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We need to learn to listen to Jesus when He asks what we want Him to do for us and to pray in faith as an answer.

The post “What Do You Want Me to Do For You?” (Mark Sermon 54) appeared first on Two Journeys.

We need to learn to listen to Jesus when He asks what we want and to pray in faith as an answer.

Turn in your Bible as we continue our study in Mark's Gospel, in Mark 10:46-52. The author to the Book of Hebrews says the Bible, the Scripture is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. The Word of God is living and active. The Gospel of Mark is alive. Jesus is the word incarnate, and in this text today, I see him beckoning to us, calling to us, drawing us. He’s standing in front of us in the text saying, "What do you want me to do for you?" Calling us to a deeper, more persistent, more detailed, more comprehensive prayer life. That's what I get out of this text and that's what I'm going to see today. This is a beautiful account. This is the last account in Mark's Gospel of one of Jesus's healings.

All of the accounts in Mark's Gospel of Jesus's healings are given to us for one reason and that is to bring us, as the readers of Mark's Gospel, to a saving faith in Jesus as the Son of God. From Mark 1:1, the theme of the entire Gospel of Mark is established, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it says at the end of John chapter 20, the purpose of all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all have the same purpose: that based on the miracles that are written in these gospel accounts, we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and find salvation through faith in his name. How do we obtain that salvation? How does it become ours, personally? This account of Bartimaeus gives us a beautiful picture of that, a lived out picture of how we obtain it.

Paul says in Romans 10:9, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." What does that mean to call on the name of the Lord so that we might be saved? This account gives us a beautiful picture of that. Jesus said at the beginning of the Sermon in the Mount, some of the most significant words, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," literally the spiritual beggars, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." You want the kingdom of heaven, you want to spend eternity in the kingdom of heaven? You have to be a spiritual beggar. What does that mean to be a spiritual beggar? This account gives us a beautiful picture of that.

Jesus told in another place, a parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector teaching us about prayer. One was a pridefully arrogant, self-righteous, individual who thought his righteousness was amply sufficient to make himself pleasing to God, and he stood and prayed about himself in that regard. But then there was the tax collector beating his breast, refusing to even look up to God but pleading with God, "Be merciful to me, a sinner." Jesus said that man went home justified. The other one didn't. This account gives us a beautiful picture of that as well. So in this beautiful passage, Jesus stands in front of a blind man who has nothing to offer and says these words, "What do you want me to do for you?”

That question represents one of the key moments there is in our relationship with Jesus the Savior. He holds in his hand every blessing you could ever want, should ever want.Every blessing on earth or in heaven is in his sovereign hands. He wants to teach us to seek those blessings from him and only from him and to ask humbly and in faith. He wants to open his hands and satisfy your desires with all of those blessings. Jesus, in the text today, stands in front of you individually, all of you, saying, "What do you want me to do for you?" 

Now, many people foolishly answer, "Nothing. I don't want anything from Jesus." They're lost. That's the essence of their losses. They don't think about Jesus at all. He never crosses their mind, so they would just say, "I don't want anything from Jesus.” Now, some sinners recognize their dire circumstances and they beg Jesus for salvation, "Save me from my sins, Lord,” and they receive, having sought that blessing by faith, they receive that gift of forgiveness of sins.

But most Christians underestimate how much more Jesus could do for us, how many more blessings we should still be seeking from him, so we don't pray very much. We don't pray about many things. We just live our independent lives, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness just like everybody else, and we just do our own things. So we need Jesus to stand in the text and call out to us and say, "I'm here. What do you want me to do for you today, now? What do you want me to do for you about the problem that's pressing in on your life? You haven't asked me about it at all. You haven't prayed about it at all." Prayerlessness. "What do you want me to do for you?"

Some people answer this question in a very worldly way. "Jesus, I want to be healthy and, Jesus, I want to be wealthy. I want worldly health, worldly success. “I want my best life now," as one put it. "That's what I want. I want my best life now." So they ask, but don't receive because they ask that they might spend what they get on their carnal pleasures.

Others realize the only thing of value is pleasing the Lord so they would say something like this, "Jesus, what I want from you is that you would work in me what is pleasing to you." Yet even those people, all of us, need to learn how to expand our concept of prayer. To expand it, to pray for far more things than we do. To pray with far more persistence than we do. To pray with far more biblical knowledge than we do. To pray for the right things, the things that God wants us to pray for more than we do. To pray for others, to take on their burdens as though they were our own and pray for them. That's what this text is saying to me.

One of my favorite hymns, those of you that know me, you know how often I think about this hymn. It's very easy actually for me to get emotional about this hymn. It's well known, but I think it was many, many years of my Christian life before I really felt the weight of the truth of the lyrics in the hymn, “What a Friend we have in Jesus.” It focuses repeatedly on this, the blessing of learning to take it to the Lord in prayer, take everything to the Lord in prayer. "What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear." All our sins and griefs to bear. "What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer." In other words, you're forfeiting peace right now because you haven't prayed about something and you're carrying burdens right now that you could be giving to him, casting upon him.

The next stanza: "Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?" This phrase captures me. I've debated it with people. Is it true? I don't know if it's a hundred percent true, but I feel like it's mostly true. "We should never be discouraged. Take it to the Lord in prayer.”Are you discouraged today, dear brother, dear sister? Could it be that you haven't taken it to the Lord in prayer? Could it be the Jesus is standing in front of you in this text saying, "What do you want me to do for you?” and you haven't asked him and therefore you're discouraged? Take it to the Lord in prayer. "Can we find a friend so faithful who will all our sorrows share?? Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer." That's what I'm getting out of this text. That's where we're going. So let's walk through it.

Let’s begin with the context, going through Jericho onto Jerusalem.Look at verse 46, "Then they came to Jericho, and as Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus, that is the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside, begging." This is the end of Jesus's public ministry. As I've said already, the entire purpose of the Gospel of Mark and everything in it, is to bring us, the readers, the hearers of this beautiful gospel, to faith in Jesus as the Son of God, the beginning of the gospel about Jesus, the Son of God. The word “gospel” is “good news" and the good news is Jesus. He is the good news. Jesus is the gospel.

Now every aspect of the Gospel of Mark has been putting Jesus, the Son of God, on display. As with all four Gospels, the component parts are always Jesus's mighty works in Jesus's mighty words, a combination of his miracles and his incredibly wise and perfect teachings. Those two together are the evidence, all the evidence we need for saving faith in Jesus. As I mentioned, this is the last healing miracle in the Gospel of Mark. There is one more miracle yet to come, but it's not a healing miracle. It's a very unusual miracle. It's the cursing of the fig tree in which Jesus cursed the fig tree, and it instantly withers. It's a very unusual miracle and God willing we'll get to that in due time. But that's a miracle of judgment, not of mercy. It's not a miracle of healing. It's a depiction of judgment on Israel for its fruitlessness. We'll get to that in due time.

So they're in transition now. Jesus is going up to Jerusalem, it's Passover time. Thousands of Jewish pilgrims are going up to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. On Jesus's mind, intensely on his mind, is his imminent death. He's going up to Jerusalem to die and He's thinking about it constantly. He's talking about it constantly. He's reminding his disciples of it. Look back at verse 32 of the same chapter. Mark 1032-34, "They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again He took the twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. 'We are going up to Jerusalem,' He said. 'And the Son of Man will be betrayed and will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. The will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later He will rise.’”

Also, James and John, after that statement, made their request and they came in front of Jesus and He asked the same question, “'What do you want me to do for you?’ Now they had answered, ‘Let one of us sit at your right hand, the other at your left in your kingdom.’" We saw that that was as we perceive, a selfish worldly type of request, understanding the kingdom wrongly and wanting to position themselves for power and glory. Jesus has to adjust their thinking about the kingdom and service in the kingdom as we saw last time. But even then, Jesus brought their minds back to his own imminent death, “for even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” [verse 45] So that's right before the texts we're looking at today.

They're in Jericho. Jericho is a beautiful and a historic city. The Jericho of Jesus's day lay somewhat south of the ruins of the famous Jericho that was destroyed, the walls crumbling in the time of Joshua. So it was close but not the exact same location. Jericho was located 15 miles northeast of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was built on a set of mountains and was 3,300 feet higher in altitude than Jericho. So we have Jesus going up to Jerusalem. In the parable, the Good Samaritan, the individual who was mugged, who was assaulted by the highway robbers, was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. So Jesus is going the other direction, going up. Herod the Great, and later Archelaus, had strengthened and beautified the city of Jericho, giving it an amphitheater, some villas, a public bath. It was like a little paradise with an oasis of fresh water, palm trees, rose gardens, lavish crops of figs, citrus and other fruits. andSo it's a beautiful place. Its winter climate was delightful. Josephus said that when it was snowy in Jerusalem, Jericho was warm and pleasant, thus Herod built a winter palace there. So that's Jericho. Jesus himself had gone out from that spot three years earlier to be tempted in the desert by Satan at the beginning of his ministry.

Now, as we look at the account of the healing of this blind man who we know in Mark's Gospel as Bartimaeus, we have what we call some synoptic problems. The Synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They're called that way because they see the perspective of Jesus's life kind of the same whereas the Gospel of John reads differently. So Matthew, Mark and Luke all have this account, but they're written differently, and it's hard sometimes to harmonize how they wrote. I don't want to spend a lot of time on these issues, but I just always want to give you confidence of the perfection of Matthew, the perfection of Mark and the perfection of Luke and how those difficulties are harmonizing.I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, but Matthew, for example, mentions two blind men, not one. Matthew says that Jesus was entering Jericho while Mark says that Jesus was leaving. Luke says He was passing through, so kind of on average entering, passing through and leaving. It was at this time as Jesus was leaving Jericho that He saw Zacchaeus the tax collector in the sycamore fig tree and went back into the city to dine at his house. So some scholars surmised that Jesus was in that sense both leaving and then going back into Jericho. That's one way you could harmonize him. None of these problems are particularly difficult. Look, if Matthew says there were two blind men, there were two blind men. If Mark chooses to focus on one of them and give us his name, so be it. It doesn't mean that there weren't two, it just he's zeroing in on this one individual and I think that tends to individualize the gospel.

Every individual has to deal with Jesus personally and this man had a name probably because as, by the end of the account today, he's a follower of Jesus. He was literally, physically, following him along the road and we're going to see in the text he was wasn't just physically healed, but he was saved. So probably, Mark gives us his name because in his community that he lived in, everybody knew Bartimaeus and this is that Bartimaeus that we all know, so he gave him his name. So that's harmonizing these three accounts.

Let's look at the blind beggar’s call. "They came to Jericho and as Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus, that is the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, 'Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.' Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.'"

I think it's hard for us who are physically normal when it comes to sight, to realize the intense suffering of blindness, what it would be like to be blind. I think we could imagine it. Some people actually rate blindness as one of their greatest earthly fears. Polls have been done and people say of all the things that could happen to you on earth, blindness would be one of the worst they imagined. Jesus himself spoke of the significance of physical sight. Jesus said, "If the eyes are the lamp of the body, if your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness." So it is very significant to be blind.

How was this man, Bartimaeus blind? We don't know. It is possible that he was blind from birth like the blind man in John chapter 9. It doesn't say. Could be he became blind through an injury or a disease somewhere along the way in his life. Blindness was actually very common in the Middle East in Jesus's day. Many were blind through the birth process. They got a disease from their mother while they were being born. Other infants became blind through trachoma, which is a virulent form of conjunctivitis. There were a lot of problems with blindness.

Religiously, spiritually, in the Jewish community, blindness was considered a curse from God. Blind people were seen to be cursed by God for their personal sin, hence the question in John 9, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Did he sin in the womb? How did that work? But you can see the mentality. If you're blind, it's because of sin. You're being cursed by God for sin.Therefore, the blind man would've been viewed as a spiritual outcast under a curse from God, only a little better than a leper just because blindness wasn't contagious, so there wasn't that terror of being around a blind person, but they were considered to be effectively, spiritual lepers, outcasts. You can see the attitude of the crowd toward him. They hate him. They're very negative toward him, yelling at him. And he was begging. Obviously, because of his blindness, he couldn't work in the normal fashion. In order to survive he was reduced to begging and surrounded by a hostile community who considered his condition a just punishment from God for his sin. Generally they wouldn't give him anything but some would and he was therefore very persistent and bold. He had to be in order just to survive. He had to fight for everything. So we see this persistent urgency as a beggar, and we see it then directed toward Jesus. He's urgently crying out to Jesus.

Bartimaeus is sitting there begging. There's a huge crowd passing by, he wants to know what's going on. He asked what caused the crowd. He was told the answer was Jesus of Nazareth. That's a basic identification of Jesus. No honorific titles, nothing, just Jesus who comes from Nazareth. However, it's pretty clear that Bartimaeus had heard of this man and had heard of all of the healings that he had done, and so he was moved by faith to cry out. He had heard that there was nothing he could not do. There was no sickness he could not heal. He had almost certainly already heard of the healing of other blind people and so he had hope, he had faith and he begins to cry out. He also, beyond that, understands some theology of Jesus's claim.

Putting it all together from Matthew's account and Luke's account, and as well as this one, it's something like this: "Jesus, Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me." All of these titles flowing out of this man, Bartimaeus. Matthew tells us he called him Lord, describing exalted status to Jesus. Now, we don't necessarily think that he understood the deity of Christ at that point, but he does call him Lord.Both accounts say that he called him Son of David, meaning he was the fulfillment of the promise that God would take a son of David and put him on a throne forever [2 Samuel 7]. Many prophets come along and predict that David or the son of David will reign on a throne forever. Jeremiah 23:5-6, “'The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘When I'll raise up to David a righteous 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'll be called the Lord our righteousness. The Son of David, a branch from David will reign on a throne of righteousness forever.’" So this blind man, Bartimaeus, is calling him Son of David, the Messiah, the long-awaited Messiah by the Jewish people.

We know from John chapter 9 that by this time Jesus's enemies, the religious authorities, had decided that if anyone claimed that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of David, they would be put out of the synagogue, basically evicted from Jewish society. Do you sense this blind man doesn't care about that at all? He's already evicted. What did he have to lose? He had no fear of them. They hated him anyway. They thought he was cursed by God already and so he has no problem crying out, "Son of David.”The Greek actually says he's crying out emphatically or repeatedly, loudly begging for mercy. And look at the crowd's heartless reaction. They disdained and despised this blind beggar. Now they try to shout him down and demand that he'd be quiet. Verse 48, "Many rebuked him and told them to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, 'Son of David, have mercy on me.'"

If you come to faith in Christ in your adult years, you have to go over obstacles that people who know you put in front of you. The crowd trying to prevent you from coming to Jesus, the crowd trying to shout you down or rebuke you. That's what this man has to face. Now he's crying out for mercy. Mercy. Mercy's a central attribute of almighty God. In this context, mercy has to do with the alleviation of suffering, alleviation of suffering. I generally tend to think of grace as having to do with the issues of sin and judgment. By God's grace we're forgiven and by his mercy our suffering is alleviated. They're very close. But here we got the alleviation of suffering. That is what mercy is. You think about Exodus chapter 2 where the Lord says He hears the cries of Israel and bondage in Egypt and He looked down and was concerned about their suffering. That is the mercy of God. He hears from heaven and He's merciful. When He moved in front of Moses when Moses said, "Show me your glory," He pronounced his name. He said, "The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God. Slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness." This is the mercy of God. He's compassion, He's merciful, and Jesus is God's mercy incarnate. He wants to alleviate our suffering. He wants to bring us into a world where there'll be no more death, mourning, crying or pain. All of these healings that display a foretaste of mercy are just a part of that work. He is bringing his people by his blood into a world where there'll be no more need for mercy, no more death, mourning, crying or pain. And that's what he's crying for. He's asking for mercy. 

Now we see our savior's compassion and power, verse 49-51, “Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’ So they called to the blind man, ‘Cheer up. On your feet. He's calling you.’ Or, ‘Take heart, get up. He's calling you’ Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ Jesus asked him. The blind man said, ‘Rabbi, I want to see.’"

This is an amazing moment for me. Jesus is a king. He's a passing king. He's going by and He stops for an obscure beggar who cries out to him. I mean, that doesn't happen, friends. The last time that I preached on Mark, we saw Jesus talk about the rulers of the Gentiles who lorded over them and their high officials exercise authority. You can see them going in palanquins or in great entourages surrounded by purple silk and all that. They're not going to stop for a beggar in the field. And the beggar in the field crying out to the passing king, if he gets obnoxious enough, one of the henchmen might go over and relieve him of his head. In medieval Japan, that's what the Samurai would do. If you're a peasant, you're groveling on the ground and you're not lifting your head. If you lift your head, they will take your head from your shoulders quickly and they have the right to do it.

But you see what happens here. Here's a beggar with nothing to offer, and we've got the great, the King of kings passing by. He hears him cry and He stops in humility and wants to deal with him. It's the kindness of Jesus. I think about this moment, just to highlight what I'm saying, when Saul was pursuing David out in the desert and wanted to kill him. Abner was his right-hand man, his military leader. David in 1 Samuel 26:14, called out to the army into Abner and said, "Aren't you going to answer me, Abner?" He calls across a valley or something like that. What did Abner said, "Who are you who calls to the king?" Who are you who calls to the king? What's Abner's attitude there? “We don't need to answer you. You're nothing. You have no right to call to the king.” That's Abner's attitude. It is not Jesus's attitude. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. We have a picture of that, don't we? Isn't that beautiful? 

Jesus is the humble king who comes to serve his people.Mark 10:43-45, "Whoever wants to become great among you must be a servant. And whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." Not just to heal this man of his blindness, but to die for this man's sins. That's our servant king. That's who He is. He's filled with compassion. Indeed, it is compassion that moved him to heal Bartimaeus, according to Matthew's account in Matthew 20:33. He's filled with compassion for this man. He feels what we feel. Jesus calls for the beggar to come and the crowd tells him to cheer up. What's with this crowd? I'm not a big fan of the crowd here.They change. "Oh, cheer up. He wants you." Once they find out that Jesus is interested in talking to him. "Cheer up! On your feet! Be of good courage, be happy, be energetic. Good luck to you," this kind of thing. So He calls to us, but I think it's a good word for us. Just look at verse 49, "Cheer up! On your feet! He's calling you." Didn't I begin the sermon saying that that's what's happening in this text? Jesus is calling you. He's calling you from the text. So cheer up, take heart, get up on your feet and bring your problems to Jesus. That's what I get out of that, even though the crowd's messed up. 

When Jesus summons you into his presence, rejoice. So energetically this man leaps up, drops the cloak behind. That reminds me of the Samaritan woman at the well who leaves her water jar there. She is not thinking about that anymore. He's not thinking about his cloak. He's going to Jesus. Perhaps someone in the crowd did him a good service of leading this blind man into the presence of Jesus.

We come to the key question, which I chose as the sermon title: "What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked him. Now, depending how you look at it, this may be one of the stranger moments in the encounter. I mean, just think about it. This is one of those times where you're like, "Really Jesus?" It's like the time that huge crowd is pressing in on him. He said, "Who touched me?" The disciples are like, "Huh, interesting question." Was there anyone in that crowd who didn't know what the blind man wanted? I mean, do you have any idea what he might want from Jesus? Any thought at all of what he might want from Jesus? Friends, Jesus is not obtuse. He's not stupid. He's not dense. He's not having no idea what's going on. He knows exactly what this man wants. Then why does he ask this question? Now, that's an important question for us, isn't it?

He wants you to articulate your need to him, speak it, tell him what you want, take it to the Lord in prayer. That's what this text is about. "What do you want me to do for you?" This is the one who had said to another man, "Everything is possible for him who believes. There's nothing I cannot do." Jesus represents God in prayer, and He knows what this blind man needs better than what the blind man knows. God, the Father, Jesus said, knows what you need before you ask him. And yet for all of that, He still wants us to ask, to put it into words and make our request known to the Lord. So the blind man gives a simple and reasonable request. Verse 51, "The blind man said, 'Rabbi, I want to see.'"

This is unlike James and John's worldly selfish carnal request. This is just a desire to see. He just wants to be like everyone else. Everyone there around can see. Perhaps at one time he had been able to see, you don't know, but he wants to be able to see the blue sky. He wants to be able to see the white wispy clouds. He wants to be able to see the sunset over the sea. See those beautiful palm trees swaying in the breeze there in Jericho. He wants to be able to see the face of his family or friends. He just wants to be able to see the world. The whole earth is full of God's glory. He wants to be able to see that, this world of light and color. He just want to be able to see.

Notice he calls Jesus “Rabbi”. It's title of respect, meaning master, and he makes his request known in plain words. He has no doubt in his mind that Jesus can do it. There's no doubt. The beggar's faith saves him. Verse 52, “‘Go,’ said Jesus, ‘your faith has healed you.’ Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road." Like all of Jesus's healings, effortless, instantaneous, completely effective, totally free financially. So completely free, effortless, perfect, instantaneous, and the ability to see, it's a stunning marvel. It's one of the most complex and amazing processes of the human body. It's only recently that there have been eye surgeons who can do many of the things that are now done routinely, retinal surgery, other aspects working on the eye that's relatively new in the history of medical science.

Jesus, like we're already told in Mark 7, has done everything well. There's nothing He cannot do. He heals blind people differently, like with the blind man in John 9. He spits on the ground and makes mud and smears it on the man. The man goes away and washes, and he can see. In Mark earlier, He spit directly on the man's eyes, and then the man saw men like trees walking around. Then He touches them the second time, and he can see everything clearly. He does healings differently here. He just touches him. He does it with a touch of his hands. He just touches his eyes and they're healed. But it's interesting here, the Greek here is that Jesus said, "Your faith..." not has healed you, "but your faith has saved you." There's a Greek word for healed, He doesn't use that here. “Your faith has saved you.” It's pretty obvious. This man has been transformed, he is a new man.

Not every physical healing in the Gospel accounts results in individual salvation of the healed person. A very good example of this is in John chapter 5, the man who's by the pool. Remember that Jesus heals and He circles back, and then Jesus says, "Behold you're well again, stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." Then the man goes and turns Jesus into the temple police. It's pretty clear that guy in John 5 wasn't saved, but this man, Bartimaeus is, and he's transformed. He follows Jesus along the road. The next thing in the gospel is the triumphal entry, and I think Bartimaeus was right there, part of the entourage. His faith has saved him. Sins are forgiven by faith in no other way.

This man is the very picture of what we call a pre-cross conversion, pre-cross salvation. Just that encounter with Jesus, a physical healing, and his faith saves him. He is beyond just the physical healing. He's now a follower of Jesus. All of us, our greatest need is not physical sight, the ability to walk, any of those physical processes, all of those are going to be taken from us at death. Our greatest need is the forgiveness of sins, the forgiveness of sins, and is by the same mechanism here, our faith in Christ that saves us from our sins.

What do you want Jesus to do for you? We need to start with the basic healing here. All of us apart from Christ starts out spiritually blind, spiritually dead. All of Jesus's salvation works are works of healing. Jesus said, "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." Jesus has come to heal all of us of our spiritual blindness fundamentally that we don't see the glory of God and we don't see ourselves and our sins properly.

What we need is for Jesus to give us spiritual sight to see the glory of God and to see our sins. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and to repent of our sins and define in the bloody death of Jesus, our only hope is salvation. It's a sure and certain hope that through faith in Christ, our sins are forgiven. That's where it all starts here. Nothing else matters. If you don't have that, you have nothing. “What will it profit a man to gain the whole world and loses his own soul?” So start there.

"What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asks. “I want to see you. I want to see the glory of God and the face of Christ, and I want to be justified by my faith in Christ. That's what I want.” Starts there. But now, you all are Christians. You did that a long time ago. Is there anything else? Is there anything else you might want Jesus to do for you? That's how I began this sermon, and that's what I want to ask you now. What do you want Jesus to do for you?

This morning, as I was thinking about this sermon, my mind was brought to Revelation 22:1-2.There’s a picture of heaven, the eternal state, and there's a picture of the throne of God and of the lamb and the river of the water of life flowing from the throne through the center of the street of the city. The tree of life is on either side of that river that flows from that throne, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. The tree bears crops every month. You get this picture of healing and fruitfulness and life flowing from the throne. I want you to picture that.

Every blessing there is in heaven or on earth flows from the throne of God and of the Lamb. All of them. Seek your blessings from Christ. All of them. Ask God to bless you. Something you don't have, but you need, ask him for it. Something that's in your life that shouldn't be, a sin, a wicked habit, ask him to take it away, and extend it beyond yourself to people around you. Seek blessings from God out of his hand. "What do you want me to do for you?" Get the blessings from him.

We have a mistaken view sometimes of prayer. Prayer works like this. You go to pray and you give God a good idea of something that He didn't have. He agrees with you that it's a good idea, and He changes course a bit because of your prayer, and now does what you tell him to do. Some of you are laughing because that's utterly ridiculous. You can't teach God anything. God already has a meticulous plan for every single moment of redemptive history. He's inviting you into what He's doing.

Let me give you a very good example of this. Jesus is our main example of prayer. I was reading this a few days ago, John 14:16, “Jesus said, ‘I will ask the Father and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive.’" Now, think about that. Jesus goes to heaven and He says, "Father, I have an idea." He says, "Well, what is it my Son?" "Why don't we send the third person of the Trinity? Why don't we send the Holy Spirit?" And the Father says, "That's a great idea. Let's do that." Do you have any sense at all that was worked out before the foundation of the world, the Father sending the Holy Spirit on the church to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth once Jesus had finished his work? I'm telling you, it had already been worked out.

Then why does He say, "I will ask the Father and he will send the counselor"? It's because Jesus knows better than we do, everything comes from God in answer to prayer. And Jesus, our mediator goes to the throne and asks him for the blessings we need. It's the very thing we see in Psalm 2. The psalmist says, "I will proclaim the decree of the Lord." Picture Jesus saying the words of Psalm 2. "The Lord said to me, 'I am your Father. Today I've begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.'" Again, that's not some new idea. That was the whole point. Jesus, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, but He has to ask the Father for the nations.

What I want you to do is, I want you to see every blessing you could ever want in your life and in the lives of people you care about in the hands of God, and you go to him and ask for them. All of them. Little things, big things, all of them. Hebrews 4:16 says, "Let us draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." In the text today, Jesus stands before us and says, "What do you want me to do for you?" What is your answer? 

Close with me in prayer. Lord, thank you for the time that we've had today in this text. We thank you for its power. We thank you for Jesus's effortless healing and actual physical healing of a blind man, years ago. We know that Jesus can still do anything. We know that our needs are greater than just physical eyesight. Lord, would you please work in us, the salvation you intended, that you would transform us little by little into the image of your Son, that you would make us holy, that you would make us pure, free from sin? And Lord, would you help us to use our prayers for the salvation of others, that we would see our coworkers and neighbors and lost relatives, people around us who are in darkness, that we would ask on their behalf, that they would believe the gospel and be saved. God give us robust, detailed, powerful prayer lives. Help us to understand what happens here when Jesus says, "What do you want me to do for you?" In Jesus' name, Amen.

In part 1 of 1 Corinthians 11, Paul instructs the Corinthian church regarding the proper display of headship and submission.

The post 1 Corinthians Episode 15 : Godly Order in the Public Worship of the Church – Part 1 appeared first on Two Journeys.

In 1 Corinthians 10:14-11:1, Paul unfolds warnings and encouragements to the Corinthian church to keep them from exercising their freedoms in a way that harms others.

The post 1 Corinthians Episode 14 : Idolatry and Christian Freedom appeared first on Two Journeys.

Places of honor are won by those who suffer for the kingdom; a cup of suffering is necessary for all who would be honored in the Kingdom of God.

Turn your Bibles to Mark chapter 10. We continue to make our way through Mark's gospel. We come to this vital passage today. Thirty-five years ago this week, I watched one of the most exciting basketball games I've ever seen in my life. Some of you are sports fans, some of you aren't. So I'm going to bore some of you for the next minute or so and others will be really excited, but that's okay. But I want to talk about this just because of something that was said. It was actually a Celtics NBA basketball game, a playoff game, game seven between the Celtics and the Atlanta Hawks.

It was the last time that Larry Bird was really just amazing and dominant as he and the Atlanta Hawks star, Dominique Wilkins, went back and forth trading baskets, one shot after another. Each one seemed to be more spectacular than the last. It was really almost like a man to man duel between the two of them with the season hanging the balance for one or the other team. During the game, the announcer, Brent Musburger, said something that has been played again and again since then, and it stuck with me even if they hadn't played it. After Larry Bird made a particularly remarkable shot, he said, "You are watching what true greatness is all about." I thought, "Hmmm." I like basketball, but I'm a Christian and that is not what true greatness is all about. I mean, I'm glad the Celtics won that day, don't get me wrong, but you know what? I've seen pictures of Larry Bird and he's old now. The Boston Garden they played in doesn't even exist anymore. It's been torn down, it's gone. I think about what Isaiah 40 says when it says, "All flesh is grass and all their glory is like the flower of the field." Friends, that is not what true greatness is all about. No sports is. 

What is true greatness all about? The text brings us right to that topic. It's something that captivates our minds. People are interested in greatness. I was at a graduation yesterday for my son at UNC-Charlotte. As they have at graduations, they honor different students for academic achievement. They do it with this Latin phrase, cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude, which means with praise, with great praise, with the greatest or highest praise. So greatness. We're interested in that hierarchy of good, better, and best. We're always analyzing what is good, what is better, what is the greatest. 

Remember for me, as somebody who loves history, at the end of the 20th century, Time Magazine listed the top 100 greatest individuals from the century that had just been completed, the 20th century. They walked through different individuals that they felt should be on the list, 100 greatest people of the 20th century.  They're inventors like the Wright Brothers who invented the airplane, and there was Robert Goddard who invented liquid fueled rockets that enabled eventually space travel and landing men on the moon. There was Tim Burners-Lee who invented the internet; William Shockley, who invented the transistor, ushering us into the digital age. Enrico Fermi was on the list who split the atom, and then of course, Albert Einstein who gave us the theory of relativity. All those scientists and inventors were on the list. Of course, they were influential political leaders from the 20th century like Winston Churchill and FDR and Nelson Mandela. Other leaders of movements like Martin Luther King Jr. were on the list. They're even entertainers and film stars and rock stars and authors, poets, actors, fashion icons, business leaders. So Coco Chanel, Lucille Ball, Bob Dylan, Charlie Chaplin, Sam Walton, all these folks are on the list. However, Time Magazine, the list there was not seeking to identify if any of these people were actually great people, just really that they'd had a great impact, so Adolf Hitler was on the list; Joseph Stalin was on the list; Mao Zedong was on the list. These are mass murderers, tens of millions killed because of their policies, but they're great on the list. They're mixed in together with people that most secular individuals felt were good people such as Billy Graham or Mahatma Gandhi, just all of them mixed together on the list. There was no filter for basic human goodness.

In our passage today, we have two disciples, James and John, seeking positions of greatness in the kingdom of God. Jesus has therefore the opportunity to address the topic of greatness, both great power and also great character in one key moment. This lesson on the nature of true greatness stands over all human beings for all history as both the goal to strive for and the standard by which we are going to be judged on Judgment Day. Ultimately, it doesn't matter at all who the world thinks is great. The only thing that will matter on that day is, "What does God think?" What does God think? Who does God think is great?

Here in the text today, we have the standard. Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all for, even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. To Jesus Christ then, true greatness came down to this, humble suffering servanthood, the humble suffering servant. Whoever's willing to pay the most, lay down his or her life to benefit to bless others will be called greatest in the kingdom of God. Now, the standard is simple. We can understand it, yet it may be one of the most difficult lessons that any of us ever learn.

So let's walk through the text and let's begin with the perversion of greatness. The perversion of greatness which is self-promotion. It's very common these days. Putting yourself forward, espousing all of your best attributes, in effect, selling yourself. It's been going on a long time. James and John are practicing it with Jesus to some degree in this text, twenty centuries ago. Secular kingdoms have been dominated by this self-promotion and politicking throughout history. In the Roman Empire, counselors to the Caesars would orchestrate political scandals for one another to knock off their rivals by shame. That failing, they might just have them poisoned. Cicero, the leading order of the Roman Republic, was an expert at dirty politics, smearing an opponent with rhetoric and with innuendo of immorality; he's very good at it, Cicero.

In the European courts of the Middle Ages, lords and nobles would fight joust with each other to show their courage or loyalty or military prowess. They would jockey for position. Others would go on great quests, military quests to achieve some dramatic goal in order to secure the undying affection of the king and garner position of power in his kingdom. Now, in the modern era, in our era, people use social media often to position themselves for greatness and to cancel their rivals, so to speak, using smear tactics, finding some damning incident from that person's youth or earlier in their history to damage their career, to damage their reputation in the cyber community. As it said, the internet never forgets. There's no escaping those past moments.

Now, the same thing happens in the secular, the corporate world as well. Young ladder climbers use power techniques. I came across a book some time ago entitled and I'm not commending this book, but this is the title, 21 Dirty Tricks at Work: How to Win At Office Politics. So you heard me say, I'm not commending this. I'm just telling you what's in the book. Techniques like stealing credit for someone else's success, trapping someone in a compromising situation and then blackmailing them, using flattery to gain someone's confidence and then at the right time backstabbing them at a key board meeting, et cetera, et cetera. These are the ugly tactics used for self-promotion to gain position in the corporate environment.

I don't think James and John were at that level, but they're jockeying for position in the kingdom. It's been going on a long time, advancement by self-promotion. They come forward and make this selfish request. I want you to notice the context. Those of you here last week, you remember what I preached on as Jesus predicted again what was going to happen to him in Jerusalem. He was going to go up to Jerusalem and He was going to die on the cross. They were going to spit on him. They were going to beat him. They were going to crucify him. This is what's going to happen. Then James and John come and say, "Hey, let us sit at your right and left side."

The timing's terrible, the selfishness. Do you see? It's just really shocking as they come angling for this position, but that's how they do. They come in and they ask effectively for a blank check from Jesus. Look at the text 35-37, “Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. ‘Teacher,’they said, ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask.’" Interesting. I liked this answer, “What do you want me to do for you?” Notice that. That's a key moment right there like in the theology of prayer. It does matter what you ask. It needs to line up with my purposes. “What do you want me to do for you?” “They replied, ‘Let us sit one of us at your right hand and the other at your left in your kingdom.'" We want you to do whatever we ask. Jesus says, "You got to tell me what you want.” They want to be effectively the second and third most powerful men on earth. That's what they're asking for. They want to sit at Jesus's right and his left in his glory, in his kingdom glory, his place of access to power and of personal prestige and exaltation. In Matthew's account, this request comes through their mother, “Then the mother of Zebedee's sons came to Jesus with her sons and kneeling down asked a favor of them.” One thing you learn with the synoptic gospels, whenever any one of them adds some information, that's true. If the other one doesn't have it, they're just simplifying the account and leaving things out. All of the gospels leave things out, but this is what happened.

Ultimately, Jesus knows who put the mother up. It was coming from James and John, but they're going with mom, kneeling down to ask a favor of them. “'What is it you want?’, He asked. She said, ‘Grant that one of these two sons of mine may sit at your right and the other at your left in your kingdom.'" Some of you moms will know exactly what's going on here. This is a big moment for her. Indications are from the studies and the New Testament that this woman, James and John's mother was named Salome and was a sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus, so is therefore Jesus' aunt and that would make James and John Jesus' cousins. Friends, this is nepotism. That's what this is. This is family ties. This is an old, old trick here. Napoleon places brothers on thrones all around Europe. This is what people do. 

Jesus wants to expose this perversion of greatness here, verse 42, “Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are rulers, regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and their high officials exercise authority over them.’" This is the perversion of these positions of power having obtained them through self-promotion. The Gentiles use them for selfish purposes. They dominate others and they stoke their egos with their positions of power, with displays of grandeur.

They're these outward displays of power and prestige, trumpet sounding at the approach of the Roman governor, regal purple banners fluttering in the air, a manner of superiority in their speech, haughty air like the famous statement made by Maria Antoinette about the poor in France, "Let them eat cake." There's that dismissive attitude toward the poor. These rulers and officials love the places of honor and the most important seats and the lofty greetings and the words of praise, the trappings of power. This is the way it always is with the rulers of the Gentiles. It's what they do. You think about the Sun King, Louis the 14th of France built the Palace of Versailles with the most elaborate displays of wealth, golden frameworks around mirrors, embedded jewels in fireplaces, crystal chandeliers, a whole hall of mirrors to give visiting dignitaries from other nations as well as his own people a sense of their own smallness and inferiority compared to him, the Sun King, Louis the 14th. Ultimately, worldly rulers use their positions to fatten themselves with luxurious living. Sadly, it seems some of this was on James and John's mind too. That's why Jesus mentions it. They're hiding behind their mother. They're using family connections. They’re angling for top positions in Jesus' kingdom.

Now, keep in mind, the disciples' errant view of what was about to happen was effectively a secular kingdom of power and prestige, just like Jesus is talking about here. That's what they thought was about to happen. Jesus is going to use his supernatural power to defeat the Romans, defeat all Gentile enemies and establish a Jewish empire from sea to sea ruling over the entire earth with Jesus as the king, and them, second and third in power. That's what they thought was about to happen. Jesus has to expose how faulty that view of power really is. 

Secondly, we see the price of greatness which is suffering. “'You do not understand what you're asking,’” verse 38, “Jesus said. ‘Can you drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I'm baptized with?’” Again, the context. As I said, the very last thing that happened is Jesus, in detail, predicted the sufferings He was about to go through. He's bringing their minds to this again and again. They did not expect the crucifixion. They weren't thinking it was going to happen. It did not factor in. You don't understand what you're asking, He says. He has to educate them. He has to strip their presumptions bear. Like all the other disciples, their understanding of the kingdom and its glory is woefully inadequate. Jesus has to educate them about the nature of the kingdom and the positions of power within it. 

Now, note something very important. Jesus does not deny that there are such positions of power, there are. There will be individuals sitting at his right and his left in his glory. It's actually going to happen. The Book of Revelation pictures 24 elders seated on 24 glorious thrones, encircling the throne of God. Jesus said the twelve would sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel [Matthew 19:28], but they definitely don't understand the price of all of that. They don't understand the cross. The blood of Jesus essential that must be shed for their sins to qualify them to be in heaven at all and the suffering needed to build his worldwide kingdom, they didn't understand any of that. So no, they don't understand what they're asking and neither do we really, but Jesus is ready in this text through the Holy Spirit to educate all of us. The price of glory is suffering.

Verse 38, “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I'm baptized with?” What is the cup? What is the cup Jesus is going to drink? In Gethsemane, we're going to see him shrinking back from the cup. God reveals the cup to him, I believe at a far deeper level than even Jesus had ever seen before, and it literally will knock him to the ground and cause blood to come out of his pores as He contemplates the cup. He says in Mark 14:36, "Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will." What is a cup that could knock Jesus to the ground but the cup of God's infinite wrath against sin? Jesus will have to drink it to save us from that wrath. That's the cup. It's a cup of suffering that He's going to pay.

As always, Jesus brings their naive and immature conceptions again to the cross because they just can't seem to understand it. The baptism, what is that? It's just a different way of saying the same thing, I believe. The cup is the baptism, which is different ways of talking about it. Baptism means “immersion”. That's what the word means, and Jesus is going to be plunged into a sea of sorrow, plunged into a sea of the wrath of God, plunged into a sea of sin as our sin bearer, as our substitute. Jesus says in Luke 12:50, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished?" Literally in the KJV of that verse, Luke 12:50, He says, "How straightened." I am straightened as if constrained in a straight jacket. I'm like in a straight jacket until I finally die on the cross. Jesus lived his whole life under the cloud of the cross, under the pressing crush of that weight. He's always thinking about it and they make a typically glib answer. “You don't know what you're asking. Can you drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I'm baptized with?” "We can," they answered. Jesus had already said, "You don't understand what you're asking." He could say it again, you don't understand what you're talking about. They had no real conception of this cup, no real conception of the baptism, and so they lightly said it. They overestimate just like Peter will do, “Even if all fall away, I never will," overestimating. We're going to spend eternity studying the infinite dimensions of that cup and that baptism. We'll spend eternity plumbing its infinite depths. They don't even have the first small inkling of what they're talking about. James and John thought they could handle anything that came their way or was required for the seeds of honor and the kingdom, but then Jesus made a prophecy about their future. In verse 39, He says, "You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I'm baptized with." They would share in Christ's sufferings. There would be bitter drops that would come from Jesus' cup. They would not drink the cup, but they would drink from the cup. They would drink an aspect of it.

James would be the first of the twelve apostles to be martyred as the account gives us in Acts chapter 12. King Herod had him beheaded, executed. John, his brother, would die in exile on the island of Patmos off the coast of Asia Minor, having suffered for the kingdom of God and the testimony of Jesus, he said. Now neither of them would truly drink the cup, the wrath of God for sins. That's something Jesus had to do alone. He had to do it alone. He's the only one that could do it, but they would drink some of this. So fundamentally, the lesson here is places of honor are won by suffering for the kingdom. They have a high price tag. There is a cup of suffering necessary for all who would be honored by the kingdom.

Thirdly, the plan of greatness, and that is sovereignty. They were forgetting the plan of almighty God. Ultimately, all places of honor have already been earmarked. They've already been tabbed by almighty God. God's not wondering who's going to be sitting in those seats. He knows exactly who's sitting in those seats. Look at verse 40, “To sit at my right or my left is not for me to grant. Those places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.” Jesus is pointing to the sovereign plan of almighty God. Everything has been planned out down to the tiniest detail. Nothing has been left to chance. God the Father has planned all of human history, planned it before the world began. All the days ordained for all of us were written in God's book before one of them happened.

It says in Ephesians 1:11, "In him, we're also chosen having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything after the council of his will." How much is everything? Everything, friends, is everything. So no, it's not an accident who's going to sit at the right or the left in Jesus' eternal kingdom. Those places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father. How does that work? The place of honor prepared by God's plan before the foundation of the world, the fullness of time and the right time, individuals are born into certain circumstances. God shapes them and crafts them for a role in the kingdom, and He prepares good works in advance that they should walk in them, [Ephesians 2:10], and then He prepares them to walk in those good works, gets them ready to do it, and then He empowers them to do those good works which they could never have done apart from Jesus. “I am the vine. You're the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing.” So abiding in Jesus by the power of Jesus, they do amazing good works even to the point of martyrdom, even to the point of laying down their lies for the kingdom. They do those good works. Specific servants suffer specific miseries and pains and dangers for the kingdom, and they receive corresponding honors because of them.

Paul mentions in Philippians 2, a man named Epaphroditus. He says in Philippians 2:29-30, "Honor men like him because he almost died for the work of Christ, risking his life to make up for the help you could not give me." Honor men like him because he risked his life for the gospel. Or again, we have the great hall of faith. Hebrews 11:36-38 says, "Some faced jeers and flogging. Still others were chained, put in prison. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were put to death with the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goat skins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground."

The price of greatness is suffering and the honors and the thrones and all that are proportional to that. Can you drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I'm baptized with? 

Ultimately, even those great servants of God who do great things for Christ will understand in heaven how they don't deserve to be there. Their sins were paid for by the blood of Jesus. All of the good works they did, they did by the power of Christ. So like the twenty-four elders in Revelation 4, they're going to be continually getting down off their thrones of glory and casting their crowns before the throne of God forever, but there are their thrones and there are their crowns to cast because they belong to them.

 All positions of power and honor come from God's sovereign plan. John the Baptist himself said this, John 3:27, "A man can receive only what has given him from heaven." Again, Psalm 75:6 and 7, "No one from the East or the West or from the desert can exalt a man, but it is God who judges. He brings one down and he exalts another." It's the plan of God.

Fourth, the path of greatness is servanthood. The ten were indignant when they heard this. Look at verse 4. This is so human, isn't it? Aren't you glad? I'm not glad for sin, but I'm glad that the Bible's honest. Listen to this, “When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John.” They're pridefully angered. They're annoyed. They're irritated. Pride was corrupting their relationships already. The lust for power was in them. The precise thing that brought Satan down from his glory, a lust for power, was in their hearts too. Deep roots in human natures, deeply in these twelve. Jesus has to deal with this again and again and again with these men. He dealt with it in Mark 9. We already saw when they're arguing, remember, about which of them was the greatest. He has to take a little child and have the child stand among them. He's going to have to deal with it right to the end, the last supper. As they go in there, they're arguing about which of them is the greatest. If I can just stop the narrative right there and say “none of them.”

In our text today, it says, "Whoever wants to become great..." He's showing a pathway to greatness. How can we become great because we're not great yet? What had these guys done? They went out on a mission trip and drove out some demons by the power of Jesus and then they came back. Other than that, what did they do? They did what we read about them doing in the gospels, which isn't much. So you want to become great? That's what we're talking about. How can I become a great man or woman of God? Here's the path. He highlights the contrast between his kingdom and the world’s, as we've seen. Jesus called them together and said, "You know that those who are guarded as rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and their high officials exercised authority over them, not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. Whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom from many." 

So Jesus' kingdom, his whole approach is radically different than the world's. He's going to say to Pontius Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest. But as it is, my kingdom's of another place." He has a whole different way of doing kingdom here. It's a whole different approach. So they lord it over. They do all these places of honor. Jesus is going to go to a deeper level. Those kingdoms are built by prideful plunder, aren't they? Isn't that the history of the world? Bloodshed. People become powerful militarily, they see what their neighbors have. They figure they can take them in a fight, and they do. They sweep in into their walled villages and they take their stuff, their livestock, their gold and silver. They kill and plunder and they add them to their kingdom. That's how empires have always been built. Read about it in Habakkuk chapter 2, “Woe to him, who builds a city with bloodshed and establishes a town by crime.” That's world history, friends. That's why Daniel 7 pictures these empires as beasts coming up out of an ocean. They're ravenous. That's how the kingdoms of this world are built, but Jesus' kingdom isn't built that way, not by those who are willing to go kill, but by those who are willing to go die. 

It's a whole different approach as He cites his whole strategy in John 12:24, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.” That's how the kingdom is built. That's what we're talking about here. The pathway to greatness is fall to the ground and die. Serve, serve others, die to yourself. Again, ambition for kingdom and glory is not a bad thing. You want to be great? Good. I want you to be great. I want you to want to be great. Let me tell you how to become great. You should be ambitious to become great. Be great like this. Be a servant. Humble yourself now. Stop living for yourself. Stop living for your earthly advantages. Stop living for your earthly pleasures. Stop thinking, "What's the best way I want to spend my time? How should I spend my money on myself? How can I advance my interest?” Stop all that. Deny yourself daily. Make yourself nothing and find out how you can meet the temporal needs of others? How can you bless someone else today? When you have achieved a beginning level of servanthood, become an even more servant. Go even lower. Just keep going down. Now, what more can I do? Go even lower. You want to become great? Be a servant. But if you want to be greatest, first of all, be the lowest of all. The low person was a “diákonos” from which we get the word “deacon”, a house servant, almost like a paid employee who did certain levels of tasks, but could leave the estate if he wanted to, a table waiter kind of thing. That's a “diákonos”. You want to be great, be like that. But you want to be the first of all, be a “doulos”, a bond slave. The lowest of the low. Go from “diákonos” to a “doulos”. You see the dissent right here. You want to become great? Serve. 

First of all, be everybody's slave. That's a downward journey. The downward journey Jesus is describing is the very one He went on and is on himself. We see the paradigm of greatness, our savior. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus left heaven's glory and went down and then down some more and then down to the lowest place. First of all, He left a throne of glory that we can scarcely imagine and took on a human form. He was born in a stable to a poverty-stricken, obscure Jewish couple. He lived a humble life as a carpenter's son. He learned the trade from his father, Joseph. He took orders from customers for how they wanted the tables and chairs made and then did them. Let me think about the humility of that. It's like, "Do you know who I am?" “I don't care who you are. I want my tables and chairs by next Wednesday.” But Jesus wouldn't have said, "Do you know who I am?" He would've taken the order. Having learned how to be a carpenter, He would've made the tables and chairs. 

When the time came when He was about 30 years old, He'd began his public ministry. All it was every day was a life of servanthood of people. Think what it's like, the healing ministry He did, which He seemed to do effectively one at a time with a touch, with a word, one person after another. No one was turned away, He never was too busy for anyone. He touched lepers. He drove demons out. He went with Jarius to heal his sick daughter. On route, He found out she was dead, and He went on and raised her from the dead. That's who He was. Being found in appearance as a man He humbled himself and became obedient to his father, serving others day after day.

He never refused anyone, but the ultimate picture, of course, is the cross. His substitutionary death on the cross was the greatest act of humble servanthood in history. That was the consummation of his downward journey, to lay down his life willingly. He was despised and rejected, humiliated, beaten, mocked, spat upon, condemned, and crucified. Here Jesus asserts that He ended the world primarily to lay down his life as a substitutionary ransom for many. He came to serve to the uttermost, to lay down his life in the place of sinners. 

Now, here, we get to the theology. We get to the core of our Christian faith. This is the central core doctrine of Christianity. This is how sinners like you and I will be able to stand before God on judgment day, blameless and unafraid, because Jesus laid down his life in our place. The word “ransom" here means the “payment of a price”, money, let's say, to rescue a slave from bondage or a kidnapped victim from their captors. It's the payment of a price to rescue people from danger. That's what a ransom is. The Greek word “anti” is inserted here in the place of, so a substitute ransom. That's the theology of our atonement. Jesus laid down his life, He shed his blood as a substitute ransom for our sins.

Some medieval theologians misunderstood this ransom idea and came up with a thought of the ransom to the devil theory. Have you ever heard something so stupid as that, as though God and the devil are equal bargaining partners? Not at all. Nothing could be further from the truth. In C.S. Lewis's classic work, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, we see Aslan the lion making the payment of his life for Edmund's liberation in response to the White Witch's demands. It's a powerful scene. But if we draw the line too directly, we could make a devastating theological mistake. Aslan clearly represents Christ in the story. The witch represents our accuser, Satan, all that's true, but Satan is not God's equal. Satan's not the one receiving the ransom. Satan is going to be cast into the lake of fire for his transgressions. The ransom is paid to God and to the justice of God. The clearest verse on this is First Timothy 2: 5-6, “For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” There's your ransom. Jesus is the mediator to go between, not between us and Satan or between God and Satan, but between us and God, Jesus the mediator. He pays his life as a ransom to God on our behalf. Why is that? Because the wages of sin is death. It was established in the Garden of Eden. The death penalty for sin is Ezekiel 18:4, “the soul who sins will die.” We deserve to die for our sins, not just the physical death, but eternal death in hell.

Jesus came to pay that debt, to give his life as a ransom for many. As Isaiah 53 says, "He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. By his wounds, we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him [our substitute ransom], the iniquity of us all.” The reward of Jesus' infinite servanthood is the highest position in the universe. “Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth that every tongue confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

Jesus has the place of greatest honor and greatest glory in the kingdom because He went the furthest down, but this is the same path that's open for us, suffering service for the benefit of others, for the advancement of the kingdom. 

What lessons can we take from this? First of all, the most important lesson of all, trust in Christ for the payment of your sins. You cannot pay them yourself. It's either trust Jesus or suffer eternal death in hell. Those are the choices. Jesus is willing to drink the cup of God's wrath in your place. Trust in him for the forgiveness of your sins. Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life for you if you'll trust in him. 

Beyond that, be alert to your pride. Don't say anything like, "Well, I thank you, God, that I'm nothing like James and John.” That would be a mistake. Say, "Lord, show me how I'm just like James and John, how I want a comfortable life, a powerful life, a prosperous life, an easy life. Just show me how I'm like that because I know I must be," and then be willing to drink Jesus' cup. We are positioned here in Durham to share the gospel with lost people. Most of them have already heard the gospel and rejected it. They're not going to welcome you with open arms. If you are going to share the gospel in the workplace or in the neighborhood or as you meet, you're probably going to have to take some heat. You're going to have to take some fire. I don't think it's likely that you're going to have one of the highest positions in the kingdom, but I don't know who I'm talking to. Who knows?

When I read church history and I always read what some of our brothers and sisters were willing to pay to spread the gospel, I know I'm way low on the list. All I know is their honors will be my honors and I'm going to be celebrating with them just far from the center, but whatever God has for you to do is going to require suffering on your part. Be willing to suffer for the kingdom. Be willing to pay the price to share the gospel with lost people. Be willing to suffer. Understand that there will be positions of honor in the kingdom. It's true. There will be people sitting at Jesus' right and left and on down, but just know this. When one part of the body of Christ is honored, the whole body will be honored with it. We won't be jealous at all in heaven. Not at all. So let's celebrate that.

Let me say a word briefly to mothers. Today's Mother's Day. This morning, I was meditating on one verse that really captured me. It relates to this text, and it's in the NIV's translation of Psalm 18:35. There, David is celebrating God's activity in his life to make him a victorious warrior. God had worked in him so that he could bend a bow of bronze with his arms. Here's the verse in that translation, Psalm 18:35, “You stoop down to make me great.” Isn't that a great verse for a Christian mother? You lower yourself. You get down to the child's level, the infant's level, the toddler's level, the preschooler's level, all that to make them great. How do you make them great?

Lead them to Christ. Teach them these themes. Teach them what God thinks is greatness. It's something that Christian mothers can do. So I praise God for your ministry, sisters in Christ. I praise God. Stoop down, lower yourself like Jesus calls on us to do, to make your children great in the kingdom.

Finally, realize someday we're going to see Christ in his glory, and we're going to see the extent of his infinite greatness, what He was willing to do to get you to heaven. You're going to be like those twenty-four elders. You're going to be on your face. Whatever crowns you have to cast, you're going to be casting them.

Close with me in prayer. Lord, thank you for the beauty of this text. Thank you for the greatness of Jesus. Thank you for the truth and what it teaches us about his kingdom. I pray, Lord, that you would enable each of us to be willing to suffer for the kingdom, to be willing to pay the price to see the Triangle area, Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, reached with the gospel. We thank you that you've enabled us, positioned us to be a light shining in a dark place. Lord, thank you for how the Bible teaches us the truth about our pride and about true humility and true greatness. By the Spirit, help us to drink in the truth of this word, to know that Jesus shed his blood, that we would not have to bear the price for our sins, and that we have a role to play in the kingdom. Help us to play it. In Jesus' name, amen.

Places of honor are won by ones who suffer for the kingdom; a cup of suffering is necessary for all who would be great in the Kingdom of God.

The post Suffering Service: The Measure of True Greatness (Mark Sermon 53) appeared first on Two Journeys.

In 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Paul warns the Corinthian believers to flee from idolatry by recounting the idolatrous history of the Israelites following the Exodus.

The post 1 Corinthians Episode 13: Severe Warnings From Israel’s History appeared first on Two Journeys.

To prepare the Twelve Apostles for what was to come, Jesus instructed them in detail what was about to happen to him.

Let's turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 10. As we continue our marvelous journey through this gospel, the Gospel of Mark, we are looking today at Mark 10:32-34. One of the most pernicious lies told about Jesus of Nazareth by unbelieving scholars is that his death came about because Jesus miscalculated the reaction to his message, got in over his head, and was arrested against his will. Surprised by it, in fact. He was swept along by political forces beyond his control and tragically killed, thus ending his dreams of a better world. In such a wicked revision of history, these scholars make Jesus out to be well-meaning, but politically naive, like a beautiful cut flower that's thrown into a raging river at flood stage. Whitewater seizing it and causing it to churn and tumble around despite its beauty, hurdling it to a massive waterfall and then over. It was pulled irrevocably to its own destruction. Nice Jesus, naive Jesus, overwhelmed Jesus, dead Jesus. Well, dear friends, nothing could be further from the truth. The central message of this marvelous Gospel of Mark comes right from the beginning. Mark 1:1, the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This gospel was written to give clear evidence of the deity of Christ that by reading it we might have faith in Christ for the salvation of our souls.

But the betrayal, the rest, the various trials, the condemnation, the mocking, scourging, and death of Jesus was a severe trial to the faith of his disciples. Jesus looked anything but like almighty God in his weakness, humiliation, torture and death. Jesus knew that his disciples needed special preparation for these terrible events. He wanted them to understand a central fact that He declared in John's Gospel, John 10:18, "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have the authority to lay it down and the authority to take it back up again.This command I received from my father." Jesus was never a victim. He willingly laid down his life for us, for his people, to save us from God's just wrath against us for our sins. In order to establish this fact all the more, He predicted his death in detail ahead of time. In fact, He did it over and over again.

Now the obvious question that must come to us is this, why did He do it? And beyond that, we could ask how could Jesus precisely know what would come to pass concerning himself? The fact of the matter is no one really knows the future, but God alone; the book of James makes this plain. James 4:14 says, "You do not even know what will happen tomorrow."

But Jesus is unique in human history. His entire life was lived under the shadow of the cross. Being God in the flesh, He had detailed knowledge of his immediate future as well as his eternal future. He had a unique role to play in the history of the world, to suffer and die on the cross as the savior of the world. From the moment He was born into that stable in Bethlehem, He lived under the shadow of the cross.

His mother Mary had been prophetically warned by a man named Simeon at the time of his birth that a sword would pierce her soul also. Also? Yes, in addition to Jesus. By the time Jesus was 12 years old, a 12-year-old boy, He understood his special identity as the Son of God, that He had been sent into the world by God, his father, to do his will.

You remember when his parents were anxiously searching for him in the city of Jerusalem and found him, and Jesus said to them in Luke 2:49, "Did you not know that I had to be in that of my father?" Is what the Greek says. In other words, "Immersed in my father's plan, immersed in my father's work and my father's will, didn't you know that that's what I had to do?"

Certainly by the time He began his public ministry, being about 30 years old, He understood completely what He had come to do. So when John the Baptist pointed at him and said, "Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world," we can't imagine that John the forerunner knew more of Jesus's mission than Jesus did. Jesus knew very well what He had come to do. Therefore Jesus walked every step of his life under the shadow of the cross. What amazing love and what supernatural courage.

We're going to walk through that today, and I'm going to begin in this sermon with God's zeal to fulfill his word, God's zeal to fulfill his word. It is by the word of God that the universe was made. Psalm 33:6 says, "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth." God's word precedes the reality, God speaks and it is. God says, “let there be light” and then there's light. The word precedes the reality. Romans 4:17 says, "God gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were." There is creative power to his word. God, therefore highly exalts his word.

Psalm 138:2, "You have exalted above all things your name and your word." God is therefore zealous to uphold his word, his predictive words. He is zealous. He says to the prophet, Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:12, "I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled." Three times in Ezekiel He says the same thing, Ezekiel 17:24, "I, the Lord have spoken and I will do it.” Ezekiel 22:14, "I, the Lord have spoken and I will do it." Ezekiel 36:36, "I, the Lord has spoken and I will do it." The people in the times of the prophets tended to disparage the prophetic word. In Ezekiel 12:22 -25 it says, "What is this proverb you have in the land of Israel? The days go by and every vision comes to nothing. Say to them, this is what the sovereign Lord says, I'm going to put an end to that proverb, but I the Lord will speak what I will and it shall be fulfilled without delay. … For in your days you rebellious house I will fulfill whatever I say declares the sovereign Lord."

That's God's zeal to fulfill his prophetic word. Now, why is that? Why is God so zealous concerning his Word? He knows and He has ordained that it is by faith in the Word of God that his people will be forgiven of their sins. Romans 10:17 says, "Faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the word of Christ." We are justified by faith in the Word, the Word of God. There is a perfect and absolute and a mystical link between the Word of God and Jesus, the savior of the world.

Is it a strong link so much so that the Apostle John begins his Gospel with the Word, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.” Verse 14, "The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." Jesus is called the Word. That's the strong link there is between the written word and Jesus at his first coming.

Then at his Second Coming as stated in Revelation 19:11-13, "I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called faithful and true. He is dressed in a robe, dipped in blood and his name is the word of God." His name is the Word of God, and at that point, all of the prophetic visions will be fulfilled. Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

But why do I say all this? Because Jesus wants his disciples and every generation to trust his words perfectly, especially those words that focus on his death on the cross and his resurrection, especially those words. So He predicts it in detail. Look at the texts we're walking through today. Verse 32, "They were on their way up to Jerusalem with Jesus leading the way and the disciples were astonished while those who followed were afraid. Again, He took the twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. 'We're going up to Jerusalem,' he said, 'And the son of man will be betrayed to the chief priest and teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him.' Three days later he will rise."

Let's understand the text. They're on their way to Jerusalem, up to Jerusalem having crossed the Jordan River near Jericho. They're moving now through Judea, ascending, going higher because Jerusalem's built up on Mount Zion up to Jerusalem. Jesus is leading the way. He's always surrounded by tons of people, but He's out in front of the entourage here, and we see the astonishing courage of Jesus.

The whole point of this sermon is that Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen to him in Jerusalem, and yet there He is strongly, powerfully striding ahead of the whole crowd toward the death He describes in these verses. Jesus was willingly laying down his life even by making that journey up to Jerusalem.

He was not trapped, He was not a naive victim who got in over his head and didn't know what was coming. Not at all. He was carrying out his father's eternal plan to save his people. The twelve were amazed, and the rest of the people were afraid. They were amazed at Jesus's determination to immerse himself in a seething cauldron of hatred and murder, amazed. The twelve by now had heard again and again from Jesus what was going to happen to him in Jerusalem. They had seen the visible rage on the face of his enemies. Multiple times they wanted to kill him, sometimes picking up stones ready to stone him right there. There was no doubt in their minds that He has bitter enemies. As a matter of fact, Thomas, typical of doubting Thomas, spoke all of their fears in John 11:16, "Let us also go with him that we may die with him.” He knew exactly what was going to happen. To prepare the twelve apostles for what was to come Jesus then took them aside and instructed them in detail what was about to happen to him.

Why did Jesus predicted his sufferings? First of all, to establish his office as a prophet, to establish him in his office as prophet. In the Old Testament, Moses opened up the office of prophet, “God will raise up a prophet like me,” and so it was an office, it was a series of prophets. The question would come, how can we know if an individual who comes is a prophet or not, a true or false prophet? How can we know? Deuteronomy 18:21-22, “You may say to yourselves, how can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” If what a prophet claims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken.The ability to predict the future and have it come true validates a prophet. Only a true mouthpiece of God can do that, can know the future.

Secondly, Jesus has predicted his sufferings to establish, as I've said, his own power over death. Here again, John 10:17-18, "The reason my father loves me is that I lay down my life only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the authority to lay it down and the authority to take it up again, this command I receive from the Father. I have absolute power over life and death." After his resurrection from the dead, He appeared in glory to the apostle John on the island of Patmos. In Revelation 1:18, He said, "I am the living one. I was dead and behold, I'm alive forever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and Hades." What does that mean, “I hold the keys?” I'm in charge. I'm in charge of death in the grave. I triumphed over them. He predicted his sufferings.

Thirdly, to protect the faith of his disciples, to protect their faith. This was going to be a massive trial. Jesus says in John 13:19 and again in 14:29, connected to other details but always having to do with suffering and things you didn't want to have happen. He said this, "I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen, you will believe that I am he or I am.” In other words, to protect your faith, I'm giving you warnings ahead of time of these things that are happening.

Fourthly, to establish the faith of subsequent generations. That's where we come in. To establish our faith because the Holy Spirit knew that He'd be writing all this down in Mark's Gospel and other passages as well. It was written down for us who would come later and read these things and have our own faith strengthened. Jesus always had in mind subsequent generations. He prayed for us in John 17:20-21, "My prayer is not for them alone. I also pray for those who will believe in me through their word that all of them may be one." Jesus wanted to protect our faith as well and give us reasons to believe.

Now fundamental to our salvation is faith in the cross of Christ, in Jesus's bloody death on the cross. It says in Romans 3:23-25, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." God presented him as a propitiation or a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. By faith in the blood of Jesus are our sins forgiven.

Every individual sinner needs to see Christ as the willing substitute before the justice of God on their behalf for their sin. So that Jesus' death on the cross was God's plan for our individual salvation. And not ours only, but for the sins of the world. We need to see that. Therefore, you cannot believe that Jesus was naively trapped into death and be saved. You can't think he was naively sucked in by Jewish Roman politics, in over his head, overpowered against his will and died, not by his own choice but by the plan of God. You have to have faith in the blood of Jesus shed on your behalf intentionally by God as part of his plan.

As Peter preached in his great Pentecost sermon. Acts chapter 2:22-24, "Men of Israel, listen to this, Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through him as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge. And you, with the help of wicked men put him to death, nailing him to the cross.

But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” Now, that's the preaching of the gospel right there, and at the center of it is Jesus was handed over by God's set purpose and foreknowledge known from the foundation of the world. Therefore, in our texts, we must see Jesus boldly, knowingly, intentionally, willingly, courageously walking up to Jerusalem to die as the fulfillment of the plan God had made from before the creation of the world for our salvation. Jesus was not trapped. He's not naive. "No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself." So Jesus told them exactly what would happen to him.

How did He know? Fundamentally, two answers. First of all, He knew it by prophetic scripture. And second of all, he knew it because He was God, divine foreknowledge. First of all, prophetic scripture. Long before Jesus was born, God progressively revealed his plan through the prophets. The Bible reveals very plainly God knows the future, He decrees the future, He predicts the future, and then He makes his predictions come true. That's what we know about God. Before Jesus was ever born, God had laid out the plan in the 39 books of the Old Testament.

Romans 16:25-27 puts it this way, "Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God so that all nations might believe and obey him. To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ."

In other words, God had a mystery hidden up in himself and then He paid it out progressively in the prophetic writings, little by little, now fulfilled in Jesus, Paul writes in Romans 16. It is a clear statement by Christ. He says this again and again. Luke 18:31-33, "Jesus took the twelve aside and told them, 'We are going up to Jerusalem and everything that is written by the prophets about the son of man will be fulfilled.’" This is even before He goes up, He's saying, "Look, all this thing is, it's all predicted, prophesied, and it's going to be fulfilled.” He'll be handed over to the Gentiles, they'll mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day, He'll rise again. Now, after his arrest in Gethsemane, after He prays in Gethsemane, He goes out and gives himself up to those that are there to arrest him.

At that moment, Peter thought it best to fight for Jesus. Remember that whole thing? I mean, what's up with Peter? I mean, he’s just missing this whole thing. He pulls out his little fisherman dagger thing, and he is going to take on 600 Roman soldiers. What a moment in redemptive history. Thank God he failed. Imagine if he'd enabled Jesus to get away. I mean, what was he thinking? He just wasn't listening. But Jesus deals with Peter. You remember how Peter swung wildly and cut off Malchus's ear, the high priest servant's ear. He told them, "Put your sword away for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my father and he would at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scripture be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?"

I tell you, no human being in history has ever had a higher view of scripture than Jesus. Effectively, He says that He would rather die than let the prophetic scriptures not be fulfilled. He also said at that point in Mark 14:48-49, “'Am I leading a rebellion,’ said, Jesus, ‘that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I was with you teaching in the temple courts and you did not arrest me. But the scriptures must be fulfilled.’”

After his resurrection, however, Jesus was even more zealous to point his overwhelmed and somewhat unbelieving disciples to the fulfillment of scripture. First, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Remember, they were all depressed, “we had hoped he was going to be the one.” Remember that? They're so depressed, so downcast, so Jesus deals with them. “'How foolish you are,’he said, ‘And how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not that Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ And then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.” Again, that same day in the upper room to the eleven apostles. He said to them, “'This is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me and the law of Moses, the prophets and the Psalms.’" Then he opened their minds so that they could understand the scriptures.”

He told them, "This is what is written, that Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things." So it is obvious that Jesus knew the details of his suffering and his death from prophetic scriptures. Well, what scriptures are we talking about?

From the very beginning of the fall, God began predicting the coming of Christ. You remember the curse on the serpent? He said, "I'll put enmity between you and the woman. Between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head and you'll strike his heel." The prediction of the death of Christ by which Satan's kingdom will be crushed.

Then right away the establishment of the animal sacrificial system. Remember how they had covered themselves with fig leaves, where God killed some animals and covered them with animal skins? Then in the very next chapter, we've got Abel offering a blood sacrifice, an animal sacrifice. Cane inventing his own religion and God rebuking him saying, "If you do what is right, will you not prosper?" So animal sacrifice, Noah comes off the ark and offers clean animals as a burn offering to God. The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all did animal sacrifice. Abraham was stopped from killing his son, own son Isaac, and a substitute was provided. "God," he said, "God will provide the lamb." As substitute, the ram in a thicket was caught. Animal sacrifice was essential to that religion that God would provide eventually to that land. Then Moses taught the Israelites animal sacrifice and made animal sacrifice the centerpiece of their religion, the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant, the Levitical priesthood, all of that set up.

They had already seen it in the tenth plague, the Passover land, the blood of the lamb shed, and the blood painted on the doorpost and lintels with the angel of the Lord passing over when he saw the blood. In the old covenant ,animal sacrifices were at the center. But all of those animal sacrifices were just a type and a shadow of Christ, not the reality. The details got ready for substitutionary atonement.

Leviticus 17:11 says, "The life of a creature is in the blood. And I've given it to you, the blood to you make atonement for yourselves on the altar. It is the blood that makes atonement for your life." It’s very clear. Essential to that is the transfer of guilt without which we cannot be saved. If guilt cannot be transferred to a substitute, we cannot be saved. We're still guilty. In Leviticus 16, we have this gesture of a priest laying hands on the scapegoat and confessing the sins of the people and putting them on the head of the animal, transferring guilt onto the head of the animal. That's what that symbol means, the putting of the hands on the animal, the transfer of guilt.

This is how we have the lessons therefore of the animal sacrificial system. All sin deserves the death penalty. The death penalty can be paid by a substitute, but the substitute cannot be an animal. It's just symbolic. The book of Hebrews makes all this plain. The whole thing was just a type and a shadow of the reality. The reality is in Christ. And why is this? Because the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins. It's just a picture, a type, and a shadow. Hebrews 8:5 says, "They serve at a sanctuary as a copy and a shadow of what is in heaven." The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves. Those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins because the blood of animals can never take away sin.

Then we have Isaiah's clear prophecy of substitutionary atonement. Isaiah 53, "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him. And by his wounds, we are healed." Four straight statements of substitutionary atonement, the clearest in the entire Bible. “We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Nowhere in the whole Bible is it clearer why Jesus had to die than Isaiah 53.

Then Psalm 22, the actual manner of his death predicted; He had to die a Gentile death, a death at the hands of the Gentiles. The Jews stoned to death, Romans crucified. Crucifixion was predicted in Psalm 22, 1000 years before Jesus was born. It begins famously with the words, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But then it says, "I am a worm and not a man scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me. They hurl insults, shaking their heads. ‘He trusts in the Lord,’ they say. ‘Let the Lord rescue him. Let him delight him since he or deliver him since he delights in him.’” And then he describes crucifixion clearly, "I am poured out like water. All my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax.It has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me. A band of evil men has encircled me. They have pierced my hands and my feet." Stop right there. What is that talking about? A death by which your hands and feet are pierced? “I can count all my bones. People stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.” But then in that same Psalm, not just the sufferings of the Christ, but the subsequent glories, the glories that would come in the same Psalm. Psalm 22:27, "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord and all the families of nations will bow down before him. The spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth." Right there in Psalm 22, a thousand years before Jesus was born.

Then there's the bronze serpent, which Jesus alluded to in the most famous verse in the whole Bible. People I think misunderstand it. Go back one verse you get the whole context. John 3:14-16,"Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the son of man must be lifted up that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” The bronze serpent lifted up for in the same way God loved the world, “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." All these prophecies together speak of a death in which Jesus is lifted up and his hands and feet pierced. His blood is poured out and the message is preached to the ends of the earth for the forgiveness of sins.That's how he knew what was going to happen to him.

 Secondly, Jesus knew what would happen to him because of his divine omniscience. He's God, He's the son of God. He knows things that we don't know. He had supernatural insight in ways that we don't. He knew peoples’ character. In John 1, He looks at Nathaniel and says, "Here is a true Israelite in whom there is no guile. 'How do you know me?' Nathaniel asked, 'I saw you while you are under the fig tree, while you're, I looked at you and I know your heart.'" Or again, in Mark 2, remember the friends who are lowering the man down through the roof by the ropes? “Jesus saw their faith and said, ’Your sins are forgiven.’" The people were thinking in their minds, "That's blasphemy. Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Mark 2:8, "Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this is what they were thinking in their hearts. And he said to them, 'Why are you thinking these things?'" He could read people's minds and hearts.

He knew remote events, things that were happening somewhere else. Remember the driving out of the demon of the Syrophoenician woman's daughter? He told her, “'For such a reply, you may go, the demon has left your daughter.’ She went home and found the daughter lying in bed, the demon gone.” How did he know? He knows. He just knows. He knows future events. He predicted the destruction of the temple that wouldn't happen until 70 AD. "Not one stone will be left on another, every one will be thrown down." A massive, massive temple totally destroyed by the Romans, Jesus predicted it. He also knew specific immediate events of his own life. Mark 11:1-6, "As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives, Jesus has sent two of his disciples saying to them, 'Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you'll find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, what are you doing? Tell them the Lord needs it and we'll send it back here shortly.' They went and found the colt outside in the street, tied up at the doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there ask, 'What are you doing untying that colt?' They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go." That's amazing.

But even more amazing as this one is Mark 14:12-16, “Jesus disciples asked him, ‘Where do you want us to go to make preparations for you to eat the Passover?’ So he sent two of his disciples telling them, ‘Go into the city.’”This is my favorite one of all. “'A man carrying a jar of water will meet you.’" There’s got to be 300,000 people in the city. "Go to New York and there'll be an orange car driving on exit 139B that pulls off to the side with it's hazards on. Pull over and talk to that person.” It's like, what in the world? The guy carrying the jar of water, follow him. He's going to enter a house, talk to the owner of the house. That's the place. Go up there and prepare. He'll have an upper room ready for you. The guy carrying the jar of water. How does he know? Because he knows everything. Detailed, meticulous foreknowledge. So Jesus knew the exact circumstances of his death. Again, that's what makes his bold, courageous march up to Jerusalem even more amazing.

What lessons can we take from this? First of all, understand the centerpiece of this sermon. Jesus was not an unwitting unwilling victim. He willingly laid down his life for sinners like you and me. "No one takes my life from me. I lay it down freely." This is a measure of his love. Greater love is no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends.

"You are my friends, if you do what I command you." Or again, John 10:14-15, "I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and my sheep know me just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep.” It's not an accident. So therefore, put your trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins."

I have given you a river of evidence of the truth of the gospel here today. You have everything you need for the simple faith that it will take for the forgiveness of your sins. Trust in him. Why would you walk out of this place still guilty before God for your sins? Just trust in him like the bronze serpent. All you have to do is look, just look to Christ with the look of faith and you'll be forgiven.

See the power of prophecy. See how God makes certain his Word gets fulfilled. Jeremiah 1:12, "I am watching to be certain my word is fulfilled." That's how zealous God is concerning his Word. So fulfilled prophecies is one of the greatest evidences of the truth, not just of Jesus, but of the Bible generally. This is not just any book. This book is a literal miracle because of its predictive prophecies. There's no other book like this in the world. So see that, and the more you study prophecy, the more powerful apologetic you can give to your unbelieving pagan coworkers.

When they ask you, "Why are you a Christian?" Say, "Fulfilled prophecy." They'll be intrigued, but then you need to know what to say. Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, start there. There's many others, but those are some of the keys. Rely therefore on this word. God's Word is a solid foundation on which you can build your life.

I thank you for Ian's testimony at his baptism, reminded me of what Jesus said at the end of the Sermon of the Mount. Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rains came down and the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, but it did not fall because it had its foundation on something that will never move, and that's the Word of God.

Then finally, like Jesus, be willing to suffer for the salvation of other people. We're not the savior, but Jesus said, we have to be willing to lay down our lives like He laid down his life, a similar pattern. John 12, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. The man who loves his life will lose it. While the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me. And where I am, my servant also will be. My father will honor the one who serves me." Friends, we're called on to reach this region with the gospel. Unbelievers are pouring in here at record numbers. Most of them are unchurched, most of those folks that are pouring in are unchurched. It is our task to reach them with the gospel. I guarantee we cannot do it unless we're willing to suffer, unless we're willing to be courageous. Let's follow Jesus in that kind of boldness that He displayed here in Mark 10. 

Close with me in prayer. Lord, thank you for the time we've had today to gather for worship, to sing together, pray together, to watch two young men be baptized and testify to their faith in Christ. We thank you Lord for the experience of new member candidates that want to partner with us. And we thank you more than anything for the display of Jesus's knowledge and courage in going to the cross. Help us, oh Lord, to be strengthened in our faith, to be faithful as we run the race with endurance. And to be bold in our proclamation, even this week of the gospel. In Jesus' name, amen.

To prepare the Twelve Apostles for what was to come, Jesus predicted for them in detail what was about to happen to him.

The post Jesus Predicts His Sufferings (Mark Sermon 52) appeared first on Two Journeys.

Pastor Andy Davis discusses in this lesson the absolute security we should have as adopted children of God.

The post Class in Romans: The Security of Adoption appeared first on Two Journeys.