No Fruit on the Fig Tree or in the Temple

On Sunday, May 15, it was my privilege to preach Mark 11, “No Fruit on the Fig Tree or in the Temple,” at Kenwood Baptist Church.

Jesus is remarkably humble in this so-called triumphal entry. He enters the temple, which essentially belongs to him, and he finds no fruit there. That is, the temple custodians do not receive him as they should. He curses a barren fig tree, which is a symbolic denunciation of the barren temple. Then he assures his disciples that the temple mount will be removed, that his kingdom will come, and that they now have authority to administer blessings formerly had through the ministry of the temple. When the custodians of the temple demand to know what gives him the right to say such things, he hints that his authority is from heaven while exposing that they will not believe him if he answers their question.

Jesus is the true king of Israel and his humility is as stunning as his exercise of authority is absolute.

As exciting as this passage is for those who are rooting for Jesus, look at how humble it shows Jesus to be. He’s the Messiah, the King of kings, the scion of David, the author and perfecter of faith, the champion of life, and he’s been walking around with his disciples and doesn’t even have his own mount.

No technology. No transportation. This is mere humanity—he has for his mode of transportation his own two feet; he has for his ability to spread his message his own voice; he has for the promotion and circulation of what he says and done word of mouth. Jesus isn’t getting anywhere if he doesn’t walk, and his message isn’t spreading unless other people talk about it.

I have to think that this was a deliberate strategy. Part of God’s plan for Christ to come in the fullness of time, it seems, was that he would come at what we now see to be a humble time in terms of transportation and communication. No internet, to say nothing of publishing houses or even newspapers.

This means that as he has gathered his following and done his work, Jesus is the definition of authenticity. There are no smoke and mirrors tricks. There is no falsely generated sense of enthusiasm or excitement. There is no editor deciding to put Jesus on the front page, or to lead the nightly news with his story. Jesus is the real thing.

Everything that Jesus accomplished that leads up to this moment of triumphal entry, from healings to teachings to a reputation to a following, all of it was accomplished by his own voice and his own two hands on his own two feet.

No tricks, no gimmicks, no fanned flame of publicity. And, I would observe, no scandals, no gaffes, no slurs, no missteps.

Worship Jesus. He does what no one else can. He walks firmly where everyone else trips. He is worthy of your trust, your thanks, your praise.

It’s as though Jesus chose a time when no “promotional advantages” would be available. Then he chose to be born in an out of the way place, in a minor country, to a disenfranchised heir to a de-throned royal line.

And when he enters the capital city in triumph, he comes not on a war-horse but on a borrowed donkey. He has no army to accompany him only a crowd of disciples who don’t really understand him, gathered ne-er do-wells and healed beggars.

This is a decisive moment in Mark’s gospel. The King has come with healing in his hands, and the rabble has received him but the rulers have not. When he entered the temple, every religious leader in Jerusalem should have wept for joy, crowded around, begged him to come to dinner, to take the place of honor and authority, to lead the coming Passover celebration.

They have not received him, but he is Lord. He will not cower before their glowering refusal to receive him and drift off into obscurity. He will stand and speak thunderous condemnation and finish his course, drink the cup, undergo the baptism.

Look at how craven and pitiful the opposition to Jesus is. They do not believe John or Jesus was from God, but they are afraid to say so.

Why don’t they believe? Their unbelief has more to do with their sinful, immoral, rebellious hearts than it has to do with any lack of evidence. Jesus has demonstrated his faithfulness and power, and he has been authenticated by mighty works. They should believe but they do not because they are rebels.

The humble king who has been revealed in all his power and authority and ability and worth has come, only to be rejected. But their rejection does not mean he is not king, nor does it mean that they have the ability to resist him or to keep from him what belongs to him.

So he curses the temple and symbolically shows what this means with the fig tree. He tells his disciples that the temple mount will cease to play the role it has played in God’s plan, that their prayers for his kingdom to come will be answered, and that they now have authority to forgive sins.

In controversy, he shows the moral cowardice and despicable rebellion of his pitiful opponents, implicitly declaring that his authority is from heaven while revealing their scheming, pathetic mutiny against the world’s true captain.

I think the whole of Mark 11 is to be read and interpreted together, as I seek to explain here.

How Should the Books of the OT Be Ordered?

English translations need to revisit the way that the books of the Old Testament are ordered.

Let me put it another way:

The only basis for the way that English translations order the books of the Old Testament is modern convention.

The order we use today seems to have arisen with the printing press. There is no ancient precedent for the order of the Old Testament books we find in our English translations.

In The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (esp. 181–234), Roger Beckwith has convincingly demonstrated that the oldest arrangement of the OT is the tripartite division into Law, Prophets, and Writings. This arrangement is reflected in the words of Jesus in Luke 24:44,

“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

This statement indicates that when Jesus thought of the Old Testament, he thought of three groups of books. These three groups of books broadly match the ordering in printed Hebrew Bibles today: Torah (Law), Neviim (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). This is the basis of the acronym TaNaK (Torah, Neviim, Ketuvim—a list of the books is here). Ancient evidence for this tripartite division of the OT is also found in the prologue to the apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus, in the text found among the Dead Sea Scrolls known as 4QMMT, and in the Babylonian Talmud’s Baba Bathra 14b.

Another indication that Jesus thought of the OT in these terms is his statement in Matthew 23:34–36 paralleled in Luke 11:49–51. In these texts Jesus speaks of “the blood of all the prophets . . . from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah . . .” This seems to be Jesus’ way of referring to all the martyrs in the OT, from start to finish. The murder of Abel is near the beginning in Genesis 4, and the murder of Zechariah is near the end in 2 Chronicles 24. Jesus’ statement only works, though, if Chronicles is near the end of the OT. In the tripartite division of the OT into Law, Prophets, and Writings, Chronicles is in the last section, the Writings. The order of the OT books used in modern English translations makes it difficult to understand what Jesus was talking about.

So how did the order of the OT books in English translations come about? Roger Beckwith (The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, 182) explains that once the early church lost contact with its Jewish roots (Origen and Jerome were rare among the early fathers in their ability to read Hebrew), the desire to arrange the books of the OT according to Alexandrian standards won the day.

It seems to me that three considerations argue decisively against continuing to follow the early church fathers in their rearrangement of the order of the books of the OT.

First, the order we find in English translations today doesn’t match the order we find in statements from the early church fathers. That is to say, there is no single “Christian” order of the books of the OT to be found in the writings of the early church fathers, so it is impossible to claim that modern publishers of the Bible are following Christian tradition that derives from the early church. The order given by Melito of Sardis differs from the order given by Origin, and different orders are given by Epiphanius, as is also the case with Jerome. There was not a uniform “Christian” order to the books of the OT until the rise of the printing press. The order of the books of the OT in Codex Vaticanus does not match the order of the books of the OT in Codex Sinaiticus. More evidence could be cited, but it’s all in Beckwith’s book. Here’s hoping that Beckwith’s book will continue to be widely read! So the first reason that we should adopt the tripartite division of the OT into Law, Prophets, and Writings over against a supposed “Christian” order of the books of the OT is that there is no “Christian” order of the books of the OT to be adopted.

The second reason we should adopt the tripartite division of the books of the OT (Law, Prophets, and Writings) in English translations today as opposed to a (non-existent) “Christian” order of the books of the OT has to do with the way that the Reformers delimited the Old Testament canon. Put simply, at the Reformation, the Protestants excluded the Apocrypha from the OT because they followed the Hebrew tradition rather than the Septuagint tradition. That is, the Jews never considered the Apocrypha to be part of the OT, nor does the NT indicate that the Apocryphal books were ever regarded as canonical. Beckwith helpfully suggests that the appearance of various Apocryphal works in both Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus reflects the reading habits of the early church rather than the canonical status of the Apocryphal books included (195). Still, some early church fathers regarded various Apocryphal books as belonging in the OT canon. In the same way that most Protestants today follow the Reformers in following Hebrew tradition and concluding that the Apocryphal books are not canonical, why should Protestant publishers of English translations of the Bible not follow the Hebrew tradition in the order of the books of the OT? Why should English translations of the Bible follow Hebrew tradition on the question of which books should be in the OT, but then refuse to follow Hebrew tradition on the question of how the books of the OT should be ordered? Again, we cannot claim that the order of the OT books in English translations today follows the order reflected in the Septuagint because (1) there is no uniform order in Septuagint manuscripts, and (2) Septuagint manuscripts include the Apocrypha.

The final decisive reason, to my thinking, as to why English translations should order the books of the OT today according to the tripartite structure of Law, Prophets, and Writings has already been mentioned: this is the order Jesus knew and acknowledged. Luke 24:44 and Matthew 23:34–36 (paralleled in Luke 11:49–51) indicate that Jesus knew and accepted the order of Law, Prophets, and Writings. The fact that Matthew and Luke include these statements in their gospels with no explanatory comment indicates that they expected their audiences to be familiar with this order of the OT books. Thus, I would argue that the earliest church knew and accepted the order of the OT books acknowledged by Jesus, and only once the Jewish roots were cut did the church fathers begin to rearrange the books of the OT. All this to say: why shouldn’t followers of Jesus follow him in his understanding of the order of the books of the OT? Since it is the order acknowledged by Jesus, isn’t the tripartite division into Law, Prophets, and Writings the truly Christian order of the books?

To summarize: We should accept the tripartite division of the OT into Law, Prophets, and Writings, and we should order English translations of the books of the OT accordingly because (1) the order in use by English translations now does not match the orders found in lists drawn up by early church fathers; (2) Protestants have agreed with Hebrew tradition rather than Septuagint tradition on which books should appear between the covers of the Bible, so Protestants should also agree with Hebrew tradition on how those books should be arranged; and (3) this is the order that Jesus endorsed and that Matthew and Luke expected their audiences to recognize.

If you’ve read to this point, you may be asking the valid question, “What difference does the order of the books of the OT make?” Well, David Noel Freedman has put forward the argument that Ezra and Nehemiah collaborated on the canonization of the books of the OT, and he argues that Ezra and Nehemiah built a symmetry into the OT. In other words, they put the books of the OT into an intentional order that itself communicated their view regarding the overall message of the OT. I don’t agree with everything Freedman has asserted (see a two part interview with him: part 1 and part 2), but what if he is right about Ezra and Nehemiah arranging the books of the OT such that the very arrangement of the books themselves communicates a comprehensive understanding of the OT’s message? In my view, only inspired prophets would have been able to do what Freedman suggests Ezra and Nehemiah did. If he is right that they built an intentional structure into the arrangement of the OT books, should that arrangement be considered inspired? I doubt that question will be settled, but we can ask similar questions: if the arrangement was intended by Ezra and Nehemiah, doesn’t reorganizing the books make it harder for people to understand the OT’s over-arching message? And again, even if the arrangement is not inspired, by undoing that arrangement, doesn’t reorganizing the books of the OT not make it harder to see what Jesus was saying?

I have a French translation of the Bible, La Bible en francais courant, that arranges the books of the OT according to the tripartite structure of Law, Prophets, and Writings. I would love to see an English translation of the Bible follow suit.

What do you think?

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This post originally appeared as a guest post at Moore to the Point.

Kingdom Greatness

On Sunday, May 8, 2011, it was my privilege to preach Mark 10:32–52 at Kenwood Baptist Church, “Kingdom Greatness.”

An excerpt:

What are some characteristics of Christ-like service, servant-greatness, slave-first-placeness?

  1. It doesn’t do this to get attention, and in doing it, doesn’t draw attention to itself.
  2. The consideration of the interests of others outranks the consideration of its own interest.
  3. The joy brought to others is counted worth the pain and loss that comes with the humiliation of service.
  4. There is a trust in God that motivates it, a belief in what God has promised that unplugs self-promotion and energizes the conviction that greatness comes from service.

Who do you want to imitate? Jesus or Donald Trump?

I see so much greatness at Kenwood Baptist Church. Do you know how much un-thanked, un-noticed, un-requested service happens at our church?

  • Someone prepares the elements for the Lord’s Supper every week.
  • There are people who come early every week to print and fold the bulletins.
  • There’s a couple that you’ll see sweeping the floor and wiping down the tables after pot-luck every week.
  • Someone cleans the bathrooms (I hope!).
  • Someone goes to the grocery story and buys the plates and forks and knives and all the stuff we need for pot-luck.
  • There are people who make the great food we eat every week.
  • Josh does a great job planning the music we’ll sing every week.
  • The others get here early to practice the music.
  • Faithful people prepare to teach Sunday School every week, for adults and for the kids.
  • There is someone behind the curtain organizing everything that needs to happen in the nursery, with the women’s ministry, and there are a whole lot of folks ministering to the Nepalis.
  • There are folks who prepare, sacrifice to be here, and miss the Bible Study and prayer meeting every Wednesday night so they can serve children.

There is greatness, Christ-like greatness, servant of all greatness, last but shall be first greatness all over the place at Kenwood Baptist Church, and I praise God for it. Members of Kenwood, thank you for showing me what it means to follow Christ, for being such good examples, such inspiring brothers and sisters. Thank you for living out the gospel.

Don’t you want more of this greatness? Don’t you want to be even more like Jesus, in even more areas of your life? What do we need in order to know how to come to Jesus, in order to embrace the greatness that comes from service? We need our eyes opened.

In Mark 6:52 we read that the disciples had hardened hearts. Then in 8:17 Jesus asked them If they perceived or understood—if their hearts were hardened, in 8:18 he asked if they had eyes but couldn’t see, ears but couldn’t hear. All of this is reminiscent of the quotation of Isaiah 6:9–10 in Mark 4:12 and Isaiah 29:13 in Mark 7:6–7.

And this whole section of Mark 8–10 is surrounded by healings that symbolize in the physical realm what the disciples need done for them in the spiritual realm. In Mark 7:31–37 Jesus gives a man his hearing. In 8:22–26 he heals a blind man, and now again at the end of this “On the Way to Jerusalem” section of Mark 8–10, Jesus heals a blind man.

If you want to see that true greatness is to serve, not to be served, you need Jesus to give you sight.

If you want to be one who lives out the truth that you don’t come to Jesus to correct him, to get a list of things to do to inherit salvation, or to demand your place of privilege; if you want to be one who comes to Jesus to cry out for mercy because you trust him, if you want to live that out, you have to come to him like blind Bartimaeus does in Mark 10:46–52.

Click the blue words (or maybe they show up underlined–the ones between the quotation marks) to hear more about “Kingdom Greatness” from Mark 10:32–52.

Summer Reading Plans

Thinking about reading through God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology this summer? Maybe it would help to gather some friends and go through it as a group, discussing things along the way. If you don’t have a quorum where you are, a group from Kenwood Baptist Church will be going through it on a 13 week schedule covering about 40 pages a week, and John Michael Larue has started a blog to facilitate discussion among those who might be scattered far and wide (dates and pages on the first post).

Some guys doing doctoral work at SBTS led church groups through the book as part of an application assignment, and they’ve given me permission to make some of their material available. John Lake provided an outline that guided the discussions in the group he led, and Allen Cagle worked up a set of discussion questions that he used.

Please don’t write this book off as too academic!

My 76 year old great-uncle has finished all but the last two chapters. He’s a farmer near the Mississippi river hoping the levee holds, and he loves the Bible and has faithfully taught Sunday School for lo these many years now. And if you need some encouraging testimonials, try this two-parter from a member of Kenwood whose husband is studying at SBTS: Part One and Part Two.

Steve Davis of WCTS Radio also interviewed me on the book, and you can hear that here.

May the Lord give us hearts that rejoice in his justice and mercy.

Piper Endorses GGSTJ

These words on the Crossway blog have me saying Soli Deo Gloria:

“I was riveted. Never do I sit down and read sixty pages of ANY book that I get in the mail. But I could not stop—could not stop reading and could not stop rejoicing over God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment. It is the kind of overview of redemptive history Edwards wanted to write. It’s what I hoped would be written.”

–John Piper
Pastor for Preaching and Vision
Bethlehem Baptist Church
Twin Cities, Minnesota

 

Do You Preach the Superscriptions of the Psalms?

For some reason unbeknownst to me, English translations of the Psalms decided not to number the superscriptions of the Psalms. This breaks with other printed practice, since the superscriptions are numbered in printed editions of the Hebrew text as well as the Greek and Latin translations. The verse numbers are not original to the authors of the individual Psalms, nor are they original to the collection of the Psalter. The verse references were added in the middle ages. For some reason, early English translators decided not to number the superscriptions, and they remain unnumbered down to the present. The problem with not numbering the superscriptions is that it gives the impression that they don’t belong with the biblical text.

Not only do the superscriptions go unnumbered, translations often put them in a different font, whether in small caps (such as in the ESV) or a smaller font (such as in the NASB and NIV), but one way or another the superscriptions are marked off as being somehow different from the rest of the text of the Psalm. This is fine, as long as it doesn’t result in the superscription being ignored.

My fear is that many serious students pay as much attention to the superscriptions as they do to the boldface subheadings some editors of modern translations have inserted into the text of the Psalms, that is, none! Concluding that the “real text” of the Psalms is not what the editors have added, serious students skip straight to verse 1, ignoring all that irrelevant prefatory text up top.

Some teachers of the Bible have also presented theological or literary arguments against interpreting the Psalms in light of the superscriptions. Worse still, some modern scholars have invented a whole set of supposed “genres” for Psalms, then their labels become procrustean beds on which the Psalms are made to lie. So instead of interpreting the texts as they stand, taking into account all the textual evidence present, they bring in a controlling theory of how the Psalms are to be classified, then they read the Psalms in light of their theory.

I have no interest in dissecting these arguments except to say this: the choice to ignore the superscriptions of the Psalms is nothing less than a radical text critical decision to exclude from consideration evidence that is in the text. We have no manuscript of the Psalms that lacks these superscriptions. Let me say that another way: every manuscript of the Psalms in our possession has the superscriptions. It is true that there are places where the superscriptions vary from one another, just as there are textual variants all over the rest of the Bible. But we have no warrant at the level of textual evidence to ignore the superscriptions of the Psalms.

These Psalms are not abstract installments in the world’s poetic registry. No, these Psalms are to be interpreted in the context of the canon, and the superscriptions are there to guide readers as to where the Psalms fit in the canonical story.

So here’s my conclusion: Are you a world-renowned Old Testament textual critic who has consciously decided that on the basis of your analysis of the manuscript evidence you cannot accept the superscriptions as belonging to the inspired, original text? Fine. Don’t preach them. But if that isn’t why you don’t preach the superscriptions, then my question for you is this: what reason can you give for ignoring part of the inspired text?

Preach the word! All of it. . .

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Programming note: this post originally appeared as a guest post on Moore to the Point.

Dante Says Love Built Hell

Consider the warning on hell’s gate in Inferno:

“Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of Power divine,
Supremest Wisdom, and primeval Love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

How Often Should a Church Take the Lord’s Supper?

How often should a church take the Lord’s supper?

Let’s cut straight to the chase: I think the New Testament indicates that the early church took the Lord’s supper every Lord’s day, that is, every Sunday. My key piece of evidence for this is in Acts 20:7, “On the first day of the week, when we gathered to break bread . . .” Earlier in Acts we read of the earliest church, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers . . . day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes” (2:42, 46).

The question, from these two references, is what they do when they “break bread”? Because Acts 2:46 seems to refer to ordinary meals, what I’m going to argue here has to be held loosely. Some say the frequency with which we take the Lord’s supper is a matter of preference, even, but I think Acts 20:7 is stronger than that.

The phrase “break bread” often refers to the Lord’s supper, growing out of what Jesus did at the last supper (Luke 22:19; [cf. 24:35]; see Acts 2:42; 20:7, 11; 1 Cor 10:16; 11:23–24).

So here’s my reconstruction: in the earliest days after Pentecost, the church celebrated the Lord’s supper daily, in conjunction (probably) with their evening meal. And who wouldn’t want to celebrate it every day! Imagine the enthusiasm of the wonder of the resurrection, the rushing wind, and the thousands converted. . . As the days and years passed, things stabilized and the church began to take the Lord’s supper in conjunction with the meal they shared together in the evening on the Lord’s day. I would suggest that Acts 20:7 (with 1 Cor 10:16; 11:23–24) indicates that the celebration of the Lord’s supper was central to the early Christian gatherings—look at it again: “On the first day of the week, when we gathered to break bread . . .” (Acts 20:7). They gathered to break bread(Paul also preached all night, so the gathering probably started in the evening, 20:7–11), and the gathering happened on the first day of the week.

So let’s say this is right. Everywhere the apostles went to make disciples, they planted churches. They always baptized new disciples into membership in those churches, and those churches met on the first day of the week to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus, looking for his return, by partaking of the Lord’s supper.

What difference does that make to us today?

Well, the whole point of being a Baptist is being biblical. We Baptists aren’t Baptists because our parents were Baptists, because we think Baptist culture is superior to all others, or because we think identifying ourselves as Baptists will improve our standing in society. We’re Baptists (or should be) because we think that being Baptist is the most biblical way of being the church. That is, we claim that the structure and practices of our churches is closer to the pattern we see in the New Testament than any other (or should be).

This means, I think, that if we become convinced that the earliest church took the Lord’s supper every Lord’s day—and if this was so widespread that when Paul and Luke are traveling from one place to another, they know that if they find a church gathered on the Lord’s day that church will have gathered to break bread—if we become convinced that the earliest church in every place took the Lord’s supper every Lord’s day, we will want to do the same.

Some object that taking the Lord’s supper every week will demean its significance. I think boring preaching and bad music demeans the significance of preaching and singing, but most Baptists churches take the risk and have preaching and singing every week. So I don’t think this argument that taking the Lord’s supper every week will make it dull is either convincing or significant. We should take the same steps to keep the Lord’s supper from becoming rote that we (should) take to keep the preaching from being boring or the music from being bad.

Someone may object: Paul preached all night. Do you think we should do that, too? No. The pattern we see in the NT is that the church was devoted to the Apostles’ teaching, and Paul told Timothy to preach the word, so we have preaching every week because the churches in the NT had preaching every week. But Paul’s preaching all night was driven by the fact that he was leaving the next day and had a lot to say. This was a special circumstance, but the gathering to break bread on the first day of the week was a regular feature of their lives. I think it makes sense for it to be a regular feature of our lives, too.

So what do you think?

Related: “The Lord’s Supper in Paul”

 

Ishmael Describes the Pulpit

As Ishmael, the narrator of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, describes the Whaleman’s Chapel, he says this about the pulpit:

Nor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that had achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the likeness of a ship’s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on the projecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship’s fiddle-headed beak.

What could be more full of meaning? – for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favorable winds. Yes, the world’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow.

Melville’s Moby Dick is free on Kindle.

Does Jesus Really Want You to Hate Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Wife, and Children?

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” – Luke 14:26 ESV

Since a man is to love his wife as Christ loves the church (Eph 5), and since I don’t think Paul was setting out to contradict Jesus, I think we are forced to seek an understanding of the context of Luke 14 that helps us understand what Jesus means when he talks about hating our relatives.

In the first part of Luke 14, Jesus is dining in a hostile environment “at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees” (14:1). It seems that they’ve set him up to do something for which they can accuse him — heal on the Sabbath, which he does (14:1–4), and then when he makes his argument (14:5) he silences them (14:6). Then Jesus goes on the offensive against them. He first addresses the others invited to the feast (14:7–11) and then he addresses his host (14:12–14) before responding to a comment made by one of the guests (14:15–24).

So Jesus walked into a trap, triggered the mechanism, but then the trap closed on those who set it, not on him. Having healed the man on the sabbath and then silenced their opposition to that (14:1–6), he begins to denounce these haughty Israelites who are trying to entrap their Messiah. He first calls them to humble themselves (14:7–11), and then he seems to address the way that this exclusive club of the Jewish leadership is not serving the nation but glad-handing one another (14:12–14). Notice that Jesus mentions friends, brothers, and relatives in 14:12.

Then in this hostile environment he starts giving examples of the kinds of excuses people are going to make as to why they won’t accept the invitation to come to the marriage feast of the Lamb. Jesus is basically listing out the reasons these people who are seeking to entrap him will give as to why they don’t want to come to his banquet. He mentions one person using the excuse of having just bought a new field (14:18), another new oxen (14:19), another having just married a wife (14:20), and in response to the ways that those who seem to be something in Israel have rejected him, the master sends the servant out to gather the things that are not in 14:21–the poor, crippled, blind, and lame. These are all the humble people who haven’t been invited to dine with this ruler of the Pharisees (14:1), and who don’t get glad-handed by these folks (14:12). Jesus told his host that he should have invited just these people in 14:13 (cf. 14:13 and 14:21).

It appears from 14:25 that Jesus has left the hostile banquet that was a trap, and yet what he says to the crowds in the verses that follow appear to have that banquet in view. So I would read this statement about hating father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and even one’s own life as speaking directly to these elite members of this exclusive circle of Pharisees that has rejected him (cf. again 14:12). If one of those elite Pharisees follows Jesus, he is going to alienate everyone in his family. And Jesus is saying that he should do so in order to be his disciple. I would also read the comment about hating one’s wife in verse 26 in light of the fact that the new wife was just used as an excuse not to follow Jesus in 14:20.

There are some people for whom following Jesus will mean the repudiation of their whole lives–parents, wife, children, siblings. Maybe that’s the case for someone converting to Christianity out of Judaism today, or out of Islam, or maybe even out of some sectors of Roman Catholicism. For that person to be a disciple, he’s going to have to renounce “even his own life” (14:26). I’ve got a friend who left Christianity and married an orthodox Jewish wife. He has converted to Judaism. I hope he comes back to Christ. For him to be a disciple of Jesus, he’ll have to be willing to love Jesus in spite of the fact that it might well cost him his wife.

Some people will have that cross to bear (14:27), and so Jesus urges people to count the cost of following him (14:28–32). If an elite Pharisee is going to follow Jesus, he’s going to have to renounce all that he has to be a disciple of Jesus (14:33).

Jesus himself repudiated his family when they weren’t following him (cf. Luke 8:19–21), but then he made provision for his mother from the cross.

So I think this passage about hating your wife and your life and renouncing all you have has a specific application to some contexts where following Jesus means rejecting the views held by everyone else in your family and being rejected in turn by them.

Following Jesus does not mean that I need to hate my sweet wife, nor do I think it means that in comparison to the way I love Jesus my love for my wife is hate. No, I love Jesus by loving my wife. Same with the life God has given me. I don’t have a life that I need to renounce in order to follow Jesus. For me to renounce my life, in the life that I’ve been given, would be to renounce a life of trying to serve to Jesus.

What about losing your life to gain it? This means that I need to love my sweet wife by laying down my life for her–losing my life by loving her as Christ has loved the church. It would be foolish and disastrous for me to say to my wife that I have to be loving Jesus so I’m going to lose my life by not loving her or spending any time with her because I have to be loving and serving Jesus. That would be a good way to get myself disqualified from being an elder pretty quickly (1 Tim 3).

Do Flowers Make You Feel Guilty?

Have you ever looked at a flower?

This week we went down to Bernheim Forest, and we saw this Quiet Garden full of Peonies. Have you ever thought about how delicate, transient, gratiuitous, and useless flowers are? God has lavished his creativity, resources, energy, mental ingenuity, and power on these things that serve no other purpose than to be beautiful.

Now think about the fact that there are deserts in the world where no flowers grow.

God has made some parts of the world gardens and other parts of the world deserts.

My point is not that those who enjoy gardens shouldn’t think about ways to irrigate deserts. We should.

My point is that those who live in gardens don’t need to feel guilty about the flowers.

We can apply this to God’s spiritual blessings just as well as we can to material ones: Some parts of the world have the word of God (incidentally, those also tend to be the parts of the world where it is possible to have clean water, good medicine, and funds that are safe from thugs and dictators who seize assets). Other parts of the world lack the Bible. Those who live in a land where the Bible is shouldn’t feel guilty about the mercy God has shown us. We should try to get the Bible and the gospel to other lands, but we shouldn’t feel guilty about the goodness God has given to us.

Why am I talking about flowers and deserts? Yesterday it was my privilege to preach the first part of Mark 10. I was going to do the whole chapter, but time ran out so I had to do a crash landing in the middle. Anyway, we were right there in that passage where Jesus tells the rich young ruler that he has to sell everything and give to the poor.

You can listen to the sermon here.

I bring up this thing about flowers because I think Jesus telling the rich young ruler to sell all and give to the poor has caused a lot of Christians to feel false guilt about about having possessions and putting money in savings. The point about flowers is picking up on what Paul says in 1 Timothy 6, where he tells rich people not to hope in wealth but in God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy – that is what 1 Timothy 6:17 says – go read it.

If God has given you something, he wants you to enjoy it, not feel guilty about it. Don’t reject God’s goodness and mercy to you by refusing to enjoy his gifts. Be generous to others. Preach the gospel. Lay your life down for them like Christ did for you (i.e., live the gospel). And enjoy God’s kindness.

But doesn’t the passage about the rich young ruler teach that we shouldn’t enjoy things (not even as God’s gifts) and that we shouldn’t save money?

No! A resounding NO!

Let me summarize a few points hermeneutical and observational:

1)    This rich guy is not a believer, so Mark isn’t giving this episode to show Jesus teaching his disciples. Mark is showing Jesus doing evangelism in this instance, not discipleship.

2)    Jesus isn’t giving this guy a ladder he can climb to get into heaven. The guy could do what Jesus tells him to and still go to hell–if he continued to trust in his ability to make more money and if he continued to worship Mammon. Jesus is exposing this guy’s idolatry, not giving a recipe to unbelievers. So if you’re not a believer, Jesus is calling you to trust in him, not your money. And he’s trying to help you recognize that you can’t redirect your trust on your own power. It’s a miracle that you need God to do for you. You need God to cause you to be born again. So if there’s something in your life that you don’t know how to overcome—maybe it has to do with the fact that you do love and trust money more than you love God and trust Jesus. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re living in adultery and you can’t overcome it. Jesus wants you to recognize your inability, and he wants you to cry out to him to help your unbelief.

3)    Mark 10:30 shows that the issue here is not having possessions, because Jesus says that those who follow him are going to get everything they give up back in this life (with persecutions). So Jesus doesn’t have something against possessions. He’s not advocating poverty or communism or socialism or homelessness. He is advocating the worship of God by faith in him.

So I submit that if you read this passage and come away thinking that you need to do something for Jesus in order to enter the kingdom of heaven or be his disciple, you’re missing the point.

Do I think Mark is teaching that followers of Jesus are called to sell all they have and give to the poor?

No.

Are we called to trust Jesus not Mammon?

Yes.

Are we called to steward what God has given us for the glory of God?

Yes.

Are we called to leverage all we have for the gospel?

Yes.

But divesting yourself of all possessions and of all means is not necessarily good stewardship, nor does it necessarily give you leverage.

Bring all the Bible to bear on your thinking about money. Two passages:

Proverbs 6:6–8,

[6] Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. [7] Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, [8] she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.

1 Timothy 6:17–19,

[17] As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. [18] They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, [19] thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.

If you’d like to hear the sermon, it’s here: Mark 10:1–31, “Are We Commanded to Sell Everything and Give to the Poor?”

Look at those beautiful flowers. Smell their fragrant aromas. And worship God who causes such beauty to continue in this world made ugly by sin.

Hear Flannery O’Connor Read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

I saw this on Andrew Peterson’s twitter page, and even though I think I re-tweeted it I felt it warranted a post.

At this link you can hear Flannery O’Connor read aloud her short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” This is a tale worth pondering.

I recommend you do the save as thing to this link and put it on your mp3 player to have a listen.

Enjoy!

The Chiastic Structure of Revelation: Limited Time Offer

And here is the fifth and final Table from God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology that will be posted here. This one lays out the chiastic structure of Revelation. I think this structure is key to understanding the book. My sermons on Revelation are here, my Preaching the Word commentary on the book will appear, Lord willing, early in 2012.

Here’s the Table: “The Chiastic Structure of Revelation.” [Link Removed]

This is going live on Thursday, April 28, 2011, and it will be removed on Saturday, April 30, 2011.

I welcome your comments, questions, objections, or critiques!

The Chiastic Structure of Psalm 38

In Psalm 38 the righteous sufferer calls on and hopes in the Lord to deliver him. Note that this Psalmist is righteous not because he is sinless but because he confesses his sin and repents of it. The one in whom the Psalm finds typological fulfillment bears the sins of his people but has none of his own (cf. Isa 53:3, 7).

Psalm 38

1–2, Do Not Discipline

3–7, No Soundness Because of Sin

8–10, Groaning to the Lord

11–12, Abandoned and Opposed

13–14, Not Responding

15–16, Trusting in the Lord

17–20, Weakened by Sin

21–21, Do Not Forsake

Dan Phillips Reviews “God’s Glory in Salvation Through Judgment”

Ever wondered how to make an author really, really happy? Call his book terrific, then refer to its distinctives as sparkling! He’ll be smiling with a great smiling. Trust me.

If you want to make it even better, say this as one farther along in the faith, from a big platform with a reputation for sound theology, incisive commentary, and great writing that is by turns clever, fresh, hard-hitting, and hilarious. If it’s not altogether clear, I’m really encouraged by this review.

Hearty thanks to Dan Phillips of TeamPyro, author of the forthcoming World-Tilting Gospel and God’s Wisdom in Proverbs, for his review of God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology.

You can read the review here, and if you aren’t subscribed to Biblical Christianity and Pyromaniacs blog, you’re missing light and heat as they set the world on fire.