Excitement and endurance.  Those two words captured the ethos of Wheeler family vacations when I was a child.  Mama would wake us in the predawn hours while the rest of the world slept.  The world is so different at that hour.  So quiet, so expectant. Sleepily we stumbled into the Ford Galaxy 500 and fled the suburbs and the city before the traffic noticed we were going. 

My sisters immediately went back to sleep, but “Barry,” my faithful furry friend, and I remained vigilant.  Taking it all in.  Trying to savor every moment of our adventure.  The sunrise, the waking world, breakfast at Howard Johnson’s along the way were all heralds of adventure. But it did not take long for predawn excitement to give way to the test of endurance. 

Bill Wheeler clearly identified with the tortoise in Aesop’s famous fable.  Slow and steady wins the race!  Even before an energy crisis drove down speed limits, my dad drove 55.  He was never in a hurry.  He loved the ‘scenic’ route.  We were eager to see the ocean.  He intended to see everything along the way.  

He was s self-consciously slow driver, but he was also steady.  And by ‘steady’ I mean we never stopped.  Never!  Not for unscheduled bathroom breaks, not to stretch our legs, not even for a little carsickness.  Unless we needed the ER, on we rolled.   And as endurance unfolded into impatience a collective cry began to arise from the back seat, “Are we there yet?”  After all the soil had turned sandy.  Spanish moss began to appear in the trees.  We had counted all the Volkswagen Bugs.  And we could not find a word that began with ‘X’ on any billboard.  Surely, we were getting close!

Travel is a good metaphor for life.  Philosophers, muses, and inspired authors have all made this connection.  In the ancient language of the Old Testament the world “to walk” never simply means ‘pedestrian travel.’  It always conveys the idea of life’s journey.  And in Mark 12, in the midst of a grueling day of constant conflict between Jesus and the religious establishment, an honest inquirer emerges. From among the scribes comes a question not designed to ensnare but to ask directions for life’s most important journey. 

Mark reports the scribe’s question and response.

“Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” -Mark 12:28-34

We sometimes reflect positively on this passage.  At last, a scribe who is “not far from the kingdom of God!”  But then we realize, “wait! he has not arrived.” “Not far from the kingdom” is not “in the kingdom.”  It is not sufficient merely to understand that it is not rite and rubric but wholehearted love for God that saves.  Without grasping the person and work of Christ and experiencing the grace of God, the demand for wholehearted love of God becomes another impossible work and inevitable failure for fallen man, unaided by the regenerating work of the Spirit.

Jesus’ follows his answer to the scribe’s question with a question of his own.  A question whose answer provides the key to knowing and loving God wholeheartedly.  Jesus does not abandon this sincere scribe on the road, somewhere not far from the kingdom of God.  But graciously gives him the most important direction he needs to arrive at his destination.  Is your attempt to love God in every area of life a frustrated work?  Or a grateful response to the grace of God in Christ?

Join us as we examine Mark 12:27-38 and consider Jesus’ answer to our question, “are we there yet?” on the journey of faith.  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. 

Subtlety, subterfuge, strategic delay, even simple arrogance.  Students love to “stump the teacher.”  With riddles, circular arguments, rabbit trails and incomprehensible jargon, students delight in bemusing the teacher.  Used as a delaying tactic to avoid an assignment, undermine authority, or just to enter into a battle of wits, rarely is an attempt to “stump the teacher” intended to gain insight, knowledge or wisdom.  It is almost always an attack on authority or an attempt to derail the agenda.

It is possible I was that student.  The one who delighted to gum up the works in the classroom and frazzle the teacher with questions designed as stumpers.  But by God’s gracious providence, many of my teachers were strategically and intellectually more than a match for my impertinence.  Dr. Jessica Hunt, my high school math teacher would see my “stumpers’ coming a mile away.  With German frankness and lightening wit, she easily deflected my attempts to hijack discussion, graciously but firmly putting me in my place.  And Ms. Constance Sandidge, my 11^th grade English teacher would often say, “Howard Wheeler that is just nonsense!”

Language and intellect are God’s remarkable gifts to mankind, but in our fallenness, we often use them to sew together a flimsy verbal garment to shield us from shameful truths we don’t want to acknowledge.  One theologian noted regarding the Tower of Babel, that God confused the languages because through words we try to create an alternative reality to the one He created.  We adopt the mantras and memes of our time as the worldview that affirms us in our sinful choices and refuse to be challenged by the timeless truths of God’s Word. 

The Sadducees in the gospels are a perfect example of this.  Though wealthy, powerful, learned, and priestly, they preferred civil power to divine power, and contemporary opinions to timeless truth.  They rejected most of what the scriptures taught and, in fact, most of the OT scriptures as God’s Word.  They reduced the OT to the first five books of the Bible, disregarding the histories, the prophets, and the wisdom books as authoritative.  They rejected any belief in the immortality of the soul, angels, and the resurrection of the dead.  They rejected the promise of a Messiah.  They loved political power more than godliness, even though deeply connected to the priesthood and the sacrificial system. 

Jesus’ claims of authority threatened their place in society, their influence, and their affluence.   In John 11:25, Caiaphas, who was high priest during the last year of Jesus’ earthly life ironically declared, “do you [not] understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” 

While we rarely hear from the Sadducees, they, along with the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin, stand behind all the plots to silence Jesus.  And in Mark 12:17-27 they join the Pharisees, Herodians and scribes in the second of a series of three “stumper” questions.  Their aim is to embroil Jesus in either intellectual absurdity or a rejection the authority of scripture.  Either one of which will discredit him as a teacher and nullify his authority.  

And so, they present him with a straw-man scenario about seven brothers and a childless wife to mock the teaching about resurrection.  It was a famous theological riddle in Judaism that had long gone unanswered by those who taught a bodily resurrection.  Surely this would “stump the teacher” and derail his agenda.  But Jesus quickly spots that the problem is not in the puzzle but in the puzzlers.  The answer is really very simple. 

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.”

Life’s most puzzling problems have solutions rooted in the promises of God and in His power to keep them all.  Where are you looking for answers?  If you start in the wrong place you will surely end in the wrong place.  The Sadducees were smug and self-satisfied.  They sought no truth higher than their own experience and ignored the deeper realities of sin and redemption that consumed their daily lives in the ministry of the priesthood.  They had no hope beyond the things of this world and as Paul words aptly describe them,

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.  1 Corinthians 15:16-19

Join us as we examine Mark 12:17-27 and consider where we must begin to unravel the questions that stump us.  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. 

It did not begin with World War I, but that is when it got a name.  The term “smokescreen” was first used in 1915.  It referred to the intentional production of large volumes of smoke to screen the movement of troops, artillery, aircraft and even ships.  Smoke screens have been commonly created by small weapons such as a grenade or generated on a larger scale by tanks or warships.

Smokescreens were originally intended to hide tactical movement from an enemies’ line of sight, but in modern warfare the enemies’ line of sight extends to satellite, radar, and high-altitude surveillance.  As time and technology advanced the art of war, the meaning of the expression expanded, but the anachronistic word endured. 

These days, ‘smokescreen’ is used more in conversations than military contexts.  The dictionary defines it as “something designed to obscure, confuse, or mislead.”  When someone wants to direct attention away from their actions, words, or intentions, they act, speak, or express an intention that distracts from what they don’t want noticed.

Salesmen point us to their product’s amazing new features to keep us from asking hard questions about reliability and service.   Politicians trumpet popular mantras and vilify opponents’ dismal records or public failures to direct our gaze away from their own (in)abilities, record and positions.  And children deflect attention from the secretly eaten cookie or the broken vase by sudden, effusive recitations on the transgressions of a sibling.  Or a relentless battery of urgent, curious questions about how the world works.

We all do it. Throw up smokescreens to obscure, confuse, or mislead regarding our thoughts, words, and actions.  And while this may appear effective the reality is that voters, consumers, and parents see through the smoke.  Yet we persist in thinking through our clever artifice we can escape moral accountability to both men and God. 

Even the Bible is filled with attempts to shelter from God’s authority through smokescreens of shifted blame, accusations of God’s unfairness, fastidious but faithless worship, and pretentious theological inquiry.  When Jesus’ discussion with the woman at the well took a decidedly personal turn, she unleased a memorable smokescreen.

Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”  John 4:16-20

And in Mark 12:13-17, one of Jesus’ most memorable sayings came in an attempt by the religious leaders to lure Jesus into a trap that would lead to either his rejection by the people or arrest by the Romans.

And they came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?” But, knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said to him, “Caesar’s.” Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Mark 12:13-17

Through a smokescreen of flattery, pretended adulation, and false theological inquiry they sought to conceal their own unbelief and entangle the Son of God in a Gordian Knot of controversy.  We see them as petty and pretentious, yet how often do we do the same thing?  Throwing up smokescreens of skepticism of God’s goodness, lip service in our discipleship, or irresolvable theological confusion to shelter in unrepentance and hide from the gracious Lordship of Christ. 

Even when we come to this passage, our focus is too often on the implications of Jesus’ answer regarding Caesar, and too little on what we are to render to God. More significant than Jesus’ teaching regarding our relationship and duty to the civil magistrate is the warning against evading love for God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength through smokescreens of skepticism, lip service and false theological dilemmas.

Join us as we examine Mark 12;13-17 and consider the call to render to God what belongs to him.  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. 

Bleak and colorless.  November calendar photos are invariably the blandest of the entire year.  October boasts vivid fall colors.  December is trimmed in bright red and green.  But November is muted grey and brown with somber landscapes and usually fog.   You might expect January to be the least interesting, but November always takes last place.  

As a child something else characterized November.  It was “Stewardship Month.”  To avoid the unpleasantness of preaching on ‘giving,’ our church confined the topic to the month of November.  The rest of the year preachers and hearers were off the hook and could rest easy.   No one invited friends to church during November.  And we all girded up the loins of our minds for the deep dive into ‘stewardship.’ 

‘Stewardship’ was our euphemism for the giving of tithes and offerings.  The November series resembled a spiritualized fundraising campaign preparing us for the new year’s budget.  Stewardship month jaded us that the topic of ‘giving’ was an unpleasant but necessary part of the Christian life.  And so, we missed out on one of the most joyful aspects of covenant life and treated ‘giving’ as an embarrassment to our apologetic for a life well lived.

But even more problematic, if we limit the realm of our stewardship to giving or finances alone, we miss the larger picture of the life God purposes for us in Christ.  All that we have, all that we are given, all that we experience, all we say, all we do, and all that we are, it all belongs to God.  He is the giver of every good and perfect gift.  Even those gifts he knows we need, but we might rather return.  He entrusts it all to us to use in ways that enable us to fill and subdue the earth for his glory.  Nowhere is this dynamic expressed more clearly than in our Doxology.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise him all creatures here below;
Praise him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

‘Grace and Gratitude’ is the Reformed rubric which animates our Doctrines of Grace.   God gives us grace in Christ.  We respond with all our heart, mind, soul and strength in loving gratitude.  We see this basic trajectory in all the great Reformed catechisms; saving grace leading to love for the law.  But never the other way around.

We are to be stewards, caretakers, shepherds of God’s grace in all the ways it unfolds in and through us.  In our things.  In our hopes, dreams, and aspirations.  In our vocations.  In our experiences and actions.  In our words.  And in our care for ourselves and others.  The Bible, and especially the New Testament, is filled with admonitions to faithful stewardship of God’s grace.

In Mark 12, we meet Jesus on the Tuesday before he goes to the cross.  The trajectory from “Hosanna” to “Crucify” is animated by what theologians call the “Temple controversies.”  Jesus confronted the scribes and Pharisees in Galilee, but now he takes on the entire Sanhedrin on their home turf in the Temple courts.  The hour is late.  The moment is crucial.  Jesus minces no words, pulls no punches confronting the men claiming to be the under-shepherds of Israel.   They are unfaithful stewards of God’s covenant of grace and have rejected the One True Shepherd King.

In a shocking twist on the Isaiah’s “Song of the Vineyard,” Jesus paints the religious leaders into a despicable portrait of unfaithful stewardship.   And in so doing, calls us through a terrible warning to faithfully steward of the grace of God.  So, how are you doing as a steward?  Are you employing the gracious gifts of God for the glory and service of your Master?  Or are you redirecting them for your own ends?  Or burying them in the ground out of fear not love for your master?

Join us as we examine Mark 12:1-12 and consider its call to take seriously faithful stewardship of God’s gifts. 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. 

Of course they are everywhere, but bizarre town names seem more prevalent in the South.  To be sure we have our fair share of “villes,” “burgs” and “dales” as well as the usual cadre of towns named for national or regional heroes and villains.  Southerners are especially fond of curiously curated Biblical places names like Corinth, Sardis, and Jericho that seem to betray a lack of familiarity with the text.  And in our beloved Arkansas, we have preserved, though mispronounced, our French origins in place names like Petit Jean and Fourche Valley.      

And then there are the seemingly inexplicable names whose origins live in the realm of folklore.  Names like Goobertown, Booger Hollow, Possum Grape, Ben Hur, Greasy Corner, and Romance.   Even familiar names sometimes have surprising origins.  Smackover, Arkansas is a transliteration of a French phrase that means “covered in sumac” and Hector was the name of President Grover Cleveland’s dog, chosen by the Cleveland himself when postal officials grew frustrated with the resident’s indecision over a name.  While the linguistic origins of Toad Suck vary widely and wildly from drunken riverboat crews to a local name for an animal’s watering hole.

But as far as I can tell, no Arkansas town is named for a game show.  In March of 1950, the town of Hot Springs, New Mexico changed its name to Truth or Consequences when the host of a popular radio quiz show announced he would air a special 10^th anniversary episode from the first town renaming itself for the program. Truth or Consequences was a trivia game in which contestants had two seconds to answer obtuse questions correctly or face some humiliating consequence, usually in the form of a crazy stunt.  When the show moved from radio to television, it was hosted by Bob Barker who would go on to host The Price is Right.  Barker traditionally ended each episode with the phrase, “Hoping all your consequences are happy ones.”

Unlike a game show, in real life the consequences of being in ignorance and unbelief from the Truth are never happy ones.  Jesus said. “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” And again, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”   With Nicodemus at night, Jesus warned,

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. John 3:16-20

Refusing truth and the One who is The Truth has no happy consequences.  Throughout the Gospels, the scribes, priests and elders refused to believe Jesus.  They are paradigmatic of self-righteous unbelief.  An unbelief that believes only in its own actions and desires.  An unbelief that deifies self and defies the one true God.   An unbelief that justifies itself coram homo rather than trusting in grace to live coram Deo.  Time and time again they confront Jesus, try to trap him, and plot to destroy him.  

In Mark 11 as Jesus is publicly teaching in the Temple, they accost him and challenge his authority.  “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?”  In an unusual exchange, Jesus promises to answer if they first answer his question, “Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me.”

Jesus’ question and the leader’s unwillingness to answer was telling.  It revealed their unfitness as spiritual leaders.  It showed their lack of true spiritual authority.  But worst of all it betrayed the hardness of their hearts.  Rather than seeking truth for themselves they tried to contrive a consequence for him and ended up caught in their own trap. 

Without truth there are no happy consequences.  Unbelief confuses proper understanding of authority, is concerned only about the acceptance of men, not God, and leaves us in arrogant ignorance of our true condition.  Are you arguing with God about his authority?  Are you more concerned about the good opinions of others than the favor of God? Are you increasingly arrogantly ignorant of your spiritual condition?  There is a Truth that sets you free.  But apart from Him there are only unhappy consequences.

Join us as we examine Mark 11:27-33 and consider the consequences of rejecting 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. 

Copious stalks, abundant leaves, profusive flowers.  Spreading like wildfire.  Prolific to the point of being invasive, impossible to eradicate.   But where is the fruit?  Like the husbandman in Luke 13 we tended, nurtured, fertilized, pruned.  Yet year after year the hedge grew into thicket and consumed our curb appeal, yet not one goji berry ever appeared. 

According to WebMD,

The goji berry, also called the wolfberry, is a bright orange-red berry that comes from a shrub that’s native to China. In Asia, goji berries have been eaten for generations in the hope of living longer.

Over time, people have used goji berries to try to treat many common health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, fever, and age-related eye problems. Goji berries, which some brand a “superfood,” are eaten raw, cooked, or dried (like raisins) and are used in herbal teas, juices, wines, and medicines.

The advertised benefits of these “super-berries” include mood stabilization, improved sleep and athletic performance, weight loss, higher antioxidant levels, and a boosted immune system.  Goji berries are a significant source of Vitamin C, Fiber, Iron and Vitamin A. And they are extremely expensive.

So, we decided to grow them ourselves.  Why pay for what will grow in your yard?  And grow they did.  The small starts we ordered exploded into hedge, then thicket.  We were confident that a bumper crop was right around the corner.  If they fruited with as much vigor as they grew, leafed and bloomed, we were sure that better sleep, weight loss, mood stabilization, and improved performance in the gym were imminent. 

And so, we waited and watched, watched and waited, and more than watchmen wait for the morning we waited some more.  But our goji plants were just that, plants.  They were all show and no berry.  Our google-based research quickly revealed that we were not alone in our fruitless frustration.   Eventually we decided to completely dig them out and start again with something else.  Yet they continue to come up and dominate our front flower garden.

Mark 11 tells us a strange story of a fruitless fig tree.  A story that has caused consternation for many believers because of Jesus unexpected response.   On his way to cleanse the Temple on the Monday morning of Passion Week, Jesus left Bethany and encountered a fig tree along the road.  Mark records that Jesus was hungry and that the fig tree was fully leafed out even though it was not yet the season for ripe figs.  Jesus searched the tree and found nothing.  Not even the early unripe figs, the paggim, often eaten green.   

And so, Jesus cursed the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.”  By the following morning, Peter noticed that the tree had withered to the roots.  In between the curse and the fulfillment, Mark reports that Jesus cleansed the Temple and challenged the fruitless religious leadership in Israel.

What are we to make of Jesus’ actions toward the tree?  This is the last miracle in Mark and the only one that is destructive, apart from the incident with the 2000 pigs.  At first glance Jesus seems capricious, petty, and vindictive, so much so that the noted atheist Bertrand Russell cites this account as one principal reason for rejecting Jesus and Christianity. 

So how are we to understand Jesus’ actions here?  Is this a one-off for Jesus? An unhinged, angry and sinful moment in an otherwise self-controlled life?  Or is this a visual parable in the tradition of the ancient prophets?  Or possibly an object lesson to prepare the disciples for the cleansing of the Temple?  Or a warning to followers whose spiritual lives are filled with stalks and leaves but never bear any fruit?

Join us as we examine Mark 11:12-25, the cursing of the fig tree, and the cleaning of the Temple and consider Jesus’ warning about the grave dangers of a fruitless faith. 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.