Philemon

¹ Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved fellow worker ² and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house: ³ Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

In 1642, Blaise Pascal, at the age of nineteen, started working on building a mechanical calculator, primarily in order to help his father with his business as a tax commissioner. The calculator came to be known as “the pascaline.” This invention was significant for a number of reasons, as Wikipedia explains:

Besides being the first calculating machine made public during its time, the pascaline is also:

• the only operational mechanical calculator in the 17th century.
• the first calculator to have a controlled carry mechanism that allowed for an effective propagation of multiple carries
• the first calculator to be used in an office (his father’s to compute taxes)
• the first calculator commercialized (with around twenty machines built)
• the first calculator to be patented (royal privilege of 1649)
• the first calculator to be described in an encyclopedia (Diderot & d’Alembert, 1751)
• the first calculator sold by a distributor[1]

Jean-Claude Carriere has told the story of how a man he knows discovered one of Pascal’s calculators.

I also knew a superb bookseller in the rue de l’Universite,’ who specialized in scientific books and objects…He lived on the rue du Bac, on the other side of boulevard Saint-Germain. One night he was walking home up the rue de Bac. He crossed the boulevard and, as he was walking along, he noticed a small piece of brass poking out of a rubbish bin. He stopped, lifted the lid, went through the bin and pulled out one of the twelve calculators made by Pascal himself. Absolutely priceless. It now lives in the National Conservatory of Arts and Crafts, the CNAM. Who had thrown it out?[2]

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Mark 3

¹ Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered hand. ² And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³ And he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come here.” ⁴ And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵ And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

Some time back, our staff read through Eric Metaxas’ very interesting book Miracles as a devotional exercise. He begins his book with a most interesting quotation.

In a 2013 article in The New Yorker about faith and belief, Adam Gopnik wrote the following: “We know that…in the billions of years of the universe’s existence, there is no evidence of a single miraculous intercession (sic) with the laws of nature.”…In the article, Gopnik continues: “We need not imagine that there’s no Heaven; we know that there is none, and we will search for angels forever in vain.

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Job 24

¹ “Why are not times of judgment kept by the Almighty, and why do those who know him never see his days? ² Some move landmarks; they seize flocks and pasture them. ³ They drive away the donkey of the fatherless; they take the widow’s ox for a pledge. ⁴ They thrust the poor off the road; the poor of the earth all hide themselves. ⁵ Behold, like wild donkeys in the desert the poor go out to their toil, seeking game; the wasteland yields food for their children. ⁶ They gather their fodder in the field, and they glean the vineyard of the wicked man. ⁷ They lie all night naked, without clothing, and have no covering in the cold. ⁸ They are wet with the rain of the mountains and cling to the rock for lack of shelter. ⁹ (There are those who snatch the fatherless child from the breast, and they take a pledge against the poor.) ¹⁰ They go about naked, without clothing; hungry, they carry the sheaves; ¹¹ among the olive rows of the wicked they make oil; they tread the winepresses, but suffer thirst. ¹² From out of the city the dying groan, and the soul of the wounded cries for help; yet God charges no one with wrong. ¹³ “There are those who rebel against the light, who are not acquainted with its ways, and do not stay in its paths. ¹⁴ The murderer rises before it is light, that he may kill the poor and needy, and in the night he is like a thief. ¹⁵ The eye of the adulterer also waits for the twilight, saying, ‘No eye will see me’; and he veils his face. ¹⁶ In the dark they dig through houses; by day they shut themselves up; they do not know the light. ¹⁷ For deep darkness is morning to all of them; for they are friends with the terrors of deep darkness. ¹⁸ “You say, ‘Swift are they on the face of the waters; their portion is cursed in the land; no treader turns toward their vineyards. ¹⁹ Drought and heat snatch away the snow waters; so does Sheol those who have sinned. ²⁰ The womb forgets them; the worm finds them sweet; they are no longer remembered, so wickedness is broken like a tree.’ ²¹ “They wrong the barren, childless woman, and do no good to the widow. ²² Yet God prolongs the life of the mighty by his power; they rise up when they despair of life. ²³ He gives them security, and they are supported, and his eyes are upon their ways. ²⁴ They are exalted a little while, and then are gone; they are brought low and gathered up like all others; they are cut off like the heads of grain. ²⁵ If it is not so, who will prove me a liar and show that there is nothing in what I say?”

On his 2003 American V album, Johnny Cash recorded and made famous his own version of the an old song entitled, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” Wikipedia says that the song has sold 672,000 copies as of January of 2016. A unique and stark video of Cash’s rendition of the song aided its popularity. The lyrics speak to the human desire for the wicked to be punished and our sense that ultimately they will be.

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Mark 2

²³ One Sabbath he was going through the grainfields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. ²⁴ And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” ²⁵ And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: ²⁶ how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?” ²⁷ And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. ²⁸ So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

The first years of marriage are years filled with fascinating discoveries! Once, as a young husband, I took a shirt to my wife on a Saturday afternoon and told her that the front of the shirt was missing two buttons. I shared with her that I was very much wanting to wear the shirt the next morning to church where I would be preaching. I asked if she could sow two buttons on the front and she happily agreed.

The next morning, Sunday, I put on the newly repaired and recently ironed shirt. I smiled when I went to button the shirt and realized that my beautiful bride could sew! The two buttons on the front of the shirt lined up perfectly with the buttonholes. I buttoned up the shirt, grabbed a tie, raised my collar, tied it, put the collar down again…and then went to button my collar

It took me a moment to figure out why my two collar buttons were missing, but I did indeed figure it out.

I called Roni into the room and said, “Dear, you did a wonderful job with this shirt.”

“Why, thank you,” she responded.

“There’s just one thing I’m curious about, though.”

“Yes?”

“Where,” I asked, “did you get the two buttons to fix my shirt.”

She paused and smiled. “From your collar.”

We still laugh about this to this day, over twenty years later.

There is a way to fix a problem without ever fixing the problem. Sometimes we might even feel that this is a good metaphor for life. A lot of us spend a lot of time just moving the buttons around on the shirt. But moving the buttons around really does not solve anything if you still do not have enough buttons!

There is a general principle here, to be sure, but there is also a religious principle. In fact, we might define “religion” as the human construction of sacred ceremonies in which buttons are moved around in a most solemn and ritualistic manner. Religion, in other words, is doing something and it is even trying to address real issues, but, in and of itself, religion does not really fix anything.

The Pharisees were official button movers. They were very concerned about where the buttons should go but were nonetheless blind to the fact that they were still dealing with an insufficient number of buttons. Jesus, on the other hand, did not come to move buttons but rather to gives us a whole new outfit! He came to dress us anew, not patch us up.

The difference between what Jesus was doing and is doing and what the Pharisees were doing is nowhere clearer than in our intriguing passage.

The Pharisees allowed the outward forms of religion to blind them to the heart of God.

Once again, Jesus is in conflict with the religious establishment, this time not because of something He was not doing (i.e., fasting), but because of something his disciples were doing.

²³ One Sabbath he was going through the grain fields, and as they made their way, his disciples began to pluck heads of grain. ²⁴ And the Pharisees were saying to him, “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?”

There is a cultural disconnect here that we need to try to tackle. Why were the Pharisees so very upset at Jesus’ disciples plucking heads of grain? We need to understand that the primary problem was not what they were doing but when they were doing it. They were plucking heads of grain on the Sabbath. Therein lay the scandal. William Barclay has offered some helpful background information.

On any ordinary day the disciples were doing what was freely permitted (Exodus 23:24). So long as the traveler did not put a sickle into the field he was free to pluck the corn. But, this was done on the Sabbath and the Sabbath was hedged around with literally thousands of petty rules and regulations. All work was forbidden. Work had been classified under thirty-nine different heads and four of these heads were, reaping, winnowing, threshing and preparing a meal. By their action the disciples had technically broken all these four rules, and they were to be classified as lawbreakers. It seems fantastic to us; but to the Jewish rabbis it was a matter of deadly sin and of life and death.[1]

So Jesus and His disciples were colliding with the sacred conventions of the day. They were, in the eyes of the Pharisees, violating the sacred Sabbath. Danny Akin points out, Jesus’ “crime” here was two-fold: (1) “they were traveling, which was defined as walking more than 1,999 paces” and (2) they were “reaping,” which appeared to violate Exodus 34:21 in which we read that “you must rest on the seventh day, you must even rest during plowing and harvesting.” “Plucking,” Akin tells us, “was considered ‘harvesting’ in the eyes of the Pharisees.”[2]

In response to the outrage of the Pharisees, Jesus told them a Bible story.

²⁵ And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did, when he was in need and was hungry, he and those who were with him: ²⁶ how he entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those who were with him?”

We should first recognize a kind of delicious irony in the fact that Jesus quoted the scriptures to the Pharisees. Were these not the religious experts? Did they not know this scripture? Or did they know it without really knowing it? There is a subtle indictment in the fact that Jesus appealed to the Bible against the Pharisees: those who claimed to know so much were forgetting their own area of supposed expertise.

The story Jesus told them came from 1 Samuel 21. There, David was fleeing murderous Saul who wanted to destroy him. Here is the passage to which Jesus alludes:

¹ Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David trembling and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you?” ² And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place. ³ Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” ⁴ And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread—if the young men have kept themselves from women.” ⁵ And David answered the priest, “Truly women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?” ⁶ So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away. ⁷ Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul’s herdsmen.

David and his men ate “the bread of the Presence” or “the showbread.” Camille Focant explains that “the loaves of showbread are twelve flour cakes one put as an offering before Yahweh as a perpetual covenant. At its renewal each Sabbath, the old bread was taken away and it could only be consumed by the priests (Lev 24:5-9).”[3]

In other words, Jesus appeals to a story in which the great David, “a man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22), ate the sacred bread that belonged to God. David, too, had therefore violated the customary understanding of the sacred.

Why did Jesus tell them this story? He did so in order to make a point by paralleling the two situations. Like David and His men, Jesus was operating in the will of God and while the conventions designed to protect the sacred had been violate, the sacred itself had actually not been violated. Why? Because the heart of the law is the glory of God and His blessing of His people, and this cannot be contained in mere legalisms. How, in other words, did it violate the law for David, the man destined to be King, to feed himself and his men on sacred bread in a moment of necessity while fleeing murderous Saul? Was not the greater good in that case the survival of David? Did it not please God more that His chosen one should survive than that the customs be literally upheld?

And what of Jesus and His men? Did it not please God more, and, in so doing, honor the entire point of the Sabbath more, for Jesus and His men to be nourished, strengthened, and comforted in their Kingdom mission by eating the heads of grain than by them not doing so and remaining hungry in an effort to honor the conventions and rules? If the point of the Sabbath is rest for weary humanity and honor for God, then what could achieve that point better than that God’s Son and His chosen disciples should eat and be nourished on this most sacred of days?

“You can know the law by heart,” writes Philip Yancey, “without knowing the heart of it.”[4] Indeed! And this seems to be what had happened with the Pharisees. So concerned were they with the outward forms of religion that they had grown blind to the very heart of God! What Jesus was doing did not look right to them only because they could no longer see rightly!

This is the danger of religion. This is the danger of legalism, which is a disproportionate emphasis on the forms and mechanics of religion. This is empty religiosity: to begrudge hungry men their food because they were violating the religious customs.

J.C. Ryle, the famed 19^th century Anglican bishop of Liverpool, observed of our text that, “we see from these verses what excessive importance is attached to trifles by those who merely observe the external forms of religion.”

            Let us watch and pray lest we fall into the errors of the Pharisees. There are never lacking Christians who walk in their steps. There are thousands at the present time who plainly think more of the mere outward ceremonies of religion than of its doctrines…It ought to be a settled principle in our minds that someone’s soul is in a bad state when they begin to regard human rites and ceremonies as things of superior importance, and exalt them above the preaching of the Gospel. It is a symptom of spiritual disease. There is mischief within.[5]

What most angers you and what most pleases you? When a person is in church but they are not dressed as nicely as you personally think they should be, which wins out: (a) anger at their violation of sartorial custom or (b) joy that they are here at all! What legalisms are possibly blinding you? Just how important are the outward forms of religion to you? How focused are you on the ritualistic element of what we do, the ceremonial, the external?

I am not arguing that there is not a place for ceremony in our lives together, but I am arguing that there is no place for the merely ceremonial and there is never a place for any external rite that would blind us to who God is, to what our purpose is, and to what it is that God is doing here with us and among us.

Legalism is a powerful thing! “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees” (Matthew 16:6).

The Pharisees allowed their religion to blind them to the reality that, in Jesus, the God whose honor they were seeking to protect was standing right in front of them.

There is indeed a scandal here, but the real scandal is not what Jesus and His disciples were doing. The real scandal was in the shocking ignorance of the Pharisees concerning who exactly it was that they were trying to connect. In fact, the Pharisees allowed their religion to blind them to the reality that, in Jesus, the God whose honor they were seeking to protect was standing right in front of them.

²⁷ And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. ²⁸ So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

Here again is rich irony: the Pharisees were standing before God trying to correct God in their effort to honor God!

Jesus makes two statements. The first is, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” We might paraphrase this as, “God did not give us this day so man would be burdened with an impossible ideal to which he must labor and strive. God gave us this day so that His creation might be blessed and man might rest.” John Donahue notes that verses 27 and 28 form “a perfect chiasm: (A) Sabbath, (B) humankind, (B’) humankind, (A’) Sabbath” and that “the device rhetorically stresses the primacy of the human person…over the Sabbath, and prepares for the subsequent “Son of Man”…saying.”[6] That is really quite interesting and highlights the point: while all of creation, including the Sabbath, should have the glory of God as its primary focus, it is indisputably true that God is most glorified in the Sabbath when His creation receives the rest and restoration that He intends for us to receive from it. Thus, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

The Pharisees had distorted the Sabbath into a kind of theoretical thing before which men should tremble and fear. Into this fear, the Pharisees poured their countless rules and strictures. As such, the Sabbath was perverted by them into an ominous thing. But God intended for man to be blessed in the Sabbath! As such, the disciples picking grain in the fields for their nourishment was more befitting the Sabbath than the Pharisees’ many rules.

But this second statement from Jesus is a bombshell: “So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

In truth, were Jesus hoping to calm the situation, this was the worst thing He could have said! But Jesus was not after a façade calm. He was a proclaimer of the truth, no matter how jarring the truth might be. So He adds this as if it were a mere addendum. In fact, it was an atom bomb.

By calling Himself “Lord even of the Sabbath” Jesus was making the astonishing claim that He had the authority to define the Sabbath and Sabbath observation properly. But that was an authority that only God had, for God alone had instituted the Sabbath! What we recognize as a beautiful truth would have been seen by the Pharisees as outright blasphemy.

It is almost as if Jesus were saying, “Do not tell me how to understand my own day. I made the Sabbath.”

This is an amazing and jarring claim to deity. Meir Y. Soloveichik has pointed to Jacob Neusner’s consideration of our text in demonstrating that there was an even more shocking element present in Jesus’ words. In his book A Rabbi Talks With Jesus, Neusner interacts with the New Testament picture of Christ and ultimately rejects Christ. His reasons are interesting.

A central passage for Neusner’s discussion is Jesus’ defense of his violations of the Sabbath:

At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck ears of grain and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” He said to them, “Have you not read in the law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the son of man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Neusner notes that actions that are usually forbidden on the Sabbath, such as lighting fires, slaughtering, and cooking, were permitted in the Temple. Thus, Jesus’ argument is that he has replaced the Temple: “His claim, then, concerns not whether or not the Sabbath is to be sanctified, but where and what is the Temple, the place where things are done on the Sabbath that elsewhere are not to be done at all. Not only so, but just as on the Sabbath it is permitted to place on the altar the food that is offered up to God, so Jesus’ disciples are permitted to prepare their food on the Sabbath, again a stunning shift indeed.”

Neusner argues that Jesus is not a liberal Jew ­ seeking to ignore the rituals of the Torah; rather, he is claiming to be the dwelling place of the divine: “No wonder, then, that the son of man is lord of the Sabbath! The reason is not that he interprets the Sabbath restrictions in a liberal manner…Jesus was not just another reforming rabbi, out to make life ‘easier’ for people…No, the issue is not that the burden is light…Jesus’ claim to authority is at issue.”

Neusner imagines himself conversing with a disciple of Jesus: “Is it really so that your master, the son of man, is lord of the Sabbath? Then” so I asked before, so I ask again “is your master God?” Again and again, Neusner returns to this question. Both Jesus and the rabbinic sages, he argues, agree that the essence of life is imitation of God. Jews believe that the holy life is achieved via observance of the Torah, the sanctification of the mundane world by adhering to its many minutiae. For Jesus’ followers, their master is now the equivalent of God, of the Torah, and Jesus’ instructions focus less on whether grain can be picked on the Sabbath and more on entering the Kingdom of Heaven. As such, the holy life must be defined by following him.[7]

This certainly adds yet another layer to what is happening here! If food could be prepared only in the Temple on the Sabbath and Jesus said that food could be prepared with Him on the Sabbath, was Jesus not equating Himself with the Temple and therefore with the very presence of God? It is a stunning thought, but one that has merit. After all, did Jesus not do the same in John 2:19 when He said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”?

Christ is the Temple. Christ is God with us.

This means that the Pharisees’ fixation on the externals of religion and on their own legalisms had blinded them not only to the needs of suffering man but also to the glory of God Himself…a glory now unexpectedly displayed in the incarnate second person of the Trinity, Jesus.

No wonder they wanted Him dead.

But the point cannot merely be a historical point about the psychology of a religious sect in first century Palestine. The point is also that religion can do the very same to us. Like the Pharisees, we too can be lured into a kind of soul-coma by the soothing sights and sounds of religious ritual and by the rush of religious rule keeping. There is nothing quite so blinding as the destructive flash of our own self-righteousness and there is nothing that engenders self-righteousness quite like taking your place as the keeper of the gate and the guardian of the rules and there is no gate quite so intoxicating as the gate of religious observance.

Beware, Church, beware! It is possible to love your rituals for God more than you love God. It is possible to love your religion more than you love your heavenly Father. It is possible to be drunk on the wine of legalism and miss the very heart of the gospel!

Jesus did not come to establish a religion. He came to start a revolution, a revolution grounded not in the minutia of religious rules but grounded rather in the person of Jesus Himself.

Do not miss Jesus because you are so busy practicing your Jesus religion! Do not miss God in your efforts to honor God.

Christ is loose in the fields of the world and He has come to change the world forever! This will mean that the world will oftentimes not understand, it is true, but it will also mean that religious folk oftentimes will not understand either. At the end of the day, whether one is blinded by atheism or religion, they are still blind.

Set aside your petty legalisms and rituals and dare to look squarely in the face of the Lord of the Sabbath, the Author of the book, the Creator of the day, the Lord of the wheat and the world and the whole wide universe. Christ has come to set us free from sin, death, and hell…and, yes, even from our religious silliness.

[1] William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark. The Daily Study Bible. (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1971), p.57.

[2] Daniel Akin, Mark. Christ-Centered Exposition. (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2014), p.60-61.

[3] Camille Focant, The Gospel According to Mark. Translated by Leslie Robert Keylcok (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012), p.115.

[4] Philip Yancey. What’s So Amazing About Grace? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1997), p.195.

[5] J.C. Ryle, Mark. The Crossway Classic Commentaries. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993), p.26.

[6] John R. Donahue, S.J. and Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. The Gospel of Mark. Sacra Pagina. Ed., Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. Vol. 2 (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002), p.112.

[7] https://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/01/002-no-friend-in-jesus

Michael Card’s book A Fragile Stone is subtitled The Emotional Life of Simon Peter.  Card begins his work by noting how few biographies of Peter he was able to find when he began his work.  This is still true, I believe.  I have Oscar Cullmann’s as well as this book, but I do not believe I have another book exclusively on Peter.  (Of course, I have no doubt that there are many good ones out there.)  On the other hand, just think for a moment about books devoted uniquely to Paul and many will come to mind if you are in any way familiar with Christian publishing.  To be sure, Protestantism has a strong Pauline bent, but it is a curious thing nonetheless.

What Card has written here is an insightful and helpful consideration of Peter.  Card really is a solid bible teacher.  I suppose you would have to categorize him as inhabiting the space between a devotional writer and an academic.  There is an undeniable scholarly aspect to Card’s approach.  He does his homework, has a sharp mind, and is a capable handler of the subject matter.  Yet, he writes for the person in the pew, bringing insights that are not merely derivative and that make actual contributions.

Card’s handling of Peter is like this.  He discusses Peter’s life, vocation, family life, walk with Jesus, spiritual development, ministry, and eventual martyrdom.  Card keeps his discussion of Peter moving with colorful prose, intriguing and appropriate speculations concerning the grey areas, and helpful applications.  I appreciated how Card attempted to link certain aspects of Peter’s writings to episodes in his life, conjectural though some of this may have been, and how he linked certain aspects of Peter’s writings to his spiritual, mental, and emotional development.

The book, it seemed to me, actually focused more on Peter’s overall development than his “emotional life” per se, but Card does a great job of showing what happened to Simon as he gradually and painfully came to submit himself wholly and joyfully to Christ.  In doing so, he showed what can likewise happen to us if we do the same.

This is a very good and very interesting book.

My parents came from South Carolina to visit last Friday and we were thrilled to be able to spend a number of great days with them.  I’m attaching a picture of my dad and my daughter that I took at Arkansas State University where our daughter, Hannah, will be attending college in the Fall.

Last Sunday in the evening service at Central Baptist Church I interviewed my dad in front of the church about being a father and being a Christian.

Here is audio of that conversation.

Mark 2

¹⁸ Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” ¹⁹ And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. ²⁰ The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day. ²¹ No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. ²² And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”

If you were to ask folks to list the great American novels, most people would probably include Herman Melville’s Moby Dick in the list. The story of a mad, obsessed sea captain ruthlessly hunting a great white whale who took his leg earlier in life is truly a work of art and a great accomplishment. Chapter 68 of Moby Dick is entitled “The Funeral.” In this chapter, Melville draws a parallel between the rotting corpse of a whale that the ship, the Pequod, comes across an orthodoxy. By “orthodoxy” is meant, in a general sense, the beliefs that are accepted by most people as true. Listen to the way that Melville likens the whale corpse to orthodoxy.

Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost survives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war or blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring the swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in the sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the whale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log – shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. There’s your law of precedents; there’s your utility of traditions; there’s the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air! There’s orthodoxy![1]

Melville’s point can be potentially dangerous if it is used to mean that all traditions are haunting corpses or that because some orthodoxies are oppressive and enslave the minds of men therefore all orthodoxies do. This is simply not true. We would argue, of course, that Christian orthodoxy, the gospel, is the most freeing message ever heard on the earth and certainly cannot be likened to a rotting whale corpse.

Even so, Melville’s main point stands: there is something in old beliefs and traditions that can ensnare the minds of men. This can happen to the point that long after men have stopped thinking about a thing or really even believing in it, it exerts a kind of haunting dynamism. Like a rotting whale corpse that people mistake for dangerous rocks, the traditions of man can weigh on our minds with dread and even steer the course of our lives. In this sense, Melville is absolutely correct!

There’s your law of precedents; there’s your utility of traditions; there’s the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air!

In fact, Jesus came up against this reality all of the time. He was forever scandalizing people who had mistaken corpses for rocks, who felt that their assumptions, formed over the years by the traditions of their religious knowledge elites, had real substance and power and needed to be heeded and feared when, in reality, they were merely the decayed and decaying corpses of faulty ideas that had taken root for far too long in their minds.

We see it in the Bible all of the time! Jesus will do something or not do something, the guardians of the old ways will react with absolute shock and dismay at the violation of their traditions, and Jesus will have to show them how their traditions were actually dead things obscuring the truth.

He makes precisely this point in Mark 2:18-22.

Jesus came to bring joy that spills the banks of sorrow.

In this text, the scandal Jesus created was the result of something He and his disciples were not doing.

¹⁸ Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?”

Jesus’ behavior was scandalous in that He and His disciples were not fasting. In that day and culture, this was a notable faux pas.

William Barclay points out that “in the Jewish religion there was only one day in all the year that was a compulsory fast, and that was the Day of Atonement…[b]ut the stricter Jews fasted on two days every week, on Mondays and Thursdays.” On these days, the Jews fasted from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. “and after that normal food could be eaten.”[2] For the Pharisees, then, this failure to fast was a failure to honor the customs and to do what good and respectable Jews did.

It is strange to see John the Baptist’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees mentioned together. Ronald Kernaghan has made the interesting and helpful observation that “since no particular day of fasting is indicated here, we might conclude that John’s disciples were fasting for another reason. John was in prison awaiting execution, and they were probably fasting in the hope that God would secure his release.”[3] Others, however, like New Testament scholar Ben Witherington, suggest that this “story seems to have come from a time after the death of John the Baptist when his disciples were mourning and fasting…”[4]

If “the people” who question Jesus are from either the party of John’s disciples or the party of the disciples of the Pharisees (and it is not clear that they are), then this adds a most interesting element to the story. Whether John was in prison about to be executed or he had just been executed, there is likely a different motivation in his disciples’ questions to Jesus than in the questions coming from the Pharisees’ camp. In other words, it is most possible that John the Baptist’s disciples and the Pharisees were asking the same question but for very different reasons. The Pharisees wanted to make sure the old ways were rightly regarded as weighty and significant. John the Baptist’s disciples may have been deeply concerned about their friend or deeply grieving over what had just happened to their friend. To them, Jesus and His disciples eating and drinking and even feasting (remember that we have just come from the house of Levi where they reclined at table) would have been eyebrow-raising to say the least. And, in truth, if this is the case, it is eyebrow-raising to us as well, for we know that Jesus did love John the Baptist.

Even so, Jesus and His disciples were not fasting, so “people” came and asked Him why this was. Why, in other words, was Jesus violating their customs and rules? Why is He not doing what good Jewish men did? Jesus’ response is telling.

¹⁹ And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. ²⁰ The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.

In response to their questions, Jesus draws on the imagery of weddings. Weddings at that time were big, festive occasions. Essentially, a wedding brought with it an entire week of feasting. Jesus refers to his disciples literally as “the children of the bridal chamber.” Joel Marcus offers some helpful background.

…lit[erally] “the children of the bridal chamber.”…can indicate either the bridegroom’s attendants or the wedding guests in general…In Jewish law wedding guests were freed from certain religious obligations that were deemed to be incompatible with the joy of the occasion; in a tradition attributed to R. Abba b. Zabda…for example, we read that when a wedding occurs during the holiday of Sukkot [i.e., the Feast of Tabernacles], all the wedding guests…are freed from the obligation of living in booths for the seven days of wedding celebration. “What is the reason? Because they have rejoice.”[5]

In other words, Jesus tells those who question him that just as mourning and sorrow and fasting would be inappropriate at a wedding, so too would it be inappropriate for them to fast when He, the bridegroom, is present with His guests or attendants. This image of Christ as the bridegroom was voiced by John the Baptist when, in John 3, he was questioned about Jesus.

²⁵ Now a discussion arose between some of John’s disciples and a Jew over purification. ²⁶ And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness—look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” ²⁷ John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. ²⁸ You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ ²⁹ The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. ³⁰ He must increase, but I must decrease.”

Jesus Himself will later use the image again in the parable of the ten virgins found in Matthew 25.

¹ “Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. ² Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. ³ For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, ⁴ but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. ⁵ As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. ⁶ But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ ⁷ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. ⁸ And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ ⁹ But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ ¹⁰ And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. ¹¹ Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ ¹² But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ ¹³ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.

Here again, Christ is the groom who comes for His bride! Paul will famously use in the image in Ephesians 5.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ²⁷ so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. ²⁸ In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹ “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” ³² This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ³³ However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Jesus is the bridegroom and, as the bridegroom, He was present with His people and that meant that His presence signaled the beginning of wedding festivities! Jesus does say, rather ominously, that the day is coming when the fasting and mourning will be appropriate.

²⁰ The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day.

This would appear to be a reference to the crucifixion of Christ. The question is whether or not it is also a reference to the ascension of Christ. In other words, does the time of mourning in which fasting is appropriate apply only to the passion of Christ, or does it, in a sense, extend to the entire Church age in which we wait for His return? To be sure, there is a difference between the horror the disciples felt when Christ was crucified and the longing we feel now for the return of Christ, but it is interesting to note that early in Church’s history she advanced fasting as a viable and even vital Christian discipline. Perhaps we might say that Jesus was referring primarily to the events of His crucifixion, but that fasting, properly done, is an appropriate way for the Church today to express its longing for the Bridegroom’s return as well as to express humility and repentance.

Regardless, Jesus’ point is critically important: now that He has come, we cannot continue to mourn as if the domain of darkness and death still hold power and sway over the world. The bridegroom has come, and His coming brings with it a joy that is too large for the confines of sorrow and despair!

The beauty of this is that it shows us what the primary disposition of the people of God should be: joy!

How can we act with sorrow and mourning and despair when Christ has come! How can we act as if death still reigns when life is in our midst?

It is interesting to see how the movies today depict the pagan peoples of the past as primarily joyful, carefree children of the earth and the Christians of the past as dour people preoccupied with sin and bearing great burdens of guilt and shame. David Bentley Hart has argued that, when the sources are examined, the opposite is shown to be true. Pagan peoples were largely terrified of the elemental powers of the universe and Christian people were by and large marked by joy! Here is what Hart says:

This is not to say that Christian culture ever wholly succeeded in resisting contamination by pagan melancholy and gravity, or even that it ever fully purged itself of this unwelcome alloy. But the “new thing” that the gospel imparted to the world in which it was born and grew was something that pagan religion could only occasionally adumbrate but never sustain, and that pagan philosophy would, in most cases, have found shameful to promote: a deep and imperturbable joy.[6]

That is beautifully and well said! Deep and imperturbable joy!

Ours is a day of great stress, worry, and anxiety. There is a conspicuous lack of joy in the world. In fact, it seems as if anger might be the primary disposition of the world today. It is a day of great uncertainty, of great disequilibrium, of despair even. Could it be that in this sad age in which we live the greatest prophetic and evangelistic act the Church today could put forward would be to model a deep, confident, unshakeable joy rooted in the living, abiding, immutable presence of Jesus Christ?

How can we mourn when the Bridegroom is with us?

Jesus came to bring truth that destroys the old order of things that enslave us.

Jesus next offers two fascinating metaphors that describe what He is doing.

²¹ No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. ²² And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.”

The first metaphor is from the world of clothing. It means that a new, unshrunk cloth, if sowed onto an old and already-shrunken cloth will, when it shrinks, destroy the old garment by ripping it apart.

The second metaphor speaks of wine and wineskins. In the ancient world, one would put new wine in new wineskins because when the new wine fermented, gave off gasses, and expanded, the new wineskin would be able to give with it and handle the pressure from within. But if you put new wine in an old wineskin that has already reached the limits of its elasticity, the new wine, once it ferments and gives off its gases, will rupture the old wineskin.

In both instances, Jesus is giving an example of something that is old being unable to handle the new thing that is put either on it or in it. J.C. Ryle summarized these verses to mean “that in religion it is worse than useless to attempt to mix things which essentially differ…The evils that have arisen from trying to sew the new patch on the old garment and put the new wine into old wineskins have been neither few nor small.”[7]

That is true and well said. What Jesus came to pronounce – the gospel – was of such a new and revolutionary character that the old religious and philosophical structures could not handle it. As a result, any attempt simply to mold these differing elements into a harmonious whole would result in ruin. But what is truly interesting is to note how, in the two metaphors Jesus offers, the new element ultimately destroys the old in two ways: (1) by constriction and (2) by expansion.

The gospel is destructive to the old order of things in that it narrows and pulls inward.

In the first metaphor, the old is destroyed by the new when a simple amalgamation is attempted because the new is too narrow.

²¹ No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made.

That is, the new element draws inward (i.e., shrinks), thereby ripping the old apart. And this is true of the gospel. Of the many ways that the gospel offends, one of the ways is its narrowness. Twice in Matthew 7 Jesus speaks of this property of the gospel.

¹³ “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. ¹⁴ For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

The way of the gospel is therefore narrow. The path to destruction is broad. Then, just some verses later, Jesus says:

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

The way of the gospel is so narrow that even many who think they are in the Kingdom will find out, in the end, that they are not. In reality, it is not those who use the language of the Kingdom and the language of the gospel, but rather those who are actually in relationship with Jesus who are saved.

There is a narrowness to the gospel. It is narrowly and exclusively centered on Jesus Christ alone. In this sense, Christ was an offense to the religious establishment by centering all truth and power on Himself. And, today, Christ is an offense to modern latitudinarian sensibilities by saying that, in fact, all roads do not lead to Heaven, but only His road. The narrowness and exclusivity of the gospel is a great offense to a modern world that not only disbelieves that truth is found in only one way but also disbelieves that truth exists at all!

The gospel is destructive to the old order of things in that it expands and pushes outwards.

However, the gospel also offends because it is too broad!

²² And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.

In other words, there is something about the message of the Kingdom of God as centered in and proclaimed by Jesus that expands outward exploding the rigid confines of the old system. We can see this in the outrage caused in the text immediately preceding our text this morning, when the keepers of the religious gates were scandalized that Jesus ate with tax collectors and other notorious sinners.

The gospel offends because it too narrowly focuses on Jesus and the gospel offends because it too broadly opens the doors of the Kingdom to whosever will come to Christ! What an amazing and beautiful truth this is! To the broad-minded Jesus is too narrow. To the narrow-minded Jesus is too broad.

I believe that Spurgeon hit on this perfectly when he said that the door of Heaven is so wide the whole world can enter in shoulder to shoulder but so low that nobody can enter except on their knees! Whosoever will may come…but only through Christ can whosoever will come!

What a wonderful series of truths Jesus lays out in this episode in the gospel of Mark! Weddings, clothes, and wine: they are all connected. All speak of the insufficiency of the old way to make sense of or even to handle what Jesus is doing in the world.

Perhaps you feel this in yourself? Perhaps you yourself have felt that the pulsating power of the gospel of Christ is a threat to the old assumptions and categories that used to drive your life? No doubt it is! This is the beauty of the narrow-broad gospel of Jesus: it shatters the old, but, in so doing, it makes all things new.

Come to the Christ who threatens the old ways! Come to the Christ who invites us into the eternal truths the Kingdom and the good news of the gospel.

It is, in fact, as old as time and older still! And yet, it is ever new and ever renewing! Come to the wedding feast where mourning and sorrow are now eclipsed by uncontainable joy! Come and be dressed by the One who takes off the old garment and clothes us in His righteousness! And come and partake of the new wine that bursts the old wineskins!

Come to Jesus!

[1] Herman Melville. Moby Dick. (New York: Everyman’s Library, 1988), p. 329-330.

[2] William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark. The Daily Study Bible. (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1971), p.52.

[3] Ronald J. Kernaghan, Mark. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Ed., Grant R. Osborne. Vol.2 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), p.64.

[4] Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), p.124.

[5] Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8. The Anchor Bible. Vol.27 (New Haven, CT: The Anchor Yale Bible, 2005), p.233.

[6] David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions. Kindle, 1932-35.

[7] J.C. Ryle, Mark. The Crossway Classic Commentaries. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993), p.24-25.

I was initially a bit disappointed to see that the audio version of Michael Card’s book Scribbling in the Sand on Audible (it’s available many other places too) was a 2.5 hour abridged version of the book.  I was wanting the unabridged audiobook.  However, I noticed that it was read by Card himself and featured appearances by folks like William Lane and Calvin Miller, so I decided to get it.  In short, I’m really glad I got this!  It was absolutely fantastic and, as I say in the blog post title, it was a real treat.

First of all, the content was great.  Card discusses the nature of creativity, its call upon all of God’s children, the dangers of it, what creativity is and what it is not, the role of community in fostering and encouraging creativity, and how and why the Church needs to reclaim its call to creativity today.  Card offers a lot of helpful personal stories that evidence a real spirit of transparency.  What is more, the additions to this audiobook – Card singing, the interviews, and, especially, a poem by the late (and dearly missed) Calvin Miller accompanied by Phil Keaggy on the guitar – were all on point and very helpful.

The primary image Card uses, that of Christ scribbling in the sand when the woman caught in adultery was brought to him, is effectively employed throughout the book.  Card depicts it as a surprising, provocative, childlike, and creative act.  What is more, he depicts it as an act to which Christ calls us and in which Christ invites us to participate.

It’s kind of hard to categorize exactly what this is.  It’s not a traditional audiobook.  It’s more of a production of the core teaching from each chapter of the book along with accompanying helps from very insightful and skilled people on the issue of creativity.  This was a profoundly helpful devotional exercise by a man that I continue to respect more and more. Definitely worth checking out.

Mark 2

¹³ He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. ¹⁴ And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him. ¹⁵ And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. ¹⁶ And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹⁷ And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

A professionally-produced television commercial comes onto the screen. The opening shot shows the inside of a church sanctuary. Music begins to play. The narrator speaks then responds in turn to a number of folks who look into the camera and tell what they would like in a church. It goes like this:

Narrator: Imagine a church where every member is passionately, wholeheartedly, and recklessly calling the shots.

Business woman: I have a busy work week, and by the time Sunday rolls around I’m tired. So how about a church service that begins when we get there?

Narrator: Can do. When you arrive, we begin.

Parents Holding Baby: This guy [father nods towards baby], he plays by his own rules. We want to find a church where if he starts screaming we’re not the bad guys.

Narrator: Say no more. If your baby’s screaming, you stay seated. The others around you can leave.

Couple Working in Yard: You know, financially Sherry and I don’t give a lot to the church, but we sure like to know who does.

Narrator: Alright. If you join now you’ll know what every person gives in detail.

Senior Adult Lady: When I’m in the church service, can my car get a buff and a wax?

Narrator: Not just that, but an oil change and a tune-up.

Man Throwing Football: And how about tickets to the Super Bowl?

Narrator: That’s asking too much.

Man Throwing Football: I’m serious. If I’m going to join I want tickets to the big game.

Narrator: Alright. You join now and we’ll get you there.

Kid on Bike: I’d like a pony.

Narrator: Look in your back yard. [kid gasps, drops bike, runs toward backyard]

As the commercial ends, the narrator says: “Me-Church. Where it’s all about you.” At the next commercial break, another commercial, much like the first, comes on.

Narrator: Imagine a church where every member is passionately, wholeheartedly, and recklessly calling the shots.

Exercising Woman Pausing to Tie Shoes: I don’t know who sets the worship service temperature, but why does it have to be so cold?

Narrator: Why do you have to be so right? Heated chairs are now being installed.

Parents Holding Baby: This one [father nods toward wife] wants a small church, but I’m afraid if it’s too small they’re gonna make me volunteer like crazy. I don’t stack chairs.

Narrator: Makes total sense. Join now and we’ll let you decide the size of our church.

Group of Young People: We’re Millennials, and we want a church that…

Narrator [interrupting]: Say no more. Any request you have will be granted immediately. [young people nod approvingly]

Woman in Parking Lot: Parking is horrible. It takes me almost six minutes to get from my car to the building.

Narrator: It’s gonna take me six seconds to tell you a valet service is on the way.

Studious Man Surrounded by Bible Commentaries: My pastor’s preaching: it’s all over the map. I say – oh, I don’t know – stick with the books of the Bible. We should be only exedagetical.

Narrator: Ok. Next week we start John 1:1. And we’ll even start pronouncing that word the way you say it.

Man Throwing Football: Hey, I’d like the sermon to be no longer than thirty minutes.

Narrator: How does fifteen minutes sound?

Man Throwing Football: Hey, anybody willing to go fifteen should be willing to go to ten.

Narrator: Heh. You drive a hard bargain. But from now on, five minute sermons it is.[1]

Once again, the commercial ends with the narrator intoning, “Me-Church: Where it’s all about you.”

These commercials actually exist, though I am thrilled to say that they are actually intentional parodies of what many churches are becoming: inwardly focused, man-centered, and “me” focused. These commercials are extreme depictions of what happens when churches lose their sense of vision, their sense of purpose. Specifically, this is what happens when churches lose their missionary hearts, when they forget that Christ came to us, that Christ Jesus was and is a missionary. As a result, the Church, the body of Christ, must be as well.

We can see the missionary heart of God in Christ in the call of Levi found in our text.

Jesus went to lost people because Jesus is a missionary.

Having returned to Capernaum and healed the paralytic man who was lowered down through the roof, Jesus once again looks, turns, and moves outward.

¹³ He went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. ¹⁴ And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

Jesus goes out beside the sea and sees a tax collector named Levi. It is traditionally understood that this Levi is Matthew. Upon seeing Levi “sitting at the tax booth,” Jesus did something extremely unexpected and profoundly offensive to the Jews who were watching this scene unfold. What He did was (a) approach a tax collector and (b) call on the tax collector to follow Him, thereby (c) inviting the tax collector into the society of His disciples.

To understand the scandal of this, one must understand who these tax collectors were and how they were viewed. Ronald Kernaghan offers some insight:

Tax collectors were Jewish people who worked for Rome. They bought a franchise that gave them the exclusive right to collect taxes in a particular area. The Roman government stipulated how much money it expected in taxes and supplied soldiers to enforce the process of collection. Rome, however, did not set a limit on how much tax could be collected from a particular franchise. The tax collectors themselves assessed the total amount that would be collected in their district. The difference between what was actually collected and what was sent to Rome was what belonged to the tax collector. The home of Levi, where Jesus ate on this occasion, was surely not an incommodious shack.[2]

Tax collectors were therefore seen as collaborators with a foreign occupying force. They assisted the enemy in oppressing their own people and, in the process, allowed the enemy to assist them. Thus, they were traitors who prospered by fleecing their own neighbors.

Not surprisingly, they were hated and despised.

Meaning Levi was hated and despised.

He was hated.

He was despised.

He was detested.

He was avoided.

He was sneered at.

And he was the one Jesus went out to meet.

Jesus went to him.

The first three words of our text are crucial:

¹³ He went out again…

Jesus went out again.

Jesus went to him. Jesus did not expect Levi to come to Him.

Jesus is a missionary.

Jesus went and Jesus goes. He went in His incarnate flesh. He goes now through His Church.

What a wonderful truth: “He went out again.”

We are here because “He went out again.”

We are forgiven because “He went out again.”

We have hope because “He went out again.”

Thank God that Jesus “went out again”!

Some years back Newsweek magazine ran an article entitled, “Savior of the Streets.” It was a story about a man named Gene Rivers. Gene Rivers is a black Pentecostal pastor who has devoted his life to reaching the gang and crime-ridden streets of inner-city Boston. His mission is to the poorest of areas and he is building relationships and trying to reach those who are caught in a web of crime, violence and poverty.

In the article, Rivers told Newsweek that when he first came to those mean streets, he sought the help of a Boston drug dealer and gang leader named Selvin Brown. He said that Selvin Brown took him into the drug dens and into the gangs and introduced him to the people of the neighborhood. Rivers said that he learned a lot from Selvin Brown and that his help was invaluable.

The greatest lesson he said he learned, however, was when this drug dealer explained to him why it was that the gangs were more important than God to the people of the streets. Here is what Selvin Brown told him. He said:

“I’m there when Johnny goes out for a loaf of bread for Mama. I’m there, you’re not. I win, you lose. It’s all about being there.”[3]

Yes, “it’s all about being there.”

Jesus was there.

Jesus formed relationships with lost people because Jesus is a missionary.

But Jesus was not just there. Not only did Jesus go out, He went out and formed a relationship with Levi and sinners like Him. Jesus is a missionary and He does not cut corners in His mission. Jesus fulfills His commission. See what happens after Jesus calls Levi.

¹⁵ And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him.

Jesus goes to Levi’s house where He is joined by “many tax collectors and sinners.” They are reclining at table, presumably feasting together.

James Brooks argues that the word “sinners” in verse 15 should have quotation marks around it (as, indeed, in some translations it does) because “it is being used with an unusual meaning” here and refers “not to immoral or irreligious persons but to those who because of the necessity of spending all their time earning a bare subsistence were not able to keep the law, especially the oral law, as the scribes thought they should. As a result the scribes despised them.” Brooks goes on to say that “a better translation” than “sinners” would be “outcasts.”[4]

Perhaps that is so, but, it should be noted, in the eyes of the Pharisees it was a distinction without a difference. Jesus was eating with scandalous company. Jesus was eating with lost people. Jesus went to the lost and formed relationships with them.

Are we doing the same?

In their book Comeback Churches, Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson write a jarring little sentence: “Most Christians don’t like lost people.”[5]

I do not know if that is true. I rather suspect it may be an overstatement. But what if it is partially true? What if “many Christians don’t like lost people”? Is that any better? It certainly is not.

Jesus liked lost people. He went to them, befriended them, formed relationships with them, and led them into the Kingdom.

Do you cultivate relationships with non-Christians? Jesus did. Where they were was where He wanted to be. Where are you? Where do you want to be?

Sometimes our love for folks has trouble extending to people who live right next door. The late Dallas Willard told of a time when he realized he was not loving the lost next door.

Some time ago I came to realize that I did not love the people next door. They were, by any standards, dangerous and unpleasant people – ex-bikers who made their living selling drugs.

            They had never tried to harm my family, but the constant traffic of people buying drugs, a number of whom sat in the yard while shooting up, began to wear down my patience. As I brooded over them one day, indulging my irritation, the Lord helped me see that I really had no love for them at all, that after “suffering” from them for several years I would secretly be happy if they died so that we could just be rid of them. I realized how little I truly cared for nearly all the people I dealt with through the day, even when on “religious business.” I had to admit that I had never earnestly sought to be possessed by God’s kind of love, to become more like Jesus. Now it was time to seek.[6]

Have you “earnestly sought to be possessed by God’s kind of love, to become more like Jesus”? If so, God will lead you to love the unlovable, to walk in when everybody else walks out, to see people as people and not as enemies. And God will lead you to form relationships with those you previously despised.

Missionary people who go often make settled religious people who stay very nervous…but that must not stop us from going!

The fact is, Jesus’ missionary-driven relationships with lost people made the religious establishment of His day more than a little uneasy.

¹⁶ And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ¹⁷ And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

We now meet the Pharisees. Michael Card has offered some helpful background information on who these men were.

In Mark 2:16 we meet the Pharisees for the first time in Mark’s Gospel. These religious leaders were known as the “separate ones” form the Hebrew word parush (“to set apart”). An extreme “back to the Bible” sect, they came together sometime after the Maccabean revolt. Their piety was founded on a radical embrace of the oral law, which they believed was delivered to the elders at the same time Moses gave the written law to the priests. At a time of political and social upheaval, when many movements and sects were forming (Sadducees, Essenes, Herodians), the Pharisees had the most momentum and the widest following. Their influence has shaped the nature of Judaism into the present day.          One of the Pharisees’ distinct beliefs was that the ritual cleanliness mandated by the Old Testament for the priests of Israel should be extended to all the people. It was a tremendous burden that they placed on themselves and everyone else (see Mt 23:4).[7]

The Pharisees were therefore hard-wired to spot the unclean and to distance themselves from such undesirable elements. As a result, Jesus’ dining with such a motley crew ran afoul of their pet issue in a serious way.

Robert Gundry notes that repetitive usage of “sinners” and “tax collectors” in verses 15 and 16 highlight the shocking nature of Jesus’ company. He notes that the Pharisees’ switching of the order to “tax collectors and sinners” emphasizes their contempt especially for the tax collectors and that “in the Greek text the emphatic position of the phrase ‘with toll collectors and sinners’…sharpens the accusatory tone.”[8]

The Pharisees were scandalized that Jesus would commune with folks who were unclean. One can argue that many religious folks often are scandalized by such associations. Julie Stoner’s poem, “I Did Not Come to Call the Righteous,” is an apt description at this sense of scandal and unease on the parts of religious folk.

We ninety-nine obedient sheep;

we workers hired at dawn’s first peep;

we faithful sons who strive to please,

forsaking prodigalities;

we virgins who take pains to keep

our lamps lit, even in our sleep;

we law-abiding Pharisees;

we wince at gospels such as these.[9]

We do wince at gospels such as these! Perhaps it stems at times from a motive that is commendable. After all, Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:33, says, “Bad company ruins good morals.” And 2 Corinthians 6:17 says, “Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you.”

It is indeed important that in our efforts to reach the world we do not become the world. On the other hand, our efforts not to become the world cannot keep us from engaging the world lest we violate our very calling and commission! Where then is the line that we should not cross? Well, the line is that point where your efforts to reach and love those in the world lead you to uncritically over identify to the point of abandoning your convictions and missionary impulse. That is a line we dare not cross.

So perhaps this separatist mindset at times has a noble origin. Regardless, at the point where it leads us to recoil from hurting and lost people when we have the good news they need our behavior becomes deplorable, unChristlike, and outright demonic. I do not believe that is an overstatement. It is demonic to withhold the gospel from hurting people and to distance yourself from them because they are lost!

Missionary people who go often make settled religious people who stay very nervous…but that must not stop us from going!

Jesus went! Jesus loved! Jesus reached! Jesus drew! Jesus invited! Jesus led! If we are the body of Christ we must do the same!

One of the most interesting books I have read in recent years is Larry Eskridge’s God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America. In it, Eskridge provides a history of the Jesus People movement of the late 1960’s and 70’s. One of the things he considered in that book was how established churches handled this movement and how, specifically, they chose to embrace or, more often than not, not embrace the tremendous numbers of young people who were coming to know Jesus. This created problems for churches. The methods of the Jesus People were unorthodox and so were the kids they were reaching. As a result, established institutional churches were conflicted over what to do in response. Eskridge explains:

The conservative churches’ reaction to the hippie Christians seems to have been mixed. Although the Mission’s operators occasionally received some money or other offers of assistance, some forays— like the time they drove over 200 miles down to Fresno and were given a couple of dollars for a meal at McDonald’s— ended up largely being exercises in hoping that a few straight Christians would be inspired to reach out to hippie youth. At this juncture, though, it appears that most of the pastors and congregations were not buying what they were selling. Steve Heefner recalled in a 2007 interview that at one time he had “counted 54 or 55 churches that members of the group had gone to, mostly the guys, sometime all of us— and we never got invited back to one…church.” One woman’s response to a request to house one of the hippie kids that they were trying to get off the street spoke volumes of the attitudes of many conservative church members. Evangelical Concerns board member Ed Plowman remembered that after he had made the request, the woman just stared at him in disbelief and blurted out: “Pastor— THAT between my clean sheets?”[10]

And there it is: that crucial moment when we have to decide whether or not we will love people where they are.

“Pastor – THAT between my clean sheets?”

I know the answer that Jesus would have given: “Yes. Yes – THAT between my clean sheets. For THAT is actually a WHO, a human being, created in the image of God and needing the love and mercy that I have come to offer him.”

Church, we will not truly be a church until we see THAT as a human being to whom we should go and reach and invite and love. THAT has a name, and it is a name known by God. More than anything, it was a name on the mind and heart of Jesus as he hung on the cross. As such, it is a name that must be on our minds and hearts as well.

“Jesus went out again…”

“Jesus went out again…”

Let the church hear what the Spirit is saying.

[1] https://www.ignitermedia.com/products/18-mechurch and https://www.ignitermedia.com/products/4559-mechurch -2

[2] Ronald J. Kernaghan, Mark. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Ed., Grant R. Osborne. Vol.2 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), p.61.

[3] John Leland, “Savior of the Streets,” Newsweek ((June 1, 1998)), p.20-29.

[4] James A. Brooks, Mark. The New American Commentary. Gen. Ed., David S. Dockery. Vol.23 (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1991), p.62.

[5] Stetzer, Ed; Dodson, Mike (2010-07-19). Comeback Churches (p. 62). B&H Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[6] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2006), 23.

[7] Michael Card, Mark. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012), p.48.

[8] Robert H. Gundry, Mark. Vol.1 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), p.125-126.

[9] Julie Stoner, “I Did Not Come to Call the Righteous.” First Things, no.194 (June/July 2009), p.20.

[10] Eskridge, Larry (2013-05-31). God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America (p. 39). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Mark 2

¹ And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. ² And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them. ³ And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. ⁴ And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay. ⁵ And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” ⁶ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ⁷ “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” ⁸ And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? ⁹ Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? ¹⁰ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— ¹¹ “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” ¹² And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

Dennis Swanberg often shares a humorous story from his pastoring days about some well-meaning men in the church who sought to inspect some ceiling damage while the Easter morning worship service was going on. To Swanberg’s and the congregation’s great horror, the man who had crawled up above the ceiling came crashing through to the ground during worship! It is truly a funny story to hear and Swanberg dresses it up as only he can until it becomes absolutely hysterical!

It is a strange sight, a man crashing through the roof during worship. Of course, something like this happened in Mark 1:1-12 with the (more scandalous) difference that it was not an accident. It was highly deliberate. While Jesus was a preaching, a paralytic man was lowered down through the roof! It forms one of the most memorable stories in the New Testament and, if read rightly, one of the most touching stories as well.

Saving faith is what emerges when deep need marries genuine hope and moves toward Jesus with undeterred determination.

Jesus, having earlier fled Capernaum because of how the ever-growing crowds made it almost impossible for him to do what He needed to do there, now returns, presumably to the house of Andrew and Peter.

¹ And when he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. ² And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them.

Shortly after Jesus returned, the utterly predictable happened: “it was reported that he was at home and many were gathered together.” Again, this is the basis for a problem that dogged Jesus as His fame grew: the popularity that grew as a result of His miraculous works threatened to overshadow the intended balance of His ministry. The balance was to be one of both Kingdom word and Kingdom deed, of preaching and miracles. In his famed Church Dogmatics, theologian Karl Barth made this point very well.

…the New Testament tradition has presented the revealing activity of Jesus as an inextricable interrelation of word and act and indeed of word and miracle…the teaching, which is, of course, presented here, is not meant to be understood apart from but only through the interpretation of the action which invariably accompanies it…The acts which invariably speak and are to be heard as well are miraculous acts…God’s act as it takes place visibly, the totality of a gracious act on man, emphasizes that the word spoken is God’s Word…Who is the One who, obviously speaking representatively for this higher authority, can speak thus because He can act thus and act thus because He can speak thus?[1]

Barth’s point is that Jesus’ miracles and Jesus’ sermons were intended to go hand-in-hand, the one informing the other. However, as we saw in the first chapter of Mark, the people continued to grasp only onto the miracles. It is therefore telling to see Mark’s description at the end of verse 2: Jesus “was preaching the word to them.” But, in the midst of this preaching, another miracle opportunity presents itself.

³ And they came, bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. ⁴ And when they could not get near him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him, and when they had made an opening, they let down the bed on which the paralytic lay.

How very powerful and how very touching this is! A paralytic man, a man who is paralyzed, is carried to the house by four of his friends. The house, of course, is surrounded by people and they have no chance of getting their friend to Jesus. But they were not deterred. Determined to create a moment between Jesus and their friend, they carried him to the roof, created an opening above where Jesus was, and lowered the man down.

What an utterly fantastic disruption this was! One wonders at the reactions of the listening crowd. Perhaps there were traditionalists there who began frantically looking at their bulletins to find where this unexpected happening was scripted. Perhaps there were wealthy folks sitting under this dug out opening who were incensed at the dirt and dust that fell on their nice robes. Perhaps there were children there who were elbowing each other and giggling at what was unfolding. Kids love things like this, especially when they happen at inappropriate times! Perhaps Peter and Andrew instinctively were outraged that their house was being thus destroyed.

Who knows what those who sat beneath this unfolding scene thought? We do know, however, what the paralytic’s friends were thinking. The paralytics friends were thinking that if they could simply somehow get their friend to Jesus, Jesus would make it ok. And so great was this conviction that they were determined to allow nothing to frustrate their plans.

This is called “faith.”

Saving faith is what emerges when deep need marries genuine hope and moves toward Jesus with undeterred determination.

I ask you: have you ever needed Jesus like this? They say that necessity is the mother of invention. “They” are correct. It is. But faith is oftentimes the mother of necessity. It was because the men believed that only Jesus could heal their friend that they then believed they simply had to get their friend to Jesus. They were driven by radical, saving faith.

One cannot help but wonder if the Church today often evidences this kind of faith? To eyeball the Church in our country, we seem so very comfortable, so very easily dissuaded, so quick to find excuses to stay away. Jesus, for us, is more of a pal or buddy than the Savior. Perhaps that is unfair, but it is a reasonable deduction when one considers the often saccharine ways in which we speak of Jesus and sing about Jesus. One also wonders if the Jesus of American Christianity can even engender such a radical faith as the paralytic’s friends showed? Once we preachers have gotten through with Jesus and the Christian bookstores have gotten through with Him and the Christian radio stations have gotten through with Him, is this Jesus still awe-inspiring enough to make us want to claw through a roof to get to Him?

There is not doubt that Christ as He is, Christ the preaching, miracle-working, saving Son of God, can and did and still does engender this kind of radical faith. We are witnessing this fact here in our text. Notice the reckless faith of the friends, the complete disregard for decorum, for ceremony, for the safeguarding of their own dignity and reputations, even for the value of the property of others. Notice that sheer, wondrous determination of their faith! They had to get to Jesus. They had to have Jesus. They must get to Jesus!

Is your faith like this? Is mine?

Jesus sees our needs more clearly than we do and so provides more fully than we expected.

And Jesus, in turn, was deeply moved by their faith!

⁵ And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Let us first consider Jesus words to the paralytic: “Son, your sins are forgiven.” This is interesting, perhaps it is even eyebrow-raising, for neither the paralytic nor the men who lowered him are depicted as having asked for forgiveness of sin. Why, then, does Jesus offer it? Does this mean that Jesus saw human illness and infirmity as the result of human sin? On this point, we must be careful, for it is precisely here that a great deal of false teaching has taken place in some quarters of American church life and it is precisely here that great misunderstanding and, as a result, great damage can take place.

Simply put, Jesus clearly did not believe that every instance of illness and infirmity was a result of the sin of the sick or diseased or handicapped person. This seems clearly enough from the story in John 9 concerning the man born blind.

¹ As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. ² And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” ³ Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

So there are many reasons why a person might be sick or handicapped or have a deformity. To be sure, there are, at times, direct relationships between human sinfulness and physical problems. One things, for instance, of an alcoholic who wrecks his liver through drinking. That would be a direct cause. So sometimes it is the case that one can trace physical problems to sin. But not always. This is important because if you do not understand this you will be tempted to give a spiritual misdiagnosis to any and every kind of illness. But that is unjust. Sometimes people just get sick.

Even so, if one were to take a step further back and look at this issue in larger and more sweeping terms, there is indeed a broader connection between human sinfulness and all that results from it: relational decay, environmental decay, spiritual death, and, yes, all physical and psychological illness and infirmity. In other words, in a general sense, all that is wrong with the world can be traced back to the fall of man and thus all that is wrong with the world is, in that sense, connected to human sinfulness.

In our text, it is obviously and simply the fact that Jesus knew the man needed forgiveness. Jesus knew precisely what he was doing. But this might also be read from a meta perspective as a statement of how Jesus’ ministry was aimed at undoing all that the fall of man had wrought and restoring the joy of paradise. I think New Testament scholar William Lane put it nicely when he wrote:

Healing is a gracious movement of God into the sphere of withering and decay which are the tokens of death at work in a man’s life…Sickness, disease and death are the consequence of the sinful condition of all men. Consequently every healing is a driving back of death and an invasion of the province of sin. That is why it is appropriate for Jesus to proclaim the remission of sins…Jesus’ pronouncement of pardon is the recognition that man can be genuinely whole only when the breach occasioned by sin has been healed through God’s forgiveness of sins.[2]

So much is happening here that transcends the individual case before Jesus. We should also say that Jesus sees our needs more clearly than we do and so provides more fully than we expected. This dear man and his friends simply want his body to work again, but Jesus goes deeper and forgives his sins! This is what Jesus does. He provides for us in ways that go beyond our feeble expectations.

We are silly and foolish people to think that we are in a position to diagnose our own problems before God, as if we ourselves know what we really need. It is like the man who walks into the doctor’s office and announces what he would like the doctor to do. In truth, the man is not in a position and does not have the necessary knowledge to make such a request, well-intentioned though it may be. It is for the doctor to examine the man and apply such remedies as he in his knowledge and wisdom knows to be necessary. It is not for the patient to claim to have the knowledge and wisdom of the doctor.

So it was with this paralytic. Did he need to be healed? Yes he did. Were his friends wrong to seek healing for his paralysis? Of course not. But he needed more.

So do we. We come to Jesus with our own diagnoses confident that we have a full and sufficient grasp of the situation. “If only Jesus would fix this and this, my life would be grand!” But we do not see the deeper issues and the deeper causes. We do not see them because we are predisposed not to want to see them. After all, the deeper cause for a lot of our problems is oftentimes us! I can certainly say that about my own life.

We want Jesus to addresses symptoms but not the root disease. If He will just take away the symptoms then we can carry on our own lives all the while projecting to others that we are fine. But Jesus is not in the business of window dressing. Jesus wants to heal us to the core!

“Son, your sins are forgiven!”

How very like Jesus! How very unexpected, unsettling, and, to some, as we will see, how very offensive!

The five words Jesus said were indescribably offensive to the religious elites because of what those five words suggested about who Jesus is. They are no less scandalous today.

Jesus’s response to the paralytic was only five words.

“Son, your sins are forgiven!”

Yes, only five words, but what a scandal these five words created!

⁶ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts,

I cannot help but point out one tangential observation: what you bring to church is what you will find at church when you get there. “The scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts…” In truth, they did not just begin questioning at that moment. They came in with questioning and critical spirits, determined to find something wrong. And, shockingly, they did find something wrong. It is the same with us.

Here is something I have simply come to believe is the truth: the attitude you bring with you will determine how you view everything that happens around you. I have seen this in church and so have you. Unhappy people, critical people, people who want to find something wrong: these are the people who not surprisingly find things to be unhappy about, things to be critical of, and things that are wrong!

Church, hear me: what you bring to church is what you will find at church when you get there.

Back to our text, what were the scribes questioning in their hearts?

⁷ “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

I do not know about you, but I love when lost people inadvertently connect the dots and get a glimpse of the full and shocking implications of Jesus’ words and actions. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” they ask. It was a natural thing for them to ask. Ben Witherington explains:

As Hooker remarks, “there is nothing in Jewish literature to suggest that any man – not even a messiah – would have the authority to forgive sins…It is also true that nothing is said in Jewish literature about such authority being given to the Son of man, but it would certainly be appropriate for a figure who acts as God’s representative on earth and shares in his judgment to be given this power.” But Irenaeus rightly queries this sort of conclusion, saying, “How can sin be rightly remitted unless the very One against whom one has sinned grants the pardon?”[3]

These five words from Jesus were indescribably offensive because of what they suggested about Jesus! One cannot help but chuckle at the scribes’ question, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Do you not wish you could have been there to look back at them and say, “Touche! You are correct! Not keep walking down that path until you connect the dots you do not want to connect. If only God can forgive sins, and Jesus just forgave the man’s sins, then Jesus is _______. Now fill in the blank!”?

This was an astonishing revelation from Jesus, and one the religious establishment was not eager to receive.

⁸ And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? ⁹ Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?

Jesus, knowing their thoughts, next asked an interesting question: “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?” The answer, of course, is that the former statement, “Your sins are forgiven,” is easier to say because it cannot be immediately proven or disproven. In other words, Jesus merely saying to somebody that their sins are forgiven does not prove to the watching skeptics and critics that the man’s sins were forgiven. All it “proved” to them was that Jesus was a blasphemer, a liar, and possibly insane, that is, it proved their prejudices and assumptions about Jesus.

But what if Jesus said to a paralytic, “Rise, take up your bed and walk”? Well, that is a whole new ballgame because that is something that calls for an external and therefore verifiable response. If Jesus says, “Rise,” and the man does not rise, then there is the proof that Jesus is a liar. But if Jesus says, “Rise,” and the man does rise, then that means that Jesus does indeed have authority and therefore possibly even the authority to forgive sins!

Jesus, in other words, “upped the ante.”

I love the delicious drama of this moment! All turn with bated breath to see what will happen! The scribes quickly cut their eyes uneasily at each other. The men up on the roof steal a quick glance at each other too then crane their necks further in so that they might see what happens next. And then, it happens:

¹⁰ But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— ¹¹ “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” ¹² And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”

Oh, friends, there are so many lessons to learn here! We see a lesson about how the preaching of Jesus and the miracles of Jesus really do go hand-in-hand, informing and assisting one another. We see a lesson about the sheer power of Jesus and His sovereign rule over all sickness and disease. We see a critically important lesson here about the nature of Christ: He is who He said He is and He has the authority both to heal the sick and to forgive…and if He has this authority, He is nothing less than God with us! We see a lesson about who Jesus is in His provocative use of the “Son of Man” title, a title that alludes to Daniel 7 and its powerful description of the one who bears this name:

¹³ I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. ¹⁴ And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Ah! We see, then, many lessons and each one is an ocean the depths of which we could never plumb. But we also see in this amazing story a simple truth that our hearts most need to hear: Jesus Christ loves hurting people who have faith enough to come. Again, this is a theologically rich and suggestive passage, but certainly one of the most beautiful theological truths we find here is the truth of salvation by grace through faith!

The paralytic received the grace of God and the grace of God was sufficient to heal him and forgive him. So it was and so it is. You do not need to perform for or attempt to impress the Lord Jesus. You only need to come and fall at His feet as sovereign Lord and King!

We are the paralytics. There is nothing we can do to merit the grace of God in Christ. But we can fall at His feet in all of our brokenness and weakness and infirmity and we can know that this same Jesus will raise us up, forgiving us and offering us healing. Sometimes this healing is bodily and now. Sometimes it is not. But He always offers ultimate healing, ultimate joy, and ultimate peace and forgiveness. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and He never stops looking with compassion upon hurting humanity.

Faith that dares to believe.

Grace that is revealed in Jesus.

Healing.

Salvation.

See the gospel!

See the Lamb of God who comes to seek and to save the lost!

[1] Karl Barth, The Doctrine of the Word of God. Church Dogmatics. Eds., G.W. Bromily and T.F. Torrance. I.1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), p.400-401.

[2] William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark. The New International Commentary of the New Testament. Gen. Ed., F.F. Bruce (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974), p.94.

[3] Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), p.116.