Discipleship

Trust in the Storm – Part 1 (Mark 4:35-41)

Jesus said to His disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” With that, the disciples set off across the lake and head into a ferocious storm. As the waves are breaking over the boat and filling it with water, the Lord Jesus is asleep in the stern of the boat. Here we see Jesus as the perfect example of trust, that, while he is in mortal danger of drowning in the lake, He so trusts His heavenly Father that He can sleep in the storm.

What I want to do with a short series of blogs is first to examine the trust demonstrated by Jesus Christ and understand in a new and deeper way the greatness and the perfection of our Savior, the God-Man Jesus Christ. But then I also want to explore ways that we, too, can become people who trust the Lord, even in the midst of storms that may threaten our lives. Since Jesus is our perfect example of trust, we must learn how to live by faith and walk by trust in the Lord in the midst of all our circumstances so that we walk as Jesus walked. A disciple is one who is growing in trust of the Lord.

Jesus, Our Example: Perfect Trust in the Storm

As Mark’s gospel account of the life of Jesus unfolds, it quickly becomes apparent that this Jesus is no ordinary person. While His voice is an ordinary human voice, the authority of His words come forth with unquestioned power. His words are certain and uncompromising and pure. They ring with the truth of heaven. He commands demons and they instantly obey. He dispels disease and death with a word or a touch. He has supreme confidence in Himself without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. His disciples hang on His every word and begin to believe that He may be the promised Messiah. And so when He says they are going to the other side of the lake (Mark 4:35), they eagerly hop in the boats and begin sailing and rowing toward the other shore.

When the boat has left shore far behind and the Master has fallen asleep in the stern of one of the little boats, “a fierce gale of wind” arises and begins to threaten the lives of all the men in the boats, including the Lord Jesus Himself. Make no mistake about the circumstances – the lake is deep and the disciples are far from shore. They are completely vulnerable and the situation is definitely life-threatening. You know that things are dire when the fishermen in the boat, who have fished this lake all their lives, wake up the Carpenter and ask Him to do something. My trust wavers and my faith flags when I hear an unusual noise under the hood of my car or when my manager at work calls me into his office, but our Lord was so confident of His Father’s care that being in the midst of a hurricane in the middle of a deep lake in a tiny boat did not prevent Him from taking a nap. Jesus has perfect trust in His Father taking care of Him.

There are two things that I want to mention that aided Jesus in His trust in the Father’s protection in this life threatening situation. First Jesus knew all the promises of God which had been written in the Scriptures and He had every reason to believe that all the promises made to the righteous in the Word applied to Him. God would be His refuge and His fortress, His help in time of trouble. He could abide with safety in the shadow of the Almighty. God would answer Him in time of trouble. God would conceal Him in His tabernacle. God would deliver Him from the hand of the wicked. When Jesus passed through the waters, the LORD would be with Him and the rivers would not overflow Him. Jesus could trust the Father with these and many more promises.

But more significantly and more profoundly, Jesus could perfectly trust His heavenly Father with His life on the Sea of Galilee, because Jesus knew that He was not going to die on the lake in a storm. Jesus had been chosen by the Father and sent to earth to die on a cross in Jerusalem. His atoning, sacrificial death on the cross had been ordained before the foundation of the world and there was no possibility that Jesus, the suffering Servant and the Son of God, was going to die anywhere but on Calvary’s tree. The salvation of God’s elect and the completion of God’s redemptive plan and the propitiation of God’s wrath necessitated the sacrifice of the Lamb of God on the cross and there could be no deviation from that predetermined plan (Acts 2:23). Since that was the case, Jesus could trust that He was secure on the lake in the storm. No matter how ferocious the storm, Jesus knew that His time had not yet come. Jesus had a baptism to undergo (Luke 12:50) and He still had a bitter cup to drink (Mark 10:38) and the accomplishment of His appointed work (John 17:4) precluded any premature death in a boating accident.

So we see the glory of Jesus in His perfect trust in His heavenly Father. But how can we, as His disciples, follow in His steps and grow in our trust in the Lord so that we are not disturbed by life’s storms? That will be the subject of the next couple of blogs.

SDG     rmb     10/3/2016

The LORD who destroys fear and dread

Psalm 27:1-3 (NASB)

The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?

The LORD is the defense of my life; whom shall I dread?

When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh,

My adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell.

Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear.

Though war arise against me, in spite of this I will be confident.

The opening verse of this psalm sounds a lot like the great crescendo of Paul’s ending to Romans 8: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (8:31) Here the psalmist has an implied question that asks, “If the LORD is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” O, we should be encouraged by this psalm because of the truth it conveys.

The first truth is that the LORD is, in fact, the believer’s light and salvation. The LORD of the universe is the One who has personally arranged all of eternity and all of the circumstances of history to make sure that He has redeemed you. He chose you in Christ for salvation before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4) and then He carried out your salvation in time and space by bringing the gospel into your ears and having the Holy Spirit breathe life into your dead soul so that you believed and embraced the Savior. He carried you until the moment that you believed and He has also carried and protected you since the moment that you believed. He planned all the events that culminated in your salvation, but He has also planned and ordained all the events that will take place from now on through your sanctification until the moment of your glorification. Each event and every experience of your life has been divinely and lovingly planned so that your life will unfold for His glory and for your greatest good. “The LORD is your light and salvation” means that the LORD of the universe is the One who has personally ordained all the events of your life, the ones that you deem as pleasant and the ones that you experience as unpleasant, such that you will be conformed more and more to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29) and will live a life that glorifies Him. Since the LORD is your light and your salvation, there is no one to fear and there is nothing to fear. “He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” (Romans 8:32) The LORD is your salvation: Therefore, fear not.

The second truth contained in this first verse is that the LORD is the defense of my life and I should therefore not dread. It is those who have no Champion who live in dread, but the disciple of Jesus Christ has an invincible Conqueror, a dread Champion (Jeremiah 20:11) who can never be beaten, acting as his defense. Jesus is our refuge, our fortress, our impregnable rock, our sanctuary. He alone is the defense of my life and He alone determines what comes into my life and when. In the Old Testament times, an orphan or a widow would live in dread, because their defense was gone and their “hedge” had been removed. (Consider Naomi in the book of Ruth, in chapter one.) The orphan or the widow lived in dread, anticipating the day when the destroyer would come. But, brothers and sisters, we are not orphans! We have become the adopted children of the Lord of hosts and we have become the brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is folly to live as an orphan when the King of the universe has made you an heir of all things with His Son, the Lord Jesus. But more than that, it is disobedience to live in dread. We are commanded in the Scriptures not to fear, because fear reveals a lack of trust in Him who is perfectly and completely faithful.

So because of the Lord Jesus, we are no longer to fear and we are no longer to dread. Rather, we trust the Lord fully and we embrace the future with confidence and hope, knowing that the LORD is our light and our salvation and our defense. Amen.  SDG  rmb  6/7/2016

Not Involved in Great Matters – Psalm 131:1

“I do not involve myself in great matters, nor in things too difficult for me.” Psalm 131:1

When a man or woman comes to the Lord in repentance and in faith and becomes a disciple of the Lord Jesus, they give the Lord a blank check for their life. With that blank check the disciple unreservedly commits to obey the Lord in everything He commands, to go wherever the Lord sends him/her and to do whatever the Lord asks him/her to do for the rest of their lives. It is certainly true that the disciple does not know what will be involved with their specific obedience and does not know all of what it will cost them to follow Jesus, but they give the Lord Jesus a blank check nevertheless and make their commitment to obey.

Now in the course of their discipleship journey, there will be many occasions when the disciple does not understand why the Lord is working out the details of their life in the way that He is doing or does not know the reasons why the Lord is calling him to do a particular thing. In fact, rarely is the disciple entrusted with an answer to the why questions. For example, in my own life I do not know what purpose was served by my three years in Russia and I can tend to think that my years there were a mistake and that I wasted that time. It is in those times that I must remember Psalm 131:1, which says, “I do not involve myself in great matters, nor in things too difficult for me.” The Lord called me to go to Russia. Of that I am sure, and that is enough. I obeyed His call and did the best I could with the time that I had there. I tried to learn the language and share the gospel with Russians. But ultimately why I was there is not my concern. I was there to glorify God with my life and to obey His calling on my life. The details beyond that are “too difficult for me.” Those details are above my pay grade and I am not to concern myself with these “great matters.” Instead of regretting that time as if it was a mistake, I rest in the fact that the Lord knows all the reasons for all things and He will work out the details.

What are other examples of “involving myself in great matters or in things too difficult for me”? Often these are areas of life where I want to have sight and the Lord commands me to trust Him without sight. When I was 46 years old and peacefully enjoying my simple life as a bachelor, the Lord called me to marry a widow with three children. The Lord said, “Roy, marry Lisa.” Just a simple command without explanation. “Lord, You have the wrong guy.” (So the Lord came to the wrong address and did not know who He was talking to??) “How will this turn out? Lord, do You realize how risky this is? A lot of people could get hurt in this if this doesn’t work.” All my questions about the future and about the outcome of this marriage betrayed a lack of trust in the Lord. And I plead guilty to that charge! But then I must realize that I gave the Lord a blank check on my life when I came to faith in Him. I told Him I would trust Him in all things and that I would obey Him no matter what He asked me to do. And I must make the decision daily “to not involve myself in great matters, nor in things too difficult for me.” Outcomes are not my concern. Outcomes are “great matters.” Outcomes are “things too difficult for me.” Hearing, trusting and obeying – those are things that I can do, but determining outcomes or answering why questions are above my pay grade. I am to leave those with the sovereign Lord and trust Him that He will work out those details in His own wisdom, for His glory, and for my good.

Sometimes I worry about the past. That is, I have a particular tendency within my personality that causes me to regret decisions I have made in the past and to feel that they were huge mistakes. When I do this, however, I am involving myself in great matters, contrary to Psalm 131:1. The Lord is sovereign and He takes full responsibility for leading His children and for determining outcomes. That is what it means to be sovereign God. When I regret something in the past, I hint that God did not control that outcome or that He didn’t intend that to work out for my good and His glory (contrary to Romans 8:28). By “involving myself in great matters, things too difficult for me,” I have discouraged and depressed myself and have dishonored the Lord. So based on Psalm 131:1, I will banish regret from my mind. (See also Philippians 3:13-14.)

Sometimes I worry about the future. That is, I am bent toward wondering if everything will be alright in the future. When I have these thoughts, I must again remember Psalm 131:1 and not “involve myself in great matters,” like how the world and my life are going to turn out in the future. Rather, I trust the Lord and obey what He has told me to do, which is consistent with the blank check I gave Him 25 years ago.

You and I are simple people and we are simply people. We have been given the humble task of obeying the word of the Lord and loving the Lord of the Word. If we do these things and do not concern ourselves with things too great for us (Psalm 131:1), we will be peaceful and blessed.  SDG rmb 12/31/2015

Matthew 5:13-16 – Disciples are Salty and Bright

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells His disciples about the characteristics of the citizens of the kingdom of God. Here in 5:13-16 He says, “You are the salt of the earth . . . you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill (and you are now that city set on a hill) cannot be hidden (for that is why the city is set on the hill). Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
COMMENTS:
Immediately after telling His disciples that they will be persecuted if they identify themselves as His followers (5:10-12), Jesus tells them that they should be easy to identify because their salt will be boldly salty and their light will be distinctly bright. Their “salt” will be easily tasted by others and their light will be easily seen.
Here is a challenge and a paradox. The challenge is that to be a follower of Jesus means you will be persecuted, but despite the potential persecution, you are not to be secret and quiet about your allegiance to Jesus but are rather to be bold and vocal. To be a follower of Jesus means to be a vocal witness of Jesus, and a vocal witness is an easy target for persecution. The true believer is not hard to find. Rather, she is hard to miss. When they come asking, “Who here follows Jesus?” she is the first one in line. To obey Jesus and make disciples means we simultaneously make ourselves a target. This is the challenge for the believer.
There is also a paradox, in that, the way to grow the kingdom of God (preach the gospel) is also the way to attract the world’s resistance. The Lord works powerfully in the midst of public gospel proclamation.
Thus as an obvious and sanctified disciple, while you are a target for the world’s persecution, you will also be a witness for the Lord Jesus and be a living, breathing advertisement for the King.
What is Jesus doing with this kind of teaching? Right at the start of His ministry, Jesus is establishing the fact that being His disciple will bring persecution from the world, but also that His disciples need to be unashamed and obvious to the world. (Consider Phil. 2:15-16 and 2 Timothy 3:12.)
In other words, Jesus declares the cost of following Him and gives the command of what it means to follow Him, and in the same breath gives the benefits of following Him.
Finally, consider that those who are persecuted are not persecuted for how they live or because they are nice people, but they are persecuted for what they say and they are persecuted because they boldly follow Jesus.
Therefore, Let your light shine BEFORE MEN and let your salt be very salty. sdg RMB 8/24/2015

Destroying Fortresses (2 Cor. 10:4-5)

SUMMARY: The verses under consideration, 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, provide one of the most concise and explicit descriptions of spiritual warfare in the word of God. Specifically we read of the saint’s responsibility and his power to inflict destructive damage on the enemy’s positions with spiritual weapons.
“For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.” 2 Cor. 10:4-5 (NAS)

BLOG: There are at least six observations that can be made from this brief passage:
1) It is clear that the enemy has fortresses and strongholds that must be destroyed. This is obvious because Paul mentions “the destruction of fortresses.” These are spiritual strongholds that have been constructed by “the prince of the power of the air” to protect his kingdom from the gospel. They must be pulled down and destroyed.
2) Until these fortresses are destroyed, there remain evil speculations and lies raised up against God, there is still spiritual fruit that has not been harvested, and there are men and women still held captive behind the strongholds who need to be set free.
3) God has ordained that His saints are instrumental in the pulling down of these strongholds. It is the saints’ unique responsibility to destroy these fortresses and to pull down these strongholds. The Lord has given that assignment to His church and it is only the saints, the followers of Jesus who have the God-ordained role of destroying fortresses.
4) If the saints do not fulfill this role and do not wield the spiritual weapons of war, these enemy fortresses remain intact. If the saints do not destroy the enemy fortresses, then the enemy’s fortresses are safe. God’s “Plan A” for fortress destruction is the weapons of the saints, and there is no Plan B.
5) Notice that the weapons of our warfare are given by God to the saints for the express purpose of destroying enemy fortresses. Our spiritual weapons are “for the destruction of fortresses.” While these weapons can be wielded for other purposes, this passage clearly states that spiritual weapons are given for the destruction of fortresses.
6) The Lord’s saints are expected to be and are implicitly commanded to be engaged in the work of fortress destruction. “We are destroying speculations . . .” Paul says that “we” are destroying speculations. It is clear from the context and from other Pauline writings that Paul intends for the “we” to include all saints and that Paul expects that every obedient Christian will be involved in the pulling down of enemy strongholds.

APPLICATIONS:
A) Become skillful in the use of your spiritual weapons of prayer and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word;
B) Begin today to actively pull down enemy strongholds.

(RMB 5/13/2015)