Southerners are lousy at isolation.  Untrained in this discipline by a lack of inclement winter weather, we tear through our stock of supplies by noon on day one.  We love to prep for disaster, but have little patience to live within the parameters of our preparations.   We cancel everything in order to stay home, then stand all day with our noses pressed to the glass, itching to get out to see “what’s going on.”    Like school children after the first two weeks of summer vacation, we become quickly bored.

As long as our internet does not go down and take with it our Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, we may actually make it.   Surrounded by bread, milk and our snack trove, we survive our brief isolation by binge-watching.   For my wife and I, our nightly habit is British crime drama.  We especially like the adaptations of Ann Cleeves’ crime novels.   Her stories are complex.   The obvious culprits are never the perpetrators.   Only slowly does the truth come into focus as the “DCI” sifts through seemingly endless strands of contradictory evidence.   Cleeves’ stories give an appreciation for the complexity of criminal investigation, warning of the dangers of precipitous judgment.   To get to the truth, we cannot take a cursory look.

Perhaps we love fictional crime drama because it satisfies our need to see justice done, without complicating it with the complexities of our own sin.   In sixty minutes, confusion gives way to clarity and good triumphs over evil no matter what means it uses to get there.   But our lives are not so tidy.  In our real story, we are the fugitives who face a justice none of us can bear.   Yet the scales of God’s justice do not weigh the arguments for and against our guilt, but rather God’s justice and His mercy.

It is remarkable how much legal imagery the Bible uses to picture our condition.  The Old Testament anticipates a redeemer who will set prisoners free.  In the New Testament, both Jesus and the Holy Spirit are pictured as advocates, God the Father is often likened to a judge, redemption depends upon a declaration of judicial righteousness and our condemnation is set aside in Christ.  

History’s greatest courtroom drama is recorded in the Bible in Luke 22 and 23.  Following an irregular grand jury indictment, Jesus is brought before the criminal court on charges trumped up religious rivals.  In Pontius Pilate’s courtroom we see the greatest miscarriage of justice in human history.  Everyone is guilty – the judge, the prosecutors, the jury – everyone that is except the one on trial.  He alone is innocent.  Evidence is ignored and the judge is captive public opinion and his own corrupt history.  Despite his declarations of Jesus’ innocence, Pontius Pilate condemns him to death and compounds injustice by releasing a man who is truly guilty of all the charges leveled against Jesus.

As spectators, we recoil at this apparent travesty of justice.  But we must look more deeply.   No cursory examination of Jesus’ trial reveals the extent of the guilty.   It is easy to spot the guilt of the Sanhedrin, of the crowds, of Judas, of Pilate, and of Barabbas.  But the investigation must go deeper.  For we are not just spectators of this drama.  Jesus is not a hapless victim of human injustice, but a willing sacrifice to divine justice – justice that is rightly ours to bear.   It is not just Barabbas’ cross that Jesus bore, but ours.   God is just – His justice cannot ignore our crimes or allow them to go unpunished – but in His mercy He is the justifier of those who have faith in Christ.  Because of this we can have peace with God and with one another.  This my friend is good news.

Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine Luke 22 and 23 and consider Christ’s innocence and condemnation for our guilt and pardon.  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. 

“Thithors!”  That word was my nemesis.  Every ‘s’ seemed an irresistible command for my tongue to leave its ‘tongue-tip-up position’ and slide out between my teeth.  My frontal lisp transformed ‘s’ words to ‘th’ words.  But ‘scissors’ was paradigmatic of my struggle.  Every Tuesday, I would leave Mrs. Cost’s first-grade classroom to sit at a tiny desk in the hallway with a speech therapist who helped untie my tongue.  I don’t remember all the exercises, but I remember when “thithors” became “scissors.”

While there are a variety of lisps common in the childhood of English-speaking children, they are all labelled as ‘speech impediments.’  The word ‘impediment’ is apt.  With no stigma attached, ‘impediment’ expresses the challenges unclear speech introduces into life.  Nothing is more broken in a fallen world than our communication.  And there are lots of impediments to it.  Impediments to expression.  And impediments to understanding. 

And our fallenness impedes nothing more thoroughly than a clear understanding of God’s nature and our own significance.  In his explanation of the Christian faith, John Calvin writes.

“Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves… Man never attains a true self-knowledge until he has contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.”   –Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin

But how can we know what kind of God exists?  One preacher rightly noted, “if we look at God from the middle of our circumstances, we will get a distorted view of God.”  Indeed, unless he reveals himself to us, our experience alone will always form a dreadful, threatening, apathetic, capricious view of Him.  But He overcomes the impediment of our darkened understanding by revealing himself in his Word and through his Son.   The Bible notes.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.  –Hebrews 1:1-3

In Mark 7:31-37 we encounter a man with a remarkable speech impediment.  He could not hear or speak clearly.  Perhaps he had suffered a childhood sickness that imprisoned him in uncommunicable silence.  As Jesus travels through the area that once begged him to leave out of fear, now the people flock to him and beg him to lay his hands on this man for good. 

At first glance, Jesus’ approach to healing the man seems surprisingly ritualistic and conventional.  Jesus had just healed a demon possessed girl remotely without a word.  But here he puts his fingers in the deaf man’s ears, spits and touches the man’s muddled tongue, makes a point of looking up to heaven and sighing, and then commands his ears to “Be opened!”  Why the drama?  Why the therapeutic actions when only his silent will is necessary?

But a careful look at the story shows us its overwhelming concern for clear communication.  Clarity about God’s grace.  Clarity about the nature of His redeeming and restoring work in our lives.  Clarity about what kind of God He is.  And how we may know Him.  In this short, compelling account, God sweeps away impediments and offers the good news of the Kingdom to all types of men and to this particular man.  And we see Jesus, clearly offered as the only Savior for all men.

Join us as we examine Mark 7:31-37 and consider Jesus, clearly offered to broken, isolated men as the only sufficient Savior.  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. 

Man’s best friend.  Loving and loyal.  Adoring and attentive.  Empathetic, protective, and supportive.  And often able to sense remarkable internal, medical dangers in their masters.   Who does not love dogs?  Sure, there are cat people, but dogs symbolize and exemplify unconditional love.  And they are affectionate.  A sign I saw recently offered a warning to visitors, “Beware of dog, he can’t hold his licker!”

Yet despite our love of canine-kind, our vernacular expressions do not esteem them so highly.  We speak of the viciousness of a “dog-eat-dog” world.  We say that ruined things have “gone to the dogs.”  Wretched illness is characterized as being “sick as a dog.” And of course, it is sometimes best to “let sleeping dogs lie.”  Even the Bible often speaks of dogs in a less than favorable light.  For example, Proverbs 26:11 and Proverbs 26:17 use some unsavory characteristics of dogs to illustrate the meddler. And when I was a boy, a fashionable epithet to declare someone unattractive was to call them “a dog.”

Few expressions involving dogs are positive.  And it is certainly not considered praise to be compared to one.  Which is what makes Jesus’ words in Mark 7:24-30 so shocking for their apparent offensiveness.   No reader of the Gospels can miss that Jesus’ words were often provocative, authoritative, and incisive; especially confrontational and explosive when it comes to religious hypocrites.  But Jesus’ response to a Gentile woman’s request for the exorcism of her “little daughter” takes us aback.

Hardly in sync with the racial sympathies of the Pharisees, Jesus seems to resort to them here.  The descendants of Abraham were supposed to be a blessing to the nations.  A kingdom of priests, a light to the Gentiles.  Instead, they had become a racist, self-conceited people who referred to all non-Jews as “dogs.”  And dogs in the ancient world were mostly feral, vicious, scavengers who threatened people, livestock, and property.  Much as we might view coyotes today.

For the only time in the gospels, Jesus here departs the historic bounds of Israel.  And in his upcoming ministry, he is more and more in Gentile areas as sets his face toward Jerusalem and the cross.  Tyre and Sidon, in modern Lebanon, were considered Israel’s bitterest enemies.  The homeland of Jezebel was filled with idolatry and paganism.  Jews considered the Gentiles of Tyre and Sidon as the worst of the worst.  ‘Dogs’ in the worst senses of the word.

We don’t know exactly why Jesus is there.  We only know he sought privacy.  Whether he was sheltering from the coming storm with the religious leaders or simply seeking a respite from the demands of ministry to have private time with his disciples before moving toward his passion, he sought to be in cognito.  Yet, his fame has preceded him, even in Syrophonecia.  And so, a desperate mother seeks him out. 

But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 

This scenario is a familiar one.  And until now, every desperate request of Jesus is met with remarkable compassion and sensitivity, even when the disciples beg him to send petitioners away.  So, we are unprepared for Jesus’ response.

And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

Not only does Jesus appear to refuse compassion to a demon possessed child, but he offers offense to her mother.  His comments even seem tinged with racism.  And so we ask, “What is going on here? Who is this?”  But a closer examination of Jesus’ exchange forces us to rethink our cursory offense at Jesus’ language and see that he is at once demonstrating for us the remarkable, far-reaching grace of God and the dogged character of the faith he gives us.

Dull disciples need to learn the lessons that the “great faith” of this ‘Gentile dog’ teach.  Jesus takes them on retreat to prepare them for the coming storm.  And the dogged faith of a desperate mother does just that. 

Join us as we examine Mark 7:24-30 and consider hallmarks of a dogged, tenacious, persevering saving 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. 

What you see is what you get!  Or is it?  If WYSIWYG were true, if we could trust that appearances would not deceive, then our senses would be an infallible guide to what is good and true.  So long as we could see, hear, taste, smell and touch, we could have absolute certainty in every choice.  But we don’t live too long till we learn that what you see is rarely what you get.

The burger in the bag bears only the faintest resemblance to the picture on the marquee.  The size of the chip bag has little to do with the actual volume of chips.  The fine print in the packing materials walks back the remarkable claims boldly and brightly printed on the packaging.   Assuring guarantees are diluted by asterisks and double daggers.  A flatterer’s sweet words quickly sour into abuse.  And lover’s undying promises often die.  Many of our greatest sorrows arise from the disconnect between what we saw and what we got.

As a young couple, Melanie and I decided to invest in a crockpot. We researched features and read consumer reports.  Satisfied with our choice, we went to a local retailer and secured our grail.  We unboxed it, eager to press it into service.   But much to our surprise the box contained something quite unexpected.  A single concrete block wrapped in newspapers!  We were shocked.  But the customer service clerk at the store was not.  “We see this all the time,” he shrugged. Utterly unphased, he exchanged it without question.

More common and distressing, however, are those we encounter whose surface is radically different from their substance.  We call them hypocrites.  A word taken from two Greek words meaning, “beneath the mask.”  Originally the word referred to the masked players in the Greek theater.  And no hypocrite is more despised than the religious hypocrite.  We have all encountered professing Christians who refuse to go to church, because “every church is full of hypocrites.”  And while this is a common excuse, it is by no means an unfounded one.

The religious hypocrite destroys everything good.  Grace is not enough.  Holiness becomes an exercise in “set construction.”  Appearance is everything.  The religious hypocrite shelters in legalism and self-righteousness, and is usually a fugitive from faithful, biblical authority.  The gospel becomes the “law according to me.”   The religious hypocrite’s self-defined piety is all that matters.  Sin is manageable.  And grace redefined as God’s grudging approval of religious “box checking.”

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day are paradigmatic of this type of hypocrisy.  Jesus’ condemnation of them was stunning.  Matthew 23 is especially pointed as Jesus unmasked mask-wearers with seven woes.

…they preach but do not practice.  They do all their deeds to be seen by others.  [But] they shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.  For [they] neither enter [themselves] nor allow those who would enter to go in.   [They] travel across the sea and land to make a single proselyte, and … make him twice as much a child of hell.  [They] clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence… [They] are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.  [They] outwardly appear righteous to others, but within are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. 

Mark 7 marks a new phase of Jesus’ ministry.  Acclaim becomes controversy.  On his way to the cross, Jesus reaches out to “unclean Gentile dogs” and conflict with the scribes and Pharisees is part of every story.  This opening account marks the trajectory of what follows as the Pharisees accuse Jesus of lawlessness because his disciples failed to walk the fence of tradition they erected around God’s gracious law.

Jesus wastes no time in calling them out for their hypocrisy.  They care only for outward appearances, locate the source of defilement in external circumstances.  And shelter in an external, self-righteousness that never reaches the heart.  They have utterly failed to believe the creed they professed at every synagogue gathering. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Jesus notes that they exemplify what Isaiah prophesied.

This people honors me with their lips,
    but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
    teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. – Mark 7:6-7

Grace always works from the inside out, not the outside in.  It begins with the work of God to give us a new heart, a new love, and as one old Scottish preacher noted, “the expulsive power of a new affection.”  The spiritual-but-not-religious crowd cries, “organized religion is full of hypocrites!” Are they more right than we like to admit? Is our religion a mask? A role? Do we honor God with our lips while our hearts are elsewhere? Do we know and demonstrate the expulsive power of a new affection?

Join us as we examine Mark 7:1-23 and consider what Jesus says about what does and does not make us unclean and clean.  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.