Here's the link to the audio for yesterday's sermon, on Genesis 2:10-14. Interestingly, this is the first passage I've preached on twice - the first time was in our first year here, when we were still meeting for worship in our living room! Only one of our original members who were around at that time are still in the local congregation, and with five years between sermons and a wholesale reworking of the message, it "sounded familiar," but wasn't just a repeat!

It's an unusual and beautiful passage, and was the subject of one of my exegesis papers at seminary (and a great article in Clarion magazine by Dr. Gootjes from a number of years ago). Here's the link:

https://archive.org/details/SermonGenesis21014

And here's the "missing link" from the series - sermon #6 in the series, on Genesis 2:1-3, dealing with the Creator's Sabbath rest:

https://archive.org/details/SermonGenesis213

I've neglected to post the links to the audio of my current series of sermons on Genesis, so it's time to rectify that situation.

I'm finally getting over something that started as a cold, and then morphed into a sinus infection, ear infection, and bronchitis. It seemed to take forever for this one to leave, but two kinds of antibiotics seem to have made the difference at last.

But other than that, it's been a great month! We started our newest outreach program, "Man Up," with a great kick-off evening in April, with more than twenty participants, and the weekly course has been going very well.

And I also officiated my first wedding last week, which was a real blessing and a privilege. Congratulations to Wally and Kaitlyn VanGrootheest, and may the Lord grant you many years of joy together in his service!

Here are the links to the sermons:

Sermon #1 - http://archive.org/details/SermonGenesis11 - Genesis 1:1
Sermon #2 - http://archive.org/details/SermonGenesis123 - Genesis 1:2,3
Sermon #3 - http://archive.org/details/SermonGenesis145 - Genesis 1:4,5
Sermon #4 - http://archive.org/details/SemonGenesis1625 - Genesis 1:6-25
Sermon #5 - https://archive.org/details/SermonGenesis12631 - Genesis 1:26-31
Sermon #7 - http://archive.org/details/SermonGenesis249 - Genesis 2:4-9

Obviously #6 is missing from the series - I'm going to have to hunt it down, and will post the link if I do find it.

Here are the links to the audio for the last three sermons in our series on Mark's gospel. The first sermon in this series was preached last September, and now, six months and twenty-seven sermons later, it's fitting that the series concluded on Easter weekend.

https://archive.org/details/SermonMark15132
https://archive.org/details/SermonMark153339
https://archive.org/details/SermonMark1540168

Sermons cover Mark 15:1-32, Mark 15:33-39, and Mark 15:40 to 16:8.

Coming up next: Genesis!

Yesterday's sermon didn't get recorded, but here is the written text of the message.

Sermon text: Mark 14:66-72
Scripture reading: John 21:1-19; Mark 14:53-72

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,

Of all the words that the Apostle Peter ever heard, there are probably two in particular that he would never forget. And those are the first two words that the Lord Jesus spoke to him as he was in the middle of casting a net into the Sea of Galilee with his brother Andrew: "Follow me."

Those two words changed Peter's life forever. For the three years of our Lord's ministry, Peter did follow Jesus; we know he had his low points during this time - and those low points were about as low as you can get. In the space of five verses in Mark 8, for example, we see Peter going from one extreme to another. First we have Jesus asking His disciples, "But who do you say that I am," and Peter answering, with amazing insight, "You are the Christ," the anointed one of God. But then, when Jesus began to explain what being the Christ actually would mean for Him, "Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him."

From the heights to the depths; from the beautiful confession to this rebuke from the Lord Jesus: "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." The Lord Jesus had renamed Simon "Peter" - because it was on the rock of Peter's confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God," that the Lord Jesus would build His church. But within moments, Peter becomes Satan, the accuser, the tempter, the liar, personified.

But this led to another statement by the Lord Jesus, a statement that would have brought to mind the first words that Jesus had spoken to him: "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." Following the Messiah means following Him in every aspect of His mission, with total dedication, with complete commitment, in ways that, as we've seen, the disciples at first never expected. That was something Peter had to learn.

The point became clearer when the rich young ruler came to the Lord Jesus to learn what He had to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus had told the young man to sell all that he had, give everything to the poor, leave everything behind, and follow Him. We know how the young man went away with sorrow in his heart, because he had many possessions and he couldn't bear to leave them behind. But in response, once the young man has gone, Peter says this: "See, we have left everything and followed you."

And it was true; Peter and the other disciples had left their businesses and their families and their possessions behind, even though they often showed a very mistaken idea of why they were following, even though especially Peter often seemed to do the wrong thing, to say the wrong thing, like he did on the Mount of Transfiguration, when he offered to build three tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah - speaking without knowing what he was saying, which seemed to have been par for the course for Peter.

And finally, as the end drew ever nearer, the Lord Jesus had prophesied that all of his disciples would fall away; they would leave Him, alone, to face His fate in complete solitude. Peter couldn't and wouldn't accept this prophecy; maybe the others would fall away, but he would never. "Even though they all fall away," Peter said, "I will not." Those are confident words. There was no self-doubt in Peter, or if there was, he did all he could to drown it out by loudly proclaiming the right things. "I will not," he says. "Yes, you will," Jesus tells him - "Truly I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times." Of course, as we might expect, Peter denies that this is even possible, and he does his denying with great vigour.

But while Jesus is praying in the garden, he comes back to his disciples to find Peter sound asleep when he was supposed to be keeping watch. Less than an hour had gone by, and the reality of what was happening certainly wasn't living up to the level of Peter's bravado. But Jesus gives him one final exhortation: "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."

Jesus knew Peter inside and out, like He knew all men. And he knew that when Peter said something, he fully intended to do just what he said. When Peter said, "I'll never fall away," he meant what he said. His spirit was certainly willing. But his weakness was becoming all the more apparent, the weakness of the flesh.

So Jesus is betrayed with a kiss by Judas. There's a brief struggle; one man draws his sword and fights back; he cuts off the ear of the High Priest's servant Malchus. And that one man with a sword, one man who still apparently didn't get the fact that the kingdom of heaven wouldn't come by the sword, was Peter. But then, as the mob takes Jesus away to be tried, His prophecy comes to pass; Mark tells us in one simple sentence, and that sentence is telling just as much in what it doesn't say as it is in what it does say: "And they all left Him and fled." "They all" - those fleeing men aren't named. They're not called "His disciples;" by this point their cowardice has made them unworthy of that title. The sheep had been scattered; they've all fled. Except one.

And that one was Peter. "And Peter had followed Him," we read in Mark 14:54. Jesus had said, "Follow me." Peter had said, "We have given up everything to follow you." Jesus had said again, "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me." And Peter followed, even after Jesus was arrested.

But that's not the whole story of verse 54: "Peter had followed Him," yes. That much is true. But there's an important caveat added to that statement: "at a distance." He had tried to take up arms against Jesus' enemies, and Jesus had stopped him. He had probably escaped from the mob, and was most likely watching from a distance. And as Jesus was led away, Peter followed - but not close enough to be identified with Jesus. Not as a compatriot, heading to a common goal. Not as a servant following his master to the bitter end. He follows from a distance; close enough to see what's happening, close enough to satisfy his curiosity about what's happening, but not close enough. And even though Peter was following Jesus, that distance made all the difference in the world.

So Jesus is put on trial. We know what the trial was - it was a joke, a mistrial, a miscarriage of justice. The council didn't have the authority under Roman rule to execute the death penalty anyway, but they could make a recommendation to the Roman authorities that their prisoner be executed. And they did their best. False witnesses came forward, but their stories couldn't be corroborated, and they contradicted each other. There was no evidence that would rightly lead to the death penalty being meted out.

Until Jesus shows that even when the situation seems most out of His control, amazingly enough it's still He who is in control of His fate, not His accusers. After the circus of false witnesses and lies and false accusations is over, after no testimony was found that could lead to the death penalty, the High Priest stands up to ask Jesus one last question. "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And Jesus answers, clearly, without leaving any mystery. The time had come where He could be absolutely open and clear about who He was; there would be no mistaking His claims, there would be no misunderstanding of what it meant for Jesus to be the Messiah. He was bound. He seemed to be at His most powerless. There was no way He could now be mistaken for an earthly Messiah who would lead an armed revolt against the occupying Roman forces. Now Jesus could state, clearly and plainly, who He was and what He had come to do.

Remember: the events that had just happened in the Garden of Gethsemane had made it clear that the cup that He had to drink from was not going to be taken from Him. Here was an opportunity for just that to happen; here was an opportunity for Jesus to avoid the terrifying experience of having to face the wrath of God that He so dreaded. But just as He did when He stood up to the temptation of Satan in the wilderness at the beginning of His ministry, just as He did throughout His ministry, just as He did in the Garden of Gethsemane, He remains faithful. He remains obedient. He remains true to His calling.

And so He answers, "I am." He uses the same words that had led to a crowd attempting to throw Him off a cliff for blasphemy, because that one claim, "I Am," was the phrase that God himself had used to identify himself to Moses. And then He identifies himself with the Son of Man, once again, and tells the High Priest that he would see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power, at the very right hand of God himself, and coming with the clouds of heaven."

All of the false witnesses in the world didn't matter now. In the eyes of the council, this was enough. This was blasphemy, a capital offence for the Jews. He was using the LORD's self-description to describe himself; He was saying that He had a special relationship with God the Father; He was even saying that He was going to be God's right-hand man, so to speak. And this is just what the council was looking for, the very evidence that the High Priest needed, direct from the mouth of the accused. The case was closed. All that remained was to have the sentence passed, to have everything made legal by the people who really had the control, the Roman authorities.

Then the abuse starts - the blindfold, the spitting, the blows, the mockery. These men, who accused Jesus of being a false prophet, strike him and then ask Him to tell them who it was that had hit Him; they want Him to "prophesy" on their own wicked terms; and He refuses. Because even in this, He's still the one who's in control. And the story that envelopes the account of the trial shows that He is the truest of prophets. Because as the trial comes to its conclusion, the prophesy he had made to Peter is coming to pass, just as He had said.

Mark makes the contrast between Jesus and Peter very clear. As Jesus stands up, ready to take what was coming to Him, Peter is on the outside, below in the courtyard. He had followed at a distance, and even though only a wall separated him from his Master, that distance had become even greater. A servant girl recognizes him as having been with Jesus; but Peter claims to Neither know nor understand what she means. And the rooster crows. Then the servant tells some of the others who were gathered that Peter was one of the disciples. And he denies it again. Then one of the bystanders comes and confronts Peter. And here's where things get truly awful. Peter doesn't just claim not to understand, he doesn't just issue a weak denial; in the strongest possible terms He disassociates himself from Jesus. With his words, he increases the distance that already existed between the One he said he would never deny and himself. He invokes a curse upon himself. He swears. "I don't know the man that you're talking about."

He doesn't even mention Jesus' name. Peter has gone from confessing, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God," to making this claim: "I do not know this man of whom you speak." Even on the face of it, it's a ludicrous statement; here he is, in the courtyard of the High Priest's home, while the trial for "this man" of whom the woman was speaking was going on. He's a Galilean; He's in Jerusalem following Jesus' triumphal entry, when throngs of people welcomed Jesus into the city, following the cleansing of the temple, which must have been on everyone's mind during the festival. Certainly Peter is overstating the case more than just a little bit in order to protect himself.

But in that overstatement, Peter is making a very telling point about his relationship with the Christ at that moment. "Knowing" someone in Scripture has a deeper meaning than just being familiar with someone, or knowing who someone is. It involves intimacy, closeness, a connection, to the person who is known. Peter followed Christ, but at a distance. That distance became greater with every denial. Peter knew who Jesus was, but it seems that he doesn't truly know Him intimately, with that close, personal connection and attachment that "knowing" implies. His terrible sin has separated him from the Saviour. He's in the dark, literally, and figuratively. He's on the outside, looking in, literally and figuratively. Our Canons of Dort call this the "lamentable fall" of Peter, and use this story as an example of the fact that "when [God's people] do not watch and pray, they not only can be drawn away by the flesh, the world, and Satan into serious and atrocious sins, but with the righteous permission of God are sometimes actually drawn away."

I've said before in this series of sermons that we can often relate better to Peter than to the other disciples, because we recognize ourselves in his weakness, in his failings, in his rashness, in his speaking without thinking first, all of these things. We see these things in ourselves, and we see them in Peter, so we sympathize with him, and maybe we even excuse him a little bit, because he's so much like us.

But I pray that in this "lamentable fall," as our confession says, none of us would ever be able to relate to Peter, or excuse what he did. This was an act of high treason against the King. These denials constituted a "serious and atrocious" sin. There's no excuse for it; the Lord Jesus had warned Peter, and he had given Peter the prescription to guard against just this kind of thing happening: "Watch and pray, so that you won't be led into temptation." Peter was watching alright, from a distance, but he couldn't keep guard in the garden without falling asleep, and he couldn't keep guard over himself here in the High Priest's courtyard. And so he fell, and he fell hard. And there's no excusing it; what Peter did that night was pretty much the most horrible thing a person can do; denying Christ, running away from Him; not standing with Him, leaving Him absolutely and completely alone in the face of a pack of wolves intent on destroying Him. This was truly shameful.

Now you may be thinking that I'm being a little hard on Peter in saying all these things. After all, we've all sinned, who are we to cast stones at someone else? Yes, we have all sinned. The Apostle Paul spoke about "the defiled and unbelieving," in Titus 1:15. For them, nothing is pure; both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny Him by their works. So even if we don't outright deny Jesus like Peter did, swearing an oath to deny that we even know who the Christ is, we can just as much deny Him by our works.

Jude speaks about the same thing in Jude 4, speaking of false teacher who had crept into the church - they were "ungodly people, who perverted the grace of our God into sensuality and denied our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." Perverting the truth, falling prey to the lusts of the flesh - in doing those things we too can deny our Saviour. And finally, Peter himself wrote much the same thing, in 2 Peter 2:1 - he speaks about false prophets and false teachers who would secretly bring in destructive false teachings, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

So, to one extent or another, each one of us has, in practice, if not in word, denied the Master who bought us. When we deliberately choose to live in sin, we are denying His sufficiency. We're denying that He is enough, that the pleasure He has to offer is good enough. We're denying that His Word is true. We're denying that His love is good enough for us. We're denying that He is worthy of our 100% devotion. But that doesn't mean we should tiptoe around Peter's sin. We should call it what it is - a horrible blasphemy against our God and Saviour. And then we should look at ourselves in exactly the same way - for as Jesus himself said, "for with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you" (Matthew 7:2). We should grieve over our denials of the Saviour. And we should follow the prescription that Jesus gave to Peter before his fall - watch and pray.

Be watchful. Remain vigilant. Don't fall asleep. And seek the Lord in prayer, because you won't be able to do any of this without Him and His power. And at the same time, remember what happens next in this story. Verse 72: "And immediately the rooster crowed a second time. And Peter remembered how Jesus had said to him, 'Before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.' And he broke down and wept." We know what happened. We know how Peter went on to become one of the greatest leaders of the early church, the writer of two beautiful letters that are included in the Bible, a great preacher and apostle who spoke about Jesus fearlessly and without shame. He was called back by the same Jesus he had denied. Those prophetic words that Jesus had spoken to him called him out of his sleep, out of his lack of watchfulness, and brought him to repentance - to real repentance. Not just feeling bad for his sin, but turning away from it.

Peter was restored. And he was restored by Jesus himself, after his resurrection. Peter had denied Jesus three times while standing outside in the dark, warming himself by a charcoal fire in the High Priest's courtyard. But in a perfect parallel with Peter's denials, three times Jesus restored him and commissioned him, in the story recorded for us in John 21, on the seashore, with a new day dawning, as fish and bread were being prepared on a charcoal fire. Three times Peter had sworn that he had nothing to do with the Messiah; but later, the Messiah would ask him three times, "Peter, do you love me?" And by God's grace, through God's gracious work of restoration, Peter could answer three times, "Yes, Lord, I do love you." And Jesus could give Him that great commission, that great calling: "Feed my sheep."

And throughout his life from then on, that's exactly what Peter would do. And his words, inspired by the Holy Spirit, included in Scripture, still feed God's sheep to this very day.
And then, after that restoration, the Lord Jesus made another prophecy - "Truly, truly, I say to you," he told Peter, "when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go. This He said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. And after saying this He said to him, 'Follow me."

His first words to Peter: "Follow me." His last words to Peter, after everything that had happened: "Follow me." Even after all that Peter had done, even with the depths to which Peter had fallen, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ shone through, all the more brightly, with that final call. Restoration is possible, and the story of Peter proves that. Forgiveness, reconciliation, the repairing of the relationship between God and human beings. The story of Peter's threefold denial of the Saviour is a warning to all of us, a serious warning, a serious exhortation, to watch and pray, so that the same thing doesn't happen to us.

But at the same time, the story of his restoration, the story of repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation and commissioning, gives us hope. May God in His grace keep us from falling like Peter did. May He, in His grace, help us to mourn and grieve over the times when we have fallen like Peter did. And at the same time, we need to trust and believe, that no matter how far we may have fallen, that there is forgiveness for those who grieve over their sins, and turn back to Christ. It's not enough just to feel sorry; Judas felt sorry for what he had done, and look what that got him - a horrible death and burial in the pauper's grave, and no restoration. But where the gospel call to repent and believe is preached and heard, and not just heard, but responded to, there is hope - real hope, a living hope, a hope that's based in the suffering and death and resurrection of Christ, which lies at the centre of our sermon text this morning.

So don't excuse what Peter did, and don't excuse what you yourself have done. Don't make excuses, for him, or for yourself. But turn to Christ. Look to Him. Give yourself to Him. He will receive you, and you can be assured that when you do, every sin, no matter how terrible, no matter how serious and atrocious, has been forgiven. Amen.

Here are the audio links for last week's sermon and yesterday's sermon. Last week I preached on Mark 13:1-37, and yesterday's text was Mark 14:26-52.

We had an especially enjoyable day yesterday; the Credo High School girls' basketball team was in town for the Provincial tournament, and they joined us for worship and fellowship along with their chaperones and a number of other guests. And we celebrated the Lord's Supper together, which was also a blessing!

Here are the links:

https://archive.org/details/SermonMark13137
https://archive.org/details/SermonMark142651

I managed to upload the audio for the sermons I preached on the last two Sundays:

https://archive.org/details/SermonMark11133

https://archive.org/details/SermonMark121827

The first is the audio of the sermon that I posted in written form, on Mark 11:1-33. The second has Mark 12:18-27 as its text, and the Scripture readings were from Ephesians 5 and Revelation 19.

This is the story of the theological trouncing that Jesus gave to the Sadducees when they asked him a question about the resurrection. In giving His answer, the Lord Jesus provides us with a couple of great insights: the first on the institution of marriage, and the second on the nature of eternal life. The Scripture readings, Paul's instructions to husbands and wives in Ephesians 5, and the beautiful picture of the marriage feast of the lamb in Revelation 19, show us the real meaning of marriage in the light of eternity, and the glorious truth of eternal life in the light of the picture God has given us in the institution of marriage.

It's been some time since I've posted, but there is a reason for that - I was away on vacation for two weeks. We're thankful to the Revs. Janssen and Lodder, from Abbotsford and Cloverdale, for filling in while I was away. The mission congregation really appreciated these two pastors coming to Prince George to lead the worship services and teach Bible studies while they were here. It's a wonderful blessing to experience that "bond of the churches" in this way, and it allowed me to rest easy for two weeks, knowing that the congregation was in good hands!

This past Sunday I returned to the pulpit, and preached on Jesus' cleansing of the temple. I did record the sermon, and it is visible on my iPhone, but for whatever reason it doesn't show up on iTunes, so I'm unable to upload it to www.archive.org for the moment.

So instead of the audio, here's the written text for this past Sunday's sermon.

Scripture readings were from Jeremiah 7:1-11, and Isaiah 56:1-12, the passages that the Lord Jesus cited in His teaching in the temple on that day.

This is the nineteenth sermon in our current series on the gospel according to Mark. So without further ado, here 'tis!

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,

Mark 11 brings us from the greatest of heights to the lowest of lows - from Jesus' triumphal entry into the city of God, to the chief priests and scribes plotting to destroy Him. Jesus' entry into Jerusalem is the picture of excitement and joy. The people welcome Jesus as the Davidic king triumphantly entering the city of His father David; they lay out their garments on the dusty Jerusalem streets to prepare the way for the king; they spread palm branches on the roads as a kind of ancient version of the red carpet treatment that's reserved for royalty today.

But within mere days, the crown of David that the people were wanting to put on Jesus' head would be replaced by a crown of thorns. The royal welcome would be forgotten, and a parody of the kingship would be played out, with Jesus dressed in royal purple, being beaten and spit upon and mocked with a false homage. The crowd that had welcomed Him with shouts of "Hosanna, blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord," and "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David," would be replaced by a crowd demanding His crucifixion.

As we've seen, Jesus' disciples now recognized that Jesus was the Messiah. As they entered Jerusalem, with Jesus seated on a young horse, the crowds of pilgrims who had gathered in Jerusalem for the Passover festival had obviously begun to recognize the same thing, even if they didn't fully understand all the meaning that Jesus would bring to that concept of "Messiah". They had great expectations; excitement filled the air in Jerusalem. They shouted "Hosanna," "save us," and cried out the words of Psalm 118:25,26 - "Save us, we pray, O LORD! O LORD, we pray, give us success! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD! We bless you from the house of the LORD!"

Two centuries before Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, in 164 B.C. there had been another procession much like this one. A man named Judas Maccabeus had won a great victory against the Seleucid Empire. On December 14th of that year, he had entered Jerusalem, he purified the temple, which had been desecrated by the occupiers, and restored the true worship of the LORD in His House. Since that time, this purification of the temple had been celebrated with the festival of Hanukkah, which is still an important Jewish celebration today.

Perhaps the tens of thousands of Jews who had filled Jerusalem to celebrate Passover were expecting a similar thing to happen now. Perhaps they saw in Jesus another Judas Maccabeus - someone who would lead God's people to drive out the foreigners and restore Israel to her rightful place. In the days of the Maccabees the enemies had been the Seleucids, in the days of Jesus those Greek enemies had been replaced by the Romans - but maybe, the people thought, the LORD was finally doing the same thing He had done through Judas Maccabeus. But obviously, as it turns out, they didn't get what they expected.

After Jesus entered Jerusalem, He did go to the temple. He went through the temple, looking at everything, but it was already too late in the day for Him to take any action, whatever form that action might take. You can imagine that at least a part of the crowd that had welcomed Him with such joy would have followed Him to the temple, with a sense of expectation. But they would have to wait until the following day; and what actually happened, the action that Jesus actually took in the event, was not at all what they had expected.

Jesus returns to Bethany for the night, near the Mount of Olives, outside of the city; there was probably no room for Jesus and His disciples to stay within the city limits because of all the pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem for Passover, and they had friends in Bethany, so the next day would bring another entry into Jerusalem - this one much more low-key, and an astonishing series of events in the temple.

The next day they came to Jerusalem. Jesus entered the temple once again. And what He did was shocking. He began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. He overturned the tables of the money-changers. He upset the seats of those who sold pigeons. He refused to allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And then, after the uproar had ceased, He began to teach. All of the hustle and bustle of activity that had been going on in the temple had been brought to a standstill, and only one activity was taking place - the teaching of the Lord. We're only given a fragment of what Jesus taught, but the original wording of the text makes it clear that this was only a small part of an extended session of instruction. But the words that Mark recorded for us must have been central to His message: "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers."

The crowd was astonished at His teaching. They were amazed. They were shocked, and they were impressed. But the shepherds of the people, the chief priests and experts in the law, were afraid of Him, for that very reason. This man was developing a huge following, and they knew that they had to take drastic action. This kind of thing could not continue. But these were not brave men. They feared the crowd, they feared Jesus' popularity, and they knew that they would have to take action against this man in a more subtle way. So while the crowds hung on Jesus' every word, their leaders began to put together a plan to get rid of this troublemaker once and for all.

And that teaching, like everything Jesus had taught throughout His ministry, had its basis in the Old Testament. This time Jesus is quoting from Jeremiah 7:11, where Jeremiah had the same message for the people of his day: "Has this house," the LORD asked through Jeremiah, "which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD."

The LORD had declared that He had witnessed what was going on the house that bore His Name, His holy temple, in Jeremiah's day. And the night before, the Lord Jesus himself had borne witness to what was happening in God's house. And so the message He proclaims is the same. Jeremiah had told the people not to trust in those deceptive words - "This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD."

The temple was not an end in itself, but that's what the people had made of it - they were the people who had the temple, they were the people with whom the God of creation dwelt, and they trusted that everything would be alright with them because of this, regardless of how they lived. They weren't executing justice with one another, within the covenant community. They were oppressing the sojourners - people on the outside, the Gentiles. They weren't caring for the widows, for the fatherless. They were shedding innocent blood in the temple while going after other gods.

They thought that the temple would save them, along with everything that went with it. So they went about their worship, their sacrifices, their offerings, while stealing, murdering, committing adultery, swearing falsely, making offerings to Baal, and going after other gods. They trusted in their status as the people of the covenant, and meanwhile they completely disregarded what stood at the heart of their relationship with the God whose temple they so revered - His demand for holiness; His demand for unswerving devotion to Him; His demand for a religion and religious practices that came from the heart. Their religion had become a self-centred religion - the people were thinking, "What's in it for me," looking out for their own interests, trying to get what they wanted. They had forgotten that one of the reasons why the Church, the people of God, exists, is for the sake of the world.

Isaiah had taken on the same issues in his ministry, and the Lord Jesus also refers to Isaiah's prophecies, with a quote from Isaiah 56:7; Isaiah had reminded the people of the universal significance of the temple. He had spoken of the importance of the temple for all nations; the temple wasn't meant to be a source of national pride for Israel; it wasn't meant to be the focus of their nationalistic hopes and dreams. It wasn't supposed to be another barrier between the Jews and the Gentiles. Isaiah spoke of the glorious future, when all the nations would stream to the temple of the LORD, when people from every tribe and every nations would come to the LORD's holy mountain to worship Him.

The temple stood for inclusion, not for exclusion - for the universality of God's people, not for the special importance of a select few. God's people had been called to be a light to the nations; the city God had chosen as His dwelling place was a city on a hill, on Mount Zion. And the people of God were called to be that city on a hill, to be a beacon of hope in a world filled with darkness. They had been called to be light, and salt - but their salt had lost its flavour, and their light had gone out. "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples," the LORD said.

But that's not what Jesus had seen the night before when He had gone to check things out on the mountain of the LORD, in His dwelling place. Things hadn't changed since Jeremiah's day, and they hadn't changed since the time of Isaiah's ministry. The leaders of God's people were still silent dogs that couldn't bark; they dreamt, they lay down, they loved to slumber; they were dogs with mighty appetites - they loved to eat, and they never had enough. But the shepherds of the people, the ones who were supposed to be leading the way, had no understanding; this becomes clear in this passage, when we get this picture of the men who were supposed to be the spiritual leaders of Israel, skulking around, afraid of their sheep, making plans to destroy the Messiah because the popularity of His ministry was threatening them.

So that's what Jesus was teaching, after He had cleared out the temple. But what was that activity we call "the cleansing of the temple," really all about? What was Jesus doing when He overturned the money-changers' tables, when He threw down the chairs of the men who sold pigeons for sacrifice, when He stopped people from carrying things through the temple?

It's often seen as Jesus' action against the commercialization of religion. It seems like the temple and the temple service had been turned into a money-making racket, with people looking at the temple more as a source of income than as a house of prayer and worship. With the focus on money-changers and salesmen, our first impression may be that this is the case. And we can apply that to our own day as well, when we see religious hucksters getting rich by selling a message to the masses that will get them the most money.

But there's more to it than that in this account. Commercialization of religion was not the focus of the Lord Jesus when He stopped the activity in the temple on that day. Think about the situation. During the main feasts in the Jewish calendar, many thousands of pilgrims would come to Jerusalem and to the temple to worship, to offer their sacrifices, to serve the Lord by offering their sacrifices to Him. By Jesus' day, there were Jews living throughout the Roman Empire, and they would come to Jerusalem from places as far away as Persia, Egypt, and Rome itself.

They couldn't transport animals for sacrifice that far - the animals had to be without blemish, and a trip that took many days of walking, a trip that was fraught with danger, would make it nearly impossible to get a proper sacrificial animal from home to the temple. So it was actually essential to the whole temple service that there be animals available for worshippers who couldn't bring their own animals with them. The selling of animals on the site of the temple wasn't a problem in itself - it was a good and necessary thing that allowed Jews from far away to do what the Lord required of them.

And all these people coming from different countries would come with money in their own currencies. That money would have to be changed in order for purchases to be made - that's just a fact of life, and it's something we still have to do when we travel to foreign countries. In order for people who lived outside Israel to offer sacrifices, they would first need someone to provide the animal for sacrifice; but they would also need to pay for that sacrifice, and in order to do that, they would have to have the local currency. So the money-changers weren't a problem either, and having money-changers on the temple grounds in order to facilitate the process wasn't a sin in itself either. The buyers and sellers, the money-changers, they all had an important job to do. They allowed the worship of God to continue, as He had commanded in His law.

As for carrying things through the temple - people would have had to carry things all the time, and there was no sin in that either. The central thing they would have to carry would be the animal they were going to sacrifice. There was no law against carrying things in the temple, and you would have to carry your pigeons in order to bring them for sacrifice. So when Jesus stopped people from carrying things through the temple, He wasn't acting against some kind of commercial enterprise, or some kind of unlawful labour in the centre of the Jewish religion.

The key to understanding Jesus' cleansing of the temple is in His teaching. It's like everything else in Jesus' ministry, and it shows us why the preaching of the gospel is so important. Because Jesus interprets His own actions by explaining them in words, so that we don't have to guess as to what He was actually doing.

He says that the people had turned the temple into a den of robbers. Does that mean that the money-changers and the animal salesmen were ripping people off? No, it doesn't, and the word that Jesus uses, the word translated as "robbers," doesn't mean that at all, in the way we think of "robbers" today. The word "robbers" is the same word used to describe the men who were crucified along with Jesus, the same word used to describe Barabbas, who was set free in place of Jesus. These so-called "robbers" weren't thieves - they weren't men who broke into people's houses to steal things, or people who robbed banks, or held up travellers on the highways.

These "robbers" were brigands; they were revolutionaries. Thieves weren't crucified; people who stole things from others would never receive that form of punishment in the Roman Empire. We need to realize what these men were - they were men who were plotting violence and rebellion in order to rid Israel of the oppressors, of the occupying forces of Rome.

So when Jesus says that the temple had become a den of robbers, that's the accusation He's making - not that the temple had become home to a crew of people who were ripping off the common folk who just wanted to make sacrifices, but that the temple had become the focal point of an exclusivistic nationalism. History shows that these kinds of movements were going on all the time in Palestine, and they centred in Jerusalem, and ultimately they would lead to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD.

So the centre of Israel's religion, the temple, the place that God had chosen as the central focus of His worship, had become a symbol of everything that was wrong with Israel, instead of the symbol of God's dwelling among men. Instead of welcoming the nations into the house of God, which was supposed to be the house where all nations could come and meet with the Creator God of the universe, the Jews were using the temple as yet another symbol of their own importance, at the expense of all the nations around them.

They weren't doing what they had been called to do; the LORD had told Abraham that through his seed all the nations of the world would be blessed; the LORD had told the people through Moses that they had been called to be a kingdom of priests. But Israel had forgotten this calling. And now the Lord Jesus was calling them on the carpet for that failure, a failure to bear fruit in service of the Great King, in service to God himself.

We can see that being made clear in the way Mark recorded this story. Once again, he uses a kind of "sandwich" technique - a story in the middle, with two bookends at the beginning and end, that kind of enfold that main story, and shine a light on the significance of the main story. In the case of this temple cleansing, the bookends are the strange story of the cursing of the fig tree. Before Jesus cleanses the temple, we read about Him coming to a fig tree that wasn't bearing any fruit. He was hungry, and He was looking for figs to eat, but there weren't any on the tree, because it wasn't the season for figs. And so Jesus pronounces a curse on this fruitless fig tree - He says to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again."

But then comes the story of the temple cleansing. The fig tree seems to have been forgotten for the moment. But on the evening after the events in the temple, they left the city again, and the next morning that mysterious fig tree comes back into the picture. Jesus and His disciples see the fig tree, and Peter sees that the tree has withered. Jesus' curse has had its effect; the tree wasn't bearing fruit when the Lord wanted fruit, and now that fig tree would never bear fruit again.

Now if we simply looked at this story of the fig tree apart from the context, we would be left scratching our heads about what it could possibly mean. It seems vindictive of the Lord Jesus to curse the fig tree for not bearing fruit, when it wasn't even the season for figs. Surely He could have looked elsewhere for food without seeming to lash out in anger at an inanimate object, a tree, of all things, and pronouncing a curse on it.

But we need to read that story together with the story of the cleansing of the temple, with the prophetic context in mind. Because we can only understand the story of the fig tree if we understand the story of the temple cleansing, and the story of the fig tree helps us to gain a clearer understanding of what Jesus had done and said in the temple on the previous day.

That fig tree represents Israel. Israel hadn't been doing the job she had been called to do. She hadn't been bearing fruit in service of the LORD, who had planted them in the promised land. And because God's tree wasn't bearing the fruit it should have been bearing, it would be cursed. Never again would she bear fruit. There would be no more chances. God's people had refused to be a light, and now the light was being removed from them.

The temple would be destroyed. Jerusalem would be destroyed. The people who rejected the Messiah would face judgement. The temple, which only had meaning in the light of the Messiah, was becoming a thing of the past. The sacrifices, which Jesus ceremonially stopped on the day He cleansed the temple, would be stopped once and for all when the temple fell, because the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice to which all of those hundreds of thousands of animal sacrifices pointed, had been offered.

The people of God would be reconstituted; the Lord Jesus fulfilled the calling that Israel had been called to fulfil, the calling that Israel had failed to fulfil - He would bring blessing to the nations; He would build a new temple, the Church, which would become the house of prayer for all nations. No more sacrifice would be necessary, no physical temple would be needed, because His Church, His new people, from every tribe and nation, would be His temple.

So the message we need to get from this passage is not a warning against commercialization of religion. No, the message of Jesus' cleansing of the temple is a declaration of who Jesus was, and what He was doing, and what He would do, as He moved toward His sacrificial death, His resurrection, and His ascension. He would provide the ultimate sacrifice. No more buyers, no more sellers, no more money-changers, would be necessary. No more animals would have to die. Because He was the Lamb of God, who had made all of those sacrifices meaningful in the first place.

He would destroy the temple, and He would rebuild it, in a way that would bring blessing to the world. He would judge Israel for her unfaithfulness and for her rejection of Him as the Anointed Saviour, and a large part of that judgement would be the destruction of the temple that Israel had put her trust in, and the city that Israel believed made her so special. His curse of the fig tree symbolized the judgement that would come, and His cleansing of the temple, shutting down the sacrificial system and everything that went on in the temple for a single day, served as a foretaste for Israel of the judgement that would come upon the very same generation.

And as God's people today, as people who seek to follow the path that was opened up and laid out by the Lord Jesus, we also receive this account of the temple cleansing as a warning for us. One of the reasons that we exist as the church of God is for the sake of the world around us, a world that lives in the darkness and futility of ignorance and sin. We, the people of God, gathered from every nation, are the city set on a hill, a light to the nations, the salt of the earth. If we think that our religion is only about us, if we think that we exist as Church solely for our own sake, we are falling into the same horrible trap that the Jews had fallen into. If we trust in our position as God's covenant people, if we take pride in our status and look down on people on the outside, and seek to exclude them, if we don't take our calling to be a salt and a light seriously, we should never think that the judgement that fell on Israel would never fall on us.

The Apostle Paul speaks of an olive tree in Romans 11, using the same kind of imagery that Jesus used when He cursed that fig tree. We have been grafted in to the olive tree, the olive tree of the people of God. Branches were broken off so that we might be grafted in. "That is true," Paul says, but "They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you" (Romans 11:19-21).

We must remember our calling; we are called to reflect Jesus to the world around us. He offered the ultimate sacrifice, and we're called to emulate Him, in sacrificing ourselves, our desires, our wants, for His sake, and for the sake of others. He gave His all for us, and He calls us to give His all for Him, to Him, and to the world. We have this warning to keep us on track, to remind us of our high, beautiful calling. We've been given the greatest gift in the world - the gift of salvation. What greater calling is there than to share that gift with others?

Through Jesus, all the nations of the world will be blessed; He has chosen us to be His instruments in bringing that blessing to the nations. And He equips us to do that; we don't have to fear, because He is with us. We can go forward in confidence, because He paved the way. So let our joy overflow, so that we can do what Israel failed to do, and what the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to do - to be God's temple, welcoming all to join us, in a house that God built as a house of prayer, for all nations.

Amen.

http://archive.org/details/SermonMark91-13

Here's the link to the audio of the sermon I preached yesterday, on the transfiguration of Jesus. The story of the transfiguration is fascinating and very odd at the same time. I've often wondered about the meaning of the transfiguration, and set about trying to answer my own questions about it. Why was Jesus transfigured, what was the transfiguration supposed to mean for the disciples, and what are we supposed to get from this account as God's people today?

Here's the link to the audio from yesterday's sermon, on Mark 8:22-38. It's an intriguing passage, and it's one I've often wondered about - Jesus heals a blind man in Bethsaida, but He takes two steps to give the man sight. I've always wondered why He chose to heal the man in that way, when He could have just done it immediately, as He had done in the past.

But as usual, context is the key. When you read the story of the healing of the blind man together with the story that follows, it all (pardon the pun) becomes clear. Just as there were two stages in the blind man's receiving sight, there were two stages in the disciples' understanding of what it meant that Jesus was the Christ. They had to have their eyes opened to the complete picture of what it meant for Jesus to be the Messiah, and what His ministry and mission would entail. So, without further ado, here's the link:

http://archive.org/details/SermonMark822-38

What with the Christmas season, and a rampant flu bug rampaging its way through our home, I'm more than a little behind in updating the blog, among other things. I didn't record last Sunday's sermon, but I do have the text, so here it is.

It's another wonderful passage, another story of the Lord's healing work - this time of a deaf mute. Scripture readings are Isaiah 35:1-10 and Mark 7:24-37, and the text of the sermon is Mark 7:33-35.

Here 'tis!

Beloved Brothers and Sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,

So far in this worship service, we've sung from three of the Psalms. With the words of Psalm 134, we've encouraged one another to "come, bless the LORD with one accord, and serve Him with all your might." In Psalm 119, we've prayed that we might submit ourselves to God's commandments, and move forward, keeping a steady course. And with the words of Psalm 146, we've praised our God and maker, and we've made a declaration that we will praise our King, for all of our lives.

All of that's pretty obvious; those of you who are members and those of you who've been worshipping with us for a while know that we do these things every week. You may even think of this simply as part of our regular routine. But consider this: if you sang those words, and meant them, if you've praised God from the heart, if you understood how important it was that you were encouraging your brothers and sisters, the rest of the congregation, with God's Word, this is evidence that something amazing has happened to you, within you. A very real miracle has occurred. Your mouth has been opened to sing praises to the Creator God, and that's what we've been doing.

And also in this worship service, we've read together from three passages of Scripture - one Psalm, in our call to worship, one reading from the prophets, as our Scripture reading, and one passage from the Gospel of Mark, the text for this sermon. Once again, I'm not surprising you with this revelation, and once again, all of this is pretty normal; this is the way we've been doing things here for nearly five years, and that's not going to change. There isn't going to be too much in the worship service that will catch you by surprise, and again, this may have already become old hat to you.

But again, if you've heard these words, if you've read them together with your brothers and sisters and the pastor, and if you've understood these words, and trusted that these are the very words of God, that too is evidence that an incredible miracle has taken place in your life. Once again, you have been the recipient of a truly wondrous gift. Your ears have been opened to hear the Word of God - not just to listen to it, not just to have it go in one ear and out the other, but to truly hear.

These are the miracles that happen when God's Word is proclaimed. This is the restoring work of the Holy Spirit in action. This is the result of the Creator God exercising His power, as He did when He formed Adam out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that man became a living creature. This is the new creation, the regeneration, the "being born again," that our Lord Jesus spoke about to Nicodemus in John 3.

And that's what the text for our sermon this morning has to teach us. We have another story of another healing - one of many, as we've already seen, but again, unique. Mark first tells us about Jesus casting a demon out of the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman. Remember last week how we saw Jesus proclaiming that the Good News of the Gospel wasn't meant only for the Jews, how the separation between Jew and Gentile would no longer serve the purpose that it had under the Old Covenant. Now He put His words into action, bringing cleansing to someone that the Jews thought of as a "dog."

After this, a failed attempt to find some rest that turned into another opportunity to proclaim the message of the Kingdom in His actions, Jesus heads south-east with His disciples, back to the region of the Decapolis, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Remember, Jesus had been there before; He already had what you might call and "advance man" working in the Decapolis - the man who had been possessed by a legion of demons, who went out and proclaimed the good news throughout the region after his cleansing. Word had gone out in this region, which was also largely populated by Gentiles, about Jesus, and about what Jesus had done.

Now, instead of asking Jesus to leave, because they were afraid of what He was doing to their society, as they had done not very long before, a group of people who lived in the Decapolis brought their friend to Jesus. The man was deaf, and he was unable to speak properly. Like the men who had lowered their friend through the roof of the house in Capernaum, these people had faith that Jesus could heal their friend. The man himself would have been powerless to get Jesus' attention, if he even fully understood who Jesus was and what He had shown Himself able to do. So they bring the man to Jesus, and they beg Jesus just to lay His hand on him; they know that even a simple touch from Jesus' hand could change their friend's life.

So Jesus takes the man aside. He's not putting on a show here; once again, He's showing that He's not a travelling healing sideshow, a one-man medical rescue unit. He had a task to fulfil, a job to do, bringing about the coming of God's kingdom. He had a message to proclaim, and He had a job to do; and the primary focus of that job was not making people "ooh" and "ah" about His amazing feats of healing.

He had been doing and saying some very dangerous things; He had been proclaiming and enacting a message that would get Him into some serious hot water with the powers that be, both religious and political. The time hadn't come for Him to be handed over to the authorities to face His death at their hands, and that's why He doesn't want to draw the wrong kind of attention to Himself, yet. That time would come, and Jesus' ministry would continue to progress down that road to the cross. But Jesus still had to build on that message that He had already begun to proclaim, to make it clear what He had been called to do.

But at the same time, the wonder that He would perform for this man was central to His mission. Maybe the crowds wouldn't see it, because He took the man aside to a private place to do it, but His disciples would see it, and they would record it so that we could be given an insider's perspective on what Jesus was doing as well. Think about this: this healing work was done so that you and I could have God's power and glory, His mercy and His grace, revealed to us. He may not have wanted the crowds in the Decapolis to know about it, but He obviously wanted us, here today, to know about it. Once again, God's amazing grace shines through, even in this.

So Jesus takes the man aside. And then He goes through a series of steps that might strike us as being more than a little strange. First He puts His fingers in the man's ears. Then, of all things, He spits. Then He touches the man's tongue. Then He looks up into heaven, and He lets out a sigh. Then He speaks to the man in Aramaic, and the Aramaic word is translated for us. After all this, we're told, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he was able to speak so that people could understand him.

What was Jesus doing here? The man's friends had simply wanted Jesus to lay His hand on their friend, because they knew that was all it would take for him to be healed - He had proven that He didn't even have to heal deliberately, when the woman with the flow of blood had been healed, and He had shown that He could heal with just a spoken word. But Jesus goes through this whole procedure, with the fingers and the spit and the touching of the tongue and the sighing and looking up into heaven. What kind of ritual was this?

But just think about who Jesus was dealing with. The man was deaf - he couldn't hear a word Jesus was saying. Jesus couldn't communicate with the man using words; He couldn't preach the gospel with His mouth, and the American Sign Language system hadn't been invented yet, so what we see here is not Jesus doing some kind of strange ritual - later on in Mark's gospel we'll see Jesus doing some odd things in a healing for different reasons, but this isn't like that. What Jesus is doing here is like a pantomime; He's speaking to this man with His actions. He's showing the man with his movements, with his actions, exactly what He's doing.

He sticks the fingers in the man's ears. He's enacting the removal of an obstruction, taking away something that's blocking the man's ability to hear. Then He spits - He doesn't spit on His hands, He doesn't spit on the man, or put the saliva on the man's tongue or anything like that, He simply spits on the ground. It's like He's spitting something out of His mouth that's blocking the ability to speak - He's removing an impediment. In that motion with his fingers, in that spitting, in that placing his finger on the man's tongue, Jesus is showing the man that He is setting his ability to speak and hear free. And the evangelist Mark tells us that that's just what happened, in verse 35 - "His ears were opened, and His tongue was released." What had been blocked was now opened up; what had been imprisoned had now been set free - that's the kind of language Mark uses to describe what had happened.

Once again, the words of the prophets are being fulfilled in Jesus' ministry. This time there's an obvious reference in Isaiah 35:5,6 - "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert."

Waters were breaking forth in the wilderness - the Spirit of the LORD was being poured out in a land that was dry and thirsty, through the ministry of Jesus. The prophet Amos had told the people of Israel what was going to happen in the future because they weren't willing to submit to God's Word, in Amos 8:11,12 - "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land - not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it."

Israel had become a wilderness. Before the ministry of John the Baptist, God's people had been experiencing a centuries-long famine of hearing God's Word; God had simply stopped sending prophets to His people; they hadn't wanted to hear Him, so He stopped speaking. But that famine had been broken, the rains had come, in the person and work of John the Baptist. And now Jesus, the one that John the Baptist had proclaimed, was reclaiming the desert land, the land that had become a wilderness because of the famine of God's Word, by bringing it the life-giving water of His Word and Spirit.

The opening up of the ears of the deaf, and the freeing of the mute tongue, was a sure sign that this was what was happening. He was the Word made flesh; and His very presence marked the end of the great spiritual drought, and the beginning of an outpouring of plenty. These handicaps that afflicted this man, handicaps that only existed because of the Fall into sin, were being taken away; but even more importantly, Jesus was proclaiming an important spiritual truth in an enacted parable.

Because in order for us to hear God's Word, in order for us to truly listen to it, internalize it, love it, we need to have the blockage of our sinful nature removed from our spiritual ears. Our natural condition is to want to listen to our own word, not God's. Our natural state is a state in which we deliberately stop up our own ears in order to avoid having to listen to God's Word. By nature we want to hear things that make us happy, things that please us. We want to hear things that make us feel good about ourselves, or things that make us forget about our problems. But when God opens up our ears, and opens up our hearts, by the power of His Holy Spirit, we are given the willingness to truly listen, and the ability to truly listen.

And in order for us to sing God's praises, in order for us to tell about the good news, in order for us to bring the gospel message into the lives of our friends and family and our brothers and sisters in the church, we need to have our tongues set free. In his letter, the Apostle James wrote a lot about the tongue. The tongue stands as a symbol of speech, of the things we speak about, and the way we speak. What is the tongue? "The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison" (James 3:6-8).

As fallen human beings, our natural inclination is to use our words as weapons. We gossip. We slander. We hurt others with our words. We say unkind things to people, and about people. We curse the God who created us. We praise ourselves, we serve ourselves, we try to build ourselves up, using that little member, and in so doing, we set the entire course of life on fire with a flame that had its beginning in hell itself.

But when Jesus came, He made streams of water flow in the wilderness. He poured out His Spirit, and when the Spirit's at work within us, our tongues become implements of good instead of evil. Our words can build up, instead of tearing down. We can encourage one another. We can admonish one another, righteously, humbly, in love. We can praise God. We can speak openly about God's grace, and we even have the desire to do so. Jesus set that man's tongue free from captivity, spitting out the obstruction, bringing new life to it, so he could speak plainly. His tongue had been enslaved, and now it was free. And He does the same thing for us, as the Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 6:17,18 - "But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness."

We have been set free from sin, including our tongues. In our hearts we believe, and with our tongues we can confess our faith. That man from the Decapolis experienced a life-changing miracle, and we should never be fooled into thinking that the miracle that has happened to us is any less impressive or amazing than the miracle that happened to him.

It all comes from Him. Psalm 40 parallels with this story of Jesus' healing work in a remarkable way:

"I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth... Sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but you have given me an open ear... I desire to do your will... Your law is within my heart. I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips... I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation."

What Jesus did for the deaf mute in the Decapolis 2000 years ago He still does today. He still opens ears. He still sets tongues free. The people in the Decapolis were astonished by what He did for that man, and we should be astonished by what He does for us as well. And in that astonishment, we should speak out. Tell of the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation. Don't restrain your lips. Don't hide His deliverance within your heart. Speak of His faithfulness and His salvation; don't conceal His steadfast love and His faithfulness from the great congregation. We have been set free to do just that, and that's not a burden - it's a precious privilege.

You just might have heard of a song called "Amazing Grace," by John Newton. John Newton had been a slave trader, but he was converted to Christ, and late in his life fought against the slave trade and worked for its abolition. He wrote these words: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see." "I was blind, but now I see" - We could also say, "I was deaf, but now I can hear." "I was a mute, but now I can speak."

Jesus opens the eyes of the blind. He unblocks the ears of the deaf. He makes the lame leap like a deer; He makes the tongue of the mute sing for joy. The people of the Decapolis recognized His greatness when they said these words in response to what they had seen: "He has done all things well." However unwittingly, they were echoing the words of Genesis 1 - when God saw everything that He had made, behold, it was very good. He had done all things well in His creating work, and now, in His work of re-creation, He was still doing all things well.

The story of the healing of the deaf mute in Mark 7 is the story of an incredible miracle, an amazing example of our Lord Jesus defeating the effects of sin and the pain and suffering that sin brings into the world. But it's much more than that; it's a pointer to the greatest miracle of all, the miracle of rebirth, the miracle of re-creation, the miracle of the new life of perfect freedom that comes only from and through Him. He has given us an open ear; so we must never neglect the Word that He has given us to hear. He has opened up our mouths, and given us the ability to use our tongues to praise Him and speak about His gospel; we simply cannot be silent about that amazing grace, and we should seek to use our tongues, whatever the situation may be, for His glory.

That is the ultimate miracle. Believe in Him, trust in Him, and in Him alone, and He will open your ears; He will open your heart. Trust in Him, and He will set not just your tongue, but your entire being, free. He has done all things well; He continues to do all things well; and we can look forward to Him completing the good work that He has begun in us. We may stumble with our mouths now; we may struggle to listen now; but we know what awaits us in the future - an eternity of perfect, unending praise, perfect fellowship with God and with one another, tongues unstained by sin - perfect blessedness, such as no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived - a blessedness in which to praise God forever.

Amen.