve.  But there is a better way.  Martha needed to have Mary’s perspective in order to serve with joy.  She needed to choose the better portion as well, to sit at the feet of the Lord to listen and enjoy His Word.  And my dear friends, this Word is for you as well.  How easy it is to succumb to our penchant to want to do things for Christ, for ourselves.  We wake up in the morning and we think of how ‘important’ all of the things we need to do are in our lives.  We need to check email, surf the web, buy that sale item at the store before the sale ends, research to find the best deal, spend more time at work and less time caring for our family, for our walk with Christ, promote our career, etc.  But such a life, a life distracted with much, is a life that will quickly slip by.  This past week, my family and I spent some time watching some home movies of our children.  Watching our kids and some of your kids when they were babies and toddlers, I realize how quickly time has passed us by.  Also, spending time with my parents these past 2 weeks, has also made me realize that they will not be with me much longer.  Our time on this earth truly is fleeting.  And to spend such time frittering it away with mere distraction is tragic.  Jesus is telling us that the one thing He offers is not like anything else in this world.  As Isaiah 40:8 reminds us: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

This story doesn’t end in Luke 10.  In John 11, Mary and Martha’s brother Lazarus fell ill and eventually died.  When Jesus arrives on the scene, Martha is grieving and when she sees Jesus, Martha says to Him: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”  And when Jesus claimed to be the resurrection and the life, and then asks Martha, “Do you believe this?” her answer to him was “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” (John 11:27)  Martha had learned that her greatest treasure was not her control over her life.  She had released that god, that idol of worship.  She had come to recognize that in the work of Christ as Son of God,  Savior, she would have something that would far surpass anything she could ever do for herself and anyone else.

In John 12, Mary and Martha again show up.  They throw Jesus a party after Lazarus had risen from the dead.  John tells us that ‘Martha served.’  So Jesus’ words were not intended to stop Martha from serving.  Not at all.  But we see a different Martha here.  Because it was here that John tells us in verse 3: “Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.”  Martha had watched as her sister had taken this perfume, expensive perfume, and according to Judas, had ‘wasted it’ on Jesus.  Mary had done what she had always done, she had cherished Jesus above all earthly treasures.  She loved sitting at His feet listening.  But this time, she wanted to sit at His feet and bless Him with her heart that led to action and sacrifice.  And Martha?  Given what Martha was like, you would think she would have jumped up and grabbed Mary and said, “What are you doing?!”  But we only know that she served.  Perhaps Martha had finally learned.  She could serve and watch and listen.  And given what she said in John 11:27, that she believed she was the Christ, I think I could safely surmise that she had learned and found, unlike Judas, believed Mary’s response was one she firmly agreed with.

My dear friends, do you empathize with Martha?  I would imagine we all do in some way.  We are all fluttering around, distracted, wrestling with self-pity, angry, and anxious far too often, even as we do acts of kindness and service and ministry.  And we forget the one thing that is necessary.  We forget that God’s Word is what such a heart desperately needs to enjoy Him, enjoy others, enjoy life, and enjoy ourselves.  Phil Ryken describes this perspective this way: “Jesus is the perfect antidote for all the unattractive attitudes that poison our service when we turn our attention away from him.  His gospel is the cure for our distraction, as we are drawn to the beauty of his grace.  His peace is the cure for our anxiety, as we trust in Him through the worries of life.”[4] This is why we have to preach the Gospel to ourselves every day.  We have to remember His truth, that “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”  We’re brought to God in His death.  We’re made alive in the spirit.  This is why we love Him when we serve and we never forget Him in all that we do.  So devote yourselves to His Word.  Make this year a new year to read, dwell, meditate, and memorize the Word.  Sit at His feet.  So let 2010 be a year, a decade, a lifetime, where you will do what you do, you will advance the Gospel found in His Word, believing that this glorious Gospel gives you such delight, that your ministry, your hospitality, your service, your mission, your evangelism, your community outreach, is because He has not even withheld His Son for you.  Happy New Year!

[2] John Newton, Letters of John Newton, 137.

[3] Quoted from Phil Ryken, Luke Vol 1, 561.

[4] Phil Ryken, Luke Vol 1, 563.

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”

29 But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. 32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ 36 Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

(Luke 10:25-37)

Introduction

There are many institutions named with the name Good Samaritan in it. There are hospitals, veterinary hospitals, nursing home facilities, non-profit organizations, churches, hospices, social service agencies, health centers, colleges, foundations, pet adoption centers, boys and girls clubs, and even wellness and fitness gyms all with the name ‘Good Samaritan’ in them. The idea of the Good Samaritan has become a ubiquitous, cultural symbol of neighborly kindness and has often been associated with health care.

But what is missing from these depictions of the Good Samaritan is the context of the story that Jesus told to the crowd on that day. In Luke 10:21-22, Jesus tells the people listening to him that some would understand all that He says about the Gospel, but some would clearly misunderstand Him. In other words, this is a story about salvation as highlighted by a lawyer, that is an expert in the law of God who stood up to ‘test’ Jesus with the question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The Good Samaritan parable, therefore, is an illustration to answer this most important question. In fact, let me contend that if you do not have the context of the Good Samaritan story, that it is a story about eternal life, all you would get from the story then would be how the world currently views this parable, a good deed towards those who are marginalized. But the context gives us a much more powerful motivation to care for the downtrodden, the poor, the unwanted, and the lost. It tells us that Christians who truly know how great God’s love towards us is, out of such love, we will go and do likewise.

There are two components to the story: 1) The problem of the testy lawyer and his misguided question in verses 25-29, and 2) The solution of God’s law and our response as illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan in verses 26-36. To understand both allows us to know what Jesus means when he says in verse 37: “You go, and do likewise.”

The Problem of the Testy Lawyer and His Misguided Question (v. 25-29)

So let’s look first at the problem of the testy lawyer and his misguided question in verse 25: “And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” It’s pretty obvious that the lawyer’s motivation was not a good one, since he was out ‘to put him to the test.’ The lawyer’s first problem was that unbelief marked his response. He simply didn’t believe Jesus was who He said He was and he wanted to do anything he could to trip Him up.

Also, we get a further picture of the lawyer in verses 26-27: “He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” The second problem was a problem of application, that even though the lawyer knew the law well, he did not apply it to his own life. He obviously knew the law well enough to quote the Shema (Deut 6:4-5) and God’s law of love towards others in Leviticus 19:18. Being an expert in the law, this lawyer intellectually knew Scripture very well. He probably had memorized large portions and had studied the law of God diligently. And so, it is no surprise that he would be able to give the right answer. But therein lies the problem, Jesus is not merely looking for the right answer. He’s looking for the heart that actually lives out the truths of the right answer. In Puritan pastor Richard Baxter’s treatise, The Reformed Pastor, the first page is a warning for all ‘Reverend Brethren’ (fellow pastors and elders). In his treatise, Richard Baxter cautions pastors that they could be ministering in such pride and negligence of the condition of one’s own soul, that though he would preach to others about salvation, he himself might not even be saved. This is the terrible danger that all who lead God’s people face, pastors and elders, that unless they are continually suspicious of their own souls, they could as Paul warns after preaching the Gospel, be disqualified from the prize (1 Cor 9:26-27). Thus, simply knowing God’s Word, as important as that is, without applying the Word to one’s own soul is terribly dangerous.

Also, notice the problem of the question itself, “What shall I DO to inherit eternal life?” For this lawyer, eternity with God was obtainable by DOING something. He believed that his good works, perhaps his knowledge of the law, his role in the local synagogue, his tithing, his concern for the poor, something that he did made him eligible for God’s favor in salvation. Also, it’s quite possible that he believed merely one deed, or maybe a few deeds, gave him an admission ticket to heaven. But for every deed this man would do to inherit eternal life, there would be many more deeds that disqualify him from eternal life, which is the fundamental problem with his question. Romans 3:20 reminds us: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.” It simply is impossible to inherit eternal life by any deed, because we cannot perfectly obey God’s law at all times. But somewhere in his thinking, the lawyer believed that this was possible and he probably believed he had accomplished such deeds.

This leads to the lawyer’s third problem, self-justification according to verse 29. You see, the lawyer had answered correctly as Jesus stated in verse 27. And his question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ is his attempt to show that he had met the law’s perfect demands by caring for his fellow Jews. For the lawyer, the law committed him to care for God’s people, but it required nothing more. In other words, there were two classifications of people in this man’s eyes, the Jews who were his neighbors, and the non-Jews, who were not his neighbors. And to justify himself, he asks this question to ‘cover his bases,’ perhaps because he was not so neighborly to others. Biblical scholar Darrell Bock comments, “Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s real question is, ‘Do not worry about spotting Jesus’ people first, just be a neighbor to all, as this Samaritan was.’” And so Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan as a response to the lawyer, to both explain who are our neighbors, but even more importantly, to explain what we must ‘do’ to inherit eternal life.

The Solution of God’s Law and Our Response Illustrated by the Good Samaritan (v. 26-36)

So the problem this lawyer had was threefold, 1) UNBELIEF: he didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah, 2) APPLICATION: he believed he had fulfilled the requirements of the law by merely knowing the law correctly, and 3) SELF-JUSTIFICATION: he believed he had obeyed the law by caring for his neighbors, fellow Jews. And in one fell swoop, Jesus essentially addresses all three components of his problem with a parable, the famous parable of the good Samaritan.

Many of you know the story. There was a man who was taking a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho which was about 17 miles. The journey was a treacherous one because there was a pass where it rose to as high as 2600 feet above sea level and then dropped to 825 feet below sea level. It was uninhabited with gullies and cliffs on both sides. The Bible refers to this pass as the Pass of Blood (Joshua 18:17) because of the inherent dangers of robbers who could easily lie in wait in the crevices of the cliffs for unsuspecting travelers. So to Jesus’ listeners, they would have been very familiar with how dangerous this place would have been and it certainly would have been no surprise that this man was robbed and beaten and left for dead.

In verse 31 Luke notes ‘by chance a priest was going down that road.’ The phrase is one of delightful surprise, as if something good was about to happen. And on this lonely, barren, abandoned road where few travelled, it would have been a stroke of ‘good luck’ that this priest was there. And of all people to come, one of God’s anointed priests. Surely, if anyone would stop to help, it would be God’s servant. And yet, one look at the man, and he steered far away from him, passing on the other side. A second servant of God, a Levite who was responsible for Temple service, not on the same level of a priest, but still a commissioned servant of the Lord, also saw the man. And he too “passed by on the other side.”

So here were two men who would know the Law as well as the lawyer who was confronting Jesus. They were dedicated servants of the Lord. They were leaders of God’s people, committed to keeping God’s commandments. They would have been well-known in the synagogue. And yet, when they saw the man lying there, probably unsure whether he was dead or alive, they refused to extend any aid at all. In fact, they didn’t even check to see whether he was alive. Perhaps they believed they would be subject to the same thievery, if the robbers were close by. Perhaps they were concerned whether their aid to the man, should he have died, could have affected their ability to worship in the temple since they could be disqualified by their uncleanness in touching a dead body (Lev 21:1-3). Or perhaps, as many of us might have felt, they were simply too busy and didn’t have time to offer any aid because it would have been inconvenient to do so. We don’t know what the reason was, but all of these reasons simply did not qualify as legitimate reasons to ignore the man. By simply passing by, these men had failed to obey the very commandment the lawyer stated in verse 27.

Do you see the implications of what Jesus is saying to the lawyer and to us in this parable? We cannot merely say we believe we are saved, that we know the commandments, and that we obey God without actually doing what He says. Moreover, we cannot pass by those who are in need simply because it is inconvenient, or because there is some risk involved, or because there is a cost. To do so means that we are no better than the priest or Levite. There will be many times in our lives when people need our help, when there are the poor, the defenseless, the desperate. I don’t think this parable means we need to answer every cry for help. It would be impossible to do so. But there will be times when you know in your heart the Lord is pressing on you to heed the call of a person who is in genuine need. You will be tempted to give many reasons why you cannot help at all. You’re too busy. It’s too dangerous or risky. You’re too tired. You’ve already ‘done your duty.’ You have your family to care for and surely God couldn’t be asking for more. During such times, we need to really ask ourselves, am I no better than the priest or Levite.

This week I had the opportunity to go to Creekside, where we formerly met. I met with John Bruce and with Kathy Greer, the Outreach Coordinator at Creek side. And she had shared with me a number of ways we can reach out to those in need in our very area. In Dublin there is a Dublin Women’s Federal Prison where we can volunteer to visit and minister to some of the women there. There is the Alameda Food Pantry near the Oakland Airport. There is the Valley Crisis Pregnancy Center. This year, we’ll be sending another team to Mozambique. I know many of you are busy. But I implore you that you would not merely pass by the desperate. To do so is not only unneighborly, as Jesus is telling us in this parable, it is dangerous for our souls.

But as you all know, the story doesn’t end there. There is a third passerby, a Samaritan man. I am sure when Jesus told this part of the story, the crowd around him must have winced with indignation. Samaritans were no better than pigs to Jews, people to be avoided at all costs. Remember also, that it was only recently that the Samaritans had rejected Jesus in Luke 9:52, so I’m sure at least the disciples would have remembered this and would have never considered any Samaritan capable of a worthy deed. But here is a Samaritan loving his neighbor by having compassion on the man (v. 33). Let’s look at what his love looked like more specifically. In verse 33, he ‘came to where he was.’ Notice the contrast between this first action and the actions of the priest and Levite. When they saw the man, they went to the ‘other side.’ But this Samaritan did not consider his own welfare. He moved toward the man. He also ‘saw him.’ He didn’t turn away, pretending he wasn’t there. He noticed the man in need. How important of a step this is in loving a neighbor. It means that we actually care enough to look, to ponder. A loving neighbor notices pain and hardship and cannot turn aside. He then has ‘compassion.’ His heart is swayed and moved. He is empathetic. He imagines what it would be like to be in his shoes. The word ‘compassion’ has nuances of pity, mercy, tenderness. He views the man and he can’t help but react, which leads to his actions.

To love one’s neighbor is not mere emotion and pity. It has to lead to action. And for the Samaritan he not only stops, he does all that he can to care for this stranger. And so verses 34-35 lists all of his actions: 1) he ‘went to him,’ 2) ‘bound up his wounds,’3) poured oil and wine on him, 4) ‘set him on his own animal,’ 5) ‘brought him to an inn,’ 6) ‘took care of him,’ 7) paid for his care. Notice that every one of his actions cost him something. When he went to the man, he risked his own security because it could easily have been a trap. He poured oil and wine on him which was from his own supply which obviously cost money. By setting the man on his mule, he had to walk the distance, which could have been miles. He brought him to an inn which would have cost him an initial outlay of money. By taking care of the man, the Samaritan probably had to spend even more time to make sure he was better. And then to pay the man not only for his care, but any further care, would have been even more money. Being a loving neighbor is not an easy task, and yes, it takes sacrifice of time, energy, and resources. In essence, a loving neighbor loves the neighbor as he loves himself.

It’s at this point, Jesus asks this critical question to the lawyer in verse 36: “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” The answer of course, is obvious and the lawyer rightly responds, “The one who showed him mercy.” Oh how that must have been so difficult for the man to say, the obvious. Notice he doesn’t say, “The Samaritan.” It was too difficult to imagine a Samaritan caring in such a way. The reality is, this man asked an initial question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The man wanted an action plan for salvation. He was used to doing good things, moral things that he believed he could control. The man even knew exactly what the answer was to Jesus’ commandment question, “Love God, love your neighbor as yourself.” And surely he must have thought, “I know I love God in such a way, and I know I love my neighbors in this way as well.” But Jesus presses the man’s view of neighbor, to the point where he realizes that he doesn’t love his neighbor as himself, especially if you change the definition of neighbor.

What if Jesus were asking you to love all of your neighbors, anyone in need, perfectly? Have you ever been asked by a homeless man for help where you have merely turned away? Have you sat here listening to the stories about orphans and widows in Africa and the fact they are literally starving to death and though you could easily give $50/month to feed 5 orphan children, you decided that you could spend the money better elsewhere, on yourself? Have you said that you want to serve the church or the poor or the imprisoned or the defenseless in some way but after thinking about it, have responded, “I’m just too busy”? The reality is, all of us have played the priest and Levite at some time. We have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. We have failed to do so and even with our best intentions, we will continue to do so. The problem with the lawyer was not merely that he failed to love his neighbor as himself, the problem with the lawyer was that he DESIRED to JUSTIFY HIMSELF. He shook off his guilty feeling by recounting all of the good things in his heart that he did. He was a servant of the Lord. He worked hard in the synagogue. He memorized Scripture. He probably tithed and maybe once in a while cared for the poor. He was perhaps a good father and husband. All of these allowed him to justify himself. He didn’t believe his failures to love his neighbor actually kept him separated from God. And so this is why he desperately needed, not to try to fulfill the law, but why he needed a Savior after all. Remember the lawyer’s threefold problem: 1) he didn’t believe Jesus was the Messiah, 2) he believed he had fulfilled the requirements of the law by merely knowing the law correctly, and 3) he believed he had obeyed the law by caring for his neighbors, fellow Jews. He needed to realize that no matter how hard he tried, he would always fall short of obeying the law. He needed Jesus as the only one who could perfectly fulfill the law as Jesus says in Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” This parable is not only a story about loving your neighbor, but even more, it’s a story about God loving us so much that His Son was sent to do what we could never do, and what this lawyer could never do, show perfect compassion to all. In one act, Peter tells us, “For Christ also suffered ONCE for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18) Commentator David Gooding beautifully describes what Jesus has done in view of this parable this way:

We were not his neighbors nor he ours. But he chose by incarnation to come where we were; and in spite of the fact that human beings hounded him to a cross, he rescued us at his own expense, and has paid in advance the cost of completing our redemption and of perfecting us for unimaginable glory. (Quoted from Phil Ryken, Luke Vol 1, 550)

In light of this reality, “You go, and do likewise.” We’ll never be able to care for everyone, and we need not feel as though we have to. Jesus has done that work. But out of this great love for us, we must go and bind up wounds, take risks, care for the poor, and defenseless. We’ll be giving opportunities to serve neighbors in 2010 and beyond. May you do so because you yourself were shown such love by your Savior Jesus Christ.

And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

21 In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

23 Then turning to the disciples he said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

Luke 10:18-24

Introduction

When I was a child, I learned a simple song in Sunday School and it went like this, “I have the joy, joy, joy joy down in my heart…Down in my heart to stay. And I am so happy, so very happy, I’ve got the love of Jesus in my heart.” It’s a simple song with an important truth. Christians are a rejoicing people because Jesus has come into our lives to stay eternally. But somewhere along the way, we lose sight of this powerful reality. It’s as if to know Christ cannot be both serious and joyous. But this simply is not the message of Christ. Jesus never states that following Christ is a life of ease and comfort, quite the opposite. We learned that following Christ means denying oneself. It means that sometimes you will be rejected by your family, your culture, your society because you follow Him. It means that your comforts will be challenged. But what Jesus never says is that the Christian life is joyless. That song I learned as a child is true not because of life’s circumstances, but because Jesus resides deep in my heart to stay. And it is this idea that Jesus wishes for His disciples to realize as they return from their ministry.

Remember, in Luke 10:1-16, Jesus had sent them out, preparing them for the harvest field, preparing them for danger and rejection, preparing them for a lack of comfort, preparing them for judgment. It was a harsh warning. But it was one they needed to heed. I’m sure it left them feeling uneasy and unsure about the mission. But as verse 17 states, they ‘returned with joy.’ They had seen amazing things, they had been left in awe, and they couldn’t help but respond with joy. This week, if you have children, you will see a response from them that will express their hearts, whether they want to hide it or not. When they open their gifts, watch their faces. If their lips quiver as they say thanks to the new pair of pants and shirt, you’ll know what is going on deep in their heart. Externally, they might be saying thank you, internally, they are feeling disappointment and perhaps despair. If they open the gift to find a new nerf gun, or a video game, or Zhu Zhu pet hamsters, and you see them burst our squealing or laughing, you know what they are feeling deep inside. They cannot hide what they feel. Well, the disciples came back with joy because of what they saw and because of what they had genuinely experienced. And yet, as great as their joy was, Jesus tells them that there are even greater reasons to rejoice than merely seeing signs and wonders. They had only begun to experience what the Lord had in store for them. And so each reason Jesus gives to rejoice is greater than the previous one and it culminates in something so spectacular that words will not adequately describe their joy. And these same reasons to rejoice are our reasons as well. So let’s look at Jesus’ three reasons to rejoice in Luke 10:17-24.

Reason #1: God Has Defeated Satan Forever (vv. 17-19)

The first reason then that the disciples should rejoice is that God has defeated Satan forever (vv. 17-20). Luke records in verses 17-19: “The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” 18 And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.” When Jesus ‘saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,’ he was repeating what was long thought of Satan, that He would be soundly defeated by God’s Messiah as predicted in Isaiah 14:12-13: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! 13 You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven.” Jesus was that Messiah who would finish the Enemy once and for all, and it would be by the cross that this would be accomplished as Hebrews 2:14 declares: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.”

The disciples’ ministry therefore, was a reminder to the world that this was the beginning of the end of Satan’s power and rule. The demons submission to them and the disciples power over the Enemy in verse 19 is not a supernatural magic show to wow the bystanders, but rather, it was intended to be a sign of the Giver of such authority, that is Jesus Himself. He would not only overwhelm the demonic forces by his awesome power, but He would also protect His people from harm, hence the language of the serpents and scorpions. Commentator Darrell Bock puts it this way: “In the war with Satan, Jesus’ ministry is D-day.”(Darrell Bock, Luke Vol. 2, 1008.)

And for this reason, anyone who follows Christ ought to rejoice. After all, one’s greatest enemy has been defeated. And like any movie where an evil enemy is continually defeating the hero, once the enemy is finally vanquished by the hero, there is an almost visceral feeling of joy. When Germany finally surrendered during World War II, there were mass celebrations that broke out all over the world. Novelist Mollie Panter-Downes describes in New Yorker Magazine what she saw in London on that day:

American sailors and laughing girls formed a conga line down the middle of Piccadilly and cockneys linked arms in the Lambeth Walk. It was a day and night of no fixed plan and no organized merriment. Each group danced its own dance, sang its own song, and went its own way as the spirit moved it. The most tolerant, self-effacing people in London on V-E Day were the police, who simply stood by, smiling benignly, while soldiers swung by one arm from lamp standards and laughing groups tore down hoardings to build the evening’s bonfires…The young service men and women who swung arm in arm down the middle of every street, singing and swarming over the few cars rash enough to come out, were simply happy with an immense holiday happiness. They were the liberated people who, like their counterparts in every celebrating capital that night, were young enough to outlive the past and to look forward to an unspoilt future. Their gaiety was very moving.

The defeat of a hated enemy and the end of suffering and pain of war has the natural effect of great, exuberant joy. How much more then will the defeat of the ultimate Enemy bring to God’s people? This is the reason why Jesus was telling the disciples they should rejoice.

However, there is one problem. The disciples simply didn’t get it. It seems obvious from the context, especially verse 20, that they were more excited about the demons subjection to them than to Jesus. We learned in verses 1-10 that Jesus had sent them on a mission with all sorts of cautions, one to proclaim the good news that the Christ has come. And by God’s grace, they returned with news of great success. They had seen miracles. They probably cast out demons and healed the sick. They were given authority and power unlike any seen before. But as always with human beings, success got to their heads. The irony of it all is that the very reason for Satan’s fall from the earth, his pride, was the very sin they were falling to in their response to Satan’s fall.

There is a lesson to be learned by all of us through the disciples foibles. Success, peace, comforts, happiness, all of these are blessings of the Lord. But these are also incredibly vulnerable times for any believer of God. I’ve been reading in the Chronicles, and it seems story after story is the story of kings who succeed because of their devotion to God, but as God provides comfort and peace, they seem to lose sight of His grace. David, after all of the successes, is walking on the roof when kings go to war, and he commits murder and adultery. Solomon, after receiving riches untold and great wisdom because of his early humility before God, later in his life when he had everything, he worshipped the idols of his many wives. Asa was King of Judah. He brought great reforms in 2 Chron 15 and repaired the Temple and put away all of the idols that had cluttered the land. And yet, when Hanani the prophet rebuked him in his latter years for depending more on alliances with Syria rather than the Lord, Asa had him thrown into prison and ‘inflicted cruelties on some of the people.’ In 2 Chron 17:3, it says King Jehoshaphat, Asa’s son, ‘walked in the earlier ways of his father David’ and ‘sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments.’ For much of his life, he sought the Lord and trusted in him. But later in his life, he aligned himself with the evil king of Israel Ahaziah and did not depend on God. Each king would fall to the same temptations, even Hezekiah and Josiah. Peace and success are wonderful blessings from God. But oh how tempting it is to forget the Lord during such times. J. C. Ryle aptly warns all of us during such times:

When everything around us seems to prosper, and all our plans work well,–when family trials and sicknesses are kept from us, and the course of our worldly affairs runs smooth,–when our daily crosses are light, and all within and without like a morning without clouds,–then, then is the time when our souls are in danger! Then is the time when we have need to be doubly watchful over our own hearts. (J. C. Ryle, Luke, 359)

I know that we are often praying for positive outcomes for things, as I believe we should. We should pray that there would be physical healing. We should pray that the unemployed should find a job. We should pray that singles find a godly spouse, and that couples be able to have children, and that marriages have deep love without the manifestation of sins, and that souls be saved. But what are you most thankful for, the outcome, or the One who has brought about that outcome? Success apart from Christ leads us to worship the created things (outcomes of circumstances) rather than the Creator (Rom 1:25). Which is the very reason we should rejoice not in the sign and power and outcome, but rather, the One who gives us the authority over the greatest Enemy of all.

Reason #2: Name Written in Heaven (vv. 17-20)

The second reason then that the disciples should rejoice even more is that their names are written in heaven as Jesus tells them in verse 20: “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” The Bible regularly refers to the metaphor of heaven as a place where the names of those who are saved are written in a book. When Moses interceded for the people of Israel as they faced God’s wrath, he said to God: “But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.” (Exodus 32:32) Paul also notes that fellow workers of the Gospel ‘are in the book of life.’ (Phil 4:3) The idea is that God knows everyone who is saved and He has made sure that salvation is assured.

And thus, as great as it is to defeat Satan, it is still less dramatic than the salvation of sinners. There is no miracle that can be performed, not the creation of the universe, not the moving a mountain, not the cure from cancer, not the suspension of gravity, nothing can compare to sinners being saved. And the reason why salvation is so great is because sin created such a chasm between God and us [the chasm of a couple in the midst of a severe conflict cannot compare] and so the cost of salvation would be priceless. Creation didn’t cost God His only beloved Son, but our salvation from our rebellion and sin did.

Surely, this is a far greater reason to rejoice than any other reason. We work so hard to find things to rejoice in, to mean something, to find some sort of pleasure and peace. Think of every major decision of your life, everything of import, the school you chose to attend, the friendships you sought, the good opinions of your parents, the person you desired to marry, the career path you chose, the ways you spent your money, the children you had, the way in which you raised your kids, the way you spend retirement, the ministry you had. We want joy to come from such events and from such work. But even if it should come, it is so fleeting. Or it is only a taste, but nothing more. But there is one joy that will last forever, and it is that your name is written in the Book of Life. And there is no better reason to rejoice than that. Ian Murray tells the story of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the famed preacher of Westminster Chapel. As his life drew to a close, Murray asked this question to the good doctor: “How are you coping now that your ministry is so confined?” If you know anything about Lloyd-Jones, you know how prolific he was in preaching Scripture. He has 14 large volumes of sermons just on the book of Romans. He loved to preach and minister. After 53 years of preaching and ministry, you would think Dr. Lloyd-Jones would be a bit forlorn about being unable to preach and minster due to age. And yet his response to the question was: “Do not rejoice that the demons are subject to you in my name, but rejoice that your name is written in heaven.” He then added, “I am perfectly content.”(Quoted from Phil Ryken, Luke Vol 1, 350)

Oh how we are far too content on such small things such as peace and quiet in our house or the ease of life after children or when we open our Christmas gifts to find what we were wishing for or a marriage that simply gets by. What do you rejoice most in, especially this Christmas season? Christian, are you rejoicing in the fact that your name is written in the Book of Life? If not, no wonder you are tired and weary and joyless. You have forgotten what a wondrous work it was for God to save you from your sin. It cost Him His Son’s blood! So rejoice!

Reason #3: The Triune God Dwells in Great Joy (vv. 21-24)

Finally, the last reason that the disciples should rejoice most is that God the Father, Son, and Spirit dwells in great joy with one another according to verses 21-22: “In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 22 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” The word ‘rejoiced’ in verse 21 is a different word for joy than the ones used in verses 17 and 20. It’s a more intense type of joy, great exuberance, the kind that produces a ground-swell of wonder and affect. And also, what’s unique about this joy is its sense of fulfillment. This joy is complete, as if every wish, every dream, every hope is fully consummated and realized. This is a joy that is not lacking one bit. And He has this joy because He is in perfect relationship with the Holy Spirit (‘rejoiced in the Holy Spirit’) and with the Father (‘no one know who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son.’) So let me put it to you this way, there is nothing you can do to add or subtract to the joy of the Lord. He is perfectly joyous. The implications of this are astounding if you think about it.

For example, when my kids obey me, it is very easy for me to feel happy about that. My joy increases. When my kids disobey me, I feel unhappy. My joy decreases. It’s the sad reality of the human heart. Our joy is affected by others. But for God, His joy is not rooted on us. He is not less joyous because of our sins and more joyous because of our goodness. Instead, He is completely and perfectly joyous in Himself because of His being God the Father, Son, and Spirit. Nothing can change that, not even our sin, and not our morality. And yet, despite the fact that He doesn’t need us to experience perfect joy, out of His great mercy, God has decided to love us with unfathomable love, so that we too might share in His joy.

And so Jesus tells us in the parable of the talents that the master will say to those who are faithful to the end: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matt 25:21) Jesus wants us to share in the joy that He has with the Father. John 17:26 makes this quite clear: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Jesus’ whole reason for coming to the world, the very reason why we celebrate Christmas, was that the fullness of joy and love the Son has with the Father and Spirit would be shared with me and you! And Jesus would set His face towards Jerusalem to bear the cross so that this could happen. Do you see how lavished God’s love is for you?

I don’t know about you, but my natural tendency is to hoard what good things I have for myself. If I have one last piece of gum, I don’t naturally want to share it with others. I don’t want to share my meals. The natural person in me doesn’t want to give to poor orphans in Mozambique, or to missions, or to the ministry of the church. Shua and I have been drinking roiboos tea these past nights, and for the past few times, when I make tea, I have made it for myself only. And when she looks at me and asks, “What about me?” I give her mine pretending I made it for her (of course she sees right through me). Sometimes it really startles me that I am so self-centered and self-focused, even without realizing it. It is so ‘natural’ to be so.

Thank God that He is not like this at all! He doesn’t give us leftovers. He gives us His very best. He gives us not only the perfect joy that He has, but His Son as the means to receive that joy! This Christmas, amongst the parties and gifts, and family gatherings. Rejoice because those are mere fragrances of the Feast that is to come. Rejoice because Satan has been and will be completely obliterated by the work of Christ. Rejoice even more because your name is written in the Book of Life. But rejoice most of all because God the Father, Son, and Spirit dwell richly in perfect joy and that He wants you to share in that joy eternally! Have a joyous Christmas!

37 On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38 And behold, a man from the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son, for he is my only child. 39 And behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out. It convulses him so that he foams at the mouth, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him. 40 And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” 41 Jesus answered, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 42 While he was coming, the demon threw him to the ground and convulsed him. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43 And all were astonished at the majesty of God.

But while they were all marveling at everything he was doing, Jesus said to his disciples, 44 “Let these words sink into your ears: The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men.” 45 But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, so that they might not perceive it. And they were afraid to ask him about this saying.

46 An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. 47 But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by his side 48 and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”
Luke 9:37-50

Introduction

Have you ever felt really frustrated by someone else’s lack of effort, consideration, change of behavior? Sure you have. How many wives in here have asked their husband to pick up their socks, help in some household chore (vacuuming, washing dishes, taking out the trash, take care of the kids, etc.), only to have their husbands glued to ESPN and respond with hypnotic circles in their eyes saying in a monotone voice, ‘Yes, honey, later,’ and only to see the deed never done? How many parents in here have asked their kids to clean their room, pick up after themselves, turn off the lights, or countless of other requests, only to find them uncompleted? How many of you have shot off an email to another, only to find that your request goes completely ignored or unanswered? It’s frustrating to continually remind someone of a responsibility that they have, only to have them repeatedly disregard what you have said. Such a response leads you to believe that not only are your words unimportant, but you yourself are not a priority in his or her life.

But in each situation, there is one problem. The frustrated person is not perfect himself. Wives who criticize their husbands about failing to take up certain chores, are often themselves guilty of their own foibles. Parents who ask their kids to clean their rooms perhaps have their own bed unmade or their own bathroom out of order. The person frustrated by an email or phone call unresponded has outstanding phone calls or emails that he himself has not responded to. The reality is that our frustrations are never out of our own perfect moral righteousness. We are very much like the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18:21ff. We want forgiveness when we fail, but we fail to show mercy to those who fail us.

There is one person, however, who has perfectly kept every moral requirement. And of course, His name is Jesus. Thus, whenever He rebuked or judged another, He did so without a hint of hypocrisy. Jesus’ anger was always a righteous anger, and His frustration was a perfect and holy frustration. Luke 9:37-50 gives a number of instances where Jesus’ righteous anger is displayed against 4 failures that the disciples needed to address in their lives in order to be able to understand who Jesus truly was: 1) Faithlessness, 2) Spiritual Blindness, 3) Pride, and 4) Misdirection. Each failure was keeping them from understanding who Jesus was and why He came to earth. And so, we can learn much from the disciples here because each struggles with these same failures. And unless we understand how to overcome such failure, we too will also fail to understand who Jesus is and what He did for us. We’ll cover Faithlessness this week so let’s examine the first failure, Faithlessness.

Faithlessness: Not Trusting God (vv. 37-43)

Faithlessness is essentially a failure to trust that God can do anything He so wills. Matthew, Mark, along with Luke, helps paint the scene for us. Mark seems to tell us that Jesus’ disciples were in a disagreement with the scribes, perhaps because the scribes were ridiculing the disciples for being unable to heal the sick boy (vv. 14-17). Matthew 17:14-15 and Mark 9:18 explain that the boy has epilepsy, is prone to throw himself often into fire and water, foams at the mouth and grinds his teeth. Luke also contends that the disease in this instance is a result of a demon.

And so, out of desperation, the father turns to Jesus’ disciples for help saying in verse 40: “And I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” The critical question here is, “Why couldn’t they cast out the demon?”

The answer is that they lacked faith. What’s amazing about this answer is what has taken place thus far in chapters 8-9 of Luke. Let me recap: 8:22-25 = Jesus calms the raging storm instantaneously; 8:26-39 = He casts out man demons out of the Gerasene man; 8:40-56 = He healed the woman with uterine bleeding for 12 years, He also raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead; 9:10-17 = He feeds about 20,000 people with nothing more than 5 loaves and 2 fish; 9:28-36 = He is revealed in all of His glory with Moses and Elijah. In other words, Jesus had performed miracles that were far beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. The disciples even had front-row seats to every one of them and yet, they still struggled with their faith.

And yet, despite all of their noble efforts, they couldn’t heal the boy. The boy probably had scars all over his body from his falls into the fire. He was probably disheveled, unkempt, maybe smelled really bad because it was difficult for him to bathe. So as the disciples tried to cast out the demon and heal the boy, judging from Jesus’ response, they probably used techniques and rigorous efforts to heal the boy. But they failed to see their lack of faith. In verse 41, Jesus tells everyone: “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” They did not truly believe that Jesus was who He said He was, even despite his miracles. They did not understand who was at the root of the miracles. It was never about the miracle itself, or even the object of the miracle (storm, Gerasene man, thousands who needed to be fed). No, the miracle was only possible because of the God behind it.

Also, Jesus’ rebuke of the “faithless and twisted generation” would have reminded people of Moses. In Numbers 14:27, God asks Moses and Aaron: “How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me?” Moses later in Deut 32:5, before he was about to die, warns Israel of their wayward past by telling them: “They have dealt corruptly with him; they are no longer his children because they are blemished; they are a crooked and twisted generation.” In other words, they continually see God work miracle after miracle and they still grumble and turn against Him. They still refuse to believe He is the God who always provides, always protects, always rules and reigns, always keeps His promises. They are a faithless people.

A Portrait of the Faithless

And that’s what faithless people do. Faithless people refuse to trust God even after God has continually provided for His people. Faithless people have a short memory. They forget blessing, mercy, grace, forgiveness received. The faithless only focus on current trials, faults, deficiencies. The faithless have a veneer of external holiness but internally, there is nothing but the darkness of self-righteousness, self-effort and self-praise. And so Jesus’ disciples, though outwardly they followed Jesus, inwardly they still didn’t believe He was who He said He was. And my friends, we too struggle with the same failure as the disciples. Faithlessness or unbelief keeps us from seeing Christ as He is. We forget the Gospel because we regularly struggle with the Gospel’s relevance in our lives. Like the disciples who were trying to cast out the demons by maximum effort and maximum holiness, we too believe that such efforts make us better parents, better siblings, better church members, better spouses, better Christians. But Martin Luther explains for us why this is so dangerous: “The wisdom and righteousness of the flesh look good, and so the righteousness of grace and faith is lost, and the righteousness of the law and works advanced and maintained.” (Martin Luther, Galatians, 52.)

Casting out demons look good, look spiritual. No one would fault them for their efforts. Our planning, strategies, efforts outwardly can look so good, so holy. But when we lose sight of WHO is the God to be worshipped in all that we do, when we lose sight of the WHY we do what we do, the righteousness of our works, our reputation, our fame, our glory is advanced and the Gospel is hidden. Jerry Bridges uses another word for faithlessness. He uses the word ‘godlessness’ and I think that’s exactly why Jesus rebuked the crowds and the disciples. They were more concerned with their inability to heal and cast out demons and probably how they appeared before others. They were probably more anxious about their own glory as Jesus’ DISCIPLES than concerned about how people viewed the God they were serving. And they would have been more enthralled by the power in demons being exorcised, than being amazed by the God who exorcised the demons. In this way, they were godless even as they promoted God. Jerry Bridges aptly describes this godlessness:

Now the sad fact is that many of us who are believers tend to live our daily lives with little or no thought of God. We may even read our Bibles and pray for a few minutes at the beginning of each day, but then we go out into the day’s activities and basically live as though God doesn’t exist. We seldom think of our dependence on God or our responsibility to Him. We might go for hours with no thought of God at all. In that sense, we are hardly different from our nice, decent, unbelieving neighbor. God is not at all in his thoughts and is seldom in ours. (Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins, 54.)

My dear friends, regardless of how long you’ve been a Christian, what you do as a Christian, what capacity you serve the church, we are all prone to be godless in our actions, to serve God for our own merit than to honor God for who He is and what He has done. If Jesus’ own disciples can faithlessly attempt to cast out demons, then surely I can preach a sermon without faith, or you can teach kids, even and especially your own kids the Gospel without Christ in view, or lead homegroup, or serve in leadership, or care for the homeless, or go to the outermost ends of the earth without God.

Are you trusting God today or are you trusting in the activities or works of God without Christ in view? What does your faith look like? Is it a faith based on outward appearances for others to see? Are you more concerned about what people think of you, than the God that you worship? Is it based on your effort (how hard you are working, how hard you are serving, where you are serving)? Such efforts, as Jesus point out to the disciples and to the crowd, will always fall short. God is not so much concerned with what you are specifically doing, as much as He is concerned about who you believe empowers you to live the life you live.

A Fight Against Faithlessness

So how can we fight faithlessness? I’d like to address two ways from Scripture.

1. We fight faithlessness when we FIND PROMISES ALREADY FULFILLED IN CHRIST.

Look at these wondrous words in 2 Corinthians 1:20-22: “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” WOW! Do you see what Paul is saying? How can we ever doubt that God will not care for us, when 1) Jesus is our YES from God.

If you really understand what Jesus has accomplished for you at the cross, that He has freed you from the power of sin and death forever, that you are no longer guilty of your sins because of Christ’s sin-bearing work, then surely anything after the cross is grace upon grace. It’s exceeding or lavished grace. If God did nothing else for you but send His Son for you to take your sins, if you could understand just how great that grace is, then even if you lose a job, or a loved one, or should be put through the most arduous of trials, you would still find Christ so sweet and God so good because of the cross.

Is your faith in a circumstance that turns out well for you? Or is your faith in a work already accomplished in a God who has never failed you and Jesus is the proof , His YES, that He has never leaved you, nor will He ever forsake you. We are accepted, loved, cherished, adopted into His family, exalted, cared for, protected, provided for eternally because God has said, YES to us because of Jesus. And if that isn’t enough, we need not doubt this love because the TRIUNE GOD actively makes this happen. Look again at 2 Corinthians 1:21, the Father (God) establishes me and you in the Son (Christ) and this is guaranteed by the seal of the Spirit (Holy Spirit). God in Three Persons actively and wholly makes certain that we are saved. How can we ever doubt Him? No matter what? How can we ever imagine such a good would not love us?

2. We fight faithlessness when we ACT ON THE BASIS FULFILLED PROMISES.

God’s Word is filled with God’s commitment to keep His Word. David tells us in Psalm 19:7: “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” Proverbs 30:5 says: “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.” And Jesus declared: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Matthew 24:35) And so, if we believe that every promise of God is ultimately fulfilled in Christ, then to fight faithlessness requires our action. It’s for this reason that James says in James 2:17: “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” It’s not that works lead to faith. But true faith is one that will always act on the assurance of God’s Word. True faith can’t help but act.

The story is told of a famous tightrope walker who was known to cross over waterfalls on a high wire. One day, the King of England was in attendance, watching this death-defying act. The man went across the falls and as he made his way back he asked the king if he thought he could push a wheelbarrow in front of him. The king said he believed he could. So off the man went with a wheelbarrow. On his return, he asked the king if he believed he could carry a sack of potatoes in the wheelbarrow. Again, the king said he believed he could do it. And so the man went with the sack of potatoes. Finally, as the tightrope walker retuned he asked the king, “Do you believe I could carry a man across in the wheelbarrow?” The king answered that he did. The tightrope walker’s response was, “Your majesty, please step in.” (From Gospel Transformation, 121.)

The king never did get in. So the question is, do you think the king had faith in the man? One could say yes because he seemed genuine in his responses. Intellectually, he believed. But faith is much more. It’s the firm belief, as revealed through action, that one has the power to accomplish what He has promised. And Jesus asked his disciples, in a sense, to step into the wheelbarrow, to trust Him completely, believing HE was powerful enough to do anything. But they couldn’t do it. They trusted in themselves more in that they focused more on the act of healing than Jesus who did the healing. And my friends, Jesus is asking you, “Will you step into the wheelbarrow?” How can we do this?

Well, how about when you’re tempted to be angry at someone? Do you take Him at His Word and believe that you are a sinner and that if you won’t forgive another, God won’t forgive you? (John 20:23) Do you believe that even if you are in the right, God is the Avenger and you can trust Him and not seek retribution or vengeance? (Rom 12:17-19) Faith means forgiveness and mercy even when the other is undeserving. Faith means fighting your anger and frustration. Faith exhibits itself through grace, peace, and forgiveness.

Do you believe that God knows what He’s doing with your life? Do you believe God cares for you like a father? (2 Cor 6:18) Do you take God at His Word that He will never leave you nor forsake you, no matter how dire, how tragic, how challenging the circumstances are in your life? (Heb 13:5) Don’t you believe that “if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (Matthew 6:30) If you say yes, then getting in the wheelbarrow is fighting anxiety with God’s promise. Worry is faithlessness. It doesn’t believe God is true to His promises. Faith exhibits itself through peace and joy.

Do you believe that God has given you a new identity and reputation? Gal 4:4-7 says you a son of God and an heir through Christ. Faithlessness leads us to be ruled by what we look like before others (whether my gift is good enough, brand-name enough/concern for where I went to school/cleanliness of house/fishing for compliments/sounding intelligent/more concerned of how our kids behavior makes us look like bad parents than our concern for our kids growing in humble submission before the Lord/school choice/athletic prowess/material possessions owned, etc.) Faith exhibits itself through contentment and joy.

Thus, fighting faithlessness is firmly taking God at His Word through His Word. And we know that He always keeps His promises because Jesus is proof of this reality. And so because of this, we act. We don’t merely say with the King of England, “We believe God can do it.” We are actually willing to get into the wheelbarrow.

Conclusion

Going back to the disciples, you can almost hear Jesus’ frustration, “How long am I to bear with [your faithlessness]?” Thanks be to God that Jesus answers His own question in the next few verses. Despite the fact that the disciples fail to see the cross and its power, Jesus does not give up on them. And that is good news for all of us. So next week, we’ll examine this second failure of the disciples, Spiritual Blindness.

And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, 22 saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” 23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”

Luke 9:21-27

Introduction

In life, we regularly make cost-benefit calculations in our heads. We might weigh the cost of expensive organic food verses cheaper, but more hormone laden non-organic food. We might consider whether the cost of buying a new car is more favorable than buying a used car or leasing a new car. We might wrestle with the benefit of renting a home versus buying a home. We might mull over eating that chocolate truffle late at night versus the cost of extra work on the treadmill, or paying for private school versus a mediocre public school for our kids, or waiting for a godly man to marry or turn to a non-Christian to marry, etc. We make many such considerations, some of little import and some of vital import.

Furthermore, there are many instances where the cost, despite its large price, is far worth it. For women who are mothers, you bore your children (especially your second, third, and even fourth children) knowing that there would be a heavy price to pay in bearing them. You went through months of nausea, vomiting, immobility, weight-gain, hair loss, sleeping on your side, giving up your favorite vices like coffee and diet coke. And then the day of the birth comes and you experience pain and agony and discomfort. And then following the birth, there is the weariness, anxiety (is the baby still breathing), vomit (not yours, the baby’s), diapers, crying, tantrums, whining, etc. And then there is the monetary cost of having children, not to mention the limitation to your freedom to do what you want when you want to do it. What a cost! But how many of you would say that you would like to trade in your child, to get back your money, your time, your energy because of that cost? No, the cost, no matter how great a child might be, is still worth it.

But though a child is far worth the great cost of having that child, God’s Word teaches us in Luke 9:21-27 that the worth of having a child, as great as that is, pales in comparison to the worth of Christ’s love for us and following Christ as a result of that love. Jesus is worth following, worth being a disciple of His, regardless of any cost we might bear. And this text gives us 5 reasons why He is worth any cost. I’d like to cover the first and primary reason why following Christ is worth any cost and what that cost is and then next week give you four other reasons from the rest of the passage as to why following Christ is worth any cost.

Reason #1: The Sacrifice (vv. 21-22)

The first and primary reason following Christ is worth the cost is His sacrifice because of our sins. Peter had just confessed that Jesus truly was the Christ, the King, the Anointed One of God who would save His people. And Jesus then adds in verses 21-22: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” For Peter and the disciples, surely this left them utterly confused. Jesus thus far had done nothing wrong. Instead, He had shown a power and authority through his teaching and miracles that was unparalleled. Who could harm Him? Besides, Peter had just stated that He was the Christ, the One who would reign on the earth to lead the people to a new Kingdom. Christs did not suffer and die. That just didn’t make sense.

But Peter and the rest failed to see that indeed, the Christ, must suffer many things and be rejected or else He would never truly be Christ. They failed to remember the words of Isaiah 53:4-6:

Surely he [the Christ] has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

And Paul reminds us that it would take Jesus not simply suffering and dying, but dying on a cross (tree) for our sake. The implications of which were staggering as Paul tells us in Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.” We simply cannot comprehend how wretched this death was for Jesus. First, physically speaking, you have to remember that in Jesus’ day crosses were symbols or torture, heinous crime, and disgust. Crosses did not crown the steeples of churches in their day. No one wore a cross around one’s neck, anymore than an electric chair is worn on the neck today. John Stott describes the cross this way:

Crucifixion seems to have been invented by ‘barbarians’ on the edge of the known world, and taken over from them by both Greeks and Romans. It is probably the most cruel method of execution ever practised, for it deliberately delayed death until maximum torture had been inflicted. The victim could suffer for days before dying. When the Romans adopted it, they reserved it for criminals convicted of murder, rebellion, or armed robbery, provided that they were also slaves, foreigners or other non-persons. (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 24.)

Roman citizens were exempt from crucifixion and the Roman statesman Cicero explained why,

To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination, to kill him is almost an act of murder: to crucify him is—What? There is no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed. (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 24.)

And so if Romans thought this way of the cross, then surely when Jesus tells his disciples that he was to suffer and when they saw Him hanging on that cross, words would not do justice what such a scene would convey to His disciples.

But as terrible as this physical agony and emotional humiliation Jesus had to endure, the dereliction he faced as a result of the curse of sin He bore for us was an infinitely greater agony. The Christ had to suffer and become a curse for us in order to redeem us as Gal 3:13 states. In other words, when Jesus died on the cross, He died as though He were absolutely the worst possible sinner before God. He died as God’s cursed sinner. Martin Luther explains why this must be so:

If you deny him to be a sinner and to be cursed, you must also deny that he was crucified and died…But because he bears the sins of the world, his innocence is burdened with the sins and guilt of the whole world. Whatever sins I, you, and all of us have done, or will do later, are Christ’s own sins, as truly as if he himself had done them. In short, our sin has to become Christ’s own sin, or else we will perish forever. (Martin Luther, Galatians (Crossway Classic Commentaries)¸ 152.)

This is the marvelous love of our God through Jesus His perfect Son. The perfect, blameless, good, righteous, loving, gracious Son of God would die a sinner, with my sins. Peter was looking for a Christ who would rule for a moment. Jesus died an unthinkable excruciating death in every way so that we could be with God forever without ever being concerned about perishing. If you truly know this reality, there will be no cost too great for you that you will not continue to follow Him.

The Cost (vv. 23-24)

So what exactly is this cost? Jesus tells us in verses 23-24: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Jesus begins by telling us that a follower of His, a Christian, is anyone. Christianity is not a religion of the elite. You do not have to have a college education, or dress in a certain style, or even have sobered yourself up to follow Jesus. Christ is not solely for the lower or upper class. Anyone can come, which is a second characteristic of this disciple: He comes after Jesus. This person actually wants to follow Jesus. He’s not forced to follow Him by his parents. He’s not doing this so he can marry a Christian woman. He’s not following so that he can have social connections with people. He is coming after Jesus. He’s not a Christian because he wants to bring about social change, or make a difference in the world. He’s not even following so that he can tell the world about Jesus. First and foremost, a Christian desires Christ. Christians actually want to be a relationship with Christ more than anything else. This is Jesus’ presumption.

So that’s the first question you need to ask yourself. Why do you want to be a follower of this Jesus Christ? Is it because when you were a child, your parents took you to church and old habits die hard? Is it because your spouse feels like it would be a good place to raise children? Is it because all your friends are at the church? Is it because you like the children’s program? Jesus tells us that such reasons fall far short of what He says a follower of His is. No, a Christian, that is, a follower/disciple of Christ, is one who is running after him, wanting to know him, wanting to pursue Him, wanting His love and care.

Moreover, the costs of following Him have three commands: deny, take up, and follow. What’s interesting to note about these three commands is that the first two are in the past tense and the third is in a present tense that has ongoing effect. In other words, when we deny ourselves and take up the cross daily, this directly leads to our following Jesus. You cannot follow Him without regularly doing the other two. Which is why it is so important that we understand what it means to deny oneself and take up the cross daily.

The first part of the cost is that the follower of Christ (the Christian) denies himself.

Now what does this mean? The words ‘deny himself’ have very strong undertones. It leaves no room for the self. In other words, to follow Christ means that you have to forget yourself completely in order that you might know how to fully follow Christ. Now, if you think of what Jesus is saying here, you begin to realize how his words directly contradict the spirit of the world and our sinful human condition. We are taught to grab hold of what we want before anything else. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard parents say these words, “Children should be allowed to be children. Therefore, I let them get what they want.” Is it any wonder then that those same children grow up to be adults who strive to get whatever they want, regardless of whether it honors God or not? How regularly are we in conflict with one another, friends, parents, spouses, where we are so convinced that our perspective is the right one, that rather than denying ourselves, we are uplifting ourselves so that our personal righteosunessness will be proven for all to see? Jesus’ words of complete self-denial counters our very basic human and societal instincts.

Now you might be thinking, “Self-denial sounds so drab, so dull. Why should I deny myself of anything?” Sure, you might find that there are some things you should deny yourself. You shouldn’t punch your boss when you’re angry with him. You shouldn’t have an affair with another woman regardless of her attractiveness. You shouldn’t drink 2 bottles of wine regardless of how expensive the wine is. Most people consider a little self-denial to be wise. But what about self-denial in watching what you feel like watching on TV or in the movies, eating whatever foods that make you happy, buying the clothing you want, driving the car you feel like you deserve? Is Jesus asking us to consider self-denial in all things?

The funny thing about self-denial and a person like me is that I think the concept of self-denial is great until someone (like my wife) confronts me with self-denial. If she were to say, “Sam, I don’t think you should eat that steak, your cholesterol is pretty high,” or “Sam, do you really need the new computer,” suddenly self-denial is no longer a nice, spiritual thought, it’s an obstacle to, what I believe to be, my happiness. You see, Jesus is not asking me, but commanding me to deny myself because in doing so, I remind myself that nothing can replace the joy and satisfaction that only He can give. And should I attempt to do so, I will find myself eventually in an incredibly empty and disillusioned state. J. C. Ryle makes this point:

The possession of the whole world, and all that it contains, would never make a man happy. Its pleasures are false and deceptive. Its riches, rank, and honours, have no power to satisfy the heart. So long as we have not got them they glitter, and sparkle, and seem desirable. The moment we have them we find that they are empty bubbles, and cannot make us feel content. And worst of all, when we possess this world’s good things, to the utmost bound of our desire, we cannot keep them. Death comes in and separates us from all our property for ever. (J. C. Ryle, Luke, 311)

Self-denial is not Jesus’ command to keep us glum and solemn. No, not at all. It’s to help us to remember that what we have is so limited in its pleasure, so fleeting. But remember reason #1? He died so that you and I would have as Psalm 16:11 reminds us, “pleasures evermore.” Jesus’ command is a protective command to make sure that we do not settle for empty bubbles that sparkle for the moment but fade away. For example, every year, I stop drinking coffee for a couple of months. People always ask me why I would do such a thing. After all, there is nothing I find so enjoyable as a great cup of coffee to start my day. But taking a break from coffee reminds me that it’s God’s mercy that I even have the resources to afford coffee and that I have the taste buds to enjoy it. But by denying myself coffee, I also remember that as great as coffee is, there is something of infinite worth that overwhelms any joy there is in coffee, it’s Christ. And so whether it’s coffee, or sports, or exercise, or television, or the computer, or good Christian books, or talking, or friendships, or food, or water, there is a place for self-denial. I want to encourage you to consider something in your life, perhaps something I have listed as something you would like to fast from, not to say that such things are bad. But instead, so that you might enjoy God more and trust that in your self-denial, you will enjoy Christ all the more.

The second part of the cost is that the follower of Christ (the Christian) takes up his cross daily.

This was nothing less than the ultimate in self-denial since to take up a cross meant that you would go out to die, much like Jesus had to carry His cross to be crucified. Taking up one’s cross is not merely hardship due to the circumstances of life. Rather, it is for the sake of Christ. That is, something happens in your life that is difficult simply because you trust in Jesus. If there is one person who would have the right of viewing ‘taking up the cross,’ merely as difficult circumstances, it would be Joni Erickson Tada. As a 17-year old, a diving accident left her a quadriplegic in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. But here is what she writes about taking up the cross:

I have learned that it’s a passion for God that will give you a passion for people. And this utter delight in Him will come from the toughest of trials that you are about to face. Our affliction becomes that which pushes and shoves us down the road to the cross…And that’s what it means to become like him in His death. Don’t think that the cross is simply the wheelchair, or an irritating job, or an irksome mother-in-law. The cross is the place where you die to sin and live to God. (Phil Ryken, Luke Volume 1, 460)

In other words, taking up the cross is facing life’s difficulties because of your love for Jesus. Perhaps there are difficulties with an irksome mother-in-law, which in itself is not cross-bearing, but if you decide to love her and care for her and even put up with her abuse, not because you need to be a dutiful daughter-in-law, but simply because you love Jesus, that’s cross bearing. My mother faced this reality with my grandmother (dad’s mother), who was not a believer. I remember faint memories of my childhood where my mother and grandmother fought bitterly, even to tears. I remember my mother’s hatred towards my grandmother. But in the last years of my grandmother’s life, my mother voluntarily went to care for her in Korea for about a month. She bathed her, changed her bedpans, cooked every meal, but most importantly she shared the Gospel with her praying with her every day. And my grandmother came to know Christ before she died through my mother’s faithful witness. My mother came back home exhausted and warn out from caring for a person who could not care for herself, but she took up her cross for the sake of Christ. Maybe for you, you decide you’re going to make your boss look good, you’re going to work hard for him because you trust in Jesus, despite the fact that he treats you like dirt. Or maybe if tragedy strikes you, like Terry Stauffer or Rachel Barkley, you take up your cross to get through each day by living, but still telling others through your suffering about Jesus. Taking up the cross is not the mission of super-Christians, but of everyday, ordinary followers of Jesus.

Also, this taking up of the cross is a daily act. Cross-bearing is not something you do once and assume you’ve done your work. It’s not something that you do when you first become a Christian and then graduate from cross-bearing. This is a daily act of obedience and trust. You refuse to take part in gossip regardless of other’s disdain for you because you have taken up the cross. You choose not to swear when all of your buddies do so because of you have taken up the cross. You choose not to cheat on your taxes even though you could ‘use the money.’ You choose to forgive your husband for his hurtful words because of your love for Christ. The cross is not an abstraction to you. You recall Jesus’ forsakenness regularly, by recalling His Word, by remembering His great love for you through that cross.

The third part of the cost is that the follower of Christ (the Christian) follows Jesus.

Really, this is the natural progression of the first two. When you deny yourself, and you take up the cross, you will truly follow Christ. And we must never forget that following Christ meant following Him to the cross. And if that cross symbolizes humiliation, rejection, suffering, can we see that we too must come to see that that is the cost that He is asking us to pay? I constantly remind myself and others that I do not worship a God who drove around in a BMW, ate fancy meals, and lived in a castle to a ripe old age. I worship a God who died on a cross. And he asks me and you, those who call themselves Christians, followers of Jesus, to do the same. There is no middle ground.

If Jesus then is asking for everything, asking for our grace to our enemies, our love to irksome parents-in-law, forgiveness for insensitive spouses, purity from pre-marital sexual relationships, trust in job loss, grace and hard work for insecure and frustrating managers, love for those who persecute us, is it worth it to be a Christian? The answer is ABSOLUTELY yes. Remember, the first and fundamental reason why the cost is absolutely worth it. Jesus died on the cross bearing our sins as if he had not only committed all of my sins, but all of yours as well. God gave us everything so we can enjoy Him eternally, that we would not perish in hell, but have eternal life. The fact is, no matter the cost, it will always be a temporary cost. The pain of childbirth, by God’s grace is so short. The blessings of having a child lasts a lifetime. Well, the timeframe of any cost for the sake of Christ is infinitely short compared to the blessings of enjoying sweet fellowship with Him eternally. Jesus illustrates this so well in the parable of the hidden treausre in Matthew 13:44: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” IN HIS JOY he sells all that he has. There is a cost. His life. But he found the field worth every bit of that cost. The cost of following Christ is worth it!

Next week, I want to give you 4 more reasons why following Jesus is worth any cost we could ever have while living in this world. But let me leave you with a quote from Martin Lloyd-Jones, as to why the reality of Christ’s cross empowers us to deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow Him:

Though you may be the vilest man or woman ever known, and though you may until this moment have lived your life in the gutters and the brothels of sin in every shape and form, I say this to you: be it known unto you that through this man, this Lord Jesus Christ, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin. AND BY HIM ALL WHO BELIEVE, you included, are at this very moment justified entirely and completely from everything you have ever done—if you believe that this is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and that he died on the cross, for your sins and to bear your punishment. IF YOU BELIEVE THAT, and thank him for it, and rely utterly upon him and what he has done, I tell you, in the name of God, all your sins are blotted out completely, as if you had never sinned in your life, and his righteousness is put on you and God sees you perfect in his Son. That is the message of the cross. (Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross, 36)

And that is why He is worth following. We can trust Him. He will never let you down. He will never leave you, nor forsake you. And the cross is proof that any cost is worth following Him.

Many of you know that I am a strong proponent of family worship (we do it, still growing though).  Well, this website has the most info and helpful tips I have found on the subject (HT: Tim Challies).  You can check it out for yourself.

For the busy, busy, dreadfully busy, Kevin DeYoung has some words for you to consider.