When You Can't See Jesus

The question this Mark 8:22-26 asks us is simply this, what do you see when you look at Jesus? What do you see when you look at Jesus?

This miracle story only appears in Mark’s Gospel. Mark was the only Gospel writer to record this event, so he must have had some special purpose for doing so. And, well, it’s just a bit of a strange miracle isn’t it? It’s hard to think of another time when Jesus needed two goes at performing a miracle. He raised Lazarus from the dead with a simple command, He didn’t have to talk Him into it. He fed 5000 men with a boys lunch with a simple blessing, He didn’t have to have two or three tries at doing it.

I think Mark wrote down this miracle because he wants to help us know what to do when we’re like the man. When we don’t see Jesus clearly, what do we do?

The disciples, at this point, didn’t see Jesus clearly. Just before this miracle, in verse 21, Jesus said to them, ‘how is it that you do not understand?’ how have you seen me, and heard me for these years now, and you still don’t get it. But just after this miracle, in verse 26, Peter says that Jesus is the Christ. Now they see clearly. So I think this miracle, which really happened, is also a parable, a story with a meaning for you and I today.

This guys problem is our problem. He can’t see Jesus clearly. When he looked at the Son of God, He was out of focus and blurry. He was in the same position as the people that Peter mentions in verse 28. The people who thought Jesus was John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets. And people, maybe some of us this morning, are in the same position.

I’m sure all of us can remember a time when we couldn’t see Jesus clearly.We couldn’t work out His will in a situation or we couldn’t see Him well enough to follow. Sometimes things get in the way of our relationship with Jesus don’t they, and we struggle to see Him. Sometimes it’s an activity or a hobby that becomes more important to us, and we fail to see Jesus clearly. Sometimes it’s a relationship that gets in the way, sometimes it’s work, sometimes we’re just lazy, but whatever it is, there are seasons in our lives when we don’t feel close to God, when we struggle to see Jesus for who He really is.

We’re confused, we’re joyless, we don’t know what to do. We want to commit to Jesus, we want to follow Him, but there’s something stopping us. When we look at Jesus, we don’t see the glorious Son of God, we see a tree.

So what’s the solution to the problem? Aren’t you glad Jesus always gives us the answer in His Word? Jesus isn’t like so many modern religions, or philosophies, or politics, that just point out problems and leave us by ourselves to face them. Jesus will take us by the hand, if we let Him, and lead us to the solution. Now, it may not be as quickly as we like, it may not be in our time, but it will happen.

This guy got alone with Jesus. He was taken outside the village, which, though small would have been full of people willing to stop and watch a miracle, full of the constant hustle and bustle of a fishing port. So he found Jesus, and got alone with Him.

Are you doing that?

Are you making time to be alone with Jesus in your daily life? are you looking at Him? If not, you’ll never see Him clearly. Are you desperate enough to see Jesus that you’ll set the alarm 30 minutes early to read the Bible? Do you want to see Jesus more than your favourite TV show, so you’ll turn it off and go to pray? When you have leisure time, what’s your priority? Is it seeing Jesus? Is it spending time with Him? Time with Jesus is never time wasted, it’s never time you’ll regret.

And he was honest about the problem. We have to be honest about how our Christian life is! Imagine what went through his head when Jesus asked him what he saw. Imagine the pressure. Jesus has healed everyone else, can’t I just say that I can see?’ But he was honest, and so must we be. Be honest with Jesus in prayer. Ask for His help, tell Him you wish you could see Him more clearly. Pray, I believe, help my unbelief. There’s no prayer that Jesus is so eager to answer as prayers that show our total dependence on Him! So ask Him for help. Be honest. Lord, I want to see, I want to serve, I want the joy of a close walk with you, but when I look at you, I see a tree. Don’t plaster on a smile, come to church and pretend everything’s ok for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning. Be honest, ask for help!

And be hopeful. This guy didn’t throw his hands up in the air and tell Jesus it was no good. He didn’t think to himself, ‘well not even Jesus can help me, woe is me.’ No, he trusted in Jesus. He knew enough about Jesus to know that Jesus was capable, and Jesus was willing. He asked for help again, he was persistent. This is why Jesus encourages us to prayer like a nagging woman in Luke 18:1-8, or like a slightly rude friend in Luke 11. Don’t give up on Jesus. Beat His door down in prayer; wear Him out asking for help.

You understand what I mean. Your situation is never hopeless and Jesus is never helpless. So keep asking, do it again Jesus, try it again Lord.

And look at what happened as a result of these things. Verse 25 tells us that he saw every man clearly. Clearly! Not blurred anymore, he saw them with perfect vision. How sweet are the days when we see Jesus clearly. How wonderful are the moments when we know where to go and what to say, when we know we’re walking closely with the Son of God. How sweet it would have been for Peter, just a few verses later, to be able to say that Jesus was the Son of God.

So the question for us is, ‘do you see ought?’ what do you see when you look at Jesus? do you see Him in His glory in the Word, in prayer, in church, in communion? Do you look at Him and see the One for whom it is worth losing all things. Or do you see a blurred vision, an obscured vision? If that describes you, then you need help, but it’s help the saviour loves to give.

Before I Preach

My Master God,

I am desired to preach today,

but go weak and needy to my task;

yet i long that people by edified by divine truth,

that an honest testimony might be borne for thee.

Give me assistance in preaching and prayer,

with heart uplifted for grace and unction.

Present to my view things pertinent to my subject,

with fullness of matter and clarity of thought,

proper expressions, fluency, fervency,

a feeling sense of the things i preach,

and grace to apply them to mens consciences.

Keep me conscious all the while of my defects,

and let me not gloat in pride over my performance.

Help me to offer a testimony for thyself,

and to leave sinners inexcusable in neglecting thy mercy.

Give me freedom to open the sorrows of thy people,

and to set before them comforting considerations.

Attend with power the truth preached,

and awaken the attention of my audience.

May thy people be refreshed, melted, convicted and comforted,

and help me to use the strongest arguments drawn from Christ's incarnation and suffering,

that men might be made holy.

I myself need they support, comfort, strength and holiness,

that i might be a pure channel of thy grace and do something useful for thee.

Give me then refreshment among thy people,

and help me not to treat an excellent matter in a defective way,

or bear a broken testimony to so worthy a Redeemer,

or be harsh in treating Christ's death, it's design or it's end,

from a lack of warmth or feverency.

And keep me in tune with thee as i do this work.

A Minister's Preaching, Valley of Vision Pp348-349

Adorn

This week in Teen Church in I preached through 1 Timothy 2. It was a sweet time together as we looked at the way Paul tells Timothy to order life in the church. Men are to raise their hands in prayer not anger, women are to focus on their hearts and not their appearance. I told our young men to stop getting angry (not that they necessarily have a problem with that) and our young women not to dress to draw attention to themselves (not that they necessarily have a problem with that either, i'm thankful for the work the Lord is doing in all of our teens' hearts.)

As an aside, can i tell you that young people can handle serious Bible teaching, so stop trying to sell me fluff curricula. 

But what really grabbed my attention was this, women are to adorn themselves... with good works. I read it again this morning in Titus 2:10, and Paul tells the slaves in the church to work hard, so that they may adorn the doctrine of God (their) saviour. To adorn something is to decorate or add beauty to something. Don't decorate yourselves with expensive earrings, but with good works. Decorate your faith with what attracts people. With good works.

So good works should decorate right belief. Paul wants Timothy to know that if the women in his church are saved, they'll be at least as attractive on the inside as they are on the outside. He wants Titus to know that slaves who are saved will be harder working and more obedient.

Our good works are our faith made visible. Almost. It's not quite that simple is it, because you can have the good works without the faith. Someone could be pinning apples on a dead tree. But the opposite is a more troubling problem. If we don't have good works? Where's our faith? There's no dichotomy here, your works decorate your faith. They don't make it objectively better, but subjectively more attractive. People will see your good works and give thanks to your Father in Heaven.

So could the women in Ephesus be saved and still dress to be the center of attention? Maybe. If they showed up the next week in sackcloth and ashes is that a way to show that they are following Jesus? Maybe. If slaves steal, is their baptism void? Maybe. Should only the hard working slave receive communion? Maybe. What about men who get angry? Once a week? Three times a week? Every time they get in a car?

And this is the marvel and the mystery of Christian ministry. This is what makes our work so indiscriminate, we can't read hearts, we just look at the adornments and pray they're not made of straw. How do you know when you're going in the right direction? Probably when the liberals are calling you a legalist, and the legalists are calling you a liberal.

A Resurrection Mission

It is perfectly clear then that the first Christian missionaries did not come forward with an exhortation; they did not say, 'Jesus of Nazareth lived a wonderful life of filial piety, and we call upon our hearers to yield yourselves, as we have, to the spell of that life.' Certainly that is what modern historians would have expected the first Christian missionaries to say, but it must be recognized as a matter of fact that they said nothing of the sort. Conceivably, the first disciples of Jesus, after the catastrophe of His death, might have engaged themselves in some quiet meditation on His teaching. They might have said to themselves that 'Our Father who are in Heaven,' was a good way of addressing God, even though the One who taught them to do it was dead. They might have clung to the ethical principles of Jesus and cherished the hope that the one who enunciated such principles might have had some personal existence beyond the grave.

Such reflections might have seemed very natural to the modern man, but to Peter, James and John, the certainly never occurred. Jesus had raised in them high hopes, and those hopes were destroyed by the cross; and reflections on the general principles of religion and ethics were powerless to revive them again. The disciples of Jesus had evidently been inferior to their master in every possible way; they had not understood His spiritual teaching; but even in the hour of solemn crisis had quarrled over great places in the Kingdom. What hope was there that such men could succeed when their Master had failed? Even when He had been with them, they were powerless; now that He was taken from them, what little power they may have had was gone.

Yet those same, weak, discouraged men, within a few days of the death of their Master, instituted the most important spiritual movement the world has ever seen. What had produced this astonishing change? What had transformed the weak and cowardly disciples into the spiritual conquerors of the world? Evidently it was not the mere memory of Jesus life, for the was a source of sadness, not of joy. Evidently the disciples of Jesus, within the few days between the crucifixion and the beginning of their work in Jerusalem had received some new equipment for their task. What that new equipment was, at leas the outstanding and eternal element in it, (to say nothing of the endowment which Christian men believe to have received at Pentecost) is perfectly plain. The great weapon with which the disciples of Jesus set out to conquer the world was not a mere comprehension of eternal principles; it was a historical message, an account of something that had happened, it was the message, 'He is risen!'

But the message of the resurrection was not isolated, it was connected with Jesus' death, seen now, to be not a failure but a triumphant act of divine grace; it was connected with the entire appearance of Jesus on the Earth.

J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, Pp23-25

"Strong God"

This is our 'song of the month' for April. I absolutely love it!

The Present Age is Easter Time

One author has written this: ‘the present age is Easter time. It begins with the resurrection of the Redeemer and ends with the resurrection of the redeemed. Between lies the spiritual resurrection of those called into life through Christ. So we live between two Easters, and in the power of the first Easter we go to meet the last Easter.’ Isn’t that a wonderful thought? In the power of the first Easter, which we celebrate today, we go to meet the last Easter. Because of the resurrection of the Redeemer, we can look forward to the resurrection of the redeemed.

We read about the Redeemer, Jesus, in verses 20-22, look at those with me. The resurrection is all about the Redeemer. Remember Paul has just said in verse 19 that if the resurrection is not true, then we are of all men most miserable. But now, he says, Jesus is risen from the dead! This is news that should make us rejoice, and he tells us why in these verses. First of all, we see that Jesus is the first fruits. In the Old Testament farming community, the first fruits were what you offered to God at the Temple. As soon as your wheat, or your corn, or whatever sprung up, you’d take an offering to the Temple. And the first fruits were a guarantee there were more fruits on the way. 

You can see then, how Jesus is the first fruits of them that slept. First of all, He is our offering to God. When we come and pray, we do it in Jesus name, when we ask for our sins to be forgive, we point to the work that Jesus has done. We have no merit before God except Jesus’ merit. We have nothing to offer except what Jesus has done. And just like a first fruit, because Jesus has risen, we can rest assured that one day, we, and all our loved ones, will rise in glory and be with God, just as Jesus is.

How does Jesus resurrection prove all these things? Because Jesus undid all the damage done by Adam. Look at verse 22, ‘for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive.’ Adam was our representative, and he sinned, and that sin was counted to all of us. We’re born sinful, you only have to walk though the daycare to know that. But we can be born again, and then Jesus will be our representative, and in Him, all who trust Him are made alive. Adam brings death, Christ brings life. Adam separates us from God, Christ brings us to Him. 

How can we be miserable, if these things are true?

In verse 23 Paul turns his attention to us, to the redeemed. Read that verse with me. Again, the first thing we see in this verse is that our resurrection is as safe, and as real as Jesus’. I love how Paul constantly shows us that all we need to be saved, and safe, is a relationship with Jesus. Paul doesn’t tell us to do anything to gain our own resurrection, he just tells us that Jesus was raised, and we will be too! He frees us from constantly feeling like we’re not doing enough, or that we’re not good enough, he frees us from comparing us to other people. If we are saved, we will rise on the last day, just as sure as Jesus did. 

This should be a great spur to us. There is nothing standing in the way of our relationship with God, so we can get up tomorrow and rejoice in Him, and love Him, and serve Him and obey Him, all because He has saved us.

And it should be a great comfort to us. There’s no need for us to fear death, because death just brings us closer to God. And our loved ones that have passed away this year will be raised, just as Jesus was.  You can see why if this is not true, verse 19 is right, and we’re miserable. But it is true? How can we do anything other than rejoice?

And Jesus resurrection has an impact that goes far beyond our own relationship with Jesus. Look at verses 24-28 with me as we think about the restoration. I wonder if the restoration of all things is one of the most overlooked doctrines in the church today. We believe Jesus will return and we’ll be with Him, but where? Well the Bible tells us that we’ll live, not on a cloud, but in a physical, perfect, restored world. Just as we’ll be restored, so will everything we see around us this morning. That’s why Romans 8:23 tells us that the whole creation groans waiting for our redemption. So it can be restored. 

Christ will do this, at the end, by putting all enemies under His feet. What happens at the end of the Bible? Jesus wins! Jesus reigns over the Earth, over the universe, on His throne, and all His enemies are gone forever. Every thought system, every policy, every law, every personal sin, all defeated forever. And Jesus on the throne! What an amazing though that is. And forever. There will never be a rebellion, there will never be an overthrow. And we’ll be with Him forever!

Paul reminds us the last enemy to be defeated is death. You can defeat nearly every sinful pattern in your life, you can have the closest walk with Jesus of anyone, but the enemy of death will still defeat you in the end. But not for long. We know Jesus has defeated death, he has struck it a mortal wound. We know the King has landed, and is marching toward the throne. We know that death, though not defeated, has been disarmed. We know those who die in faith go to be with Jesus. and one day, no one will die, and we’ll all be with Jesus, redeemed, resurrected and restored forever, and God will reign unopposed, and He will be our all in all. 

Paul says if these things are not true, then we would all be miserable. And we should be miserable, because we’d be wasting our lives. But these things are true. The first Easter leads inexorably toward the second Easter, where we’ll see the risen Jesus, He’ll wipe every tear from our eye, and we’ll rejoice forever with Him.

Bread of Heaven; a video by Glen Scrivener

God Speaks Life

I think one of the signs you're growing as a Christian is that your duties become your joys. You have to read the Bible, but, hey we get to read the Bible! We have to go to church, but guess what, it's Sunday, we get to go to church today! We have to get baptised, but yes! I get to be baptized, and identify with Christ and His people.

Duties slowly become joys. I'll be honest, i'm never excited when my alarm goes off at 515 four or five days a week. But marrying a teacher means early mornings and long days, and if i don't start in the Word, i'll never get there. So i get up, stumble to the coffee machine, locate my Bible, and the Valley of Vision, and off i go. I have to get up before dawn and read the Bible, but i get to wake up before dawn and read the Bible. A Christian duty becomes a delightful joy. The back yard is dark, the house is quiet, and God is speaking.

And when God speaks; life!

God speaks in Genesis 1, and there's life. God speaks and there are trees, and fruit, and seas teeming with fish, and Adam and Eve. And it's good. try it for yourself, try speaking out and creating life. I just did, it didn't work. But God speaks, and it does! Isaiah tells us that God's Word is like rain falling to the ground. It waters the crops and they grow. Life!

In Luke 7:11-17 Jesus is walking to Nain, and He passes a funeral procession. The boy is dead, the mother is wailing, the Nain City Nuggets Major League Mourning team are turning in an all-pro performance. But God is about to speak. 'Young man, i say to you, arise.' And he does. Because God spoke, and there was life. The mother rejoiced, the Nuggets trudged off the field, last minute winner- probably offside.

(As an aside, this is another one in the eye for people who tell us that 'Jesus never claimed to be God.' Jesus hardly did any else but claim He was God.)

And onto 2 Corinthians 4:4-6. What happened when we got saved? God turned the light on and we saw Christ. We saw Him, not as a 'good teacher,' not as an irrelevance, but as God Himself. The lights came on, and we worshiped. Just like 'in the beginning.' We see the glory of God in Christ. As we read the Gospel, the letters, the prophets, the history, we see God's glory in Christ.

We have to, and we get to. It's a duty and a joy. We have to because in the cultural wasteland of post Christian America, it's the only we to survive. We get to, because we meet a loving God, who would feed us with the finest of wheat, and honey from the rock.

Prayer for a Tuesday

Tuesday is an odd day isn't it? Not Monday, so there's no free pass to be grumpy, not Wednesday, so you don't feel like you're really making it to the weekend just yet. Tuesday is just sort of there, waiting to be got through.

I'm a fan of reading plans, and yesterday i started Joe Thorn's plan to read through the Valley of Vision in three months. I've had a copy of this book of Puritan prayers for a few years, but have hardly scratched the surface. I'm looking forward to doing just that in the coming weeks.

This morning's prayer was 'The Deeps' and what follows is the second half of that prayer.

Plough deep in me, great Lord, heavenly Husbandman,

that my being may be a tilled field,

the roots of grace spreading far and wide

until thou alone art seen in me

thy beauty golden like the summer harvest,

thy fruitfulness as Autumn plenty.

I have no master but thee,

no law but thy will,

no delight but thyself,

no wealth but that thou givest,

no good but that thou blessest,

I am nothing but that thou maketh me,

I have nothing but that i receive from thee

I can be nothing but that grace adorns me.

Quarry me deep, dear Lord,

and then fill me to overflowing,

with living water.

Reject and Protect

One of the reasons i love reading the Bible is the times when you can feel it slowly reshape your heart. Sometimes with the sudden power of a tornado, sometimes with the gentle persistence of the ocean reading the Bible informs us, changes us, it smashes up our categories and puts them back together again.

Reading the Bible confronts us with reality. In a day of mega-pastors, mega-churches and mega-conferences we need to the Bible to gently, or strongly, remind us what the church is for. That was Paul's aim in 1 Timothy. He doesn't give his young charge growth tips or ideas for a more engaging Sunday morning. he tells Timothy what the church is to reject, and what the church is to protect.

The Church, universal and local, then and now, must reject false teaching. Paul makes this very clear as early as verse three. Tell people to stop teaching different doctrines. Paul does tell us what they were teaching, but it was something Jewish, something mythical, something legal. Something that resulted in vain conversation and speculations, rather than the love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience. Reject false teaching. No matter how fashionable, no matter how comfortable, no matter how many people read the books, reject it. Spurgeon said, 'wrong is wrong though all call it right,' or something like that. And the church has to say that as well.

The church must reject false teachers as well. Not just their teaching, but them. Maybe this is who Hymenaeus and Alexander were. Hymenaeus pops up again in 2nd Timothy, so it's a fair guess that he at least was a teacher. Paul doesn't tell us that their popular and he doesn't want to cause a scene, he doesn't tell us we need to wait and see what they say next. He tells Timothy that he, personally, has handed them over to Satan. And this is a mercy! Mercy on false teachers means pointing out their false teaching.

And the church must protect what is true. How can we know what's true? Well does it issue in a deeper love for Jesus? A more whole-hearted love fro the brethren? Does it come from a pure faith and a clean conscience?

Paul's testimony in verses 12-17 are not a digression, he tells us what the church is to teach and protect.

Verse 13 tells us that Paul was a sinner before he was saved. A blasphemer, persecutor and insolent opponent, to use his words. So are we all, to a greater or lesser extent. That’s the bad news before the good news, that we’re all sinners, that we all deserve death. To get the Gospel right, the church must teach that.

Verses 12, 14 and 16 tell us that Paul was a sinner, saved by grace. Paul says that his strength comes from Jesus, that he received grace and mercy from Jesus. Our salvation is all of Jesus, and none of us. Jesus comes, Jesus lives perfectly, Jesus dies instead of us and rose again three days later. All we have to do is open the gift. Paul doesn’t want, or take, any credit for his salvation. And the church must teach that our salvation is all from Jesus, from beginning to end, if we’re going to teach the Gospel right.

Paul shows us in verse 17 that we’re saved to praise Jesus’ glory. Read that with me, because it’s so beautiful. This is what worship is. Recognizing God and giving Him glory. God is immortal, without beginning or end. He’s invisible, you can’t see Him. He’s the King of ages, His reign never ends. He is the only God. The choice is between God and no-god, not one god or another god. You were saved to give Him your attention and your affection.

These truths are the key and foundation of the church. Lose these, or even just assume them, and we lose everything.

The church must reject what's false, and protect what's true, for the sake of it's people. For the sake of every Timothy, every Hymenaeus and every Alexander. That what is beautiful may fill us to the core, and what causes shipwreck may be protected against.