1.3×10^25 lbs.  Or if you prefer metric, 6×10^24 kgs. That is how much the world weighs.  Certainly, that is exponentially more than even Internet sensation, Anatoly can deadlift.  But when we talk about ‘carrying the weight of the world,’ we have something else in mind. 

No doubt, you have heard the expression. Maybe experienced it.  Or seen it etched indelibly in the furrowed countenance of friend.  Carrying the weight of the world.  Drawn from the story of Atlas in Greek mythology, we use this expression to describe the “struggle with an immense or particularly worrisome burden or responsibility.” 

Guilt, debt, grief, failure, disappointment and loneliness are just a few crushing burdens.  And often responsibility makes demands on us that exceed our ability, endurance, resources or courage.  It’s like we are carrying the weight of the world with no one to share the load.  Stress, depression, sleeplessness and sickness threaten to take control.

But of all the weights that weigh us down, none is more unbearable than our sin.  We get a sense of this in Paul’s lament from Romans 7:24 when he considers his struggle against his own sin, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  And from the Psalmist in Psalm 13 who cries out.

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
    and have sorrow in my heart all the day?

Or even the more plaintive opening to Psalm 130.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?

But these are not the last words.  The Psalmist concludes.

O Israel, hope in the Lord!
    For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
    and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
    from all his iniquities.

And Paul exclaims, “Thanks be to God through out Lord Jesus Christ.  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”   Sin is an unbearable curse, but in God’s mercy he has provided a sin-bearer, someone to carry a weight greater than the weight of the world, the weight of God’s justice.

Gethsemane, the “olive press,” paints this promise in bold strokes as we see both the horror of sin and the power of our savior intersecting in one of the only recorded prayers of Jesus in Mark’s gospel.  Following Jesus’ temptation at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, Luke records, “when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.”  Gethsemane is the “opportune time.”  A time of testing so severe that Jesus sweat drops of blood and cried out to God with “prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who has able to save him from death.” (Hebrews 5:7)

Redemption is wrought through the cross and empty tomb, but victory begins in the Garden of Gethsemane.  In stark contrast, we see the crushing horror of God’s justice for sin and the sufficiency of Christ alone to save from sin’s curse.  Jesus tells the disciples to “watch” while he goes a little farther and wrestles in prayer, pressed down by the weight of the world’s sin.  And in the same way, we need to watchfully observe what it means to face the judgement for sin and who, alone, can bear it for us.

Thomas Kelly’s hymn, “Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted” offers a needful warning.

Ye who think of sin but lightly
    nor suppose the evil great
here may view its nature rightly,
    here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the sacrifice appointed,
    see who bears the awful load;
’tis the Word, the Lord’s Anointed,
   Son of Man and Son of God.

Have you thought of sin but lightly, not supposed its evil great?  Have you viewed its nature rightly, fully its guilt to estimate?   Has your sin felt to you like the weight of the world?  Join us as we examine Mark 14:32-52 and consider both the crushing weight of sin-bearing and the sufficient strength of our sin-bearer.  We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

Kenny was one of the “special” people in the world.  Born with many limitations, he had a limitless capacity to find joy, to love people, and to sing songs about Jesus.  His simplicity filled his mother’s careworn heart with a secret abiding strength.  But Kenny outlived the usual life expectancy of “special” people like himself.  And in his young, old age, he faced new complications.  Cancer and pain intruded into Kenny’s remarkable life.  But Kenny could not describe his increasing pain.  All he could say was “my toe hurts.”

The source of pain can be hard to diagnose.  Parents and doctors often begin with “tell me where it hurts.”  But pain travels the 45 miles of nerves in our bodies, radiating, spreading, complicating, debilitating.  We can’t always pin it down.  We don’t always know its source.   And not all pain has physical causes.  Our music and poetry give ample evidence that often the deepest, most undiagnosable, unmanageable pain comes from emotional and spiritual trauma.  Deep pain that radiates from our own sinful brokenness and that of others.  Pain that is hard to reach.  And even harder to treat.

Of all the pain we will experience, however, none is more devastating than the pain of betrayal.  Betrayal sinks deep into the heart, mind, soul, and strength.  It can embitter, destroy future trust, make us callous, vindictive, numb.  It often denies us any opportunity to clarify or restore. 

Betrayal and abandonment give stark and crushing weight to God’s declaration, “it is not good for man to be alone.”  The unfaithful spouse, the ungrateful, rebellious child, the traitorous citizen, the slanderous patient, employee, or customer.  And the friend who disappears only to reemerge as our accuser and enemy. 

The pain of betrayal is inversely and exponentially proportional to the relational distance to our betrayer.  The more intimate the relationship the more intense the pain.  If you are older than three years old, you have experienced betrayal.  How are you doing?  Are you coping? Are you healing, forgiving?  Has your betrayal done irreparable damage to your ability to love, trust, and care?

In Mark 14, the inspired author begins one, long continuous narrative of the final earthly days of the Lord Jesus Christ.  The entire chapter has a dominant theme, the beating drums of betrayal and abandonment.  Christ must shoulder the crushing load of our judgement alone.  No one can help.  Only he can bear our griefs and carry our sorrows.  Though supported by his divine nature, his human nature must “bear our sins in his body on the tree.”  In his sufferings he has no human comfort.  His enemies taunt, his friends abandon, his disciples flee, Peter and Judas deny and betray.  And in a way that is hard to understand, even His Heavenly Father forsakes him as he bears the judgment of sin.

It is any wonder then that in Handel’s Messiah, the composer puts the words of Lamentations 1:12 prophetically on the lips of the Lord Jesus.

“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
    Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
    which was brought upon me,
which the Lord inflicted
    on the day of his fierce anger.”

But what was Jesus’ response to the sorrow of betrayal and abandonment?  Sandwiched between the explosive revelation of an inside betrayer and an ancient prophecy that all his beloved disciples would abandon him, Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper.   This shocking juxtaposition forms a powerful picture of God’s grace and kindness toward our blackest, sinful betrayal.  And gives you hope, my sin-worn friend that there is grace for you in Jesus’ invitation to “come to me when you are weary and heavy laden.”

Join us as we examine Mark 14:12-31 and consider the scandalous grace God offers us in response to our sinful betrayal. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.   But what does this mean?   Is appearance everything? Are the glamour magazines to be believed?    No, beauty comes in many different shapes, sizes, and proportions.  God has made everything (and everyone) beautiful in its time.   The discerning eye finds beauty in every form.   We know this instinctively.   Yet, we don’t believe it is true of ourselves. 

Our fallenness has given us a creaturely discontent with the Creator’s genius.   But who are the most beautiful people you know?   And why are they beautiful?  Is it the proportion of their face, their coloring, or the shape of their features?   No, their beauty appears by contrast — kindness when others are cruel, resilience in the midst of adversity, joy when sorrow is the order of the day.    Their beauty radiates through contrast not conformity.   God delights to create beauty through contrast.

He created a world of contrasts.  Contrasts which give, even this fallen, groaning, creation a beauty that leaves poets speechless.   He began with light and made the world responsive to it.   Light creates color and contour, clarity and, yet concealment.   Lighting gives everything perspective.  And changing light reveals new aspects and insights in the familiar.   Lighting and contrast are foundational to visual beauty.   Artists use lighting and shading to breathe life into their work.  

But as with all things God made, sensory experience has an analog with spiritual truth.  Spiritual truth in scripture is often taught by way of contrast.   The Bible tells the triumphal story of how God rescues us from sin, self, and Satan.   But the story only becomes compelling when we realize our desperate condition.   Until we grasp how bad we are, we cannot see how good the good news is.   The Fall plunged us into irrecoverable ruin.   And until we are convinced of this, we will never seek Christ and find redemption.    The beauty of the gospel can only be appreciated in contrast to the ugliness of our condition apart from Christ.  

In Mark 14:1-11, the inspired writer creates one of his characteristic contrasts. Sandwiched between the murderous plot of the religious leaders and the sad treachery of Judas is the beautiful account of a woman who anoints Jesus with a bottle of rare and costly perfume.  In the midst of death and betrayal, the Holy Spirit places a woman whose love for Christ is so fragrant that it perfumes the gospel wherever and whenever it is read and preached.  The beauty of her action is set in start relief against the ugliness of betrayal.

What animates her action? And theirs? Where does betrayal come from? And what does it look like?  And beauty?  What action is so beautiful that it evokes the Savior’s praise and warrants a stern rebuke for its critics? Beauty or betrayal?  Which fragrance does your life effuse?

Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine Mark 14:1-11 and consider the contrast between beauty and betrayal.  We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

Eyeglasses are gamechangers.   They are so common we cannot imagine growing older without them.   Demographers report that three fourths of all Americans wear corrective lenses.  Without them reading would be impossible for me.  And my driving would be more hazardous than it already is.   But for all their benefits, wearing glasses has challenges.

First, they are remarkably hard to find, especially when they are on my head.   And of all the things I drop, they seem more drawn to the effects of gravity.  No matter what bridge-rest I install, my glasses inevitably come to rest at the end of my nose, librarian style.  And, most notably, they are impossible to keep clean. 

My beloved wife plants glass cleaner and lens cloths in every nook and cranny of my life.   Yet my glasses always look like I’ve been cooking French fries then banging out erasers.   If you doubt the air is heavily polluted, you are in the one fourth of Americans that don’t wear glasses.   Of course, all glass is a dirt magnet.   Its transparency tells all, readily revealing every streak, speck, and smudge.

But if there are small children in your home the transparency of glass reveals something else – expectation.   While the phrase, “wait till your father gets home” can inspire fear, it more often inspires delight.   Any family with a glass door or large picture window will find it covered in smudges from fingertips and noses.   Children, expectantly waiting for the return of fathers and mothers, press against the glass with hands and faces.  Filling the space with the telltale signs of longing for the return of a loved one.

No doubt, I am not the first to notice this.   Or make the analogy, that our lives as believers should, in the same way, transparently offer telltale signs of the longing for the return of our Beloved One, the Lord Jesus.   Years ago, NewSong pictured this poignantly in their song, Fingertips and Noses.

Up in the hills somewhere in Kentucky
In a little old school way back in the nothing
Where special kids born with special needs
Are sent to learn life’s ABCs

Their teacher, Mrs. Jones, tells them all about Jesus
How in the twinkling of an eye He’s coming back to get us
About streets of gold and pearly gates
How they want to go, they just can’t wait
And she can’t keep them in their seats
They’re all at the windows straining to see

And it’s fingertips and noses pressed to the windowpanes
Longing eyes, expectant hearts for Him to come again
All they know is that they love Him so
And if He said He’d come, He’s coming
And they can’t keep their windows clean
For fingertips and noses

She tried to explain to the kids about His coming
She tried to calm them down, but they just wouldn’t listen
They just giggled and they clapped their hands
They’re so excited that He’s coming for them
And the first thing you know they’re out of their seats
Back at the windows straining to see

Where will Jesus find us when He comes again?
Will we be like little children waiting just for Him?
With our fingertips and noses pressed to the windowpanes
Longing eyes, expectant hearts for Him to come again.

Where will Jesus find us when He comes again?   With longing eyes, expectant hearts for Him to come again?   Some of the Bible’s most enigmatic and distressing passages are framed by instructions to believers to watch, wait and live expectantly, longing for Christ’s return.  Our mantra is to be maranatha or ‘Come, Lord Jesus.’   Is that your mantra?  Can you say with the Spirit and the Bride, ‘Come!’  Or is your cry, “not yet!”  

How eager are you for the return of Christ?  How convinced are you that the day of His return will be the very best day, not a day of disaster?   Will the climax of your life be the “blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us?”   

Join us this Lord’s Day, as we examine Mark 13:1-37 and consider how Jesus’ repeated command to “watch!” warns us to live expectantly and cultivate a longing for his return, training our hearts to cry, “Come, Lord Jesus.”  We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube. 

Birds and bees.  Spinach in our teeth.  A beloved’s new hairstyle. The duplicity of a close friend.  Ambitions that don’t line up with abilities and aptitudes.  The pain of hurtful comments.  A terminal diagnosis.  The “hospice talk.”   All these are awkward conversations. 

We struggle to navigate these uncomfortable conversations.  We avoid and evade the person to dodge the conversation.  Or subtly infer, imply, and insinuate, hoping our friend will understand what we are saying without actually saying it.  But this vacuum of clarity is almost always filled with imputed motives and a fiction bearing little resemblance to the awkward truth.  In the end we must usually resort to an uncomfortable bluntness.  Then work to pick up the relational debris awkward conversations inevitably create.

While the Bible instructs us to be open to constructive criticism, our natural defensiveness struggles to see the “constructive” part and feels only the weight of criticism.  We read, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”  But everyone likes kisses better than wounds.   

Pastors have lots of awkward conversations.  It is simply part and parcel of any vocational calling to care for others.  But the awkward conversations pastors often dread most are those related to “giving.”  Especially since in a small church, pastoral support is often the bulk of the budget.  Preaching on giving has often been confined to a very short series on ‘stewardship,’ which is our euphemism for giving.

The fact that we view the topic of giving, especially tithes and offerings, as an awkward conversation speaks volumes about a consumeristic view of the Christian life.  We tend to view the topic of ‘giving’ as an unpleasant but necessary part of the Christian life.  And so, we miss out on one of the most joyful aspects of covenant life and treat ‘giving’ as an embarrassment to our apologetic for a life well lived.

Along with “all Christians are hypocrites” the other darling mantra of skeptics is “all they want is your money.”  Without a proper view of the grace of giving, we cower apologetically at these slogans.  Thrown back on our heels, we treat the topic of giving as anathema and only refer to it tangentially, quick to translate ‘giving’ into convenient service not sacrificial gratitude.  

But the Bible is very clear that giving tithes and offerings is an indispensable part of our Christian life.  Indeed, “God loves a cheerful giver.”  By cheerful giving, we celebrate all the attributes of a giving God, his grace, his provision, his faithfulness and his goodness.   Our practice of giving is a powerful barometer of our delight in our God and faith in what we profess to believe about him.

No story in the gospels demonstrates more clarity on the topic of giving than the story of the ‘widow’s mite.’   But the point of the story is not the gift, but the giver.   At the end of Mark 12, after an exhausting day of controversy in which Jesus took on all comers from the Sanhedrin and brought them to silence time and time again, Jesus observes and remarks on a poor widow’s offering.

He sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” -Mark 12:41-44

We know little about this widow’s circumstances.  She was probably lonely.  Perhaps she faced the challenges of older age.  Certainly, her life is one of financial instability and uncertainty.  But there is a secret delight in one who gives both of her last two copper coins to the One who has her heart and holds her life.  She is not reluctant.  She is not calculating.  She seeks no praise or sympathy.   Quietly, sacrificially, confidently, cheerfully she casts all she has into the collection, resting in the goodness and mercy of her God.

What is your attitude toward giving?  How do you feel when you put your gift into the plate, schedule an online payment or recurring bill pay?   Are you reluctant, calculating, begrudging?  Is there an economy of merit in your heart?  A keeping of accounts with God?  Or are you avoiding the emotional calculus of giving by simply not giving?   Lots of people gave on that Tuesday of Passion Week, but the poor widow is the cheerful giver that caught the Lord’s eye.  Not because of the size of her gift, but the size of her joy.

Join us as we examine Mark 12:38-44 and consider what it looks like to be a cheerful giver. We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.