Two Journeys

Jesus is the prophet who warned of God’s judgment on the world for its rejection of Him as he described the end of the world to the disciples.

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Salvation does not depend on “the one who wills” or on “the one who runs” but on God, who has mercy. And God gives mercy freely to whomever he chooses.

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God chose his elect before the foundation of the world to be primarily foolish in the eyes of the world, he did this specifically to shame the powerful and wealthy.

Turn in your Bibles to Mark 12.  We're looking this morning at the text verses 38-44. Most of God's choice of servants throughout history have been obscure people. Their acts of service have been unnoticed by the general population. They've been unrecorded by the historians of their age, seemingly lost for all time in the hiddenness and the forgetfulness of the obscurity of history. But God never forgets. God sees everything that we do, and He never forgets any act of service. The account that we are studying this morning of the tiniest, most seemingly obscure act of giving done by an unnamed and obscure woman was recorded and celebrated by the Holy Spirit in two different places, here in this text and also in Luke 21. It was God's intention that every generation of His people since that time read this account.

This account teaches us many things, but especially it teaches us that God delights in secret acts of piety and humble service that no one ever notices, but that He does. God knows His obscure servants because the overwhelming majority of His people are precisely that, obscure servants. Look at the clear declaration given us by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 1. He says there, "Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were influential, not many were of noble birth, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of the world and the despise things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before Him."

This text says that God specifically put His church together in His own mind. We learned from other passages, before the foundation of the world, God chose His church with a majority of people who were not wise by human standards. They're not the geniuses, they're not the intelligentsia, they're not the Nobel Prize winners, they're not the poet laureates, they're not also many influential, they're not the movers and shakers in their generation. They're actually the opposite. They are the moved and the shaken. Not many of them were nobility, not many of the aristocracy, not many of the A-listers, the Hall of Famers, the world champions. God chose His elect before the foundation of the world to be primarily foolish in the eyes of the world, weak in the eyes of the world, lowly. He did this, He says in that text specifically to shame the wise, the powerful, the wealthy, the nobility.

When will that shaming occur? Certainly not for the most part in this world, but it will happen on Judgment Day and for all eternity. That's when it will be obvious that all that mattered is what Christ thought about you, your person, and your works. All that mattered is what Christ thought about you and how He evaluated you. So God loves the obscure, He loves the insignificant, He loves the works that fly perpetually below the radar of our screen that the world never noticed.

I noticed this theme some years ago as I was reading through the Bible and my annual Bible reading program brought me to the book of 1 Chronicles, everybody's favorite book. I don't know if you remember what's in 1 Chronicles. It begins with a series of genealogies of the tribes of Israel, the 12 tribes. There are 911 names in those first nine chapters. Yes, I counted them. Other than David's descendants, the tribe of Judah, over 90% of those names had no cross-reference at all to any other passage in the Bible. In my study Bible, there were no footnotes about those people because we know nothing about them other than what tribe they were and their name or whatever it says in the verse. The question came to my mind, why are they here at all? Why did the Holy Spirit inspire the author of 1 Chronicles to write their names down and then the Lord protected that copy throughout every generation so that all of us would read those names, people that we don't know, and recorded for all eternity. We have no further explanation of their lives, not a word about their deeds, their dreams, their hopes, their expectations, their fears, their achievements, their accomplishments, none of it. So why are they there? I don't know, but it may be to teach us that God cares about obscure people just like you and me, and that though we don't know anything about those people, God knows everything about those people, and that their lives matter to him. Most of God's people in every generation are exactly those kinds of people. They're obscure whose lives will almost be totally forgotten within three generations of their death.

We're coming around to that time of year when some of us watch It's a Wonderful Life. Others can't stand it. You watched it one time and you were like, "Why is this movie on every year?" But I love that movie. The movie is about a simple guy named George Bailey who's an obscure individual, who lives an ordinary life, running the Bailey Building and Loan so that common working class people can have homes to live in. At a key moment, he makes a moving speech to the villain in the story, Mr. Potter, a wealthy man who's taking advantage of these poor people. In that speech, he basically says, "These common people that the Bailey Building and Loan cares for and provides for are the people who do most of the eating and sleeping and living and dying in this town and in this country, and though they don't matter to you, they matter to my father who started the Bailey Building and Loan, they matter to me."

It's a very passionate speech, but Jesus goes infinitely beyond that sentiment. He actually uses the commonest actions of obscure people to build the city in which we will live forever, the radiant new Jerusalem whose stones were put in place by the humble actions of the kind of obscure people that we're looking at today, like this woman who gives the two copper coins. The entire new Jerusalem is built by those types of labors, those types of works. That's what this account is about in my mind, an obscure woman, a widow with no name, almost no resources, who is carefully noticed and celebrated by the only observer who really matters and that's Jesus Christ. He's the judge of all the earth. It is a strong statement that Christ notices and uses hidden acts of sacrifice to build his kingdom of glory.

The context is one of stark contrast. Putting these two paragraphs together, you may say, "What do they have to do with each other?" You've got the Scribes and Pharisees, religious leaders of the day who Jesus just rips in this account with their outward displays of religion that dominated Jewish society, but were actually deeply corrupt. They were wolves in sheep's clothing, plundering poor widows like this one. Then you've got this widow who Jesus, it seems, celebrates. I put it together in terms of the concept of a foretaste of Judgment Day of what Jesus thought about this one category and what Jesus thought about the other.

That's the unifying theme of the two paragraphs, Jesus gives us a foretaste of Judgment Day.  We begin as we look at that by saying things are not what they appear. There should be a growing sense in the heart of maturing Christians. The things on earth are not as they appear to be. Many of the most powerful people on earth, the wealthiest people on earth are to be the most pitied because of their spiritual condition and the road that they're on. Many, on the other hand, are the meek and lowliest people on earth, Jesus says, who stand to inherit everything, the meek who will inherit the earth.

The  Judgment Day that is coming is a day of great reversals, a day in which the lowliest and most obscure of Christ's servants will be exalted to the heavens and crowned with stunning glory, and a day in which those most glorified in this world, the most outwardly powerful and wealthy and dominant will be stripped forever. There is a day coming in which all secrets will be unveiled and all works judged with a perfect eye by the judge of all the earth. That day is called Judgment Day. The Scripture reveals who that judge will be and that judge is Jesus Christ. My task as a pastor and a regular preacher of the Word is to make that Judgment Day vivid in your minds every day, that you think about that day, you get ready because that Judgment Day is most certainly coming.

Jesus is presented in Scripture as the judge of all the earth. Many passages speak of him as a perfect judge. Isaiah 11, for example, speaks of this, “A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse. From his roots, a branch will bear fruit that shoots from the stump of Jesse — Jesus Christ, the incarnate Lord. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him. The spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the spirit of counsel and of might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. He will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what He sees with his eyes or decide by what He hears with his ears, but with righteousness, He will judge the needy. With justice, He will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth. With the breath of his lips, He will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt, and faithfulness his sash around his waist. That is Jesus portrayed as the judge of all the earth in Isaiah 11.

Jesus openly made this claim for himself. In John 5, He said that the Father has given Him the honor of being the judge of every human being that ever has lived or ever will live because He's the Son of Man. John 5:22, 23, "The father judges no one but has entrusted all judgment to the son that all may honor the son even as they honor the Father." It's an incredible statement to make saying that the entire human race will honor Jesus the way they honor God when He sits up to judge the human race. A few verses later, John 5:26, 27, "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the son also to have life in himself and He has given him authority to judge because he is the son of man." Then in verse 30 of that same chapter, "By myself, I can do nothing. I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just I seek not to please myself but Him who sent me."

That's an open claim that Jesus makes of having an honor equal to God himself and that God has given Him the role of being judge of all the earth. He says the same thing in Matthew 25, speaking of the Second Coming, "When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory." He'll sit in honor and glory and power judging. That's the picture. "All the nations will be gathered before him and he'll separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." Jesus, the judge of all the earth. On that day, He will, it says in Proverbs 20:8, winnow out the wicked with his eyes and He will reward his faithful servants with eternal honors.  Proverbs 20:8 says, "When a king sits on his throne to judge, he winnows out all evil with his eyes." He's going to separate out the wicked, the goats, and He'll reward his faithful servant as He says in Matthew 10:42, “If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones, these messengers, because he is my disciple, he will never lose his reward.” That's a tiny act of service similar to the widow giving her two copper coins. You’ll never lose your reward because Jesus will see every cup of cold water given to help missionaries, to help servants of the word along. He will reward them, and they'll get the same reward as the messengers, the missionaries, the pastors, et cetera, the support system. It's an incredible statement.

Jesus begins in this passage by exposing the spiritual predators. This is the final week of Jesus' life. We're walking through that. Jesus is in the temple and He's teaching. He's been ministering, healings, it says in one of the other Gospels, not here in Mark, but He heals, and He does his teaching ministry. These are the final words in Mark's Gospel that He speaks to his unbelieving enemies.  The Scribes and Pharisees have dogged his steps every day of his public ministry. They hate Him, they're opposed to Him, they're genuinely wicked people. But to others, they appear as righteous. The Scribes and Pharisees are the spiritual leaders of Israel. Jesus says in Matthew 23, they have a legitimate authority, they sit in Moses' seat, so you must obey them. They have a legitimate authority, but they have misused that authority. They've abused that authority, and Jesus calls them out. This is their final chance to be convicted by the only perfect prophet that's ever lived, to take his fiery words, his convicting words to heart and repent of their sins and find salvation in Him. Like a surgeon cutting open the body to find the tumor, He exposes their wickedness.

Mark's account here is greatly truncated compared to Matthew’s account. It's greatly reduced. Look at verses 38-40, "As he taught, Jesus said, 'Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows houses, and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.’” That's it. Just a few sentences here. But in Matthew 23, He gives the seven woes to the Scribes and Pharisees in this rhythmic pattern, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. Woe to you, scribes and pharisees, you hypocrites,. . .” a whole chapter. It's a lengthy chapter in Matthew 23.

Here he just says Scribes or teaches of the law. Matthew adds Pharisees, he puts them together. Jesus warns the people to watch out for them. Earlier He had called them the blind leading the blind. Now, here He exposes their love for ostentatious displays of religiosity, flowing robes, the trappings of godliness and of piety, but there's no real spiritual power behind it, there's no life behind it, no genuine holiness. They love the horizontal honors they get from the Jewish population, they love to be greeted in the marketplaces, they love the places of honor, they love to be in the most important seats in the synagogues. They love this kind of thing. They were used to it, they expected it, they probably felt they deserved it, and it seems that the people felt so too because they gave it to them. They gave them this honor. But Jesus also exposes their hypocrisy for a show. He says here in Mark's Gospel, they make lengthy prayers. They're just putting their piety on display.

But then Jesus also probes to their secret wickedness, they devour widows’ houses. They take advantage of widows who had no protection. Because of their positions of power in the society, they could go over a widow's estate and give her binding spiritual, religious, legal advice. Furthermore, they could and did demand exorbitant fees from widows for their services. If the widow couldn't pay, they had the right to confiscate their homes. It's really horrible and disgusting, especially when you consider what James says in James 1:27, "Religion that our God and Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress." They were taking advantage of widows in their distress. It says in Exodus 22:22-24, "Do not take advantage of the widow or the fatherless. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused and I will kill you with the sword."

Jesus's harsh words to them in Matthew 23 and his brief words here is a foretaste of the coming sword, and that sword is going to come on Judgment Day for them. He's representing a rage from God against them for this, the fact that they devour widows’ houses. He's using his words as a foretaste of the sword. Remember how in Revelation He's depicted as having a double-edged sword coming out of his mouth. He has this rage and He's clearly revealing what's going to happen to these wicked religious leaders on Judgment. Look at verse 40, they will receive the greater condemnation.  I believe this principle is based on one's knowledge of the Word of God. The more you know and didn't obey, the worse it's going to go for you on Judgment Day. That's why I've said before, the worst place to go to hell from is a healthy Christian family that poured the gospel into you from childhood and you never repented. I do believe the more you know and don't live up to it by faith, the worst it will be for you in Judgment Day. How about these Scribes who were pouring over every letter of the law of Moses and they weren't living it out? It's a terrifying thing. In Greek it says they'll have greater condemnation or abundant judgment, actually overwhelming judgment.

The woeful statements, as I said, are in Matthew 23. The rhythm is seven times, a sevenfold condemnation that He uses with his words, a prophetic statement of woe, "Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites." He probes their hypocrisies, their outward show of inward corruption. He calls them whitewash tombs which look beautiful on the outside but inside full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. It is a terrifying chapter to read and it culminates in this statement of judgment on them, Matthew 23:33, "You snakes, you brood of vipers, how will you escape being condemned to hell?" It's a terrifying statement coming from the judge of all the earth.

Then He makes the prediction of Jerusalem's destruction because they always persecute the prophets sent to them. "Therefore," Matthew 23, "I'm sending you prophets and righteous men and teachers. Some of them you'll kill and crucify, others you'll flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all this will come down on this generation." Then He says this, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling. Behold your house is left to you desolate for I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'"

That sets up the next chapter that we're going to go to, God willing, Mark 13, the prediction of the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem, but it all comes on the tail end of his condemnation of these terrible religious leaders, the Scribes and Pharisees.

That's the condemnation He gives to those corrupt religionists. Now we turn to the widow, the obscure giver, and Jesus extols her. Look at verse 41-44, "Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple Treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts, but a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, 'Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth, but she, out of her poverty, put in everything, all she had to live on.'"

It begins with Jesus's physical position. It's very significant, Jesus sitting down and watching. I want you to get a foretaste of Jesus on his Judgment seat. That's what you get the picture of. He's sitting down and He sees everything. As in Revelation 1, He has eyes of blazing fire. He's watching what's happening in the midst of all this hustle and bustles, just a busy day, people coming and going, and they're pouring money into this treasury, into this box, and He's observing it. This is a picture you should have in your mind. Jesus is seated on his Judgment throne and watching everything I do. He's evaluating me. That's what Judgment Day is all about. We're all going to come before his Judgment seat and give an account for everything we've ever done in our lives. This account gives us a picture. We can picture it in our minds. He's seated and watching and observing, and He's talking about it.

All of this is going on, and the monies are coming, people are making contributions in the temple grounds. He's sitting there just watching it. Sadly, the monies that are being collected in this big box, they go to the Scribes and Pharisees, the very ones that Jesus has condemned. They're going right to those wicked people, and it's tragic. You can picture a wooden chest with a hole and a metal-like trumpet-looking thing, like a funnel. The people would come in and they would pour their money in. It was all coins, it wasn't paper money. It would be precious metals, gold, silver, copper. The larger the donation, the more money, the more sound it would make.  It would just rattle and clang down the thing if you're putting in lots of amounts.

Some of these people were coming in and making a big show of what they were offering. I think they have these kind of money things like at the Harris Teeter store too. Sometimes people bring huge amounts of coins and it's like... I can't imitate it, but it's just this loud noise and they're all coming and they're giving. Lots of heavy coins. The gold is the heaviest, the densest and lots of that. It's just coming down. I think it lines up somewhat with Jesus' condemnation of this kind of outward showy giving. In Matthew 6:2, He says, "When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their award in full." I don't know if there's actual trumpets, but this thing was like that. It was making a lot of noise if you gave a big amount.

While all this is going on, all this racket and bustle, along comes this woman and she's got in her hand these two little copper coins. The text identifies her as a poor widow. She was at the lowest level of their society socioeconomically. There was no one to protect her. She had no resources. Again, she's completely obscure. The text tells us nothing about her. Her gift would've made almost no difference at all in the running of the temple or anything. It was just a tiny, seemingly insignificant amount. Jesus watches her carefully. I think He could only have had supernatural knowledge of what she put in. Imagine how small these coins were. She extends her hand, opens it, and walks away. How do we know it was two copper coins? It's just that supernatural knowledge the Bible gives us, but Jesus knew. He watches her carefully and He has supernatural knowledge of her condition like He does of that Samaritan woman who's had five husbands and the man she now has is not her husband.

Jesus has supernatural knowledge of her circumstances and He speaks of the significance of her giving. He knows that those two coins represented everything she had in the world, all she had to live on. He speaks of that significance of the action. One could easily question her judgment in giving this amount, think that she was actually behaving foolishly. There's actually a well-known commentator that took this whole angle. He said, "These two accounts are put together where you have the victimizer and then the victim." I think it makes a certain amount of sense. However, he goes too far when he says that the text in no way presents the woman as a model of giving. That I cannot agree with.  If you just read the paragraph, you'd think that Jesus is actually commending her faith-filled giving. He's talking about sacrifice, He's talking about the gift is proportional to what it meant to you. It's proportional to your sacrifice. It's not a value system on an absolute scale. It has to do with what that money meant to you. So I think that commentator went too far when he says, "Look, there is nothing commendable about what she..." Actually, he goes so far as to say, "She's somewhat foolish, but she's an example of a widow who's being plundered and being taken advantage of." That part I can agree with. But that she's not a role model, I can't go that far.

As a matter of fact, I don't know if you remember that story in the Old Testament about Elijah, during the famine, during the drought, he was being fed by some ravens, and he was by the brook, but then that dried up, and then it was time for him to move. God tells Elijah, 1 King 17: 9 and following, "Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there.  I have directed a widow there to supply you with food." The thing that's funny about that is she knew nothing about that, but God says, "I've directed her." In other words, it's a done deal. She's going to take care of him. He went to Zarephath, and when he went to the town gate, the widow was there and she's gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, "Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I might have a drink?" As she was going to get it, he called, "And bring me, please, a piece of bread." You get the feeling in the account, "Now you've gone too far. I'll get you a little water, that's hard enough to come by during a drought. But the bread now, that's a whole different matter.” So she says, "As surely as the Lord your God lives, I don't have any bread. What I have is a handful of flour in a jar and I have a little olive oil in a jug. I'm gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son that we may eat it and die." She's basically saying, this is her version of the two copper coins, this is all I have to live on, this is it. But then Elijah said to her, "Don't be afraid. Go home and do as you said, but first, make a small loaf of bread from me from what you have and bring it to me. And then make something for yourself and your son for this is what the Lord the God of Israel says, the jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land."

He gives her a promise from the Lord. The key thing with this woman in the Elijah story is she believed that promise. She was willing to act in faith on that promise. She went away and did as Elijah had told her. There was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family for the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry in keeping with the Word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.

I do not think we can say this widow is an example of foolishness having given too much. Think again, the rich young ruler, Jesus commanded him to sell everything he had and give it to the poor. I don't think that she's negative. As a matter of fact, I want to turn around and say she is an example of sacrificial giving that will stand across all the ages and is worth celebrating. 

God delights in obscure servants and hidden works of sacrificial giving. He delights in them and Jesus notices them. As I've said, most of God's servants are obscure people who do their good deeds in a hidden way. God sees what they will do and will reward it based on His principles. Jesus said, "When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing that your giving may be in secret, then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you fast, put oil in your head and wash your face so it'll not be obvious to others that you're fasting but only to your Father in heaven and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you." Those are three examples, giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting where God observes secret acts of hidden piety and rewards them on Judgment Day.

Culminating all that, He talks about storing up treasure in heaven. In Matthew 6, He says, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." That whole section, Matthew 6:1-21, commends a life of secret piety and giving in which your works are not being done to be observed by others, but God sees and He rewards them and He's exhorting you store up a whole lifetime of those works, that's going to be treasure for you in heaven.

Later, as I mentioned, when teaching about rewards in Matthew 10, He sends out the disciples two by two and makes this amazing statement, which I alluded to a moment ago, "Whoever welcomes a prophet because he is a prophet, will receive a prophet's reward. Whoever welcomes a righteous man because he is a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward. And if anyone gives one of you messengers of the gospel, even a cup of cold water, he'll certainly not lose his reward." What is Jesus saying there? He's saying that the hidden support system people get the same rewards as the upfront famous people. The ones that supported Luther or Calvin or John Owen or whatever, the ones that no one even knows about that enabled them to live and to do their works and all that, they will be honored and rewarded with the same kind of reward that the upfront famous leaders get.

That means on Judgment Day, there'll be some surprises. A lot of them as a matter of fact, because Jesus says about this widow, she gave more than anyone else gave. You see, she gave more. She gave the most. It's not something we would've seen. One of the Judgment Day principles is the gift is accepted based on what it meant to you, not based on its absolute market value. He says in 2 Corinthians 8:12, "If the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what one does not have." That means the harder it is for you to give, and I don't just mean financially, it could be in evangelism, it could be your time, your energy, it could be hospitality, it could be anything, if it's hard for you to do and you do it anyway, it's more commendable than if it comes out of a surplus. I think most of the giving we give is out of surplus. It doesn't pinch us. It's not a real sacrifice. But for this widow, it is a real sacrifice.

That means Judgment Day is a great reversal. Some of the greatest servants of Christ will be Judgment Day surprises like this widow, and many, if not most of them, will be women. I've studied church history. History tends to focus on men, on great leaders, political leaders, religious leaders, military, financial, and they've generally been men. There are great men who have made great sacrifices and they will be worth getting some reward in heaven. They are what they appear to be, godly men who served. But there are also millions of hidden women whose faithful work for the kingdom was never been seen. Single women who served in obscurity, mothers who raised generations of Christians, who poured into them the Gospel from infancy. We don't know what they did, but God knows. This account, this woman, this widow with the two copper coins is like the prime witness in my whole account here that there's going to be great reversals and surprises on Judgment Day and that God honors the secret works of obscure servants including women.

In the book that I wrote on heaven, The Glory Now Revealed, I focused on this woman and two copper coins. By the way, that's why I couldn't go with that commentator and his observance saying that she was no good example. I was already in print, so I couldn't back out of it. So I'm going to stick with it, but I really do, I think if you read this paragraph, I think you get commendation by Jesus, not criticism. She's the prime witness in that chapter on obscure heroes and obscure movements in history that'll be revealed on Judgment Day.

But it wasn't just her or just women, there were a lot of people. My favorite obscure missionary hero that I learned about as I was working on that book was a man named James Gilmour. He was a missionary to Mongolia in the 1870s. I've carefully studied the history of missions, and I'd never heard of this guy. He labored in the most severe climate imaginable, with temperatures dropping to as low as 40 degrees below zero. He survived on handfuls of millet, trekked over 300 miles a week, over 40 miles a day to reach people in the remotest places on planet earth. He struggled with extreme loneliness. He struggled with a constant sense of total failure to his mission.

Why do I say that? The Mongolians that he was reaching were not hostile to him. They were generally hospitable, they were amicable, but they just weren't interested in the Gospel. They believed in their Buddhism and their spirituality. They were fine with how they were. Though they tolerated him ministering and they didn't overtly persecute him, they had no interest in what he was saying. He recorded over 24,000 gospel presentations and only three conversions. I have never read in all the church history of anyone that was so faithful with so little return on his investment.  Think about that, I mean, it's probably why you haven't heard of him. If he had saved 10% of the people, It's like, "Great missionary leader." He was a great missionary leader, but just not in the ordinary way. He was faithful. What would it be like for you? Imagine your personality. Imagine you in that place and you have shared with 3,000 people and none of them have come to Christ. You're going to share with another 3,000, still no one. What kind of perseverance does it take to keep going when you get so little return? Of those 24,000, for all we know, a larger percentage of them will actually be in heaven. You know how it says, "I planted the seed, Apollos watered, but God made it grow." Sometimes seeds are planted and you never know what happened to it. But James Gilmour is that kind of an individual. He reminds me of the heroes in Hebrews 11. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, persecuted, mistreated, the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves, in holes, in the ground. That was James Gilmour.

As I finish, I was thinking recently about a movie I watched, a powerful movie called A Hidden Life. It was about a farmer who lived a simple life with his wife and daughters in the Austrian Alps during World War II. His name was Franz Jägerstätter, and he would've been completely obscure had he not been one of the rare men who stood up to Adolf Hitler. He was a conscientious objector who was willing to serve in the army, but not to take the vow of personal obedience to Hitler that every soldier had to take. He would not do it, and because of that, he was severely punished and even martyred by the Nazis.  The movie's called A Hidden Life, and it comes from a quote by a female author named George Eliot who wrote a book called Middlemarch, and this is the quote, "... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might've been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs." That's most of us.

Within three generations if the Lord doesn't return, people will not visit your tomb. They will not know much about you. All of your works will be forgotten by everyone alive on planet Earth, but Jesus will never forget. The call for me at this end of Mark 12 is to live a life of faithful obedience to the commands of God, to trust in Christ as our Lord and Savior because without that, you can't store up any good works, only wrath, but to trust in Him and then to live a quiet and a hidden life that God will reward on Judgment Day.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for this incredible account of this woman. We thank you Lord Jesus that you were there to see it and to comment on it and to celebrate it. And Lord, I pray that we would be faithful, that we'd be willing to live a hidden life that's not hidden to you, a life that is obscure to the hustle and bustle of the world age, but not obscure to you, a life that you'll reward on Judgment Day faithfully, not missing anything that we do by faith in service to you. In Jesus' name. Amen.

God chose his elect to be foolish and obscure in the eyes of the world, but their gifts shame the powerful and wealthy oppressors.

The post A Foretaste of Christ’s Judgments: Oppressors Punished, Obscure Servants Rewarded (Mark Sermon 69) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In Daniel chapter 2, King Nebuchadnezzar's troubled dreams led to the execution of Babylon's wise men. Daniel prayed to God and received the answer, praising His wisdom and power.

The post Daniel Episode 2: Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream appeared first on Two Journeys.

Christ, son of David and the Son of God is the meticulous, precise Bible interpreter and also the meticulous, precise Savior.

Turn in your Bibles to Mark 12. We're looking this morning at verses 35-37. Anyone who knows me knows I have an esteem for church history. I love church history.  One of my favorite people to study are the Puritans who were English Christians in the 16th, 17th century. They were remarkable people who accomplished far more than most ever do because they knew the God they believed in, and they sought to orchestrate every aspect of their lives in conformity with what they read in Scripture. They were meticulous and precise in the way that they lived. They were precise in their doctrine, very careful in their doctrine. They were precise in their public worship. They were precise in their Sabbath observances, in their family lives, in their private prayers, in their secular employments, in their politics. They tied everything to the perfect truths they saw in the Word of God. One Puritan pastor, Richard Rogers, ministered in Essex and was told by a wealthy nobleman in his parish, "Mr. Rogers, I like you and your company, your group very well, but I find that you are too precise." Rogers replied, "Oh, sir, I serve a precise God.”  We serve a precise God, and evidence of the precision of God surrounds us every moment in the universe that we live in. We see in His meticulous, in His careful creation, evidence of His precision. Advances in science over recent centuries have shown how just precise the universe really is.

I was reading a book recently by Eric Metaxas called Is Atheism Dead? He argues that recent advances in science have made atheism more and more unreasonable. In it, Metaxas talks about arch-atheist evolutionist and enemy of the gospel, Richard Dawkins, who is relentless in his hatred of Christianity. He goes all over the world to ridicule and to debunk Christianity, but in an unguarded moment was asked, "Of all of the arguments for the existence of God, which do you find most difficult to overcome?" He said, "That's easy. The evidence of a finely tuned universe, that the universe has physical constants that are so precise, if they deviated even a tiny, tiny amount, life would be impossible. Actually, existence would be impossible, and there's a stacking up of these that makes it difficult to refute the evidence of a precise God who made them all."

Classic example of this is what's called the “Goldilocks” planet that we live on. You remember the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, how this wanderer comes into a cabin and finds some porridge, and the first bowl is too hot and the second bowl is too cold, the third bowl is just right. The same thing happens with the chair and with the bed and all that. Earth is like that, it’s the Goldilocks planet. The distance from the sun, Venus is too close, so it's too hot, Mars is too far, so it's too cold. The earth is just right. Also the gravitational force of the earth, the power of gravity is just right to retain the gases in the atmosphere necessary for life. The atmosphere itself is just right. When it comes to oxygen, 21% of the air you breathe is oxygen, 78% is nitrogen. If there were more oxygen, things would be igniting all the time around us, burning, combusting. If they were too little, we would have trouble staying alive.

So it is with water. Water is weird. I know we're used to it, but it's just a weird substance. It's got some amazing attributes. For example, simply the fact that the solid form of it floats in the liquid form, ice floats. Because of that, then ice floats to the top in lakes and ponds and rivers and doesn't descend to the bottom where the sunlight could never reach it. And eventually, it would quench out life because of an ice age. So it is with the genetic code of every cell in your body, the DNA, the string of proteins. They are so meticulous and precise that if anything were deviated at all, life would be impossible. These are examples of a precise God and His precision in creations around us all the time.

This precise God also had a precise plan for human history and for our existence. All the days ordained for each one of us were written in God's book before one of them came to be. That's true not just of us individually, but it's true of the entire flow of human history. God ordained a precise sequence of nations and empires, kingdoms and smaller nations to rise and fall in exactly the way He ordained.  In Acts 17:26, it says, "From one man, He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth." He determined the time set for them in the exact places where they should live. That's a precise God orchestrating all of human history.

At the center of that precise plan by this precise God was a plan for the salvation of sinners like you and me from every tribe and language and people and nation. Peter in preaching on his great Pentecost sermon said this in Acts 2:23, "This Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. And this one you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." That's a precise plan concerning Jesus, that He would be born, as Galatians tells us, in the fullness of time at just the right time in history, and according to this plan, He was killed. This precise plan was predicted in a precise book. This is the precise book, the Bible, and in it is a set of precise prophecies meticulously laid out in the Hebrew language, in Hebrew letters in the Old Testament.

This morning we're going to see the precise son of God,  Jesus making a surprising observation and drawing a stunning conclusion from one verse in scripture, a psalm, actually based on one word in that psalm actually based on one letter, the ending letter of that one word. Everything comes down to that one letter. That's the precision of Jesus and the argument He's going to make today.

Jesus spoke about the precision of scripture and His esteem for it in the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew 5:17 and 1, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a pen stroke will pass from the law until all is accomplished." KJV has “jot and tittle”. But it's just an iota, which is a Greek letter. But Jesus was actually referring, I believe, to the Hebrew letter, the yod.  You can see in Psalm 119 the shape and some of the English translation, the shape of the various letters. It's hard to see the relative size, but the yod is the smallest Hebrew letter. It looks like an apostrophe, like the apostrophe as like the possessive that we use, apostrophe. It's like a little apostrophe. It's pronounced ye, like a Y sound. That's what a yod is. The pen stroke refers to the way that the letters are shaped, like the finishing of a letter, what some printers will call a serif. On the end of a letter, it gives a shape of a letter.  Jesus is saying, "Until heaven and earth pass away, not a single yod will disappear and not a single pen stroke will disappear from the law until everything that God ordained in the scriptures is fulfilled." Actually, He said that His own words would outlast heaven and earth. "Heaven and earth will pass away. My words will never pass away."

This meticulous Scripture gave rise to a very meticulous Jewish culture. The Jews were very precise over the written word of God. They knew that there were 613 commands in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 613 commands. They knew that 248 of them were positive and 365 were negative. Doesn't it make you wonder what they did with their time? They're there walking through and categorizing that, that’s what they did.

The Scribes also counted letters in each of the books that they copied. They meticulously counted the letters. They knew the middle letter of each book and they knew, indeed, the middle letter of the Pentateuch. I bet you're wondering what it is. It's a vav, which is a W in the Hebrew word for belly in Leviticus 11:42. That's the middle Hebrew letter, and they would count forward and count back, and if they didn't arrive at that vav, they knew something was wrong somewhere. That was the precision.

Jesus applies this kind of meticulous precision to prophecy in Psalm 110. In Psalm 110 in verse 1, His entire argument comes down to a single letter in the Hebrew. Actually, it is the letter yod, the one I mentioned earlier, the little ye sound, the little apostrophe. With that closing letter in the way the Hebrew words are formed, the word adon, which means Lord, is turned, possessive, adoni, my Lord. The whole thing comes down to that. How is it that David, writing that, called Messiah, His son, my Lord? It all comes down to one letter. That's the precision here.

What is the goal? What is Jesus' goal? The goal is the same goal that there is in Scripture. He's not trying to ensnare or trap people or prove His intelligence or His meticulous nature; none of the above. He wants to save sinners. It's salvation; that's His goal. For that is the purpose of scripture.  2 Timothy 3:15 says, “The holy scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.” 

 The whole thing comes down to the identity of Jesus. Who is Jesus? That is the focal point of this conversation. Jesus brings it up. It is the final week of Jesus' life. It is the Wednesday of Holy Week. Jesus' enemies are coming at Him in waves trying to trip Him up. They want to condemn Him to death. They're coming at Him concerning His sense of His own identity. That is essential also to our own salvation. All four Gospels, I believe, are written for the same purpose as the Gospel of John. John 20:31 says, "These are written." You can put that on all four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," or perhaps God the Son, "and that by believing that, you may have life," that is eternal life, "in His name."

It all comes down to the identity of Jesus. Jesus' enemies are openly challenging Him concerning His identity and His authority. Back in the previous chapter, Mark 11:27, 28, while Jesus was walking in the temple courts, the chief priest, the teachers of the law, the elders came to Him. "By what authority are you doing these things?" they asked. "And who gave you authority to do this?" They're asking Him His authority to cleanse the temple or to teach. Who do you think you are?

This brings us right to Jewish conceptions of the Messiah, the Christ. Throughout history in Jesus' day, even up to our own time, Jewish people have conceived of the Messiah as purely human and only human. He would be a ruler, powerful, mighty in battle, able to defeat Israel, Gentile foes and conquer their lands, bringing in a worldwide Jewish empire of immense power and worldly wealth. That was what He would be. Then, having conquered all the Gentile foes of Israel, He would sit on a throne in righteousness and justice in Jerusalem and rule to the ends of the earth. But it was purely a human conception. He would be militarily powerful and He would bring in worldly wealth to the Jewish nation. Mighty, yes, powerful in battle, absolutely, wise in rulership, of course, but human only.

Their fundamental answer, which they give in the text, and we'll walk through that in a moment, is the Christ, the Messiah, is the son of David, which in their mind basically meant another David. What David was, that's what the son of David will be. Maybe better, maybe more powerful, maybe wiser, but still just a human king. That's all. That's how they conceived of it, another David. Certainly not a savior of souls before a wrath-filled holy judge. They didn't think they needed that. As the book of Roman says, they sought to establish their own righteousness by the law. They didn't think they needed any help. They didn't conceive of the Christ, the Messiah being a savior from sin. They didn't think they needed it. They certainly didn't conceive of the Jewish Messiah being a savior for Gentiles so that there would be, in the end, one new people, Jew and Gentile together in one beautiful, worldwide kingdom. They didn't conceive of any of that.

The Jewish leaders are there, and they hate Jesus. They're opposed to Him. They're fighting Him. The Scribes, Pharisees, elders, chief priests, teachers of the law, they all banded together in overt hatred of Jesus. Why is that? Jesus had assaulted their concept of religion, He had assaulted their conception of their own righteousness, He openly challenged their interpretations of the laws of Moses, especially on Sabbath regulations He exposed their hypocrisy. He called them lost. He called them blind leading the blind. He said their righteousness was like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but inside full of corruption,  so they hated Him with a passion.

Furthermore, He had openly exposed their financial greed, how the whole religious system that they ran there at the temple made them a den of thieves. They were jealous of His popularity with the crowds. The crowds were wildly in love with Jesus, and they were jealous of that, so they hated Him. They especially despised His claims to be divine. He said, "Before Abraham was born, I am." They picked up stones to stone Him. When they're questioning Him healing on the Sabbath, Jesus said, "My Father is always working to this very day, and I too am working." They hated Him all the more because He made Himself equal with God, claiming to be God. They considered His claims to be God to be open blasphemy, and they wanted to kill Him.

They come on this final week of His life, the Wednesday of Holy Week, with a series of questions, one after the other, wave upon wave. The Pharisees banded together with the Herodians to ask their most devious and dangerous question about taxation. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? They figured they had Him either way. If He said, "No, we shouldn't pay taxes to Caesar," then Caesar will hear of it and, through Pontius Pilate, put Him to death. But if He says we should pay taxes, then they will look on Him as a collaborator, like a tax collector, and they'll hate Him. He'll lose the patriotic Jews. They figure they have Him either way. But Jesus, with His supernatural wisdom and knowledge, gave an answer they couldn't deal with, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God’s.

Then the Sadducees banded together, they who deny the resurrection. They come with that ridiculous test case about seven brothers married to one woman, et cetera, and thus proving they thought by the law of Moses that resurrection is impossible. Jesus exposed their error. You're in error because you don't know the Scriptures or the power of God, and proved the resurrection.

Then some other Pharisees get together to ask them which law or which commandment is the greatest? The problem was the one they chose you ask actually wanted to know the answer. He actually yearned to know the truth. They have a much more favorable exchange in Mark's Gospel than you see in the other Gospels. Jesus told the man, "You're not far from the kingdom of God,” because the man genuinely wanted to know the answer and wanted to live it out.

But now the time has come for Jesus to turn the tables. "You're asking me a series of questions. I have a question for you."  He brings up this question. He's not doing it to try to trap them, He's not doing it to try to trick them or to show His superiority, He wants to save them, He came to seek and to save the lost. God has no pleasure in damning souls to hell. Ezekiel says very plainly in Ezekiel 18:23, “'Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?’ declares the sovereign Lord, ‘Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?’" That is the spirit of Jesus. "I don't enjoy condemning people to hell. I would love for you to turn from your wicked ways and live and find salvation." That's His motive.  This is exactly why that same week He wept over Jerusalem, as depicted in Luke 19, “As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it and said, ‘If even you had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it is hidden from your eyes.’" Jesus is giving all of them one last invitation to believe in Him as He really is. 

So He makes His case from the Scriptures, constantly pointing to scripture as its proof of His identity and His mission. In this case, it's Psalm 110.  If we combine Matthew's account from Mark's, we get the whole flow. There's a little more detail in Matthew, so I'll be leaning on both, but you could just listen or follow along in Mark. In Matthew, Jesus raises the question. Matthew 22:41, 42, “While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, ‘What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is He?’" They, in Matthew's account, give the answer, an easy answer. “‘Son of David,’ they replied.” That's how it begins in Matthew.  In Mark, it reads this way, “While Jesus was teaching in the temple courts, He asked them, ‘How is it that the teachers of the law say that Christ is the son of David? David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.’ David himself calls Him Lord. How then can He be his son?” That's the whole account in Mark.

You get the reactions a little different in Matthew than in Mark. In Matthew 22: 46, it says,"No one could say a word in reply. And from that day on, no one dared to ask any more questions." He's silenced his enemies in Matthew 22:46. They don't know what to say.

It's extremely significant that these Jewish experts in the law didn't have an answer to Jesus' question, therefore there isn't one other than the right one. Over the centuries, the Jews have had a chance to look at this question and answer it. There is no answer other than that which points directly to the deity of Christ. But unfortunately, as Paul talked about in Corinthians, the veil covers their faces when they read these scriptures and they can't see the truth, but there's no answer. They have no answer.

Mark focuses on the delight of the crowd. Look at verse 37, “The large crowd listened to him with delight.” They're like, "Wow. I never saw that before." Can I just tell you in general, the Bible says more than you think it does. I'm going to give you just a principle for the rest of your life. There's more in the Bible than you think there is, so just keep studying it. There's always more to learn.They were amazed. They're like, man, "I never saw that. I've been reading Psalm 110 my whole life, and I never asked that question."

What's going on? Jesus raises a question. Does Jesus answer the issue? No, He doesn't. He raises the question. How can David, speaking by the Spirit, call his own son his Lord? We're putting it simply. How can David's son be David's Lord? Do you have an answer? What's going on there? This is what Greg Koukl would call in his book, Tactics, putting a rock in someone's shoe. What does that mean? Ask them a question they can't answer. Something that jars them, something that keeps them up at night. If you were to die tonight and you were to stand before God and He were to ask, "Why should I let you into heaven?" What would you say? That's the Evangelism Explosion question. That's a rock in someone's shoe. Are you ready to die? Sometimes we feel like as evangelists, we need to kind of clinch the deal. We need to seal the deal. Sometimes all you need to do is put a rock in someone's shoe. In this case, it's this question, how can David's son be David's Lord?

The Jews obviously were partially right. The Messiah, the Christ is the son of David. If you go back to, 2 Samuel 7, David has a desire to build a temple for God. He thought the Tabernacle's temporary tent wasn’t sufficent, it was time to build a temple. He wants to build one. Nathan, the prophet, comes with the word of God saying, "You are not the one to build the house for me. But a son coming from your own body will build a house for me." 2 Samuel 7, 12-14, "When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body. And I will establish His kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name. And I will establish a throne of His kingdom forever. I will be His father and He will be my son." It's called the Davidic Covenant.

We know the immediate fulfillment is David's biological son, Solomon, who built the actual physical temple. But we know that the words go bigger than this because the real, final, permanent temple of God in which God dwells by His Spirit is the church of the living God that He builds with living stones through evangelism missions. Jesus is the one who's going to build the eternal and final dwelling place for God. We know that there’s immediate fulfillment and long-term fulfillment.

But there is this Son of David theme right from 2 Samuel 7. It just continues on throughout many, many passages in the Old Testament, picking up on this. For example, Psalm 89, 3-4, "You said, I have made a covenant with my chosen one. I have sworn to David, my servant. I will establish your line forever, and I'll make your throne firm throughout all generations." Or probably the most famous, the most well-known is Isaiah 9: 6-7, "For to us, a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on His shoulders. And He will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace, there will be no end." Listen. "He will reign on David's throne and over His kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness. From that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this." Isaiah 9 is a powerful prediction of an eternal kingdom of David.  In Jeremiah 23: 5-6, “'The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.'" This is centuries after David had died, but, "I'm going to raise up to David a branch, a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land.”   “In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which He will be called the Lord, our righteousness." That's so beautiful, the Lord is our righteousness. That's His name. That's a gospel. Jesus is our righteousness, Jeremiah 23.

Or again, Ezekiel 37: 24-26, "My servant, David, will be king over them. And they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees. They will live in the land I gave to my servant, Jacob, the land where your father's lived. They and their children and their children's children will live there forever, and David, my servant, will be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers and I'll put my sanctuary among them forever."

Again, this is centuries after David had died. It means the Son of David will reign on a throne in David's name forever. They weren't wrong. The Gospels prove it as well. The very first fact told us in the New Testament, it's the simplest, shortest genealogy. If you have a desire to memorize a genealogy, may I commend Matthew 1:1, it’s a very good abbreviated genealogy. "The record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." My friends, that's the first fact the New Testament tells us about Jesus. He is, in fact, the Son of David.

Then Matthew gives a comprehensive genealogy to prove that Jesus was biologically descended from David through Joseph, His earthly father, Joseph. Luke has a different genealogy, but again, most scholars believe that's Mary's genealogy, also a descendant through David. Again and again in the Gospel, Jesus is called Son of David. He doesn't reject it, He accepts it like the two blind men in Matthew 9:27, “As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, calling out, ‘Have mercy on a son of David.’" Or that Canaanite woman, she cried out, "Lord, son of David, have mercy on me. My daughter is suffering terribly from demon possession,” son of David. Blind Bartimaeus, Mark 10:47, when he heard it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me."

Even just recently, at his the triumphal entry, they're all shouting, "Blessed is the one who comes in David's name. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, David, Hosanna and the highest." David, David. David, and He accepts it. He is, in fact, the son of David. The Messiah, the Christ, was truly the son of David.

But friends, this is the point. That's inadequate, that’s not enough. You have to think greater thoughts than that to be saved. First of all, over the centuries, David had lots of descendants. There were lots of descendants of David. Joseph was called by the angel, son of David. Joseph isn't our savior, but he is a son of David, and the angel calls Him, son of David. That's not enough. Jesus wants to expand your conception of Himself.  If I can just tell you, I believe that will go on for all eternity. Your conception of Jesus will keep growing and growing and growing and growing forever and ever. Jesus will never run out of new ways to show you His glory. But He's pushing at us now by the Scripture and by the Spirit to expand your conception of the greatness of Christ. All of us underestimate Jesus, so He's going to Psalm 110 to reason. He wants to challenge them, He wants to push at them.

Let's look at His key exegetical assumptions, the keys to Jesus' argument, and let's walk through it. Key number one is the Davidic authorship of Psalm 110, it’s key to everything. If David didn't write Psalm 110, we're finished. But Jesus asserts it. "How is it then that David, speaking by the spirit, calls him Lord? For he says, "The Lord says to my Lord, if then David calls Him Lord, how can He be His son?"" This is the key to the argument. David wrote Psalm 110. If David did not write Psalm 110, the whole argument falls apart. If Psalm 110 was written some centuries later by some pious Jews, there would be no problem with those pious Jews writing about the Messiah being called “my Lord”. It's no problem. The author of that psalm would have no problem, and it's not an issue. But if it's David, now we have an issue here. Jesus clearly asserted that David was the author of the Psalm, and therefore he wrote the words, “my Lord.”

Key number two, David wrote the Psalm under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is key to everything we do here at First Baptist Durham, the inspirational authority of the Bible. We believe every single word in this is written, was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and therefore is free from error. Jesus openly ascribes the statement to the Holy Spirit through David. How is it that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls Him Lord? That guards David when he was writing Psalm 110 from error. He didn't make a mistake. It was really the Spirit that wanted him to say, "My Lord.” The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a stool for your feet."

Assumption number three, the fact that Psalm 110 was Messianic, that it's talking about the Christ, the Messiah. Jesus asked, "What do you think about the Christ, the Messiah? Whose son is He?" The one you're all waiting for, the expectant savior that's going to come, the Davidic son. What do you think about it? We're talking about the Christ. How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls Him the Christ Lord, and then they quote Psalm 110? The Jews didn't stop them there and say, "Oh, whoa, wait. That's not even talking about the Christ." They knew it was. It was a messianic psalm. If so, the psalm itself doesn't make much sense. Who's he talking about? “The Lord said to my Lord” what? "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." If that's not the Messiah, then there's some other great personage that we would want to know about. Who are we talking about here?

A couple of verses later, the Lord has sworn and will not change His mind. "You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek”. The author to Hebrews just works on that for a whole chapter. Who are we talking about? If that's not the Christ, who is it? Someone who sits at the right hand of God whose enemies God crushes, and he is a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. Who is this? It's Messianic. This is the Messiah. That's key to the argument.

Assumption number four, the fact that under the laws of Moses, a son is never greater than his father, especially when it comes to kings and princes. In the 10 commandments, sons are commanded to honor their fathers. Furthermore, a king sitting on a throne, his son, we would call in English a prince. Is there a difference between being the king and being a prince? There's a big difference.  Suppose the prince wants to be king. We'll read about it with the rebellion of Absalom. He has to kill his father to do it. Even when at the end of David's life Adonijah wants to usurp and grab, and he makes Solomon his heir, David's not going to be calling Solomon “my Lord.” That isn't happening. Actually, it's the other way around. They say, "My Lord," to him even though he is on his deathbed. Then interesting, like you're all supposed to say to a king, "Oh king, live forever." If you want to be King Solomon, you're hoping that doesn't happen. But at any rate, the fact is you're never going to have the father calling the son, “my Lord.” They knew that. That's the final assumption David calls him “my Lord.” That's the little squiggle, the little yod after the word adon, adoni, “My Lord.” It all comes down to that one pen stroke.

If then David calls Him Lord, how can He be His son? That's an interesting question. How can David's biological son be also David's eternal Lord? There's only one answer to that, and that is the mystery, the Christian mystery of the incarnation; that Jesus is both fully human and fully God. Like John the Baptist, David himself could say, "He who comes after me is greater than me because he preceded me." David's son preceded Him. Jesus is, therefore, unique of all human beings that ever lived in that He chose to enter the world, He chose to be born. He told Pontius Pilate that, "For this reason, I was born. And for this, I entered the world to testify to the truth.”  Like John the Baptist said, "He who comes after me is greater than me because He was before me." Chronologically, He was born after me, Jesus was born after John the Baptist, six months after, but He preceded him. John knew that because He's a son of God, He's incarnate. He existed before He was human. This is an infinite mystery, the incarnation.

1 Timothy 3:16 says this, "Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great. He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the spirit, was seen by angels, was preached on among the nations, was believed on in the world and was taken up in glory." But look at what in the verse almighty God invites David's son to do. "The Lord said to my Lord..." What did he say? "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." This is quoted eight times in the New Testament. That's how significant this verse is, “Sit at my right hand.” Jesus is exalted. After His death on the cross and after His resurrection, He passed through the atmosphere, He passed through the sky, He passed through the heavenly realms until at last Ephesians 1 tells us He was seated at God's right hand, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and given every title that can be given, not only in the present age, but also in the one to come. God placed all things under His feet and appointed Him to be head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way. That's what “sit at my right hand” means. That's what He's invited to do. David's son, His biological son, is invited by Almighty God to share His glory and His sovereign throne.

It's also a threat, isn't it? Don't be one of Jesus' enemies because the verse says, "God says to Jesus, ‘You sit at my right hand and I will crush your enemies.’" If you are Jesus' enemy," the text says, "God is going to destroy you." Psalm 2 makes that plain. If you fight against the Lord and His Messiah, He will destroy you. God will put His sovereign power against you. He'll make all of His enemies a footstool for your feet.  This is the most sublime and infinitely complex mystery of Christian theology. Jesus is fully God and fully man, biologically descended from David but Almighty God in the flesh. And before Him, every knee will bow, every tongue will swear that Jesus is Lord, that means God, to the glory of God, the Father.  That includes David right now, who I believe is absent from the body and present with the Lord. What do you think he's doing up there? Is he not on his face worshiping his greater son, worshiping the glory of Jesus? That's what's going on. Jesus is the radiance of God's glory. He is the exact representation of His essential being. Anyone who has seen Him has seen the Father. In his death, all the attributes, the perfections of God were put on display for all eternity. The justice of God, the love of God, the power of God, the wisdom of God, these attributes are on display in the death of Jesus. That's who Jesus is. If you believe in him, someday you will see His glory with your own eyes. You will see Him face-to-face. You will see Him exalted and radiant and glorious. And you, yourself, will share in His glory because you will shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father. Yes, son of David, but He's infinitely more than that, He is the son of God.

You have to believe this. You have to believe this to be saved. If you confess with your mouth- what? -Jesus is Lord. What does that mean? It means Jesus is God. That's what it means. And believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  Or if you can make Thomas' confession. Thomas said very plainly when he saw the evidence of Jesus' resurrection from the dead, "My Lord and my God." That's what David means under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. "The Lord said to my Lord and my God, sit at my right hand." That's what he's saying. Can you make that confession? Can you look at the incarnate Jesus, read about him in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, look at that personage and say to Him from your heart, "My Lord and my God." If you can do that, you'll be saved. Your sins will be forgiven.

I began talking about a precise God, meticulous God. The God who made this universe and all the physical constants and all that. That's interesting to some people, to other people not because they’re not into science. I get it. But know this: This precise God, someday you're going to stand before Him and give an account for your life. You're going to be assembled together with all the nations and you're going to give an account for everything you've ever done in the body.

It says in Revelation 20:12, "I saw the dead great and small standing before the throne and books were open. Another book was open, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. And Jesus himself said, ‘I tell you, you'll have to give an account in the day of judgment for every careless word you have spoken.’" That's the precise God you're going to stand in front of.

I remember I was sharing the gospel with a coworker once, and I quoted that verse talking about Judgment Day. He said, "I don't remember everything I've said." I said, "That's fine. God's written it down, He remembers." And his eyes got big. That is the precise God that we serve. He remembers everything you've ever done, and you have to give Him an account. No one can survive that without Jesus. It's impossible to survive Judgment Day without faith in Jesus Christ. Imagine on the other hand what it's like to have Jesus own you as one of His own and say, "My righteousness is her righteousness, his righteousness. My name is around him or her. This is one of my sheep. I'm extending. Welcome to this person. Come into the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world by your Father." That's what you need.

This is a tender warning. "Sit at my right hand," the text says, "until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." Don't be Jesus' enemy. Flee to Christ, and He will be not just your friend but your brother, He will be the lover of your soul, He will be your Lord and your God.

We have opportunity to witness this week. I would suggest find someone and put a rock in their shoe. Ask them a question that they can't shake. I was on an airplane, and woe to people who sit next to Andy Davis on an airplane. Who knows where that conversation's going to go? But I remember we had reached a certain point and I felt like there was nothing more I needed to do in the conversation. The person wasn't ready to come to Christ. I actually said this to this person, who's a businessman. I said, "I'm going to pray that tonight you'll be unable to sleep because of the things we've talked about." And I think that's good. Sometimes all God wants you to do is put a question in someone's mind that they can't shake that they need to think about.

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the opportunity we've had today to study your word, to walk through Jesus' incredible question that He asked His enemies. Lord, I pray that we would not be your enemies, I pray, I thank you that in Christ we are adopted, we are loved. We're part of your bride. We are delighted. But we know that we don't deserve any of those things; it's only by your grace. Father, this week as we assemble with family and friends, as we have the chance to be together, help us, oh Lord, to just give thanks to you, knowing that we don't deserve any of the blessings we have, but ultimately to give thanks for Jesus, our savior of whom we can say by the working of the spirit in our hearts, my Lord and my God. In your name we pray. Amen.

Christ, son of David and the Son of God is the meticulous, precise Bible interpreter and also the meticulous, precise Savior.

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Daniel’s resolution to be holy and not be defiled by food was key to his role in Babylon during the exile.

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Every moment of the day, Jesus Christ's call to us is to pour ourselves out in service to the needy, deny and spend ourselves for them, and love them as we love ourselves.

The scripture tells us that all of creation is groaning because of human sin, groaning through its endless bondage to decay and death. But the groaning of nature is nothing compared to the groaning that sin has caused among the human race itself. I can hardly imagine what it must be like for the perfectly compassionate God to hear those groans 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Bible tells us that God saw the miseries of Israel when they were in bondage in Egypt. He heard their groaning because of their task master's lash, and we are told He was deeply concerned about them. It's a picture of the compassion of God. Then after saving Israel from slavery in Egypt, He taught them not to oppress their neighbor, because then their neighbor would cry out to him. Exodus 22:27 - "And If he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate."

How costly has human sin been? How many times have people rebelled against the Second Great Commandment that we are studying this morning, and have not loved their neighbor as themselves? How many groans have gone up as a result? Not only so, but our general human condition, caused by Adam’s fall into sin, has resulted in miseries, not caused by any direct evil human choice, but they're just part of our fallen condition.

Diseases, like cancer, leave people groaning in hospital wards all over the world. Natural disasters, like hurricanes, and tornadoes, and floods, have wiped out crops, and destroyed homes, and taken lives, and left misery and groaning in their wake. God heard the collective groan of pain and suffering from the human race, and in mercy He moved toward misery. Out of compassion, He moved toward misery. He sent his beloved son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to enter this world, fully-human in the incarnation, to make his dwelling among us, and to share our sorrows. Jesus, in mercy, moved toward misery, and now He's calling on his people to do the same.

Our tendency, naturally, is to flee misery, to run away from it, to avoid it. In our society, there are so-called first responders who are paid by our society to move toward misery, to move toward the car accident, to move toward the fire, to move toward the flood, to move toward the bomb threat, to move toward the collapsed building, but most everyone else instinctively flees. Jesus, in the Second Great Commandment, especially in the parable of the Good Samaritan, has commanded his people, in mercy, to move toward misery, and to alleviate it. That is the call of the Jericho Road that's in front of us this morning. It’s exactly the opposite of our self-saving, self-serving nature. We desire to be insulated from suffering. We desire to move through this world of pain with as little personal pain as possible, until we finally escape it, and go to heaven, a world free from all death, mourning, crying, and pain.

I remember well, a number of years ago, the first time I was ever out of the country, riding through the streets of Mombasa, in Kenya, my first overseas mission trip. It was the last week of a summer-long trip. We were staying in a comfortable resort right on the Indian Ocean. Some of us wanted to see the city, Mombasa, and so we were touring, in some of the poorer districts of Mombasa, in a brand new air-conditioned van. That was nothing unusual for any of us Americans. We're used to air-conditioned vans. What was new for me, anyway, was the site of urban poverty in a country not our own, another country. I had never seen poverty like that in all my life.  The more streets that we drove down, the more uncomfortable I became with what I was seeing. The shocking disparity I saw between what I know to be my life, the life I'm used to, and what I was seeing through the tinted glass in that air-conditioned van ride. It also became a symbol of the way that I was making my way through this world, that that air-conditioned van ride, that bubble of security, was the way I honestly wanted to move through this misery-filled world, to be in a different way of understanding this phrase: “In the world, but not of it.” It's like, that has nothing to do with me, and I've been convicted ever since of that tendency.

I had a second experience a year later, when I was in Pakistan, my second time out of the country. I was on a team, at that point, that summer, ministering. It was 1987. We were ministering to refugees who had fled from Afghanistan to Pakistan.They fled because of the Russian invasion in that summer of 1987. Again, I had never seen poverty like that in all my life. As a matter of fact, they're still the most destitute people I've ever seen in my life. They had literally nothing, except the clothing that they were wearing. Because they had fled for their lives, they brought nothing with them. Most of them had recently lost loved ones, violently, to the ravages of war. They had a haunted, and terror-filled look on their faces.  They were squatting in a desolate area, across the border, in Pakistan. They were barely tolerated by the Pakistani government. They were basically ignored by the local Pakistani population, and they made an impact on me. But it wasn't really even them that I have in mind. It was a later experience I had in that city, Peshawar. We were going through the streets of the city, and we became accustomed to being accosted by beggars in ways that we don't really face here in our culture. They would come up to us, and pathetically point to their mouths, and to their stomachs, indicating that they were hungry. They were starving to death.

The missionaries that we're working with told us that there were professional begging syndicates that used women, children, cripples.  They were organized by strong men, similar to the way pimps work with prostitutes in our country. The missionaries didn't seem that concerned. They'd been in that country for decades, and it just wasn't something they were really that worried about, but they saw our unease with the topic of beggars, and they suggested, "Well, why don't you just go buy some naan", which is that beautiful flat bread in one of the bakeries. “Just carry it with you, around, and as you do your work, and then as they come up and point to their mouths, and their stomachs, you can give them food, immediately.” I thought that was a great idea. So we bought naan, and I carried it around. It was still steaming hot, delicious, really some of the best bread I've ever had in my life.

Sure enough, later that morning, one of the beggars came to me, and she pointed to her mouth, and her stomach, and triumphantly, I produced the bread. When I gave it to her, she angrily threw it on the ground, and walked away. She didn't want bread, she wanted money, and she was using this hand and stomach thing. What really bothered me, however, was my reaction to what she did. I felt somewhat relieved. Relieved from what? Relieved from the whole problem. You can see why. The whole thing's kind of a scam, right, and we don't really have to be that concerned. The only problem was as the morning continued, soon another beggar came with a child and did the same kind of gesture. So I produced the loaves, and she took them immediately out of my hand, and gave one to her daughter, and they both started eating it like they hadn't eaten in a week.  So now I was stuck. My earlier happy kind of outcome was now destroyed. I gave her the bag that I had. I realized that I was seeking, like the lawyer in the story you just heard, to justify myself. 

This is the big danger, that we seek to justify ourselves, and exonerate ourselves, from the vast problem of the haves and have-nots in the world, and I don't think that Jesus is meaning to exempt us. He's not going to give us... Not in this sermon, not in any good solid right teaching, you'll ever hear a way out from the problem. Probably the most convicting thing I've ever heard in this, is when Jesus said, "The poor, you will always have with you, and you can help them anytime you want." Why is that convicting? There's another understood statement: "We'll talk about that on Judgment Day, how much that was." It's going to be a topic of conversation.

This morning, we're going to look down the Jericho Road. We're going to look at the Second Great Commandment's call to a heart of compassion, a heart of mercy, that instinctively moves toward misery, and not away from it. That's what I think the call of the Jericho Road is. It's dangerous, because it searches us. Like the Scripture says, "Lord, you have searched us, and you know us." The Scripture is searching us. That's what law does, by the way. Jesus said, "What do you read in the law?" This is law. This whole parable is law. We need to understand that. We need to, therefore, see what is the law supposed to do. What does it do in your life? I went through that in the beginning of my sermons on the two Great Commandments that say, "Law fundamentally crushes your self-righteousness, and brings you to Christ, but then once you've come to Christ, then the law tells you the right way to live."

That's what I expect this law, this Jericho Road, to do. The Jericho Road has to do with interactions with other human beings. The Lord Jesus is testing us to the core. Are we going to see misery, and move toward it in this world, in our trip through the world, or like the priest and Levite, are we going to see it, and move by on the other side of the road? Are we going to put a road between us and the misery? We can imagine, if we're honest, a life in which we move, like that air-conditioned bubble, through this world of misery with as little compassionate suffering as we can, and the Lord is calling us to a better kind of life. It's a relentless call of Jesus Christ, that we would pour ourselves out in loving service to others, to deny ourselves for them, spend ourselves for them, and to love them as we love ourselves.

Again, our context here. We're in the Gospel of Mark, but I chose to focus, this morning, on the Parable of the Good Samaritan as an illustration of the Second Great Commandment, but our home base is the two Great Commandments, and this is the last sermon I'll preach on the two Great Commandments. In Mark 12:28, one of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating, noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer. He asked him, of all the commandments, which is the most important? The most important one is this, said Jesus, "Here O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. The second is this, love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these."

As we compare this to the text you heard this morning, in Mark, about an inquirer, a lawyer, who in my opinion, is an honest seeker of spiritual truth. He's a very different individual than the one who came in Luke. In Luke, he comes to justify himself. In Mark, I think this man comes to know the answer he wants to know. The recitation of the same answer is given, but in Mark's Gospel, it's Jesus that gives it. In Luke's Gospel, it's the lawyer seeking to justify himself that gives it. We can know the right answer. These two commandments, the two Great Commandments, are intertwined. True love for your neighbor depends on first, loving God, but true love for God always results in loving your neighbor. They're intertwined. 1 John 4:20 , "If anyone says I love God, yet hates his brother, he's a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." They're intertwined.

What does it mean to love your neighbor? That was the question in front of us last week, and last week I gave this definition: Love is a heart attraction, resulting in cheerful, sacrificial action, for the benefit of another person. Heart attraction, cheerful, sacrificial action. Love is heart attraction. There's a heart movement toward the person. We see that in the Good Samaritan. He is moved with pity, moved with compassion. The Good Samaritan has a heart attraction to the individual. Love is also a sacrifice. It's a willingness to give something valuable: time, energy, money yourself, your attention, your gifts, your personality. Without sacrifice, there's no love, and the more sacrifice there is, the greater love, but the sacrifice must be given cheerfully. You have to be delighted to give it, not reluctantly, or under compulsion. There's something flowing from that heart attraction, and it results in beneficial action. The actions you take are going to be beneficial to the person you're helping. That's last week's definition.

The two aspects I argued last week are indispensable. There has to be a heart attraction, or God doesn't see it as love, and there has to be sacrificial action, or God doesn't see it as love. If it's just the one, or the other, it doesn't meet the criteria of the Bible.  Jesus has given us a beautiful example of this through his perfect ministry. A very good example of this is in Mark 1:40 and 41, Jesus' heart of compassion. "A man with leprosy came to him, and begged him, on his knees, 'If you are willing, you can make me clean'. Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. 'I am willing', He said. 'Be clean.'" The number one emotion ascribed to Jesus, in the gospels, is compassion. Again and again He knit his heart with people like this leper.

What would it be like to be a leper? Filled with compassion, He wants to alleviate his suffering. His mercy moves toward misery, and He heals him. In that case, the Holy Spirit, through the gospel writer, Mark, ascribes it to Jesus. Filled with compassion. But later, in Mark 8, He ascribes it to himself. He describes himself. "During those days, another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, 'I have compassion for these people. They have already been with me three days, and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way.'" That's a beautiful picture of that heart connection with a suffering person, or in that case, a crowd. “ I have compassion. I can't just ignore what's going to happen. If I send them home, they're going to collapse.” Jesus says that He has compassion, that’s his heart attraction. 

What about his sacrificial action? No one sacrificed more to fulfill the Second Great Commandment than Jesus. Day after day after day, there was a huge urgent crowd of sick people surrounding him so fiercely that, at some places, He almost couldn't breathe. In some places, they couldn't bring the next paralyzed person to him, so they had to dig through a roof. He was crushed by need, every day, and He never once pushed back, or complained, or did anything but be there for hours and hours, caring for sick people.

But of course, the ultimate display of the Second Great Commandment is Jesus' death on the cross. No one has ever more perfectly fulfilled the Second Great Commandment than Jesus's substitutionary atonement on the cross. He took our sins, and the wrath that we deserve under the justice of God, on himself. He took our misery on himself. He took hell, our hell, on himself, on the cross, and died under the wrath of God. There is no more perfect display of the Second Great Commandment than that. That's Jesus’ giving example.

Now, He calls on us to love our neighbor as ourselves. The words of the command is: “To love your neighbor as yourself.” What does that mean? We talked about this last week. You have spent, since last week, a whole week loving yourself. I'm not saying it's wrong. There's not a sense, at all, in the command that it's wrong, that you need to stop loving yourself. It's not saying that at all. It's saying, expand your love. The way you already love yourself, love your neighbor as you do love yourself.  How is that? You're constantly thinking about your own preferences, your goals, your pleasures, your desires, your aspirations. Turn it around. What is somebody else's preference? What is somebody else's goal? What is somebody else's aspiration? What is somebody else's emotional state? Expand yourself, and take theirs into you, the way you do for yourself. That's what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.

 Also, physical needs. You will alleviate whatever misery you have, as best you can. Again, there's nothing wrong with that.  Are any of you uncomfortable right now? There's not much I can do to help you. The temperature's not exactly right, et cetera, but you know at least you can shift around in the pew, and get yourself comfortable. If you have some problem with your lower back, you're going to alleviate it. Love your neighbor as yourself. How can I alleviate suffering? How can I alleviate pain? Mercy moves toward misery. That's the command. We're told in Philippians 2:4, "Each of you should look not only to your own interest, but also to the interests of others." That's the Second Great Commandment.  The non-Christian is fanatical about self-interest. It's what they do. Philippians 2:21 says everyone looks out for his own interests. Looking out for number one, survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog selfishness is the root of what makes life here on Earth so utterly miserable. It's been going on since the beginning of our journey in evil, from the tree.

But a loving Christian learns to see others' needs as if they were his. A Christian looks at that third world's urban poverty and says, "What would it be like for me to live here?" What would it be like if I were one of those people on the other side of that tinted glass? What would it feel like for me to be a day laborer in India, clamoring with a hundred, or 200, other day laborers, surrounding one guy who had 10 jobs to offer that day? That's it. If you're not one of those 10 people, you won't work that day, and your family probably won't eat that day. What is that like? I saw day laborers like that, from a hotel room in India, when I was there a couple years ago. 

Also, a Christian looks at the lostness of a coworker. It has nothing to do with socioeconomics. It has to do with the fact that they're lost. They're without hope, and without God in the world. They're under the wrath of God, and they're accumulating more wrath every day.  We're told in Romans 2, "Every day, more wrath." What is that like? What is it like, that every day that they live on earth, they have more wrath waiting for them when they die? What is it like to be on that broad road that leads to destruction? What is that? Paul responded in Romans 9, with this, "I have great sorrow, and unceasing anguish, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ." For the people of Israel, the lost among his own people. “I would be willing to give up my salvation for them, but I can't, but I'd be willing to do it.” That's what it looks like. It's mercy moving toward misery, and seeking to alleviate it.

Jesus gives us this new command: "A new command, I give you: Love one another as I have loved you." That's the newness of it. The Old Testament already told us, love your neighbor as yourself. That's why the lawyer gave him that answer, it was well-known. It's well-known as a summary of the law, Leviticus 19:18. But Jesus says in John 13:34, "A new command, I give you: Love one another as I have loved you." You must love one another. Ultimately, as I said, Jesus going to the cross, greater love has no one, than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. 

We're not going to be called to die for somebody else. Paul says in Romans 5, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die." It's a very unusual thing, that you would, literally, physically give your life for someone else. It does happen, but it's rare. But the question is, how can you metaphorically die for another person? How can you die to yourself in evangelism, or in mercy ministry, benevolence ministry? How can you die to your own preferences? It feels like dying, because you have things you want to do, and instead, you don't do them. How can you, like Jesus, be willing to die for a neighbor? It says, in 1 John 3:16... “This is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." There is a laying down of your life, similar to Jesus dying on the cross.

The heart attraction, we walked through last week. I want to remind you of it, from 1 Corinthians 13. What does it mean to have a heart that's genuinely attracted? Without it, any sacrifice, even the greatest sacrifice, will be as nothing on judgment day. 1 Corinthians 13:3 , "If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." Meaning, on Judgment Day, it's not rewardable. I can do this incredible sacrifice in an unloving way. My heart isn't attracted to the person in that way. I have not gone out, in compassion, to them. Then he just beautifully describes what that heart attraction looks like. 1 Corinthians 13:4, and following, "Love is patient. Love is kind. It doesn't envy. It doesn't boast. It's not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. It's not rude. It's not self-seeking. Love does not delight an evil, but rejoice in the truth.”  That's what it's like. It carries itself. Love carries itself that way. You could do the most amazing benevolent ministries in the city here, or anywhere, but if you're not like this, it's actually doing more harm than good. That's that heart attraction, resulting in sacrificial action, but it must move out to act, and that's what the Good Samaritan is all about. Look at it if you would, or just listen along. 

Luke 10:25-37, look at the words again. "On one occasion, an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. ‘Teacher’, he asked, ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?’” A very important question. What must I do to inherit eternal life? “'What is written in the law?’, He replied.” How do you read it? “He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.’ ‘You have answered correctly’, Jesus replied. ‘Do this, and you will live.’”  But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" It’s a very important moment in this whole account. He wanted to justify himself, and ask, who is my neighbor? In reply, Jesus said, "A man was going down, from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him, and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took out two silver coins, and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him', he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'"

His inquiry begins as an effort at self-justification. The lawyer was seeking to justify himself, rather than to repent of sin. I can tell you the big picture. The whole point of this excursion into the Second Great Commandment, the law, and this Good Samaritan story, is not to help any of you justify yourselves. Rather, it must be to convict you, so that you can live better, or so that you can come to Christ, but not so that you can look at it and say, "I thank you, God, but I already do the Good Samaritan stuff." Not at all. That's the point. He's seeking confirmation that his righteousness was enough. He's already done enough.

So, day after day, we seek that air-conditioned van ride through the world. We seek to be the priest and the Levite, going on the other side. But along with that, as knowers of the Bible, we seek to justify ourselves. We want some escape, some way to say, "Hey, what I've done is enough." We will make excuses. We'll come up with concepts like the undeserving poor. Things like that. What is undeserving poor? Somebody who I don't have to help, because their poverty, or their circumstances, are their own fault. So we're exempt, because they're undeserving poor. Or we'll look at the costs, and say, "Look, you got to realize how busy I am in my life. You got to realize I have my own limitations." Or I have my own family needs, et cetera. I understand. We make these kinds of excuses. We all try to draw boundary lines around who we should love, so tightly, that it excuses the most difficult mercy ministries.

There are two key questions in front of us in this parable of the Good Samaritan. Who is my neighbor, and what does it mean to love him as myself? But above that is the question, what must I do to be saved? The big question is: What must I do to be saved? Then below that, within the parable, these two questions, who is my neighbor, and what does it mean to love him as myself? Let's walk through the parable.

The setting is the deadly, dangerous, Jericho Road, which was notorious for robbers that could hide in the mountainous clefts, and the twists and turns of the road. This was just a well-known dangerous spot. The story unfolds, as you know. There are six people in the parable. First, we have the victim. We know literally nothing about him. We don't know nothing about him. We don't know his nationality. We don't know his race. We don't know his age. We don't know his socioeconomic status. We don't know anything. That's striking. You get the feeling that none of that matters. It's not important who he is. He's human. He's been attacked. He's lying, bleeding, by the side of the road. Nothing else about him matters. Therefore, Jesus's answer to the question who is my neighbor is: “Anyone in need. It doesn't matter who the person is.”

Next we have the robbers. Let me line up the mentality that each of the actors in this drama has about resources, about money. The robbers have this attitude: “What's yours is mine, if I can take it from you.” These are the people in the world who are takers, they’re thieves, they’re violent. They absolutely are breaking the Second Great Commandment. No doubt. They're criminal elements, and they will assault, or invade, or do what's necessary to take other people's stuff. The robbers; what’s yours is mine, if I can take it from you.

Then you've got the priest, and the Levite. They're basically the same. It's just two times the same person. The doubling is for emphasis. There's no essential difference between the priest and the Levite. It's just doubled for emphasis. Their attitude is: “What's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours,” period. I mean, you live your life, I'll live mine. Your problems are not my problems. My problems are not your problems. This is the way most people go through this world.  Furthermore, Jesus makes it clear that both the priest and Levite see the guy on the side of the road. They see him, and move by on the other side. They willingly choose not to get involved. The separation by the road, the distance, represents willful ignorance, staying far enough away from the suffering so you don't know its details, because if you find out the details, you might get drawn into it. You might get involved, and you don't want to, so you're on the other side. It's willful. It's a symbol of willful ignorance, and that's also a problem for most of us Christians. Most of us aren't just cold-hearted, bad people. We just are ignorant of the suffering of the people in the world. We just don't know that much about it, and we choose to be that way.

Notice, also, that they're both religious people. The priest is religious, the Levite is religious. They're religious people. It's just a common problem. The lawyer, who's coming, is a religious person seeking to justify himself. For us, we need to be mindful of the fact the most terrifying sins that we're going to be pressed on, on Judgment Day, will be sins of omission. These would be good works, that God went ahead of you, in advance [Ephesians 2:10], and set up for you to do, and you didn't do it. That's what sins of omission are. Good deeds, good works God set up, and you didn't do them. This is the topic, very much the topic, of the sheep and the goats, which isn't a parable, it's just an analogy of what Judgment Day is going to be like. Jesus is going to come and sit on a throne of glory. He's going to assemble all the people that have ever lived in front of him, and He's going to separate them into two groups; the sheep and the goats. He's going to say to the goats, the reprobate, those about to be condemned, "I was hungry, and you did not feed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me in. I was sick, and you did not visit me. These are things you did not do." The sins in the sheep, and the goats, are sins of omission. We know full well there are sins of commission too, but that's not what He describes there.

What will it be like for us, on Judgment Day, to see a replay of our lives, and see all the good works that God set up, day by day, for us to walk in? What will that be like? My job as a pastor is to make that moment acute to you now, by faith, and by the ministry of the Word. To make it sharp. Make it clear what's going to happen. You are going to give an account to Jesus, and so am I, for every moment you've lived on earth. "We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done in the body, whether good, or bad.” [2 Corinthians 5]. "Please don't tell me" [Romans 8:1] "I thought there was no condemnation." Friends, I'm not talking about condemnation. I'm talking about accountability. You're going to give an account to Jesus, and that includes sins of omission.

Then we've got the innkeeper. What's his attitude? “What's mine is yours, for a price.” This is the innkeeper, a merchant. This is a professional medical person. This is their job. It's what they do, but that's not Second Great Commandment stuff. That's the market. That's the job. That's what it calls the price. 

Then you've got the Good Samaritan. His attitude is “what's mine is yours, if you need it. What's mine is yours if you need it.” I find it amazing that Jesus chooses the Samaritan to be the hero. Jesus loved doing this kind of thing. It's like, "Oh, I'm not supposed to heal on the Sabbath. Watch me heal on the Sabbath." He goes right at things that would be irksome to the Jews.  The hero of the story is an outcast, that they all hated. I think the feeling is if the victim had been a Samaritan, and we are supposed to... In the story, we're Israelites. What are we supposed to do? Help the Samaritan. That's the point. So what does he do? He helps sacrificially. He stops. His heart is moved with compassion. He's drawn over. He stops. He helps. He pours oil and wine on the wounds. He binds them up. Immediate first aid is given, then he puts him on his donkey, and gets him down to an innkeeper so that he can be cared for. He spends the night caring for this individual, and then he gives of his money, paying the two days' wages to the innkeeper, to meet the needs, and he promises to come back later, and make certain that the man's all right. He's invested, he's committed.

Then Jesus summarizes the whole thing [verses 36-37], “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” It an interesting way to phrase that. “Then the expert in the law replied, ‘The one who had mercy on him.’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Go and do likewise.’" You just feel like, for all of us, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that's what He's saying to us, “Go and do likewise”.  Now we have those questions. Who is my neighbor? Any needy person that God brings into your life. What does it mean to love him as I love myself? Sacrificial acts of service to meet the need presented. 

Let's ask the hard questions. It starts with that whole question, what must I do to be saved? Is mercy ministry necessary for me to go to heaven?  That's an interesting question, isn't it? What must I do to inherit eternal life? Do I have to be the Good Samaritan in order to go to heaven? Let me say, directly, the law cannot save you. No one is saved by obedience to the law, and this is law. When Jesus says, "go and do likewise”, He understands the theology of salvation by grace very well. He's just doing something different there. He's not saying law can save you. Then what is the function of the law? It is to convict you, to kill you, basically, and bring you to the cross. Fundamentally, we are not justified, that is forgiven of our sins, by our own mercy ministry. We are justified, forgiven of our sins, by Jesus's mercy ministry toward us. Jesus had compassion on us, and in mercy, moved out to alleviate our eternal misery, which is hell. Therefore it says, in Romans 59, "In order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy, we're going to spend eternity glorifying God for his mercy." We're not justified by our own good works, we’re not justified by our own obedience.

The next question: What is the scope and dimension of my life of loving my neighbor? Like the lawyer, aren't we ready to ask who is my neighbor again, and again? We tend to excuse ourselves from this service. I've argued that the law crushes you, kills you, and brings you to the cross, but then it's not done with you. Then having been forgiven, we are now filled with the Holy Spirit, who wrote the law to begin with. Now, He enables you to obey it, by his power through Christ. We circle back to the Good Samaritan, and say, "Okay. How can I do this? Who is my neighbor?" Let's begin by acknowledging we have the tendency to justify ourselves, and try to get out of it by... Like I said, the whole idea of the deserving poor. I'm not saying that there's not addictive behaviors that destroy people's lives, and it would be very good for them to stop doing them. I'm not saying we should just give money to anybody that comes up and asks, especially to addicts, knowing full well that that money will go right into intensifying their addiction. I think we have to be intelligent about it. What I'm saying is, we can't excuse ourselves from this whole thing. That's all I'm saying.

How then can we be transformed to be a person that actually fulfills this law? I want to give you priorities that I have discerned in Scripture based on this topic. What are our priorities? Top priority: Justification before mercy ministry. First, make certain that your sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ. What is the work of God? John 6, "This is the work of God. Do you believe in the one he has sent?" Start there. Don't try to earn your way to heaven by your good deeds, by being the Good Samaritan. You'll never do enough. Besides which, it's apples and oranges. You can't use present, or future, obedience to the law, to pay for past disobedience to the law. You can never get ahead or get extra credit. If you do a Good Samaritan thing today, you were supposed to do it. So you can't use it to pay for the fact that you didn't do a Good Samaritan thing last week. So, the top priority is your own justification by faith in Christ, before any mercy ministry.

Second priority: Minister to the soul, above the body. What would it profit someone, if they should gain the whole world, and lose their souls? Therefore, any mercy ministry this church does has to prioritize the proclamation of the Gospel, for the salvation of souls. It is more important, like when Jesus forgave the sins of the paralyzed man, before healing him of his paralysis. There is a clear priority structure. Your sins are forgiven. This was, by the way, the flaw of the social gospel, and I worry sometimes that American evangelicalism might go right back into the social gospel again, caring more for the temporal needs of people, and forgetting that they are on their way to hell, apart from the gospel. Therefore, I think this is a good slogan: We Christians care about alleviating all misery, but especially eternal misery. And what is eternal misery? It is condemnation in hell. So the top priority of our ministry to others is the soul above the body.

Third priority: Ministry to the family of believers, especially your own family, above ministry to outsiders. Our top priority, in terms of physical provision, is for our own biological family. As in 1 Timothy 5:8,”If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith, and is, worse than an unbeliever." In other words, all you families, and heads of households, and all that, take care of your own people. Don't bring them to the church for benevolence. That's the strong message of 1 Timothy 5. But then, even within our benevolent ministry, we should care about the needs of Christians, before we care about the needs of outsiders, as it says plainly in Galatians 6:10, "Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers." What does the word “especially" mean? That's our top priority, but it doesn't exclude the other ministry.Wh  Start with the household of faith. We start with believers. We seek to alleviate their misery as best we can, and then it moves out from there.

Then fourth: Ministry to the poor, above ministry to the rich. What does that mean? Jesus said in Luke 14, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers, or relatives, your rich neighbors. If you do, they may invite you back, and so you'll be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you'll be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." That's the priority structure, but that doesn't mean we can't do mercy ministry to rich people, because they suffer in other ways, and ultimately, through the proclamation of the gospel.  Those four priorities should shape the way we do mercy ministry. 

As I finish applications, let's just start, all of us, with repentance. “God, show me my sin.” It could be, for some of you, repentance and faith in Christ. You came here an unbeliever. Start there. Repent, and believe the good news of the Gospel, for the forgiveness of your sins. Start with that. But if that's happened to you years ago, say, "Lord, how am I like the lawyer seeking to justify himself? How am I like the priest who saw him, and move by on the other side? How am I like the Levite who saw, and moved on the other side?" Then, "How can I then move out into mercy ministry here, where I live? Who are my neighbors, my actual physical neighbors? What do I know about them?"

We have less of a neighbor-feel than we've ever had in our society. Do we even physically know our neighbors? What do we mean by the word “neighbor”? Wouldn't it be a shock if we actually, in some cases, got to know our neighbors, and then found out what was going on in their lives? Maybe see a tree down, and bring a chainsaw over there, and maybe find out that one of them has been in the hospital for while, and bring a meal.

Love your church member as you love yourself. Take the church phone directory. Go through it. Pray for people daily. A page a day, or two pages a day, whatever. Then also say, "Is there some kind of suffering in the church that I can alleviate, some way that someone's hurting? What can I do?" Use the home fellowship as a basis for that. 

Then love your urban neighbor as you love yourself. Our urban setting has changed radically in the last number of years, some call it gentrification. More and more wealthy people are buying up ramshackle properties, and then renovating them, et cetera. You used to be able to walk, literally, three minutes, and get to poor and needy people, and care for them. Now it's a different time, but like Jesus said, "You'll always have poor people."

So the question is, what benevolent ministries can our church be involved in? We're already involved in refugee ministry. We could be involved more. There are always more ministries. Find out what opportunities there are in our city for this kind of service. And then finally... I'm going to preach, God willingness, on this sermon soon, in Mark 13. How can we love unreached, people groups better? How can we care about eternal suffering of people that have never heard the gospel? How can we love our lost coworkers better. In evangelism, how can we use mercy ministry to couple it with the words of the gospel? What is God calling us to do, individually, and as a church?

Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank you for the time we've had to walk through this powerful passage. God, teach us to have a heart of mercy that moves toward misery. Teach us, O Lord, to care about the suffering around us, and to seek to alleviate it. Give us opportunities to share the gospel with people who are on that broad road that leads to destruction. Help us, out of compassion for them, to do that. God, give us opportunities to alleviate suffering here in our community. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Christ’s call to us every moment is to pour ourselves out in service to others and love them as ourselves by moving towards those in misery.

The post Moving Toward Misery: The Call of the Jericho Road (Mark Sermon 67) appeared first on Two Journeys.