I had a strong arm.  But I was a big target.  And it was that which seriously reduced my capital as a teammate.  Elementary school dodgeball was a hotbed of competition and controversy.  No one wanted to waste their pick on an easy target.  And so, I waited.  And I waited.   Until the process of elimination saddled one hapless team with me as their last round draft pick.

I loved school, but recess was not my strong suit.  The Presidential Fitness Test and choosing teams were a definite low ebb in my institutional experience.  The order of selection was predictable.  Tony Fulcher and Roy Daffron were always first.  And I was often, if not always, last.   I sometimes thought that if the teams could have opted out of the process of elimination, they would have when it came to me.  Perhaps you know the angst of choosing teams.

But as with most things in God’s grace-based economy, last things are first things.  And unprofitable ones are chosen ones.  Incapable servants are made competent and do remarkable things.  It is the theme of the Bible that those unworthy and unlikely to ever be chosen are elected by the free grace of God alone and empowered to turn the world upside down. 

The Apostle Paul wrote half the New Testament, planted unknown numbers of churches, was responsible for explosive kingdom expansion and yet he writes.

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant.  -2 Corinthians 3:4-6

God chose an entire nation to be His treasured people, yet he reminds them.

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you.  -Deuteronomy 7:6-8

It is God who “arranges the members in the body, each one of them, as he [chooses].”  The body of Christ is not a meritocracy based on skill, prominence, or net worth.   Despite what we think, these have no power to expand the kingdom of God.  The New Testament reminds us that “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

Nowhere is this dynamic more on display than in Jesus’ selection of the Twelve in Mark 3.  None of those men applied for the position of apostle or submitted to tryouts, auditions, or examinations.   Jesus made the choices, choosing those whom he desired.  And the list of the Twelve is like a highlighter, underscoring that they were “uneducated, common men,” often very dull, whose only qualification was that they had been with Jesus.

Mark 3:7-19 gives a vivid picture of the crushing demands of following Christ and of God’s grace in choosing and sending us to meet those demands.  This passage unfolds God’s purpose in choosing us, his plan for our calling, and an important portrait of the people God chooses and uses.  

Join us as we examine Mark 3:7-19 and consider purposes, plans, and people of God’s choosing. 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 us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Dizzy Dean, Ted Williams, and Jesus.  Somehow Carl Hall could unite their stories in a compelling way that kept seven ten-year-old Royal Ambassadors focused and engaged for a whole half hour before he would take us to the church parking lot and instruct us on the art of the curve ball.  He seemed ancient, but did not have one curmudgeonly bone in his body.  Though we were sure he could get mad. Carl Hall never let us see him angry.  And we gave him plenty of opportunities. 

Some people are like that.  With the patience of Job, they roll with whatever frustration, adversity, or disappointment comes their way with grace and peace.   Yet occasionally we see their “bridge too far.”  When the outer boundaries of their patience are breached.  Their dominion sensor tripped.  Their sacred profaned.  Or a deeply held conviction scorned.  Then you see that flash of intensity.  A moment of light and heat.  A righteous indignation that commands attention by its rarity.

No man ever exhibited patience like the Lord Jesus.  Indeed, he is gentle and meek.  The helplessness of the crowds, the dullness of the disciples, the despair of Pilate and the ignorance of his executioners all reveal his remarkable tenderness and compassion.  But it is always an error to confuse meekness for weakness.  After all, it is the meek who will inherit the earth!  Moses was described as the meekest man on the face of the earth.  And he was no pushover.  

The earthly life of Jesus, as described by the gospels, reveals clearly what the author of Hebrews summarizes, that “he had to be made like [us] in every respect.”  And our catechism notes.

Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin. -Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 22.

‘A true body and a reasonable soul’ speaks of true humanity.  Jesus was no apparition.  No mere theophany in human form.  He was a real man.  He ate, slept, got tired, and was tempted in every way as we are.  And he got angry.  So angry that the Gospel of John tells us that he made “a whip of cords and drove [all the merchants] out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen.  And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables.”  

He was indignant with the disciples when they kept children from coming to him.  He sharply rebuked James and John when they asked to call down fire on an unfriendly village.  At the grave of Lazarus he wept, but he was also “deeply moved in his spirit and troubled” at the unbelief of the people. 

And in chapter 3 of Mark’s Gospel Jesus is angry with those who prefer Sabbath rigor over compassionate care for a disabled man.   So angry that the word Mark uses to describe it is found only here in the New Testament.  And while Mark shows more of Jesus’ emotions than other gospel writers, the intensity of Jesus’ response to the scribe’s hard-heartedness is found elsewhere only during Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane.  

Jesus’ anger that Sabbath in the synagogue exposed much more than a lack of compassion.  It revealed a preference for the words of men over the word of God.  And a love of self above every other love.  Graceless religion is the most insidious expression of man in his fallenness.   It despises the love of God and the person of His Son.  And it made Jesus angry.    

Join us this week as we examine Mark 3:1-6 and consider what makes Jesus angry. 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 us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Advice is plentiful, but success is elusive.  Rarely do we rise from our sleep of a morning declaring, “that was a hall-of-famer.”  Yesterday’s burdens lasted longer than daylight. They make us unrested, weary our souls, load us with the world’s cares.  The strongest morning joe cannot take off the edge.  Or restore what tension has taken from us.  The Curse is strong.  What little we know of our own and others’ lives press down with a gravity no planet can muster.

We know all the tricks.  Turn off our screens.  Get more natural light during the day.  Set the thermostat lower.  Hang blackout curtains. We don’t eat after 7pm. Or drink coffee after noon.  Reserve our bed for sleep.  Drink chamomile tea.  And try to stop thinking, “If I don’t fall asleep soon, tomorrow will be ruined.”  Yet all the “Quick, Proven Ways to Get Better Sleep” the internet boasts fail to include the one thing man was given by his Maker for rest.

Before man had lived a full day,

…on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.   Genesis 2:1

When God graciously takes a people to be his own, blessed people, he instructs them.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.… For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Exodus 20:8-11

No other religion in the ancient world had a day of rest.  Work, work, works!  All the ancient and contemporary world’s idolatrous religions command man to work harder, be better, do more.  And man’s fallen, cursed, twisted nature pines for Adam’s Covenant of Works.  Striving to be his own god, to ascend to the heavens by the work of his own hands.  But the Tower of Babel is never tall enough.  Only the gracious giver of all good and perfect gifts can command, promise and provide rest.  

The Bible is filled with promises for rest.  Psalm 127 declares, “He gives to his beloved sleep.”  And the author of Hebrews encourages us that “there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest.” And one of Jesus’ sweetest invitations is “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Only God’s grace brings a rest that refreshes body, mind, and spirit. And the Sabbath is both the root and goal of our restfulness.  It is a sign of God’s gracious gift and a means of grace which grants it.  Yet we often attempt to turn even that into work.   We encumber the observance of the Sabbath with legalism, tedium and guilt.  And it becomes a thing to be rested from rather than rested in.

Nothing steals God’s gracious provision of rest through the Sabbath like legalism.  We see this in hard-heartedness of the religious leaders of Jesus’ day.  Rather than resting on the Sabbath they are following Jesus, spying on him and scrutinizing his every move in order to find some basis for accusation.   And in Mark 2:23-28, they desecrate the very Sabbath they accuse Jesus’ disciples of defiling by their hardness of heart.

In response to their complaint, Jesus gives one of the most important principles of Sabbath-keeping.  “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.  So, the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”   Far from adding laxity to Sabbath observance, Jesus points out the beauty and purpose for God’s gift of rest through the Sabbath.  A gift that brings rest like nothing else.

Join us as we examine Mark 2:23-28 and consider how we are the think rightly about the Lord’s Day and how we observe it.   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 us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Opposites attract!  The maxim is undeniably true in electromagnetism.   But not reliably so for relationships.  Molecular bonds are strong and binding.  But in relationships, while opposites may attract, they often fail to form strong bonds.  Intimacy and like-mindedness are directly proportional.  The former will only increase as the latter increases. 

Opposites in personality and giftings may offer complementary strength.  But if the opposition strikes at core values the relationship is doomed. Some things can simply never coexist without destruction.   Some things just do not play nicely with others.  Despite the seeming tolerance of “COEXIST” bumper stickers, the reality is that some things are fundamentally irreconcilable. 

In fact, even that word, “coexist” unwittingly expresses the impossibility of what it aspires to promote.  To exist simultaneously, but not together.  To exist separately, tolerantly, but without any basis for exercising real love.   In 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, then Wal-Mart President, Don Soderquist addressed the Information Systems Division in which I worked.  He said something that struck a chord, “Tolerance is a passive form of hatred.”

Love does not simply “coexist.”  Love recognizes that some things are not compatible.  Love does not just go along to get along.   Love draws lines, love makes new demands, love does not settle for the status quo.  As Jesus comes forth proclaiming the Gospel and the Kingdom, he draws lines, makes demands and challenges the status quo.   The Gospel of Mark finishes only one chapter before Jesus’ acclaim turns to controversy.  Jesus forgives sins, receives sinners, and explodes every self-righteous religious view of his contemporaries with the long-promised grace of God. 

Often the Law and the Gospel are set in opposition.  And to be sure there are proper distinctions, but, as Paul reminds us in Romans 3:31, “Do we overthrow the Law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.”  No, it is not the Law and the Gospel which are in opposition, but it is the Gospel and “works righteousness” that are in opposition.   And they simply cannot coexist.  The confusion of Jesus’ contemporaries was that they could be justified by God through their own piety and qualified obedience to the law.  

While the Scribes and Pharisees felt the weight of God’s law, they failed to find it weighty enough.  They constructed a fence of human tradition they believed would allow them to keep it sufficiently to be declared righteous in God’s sight.  Yet Jesus would teach time and time again, “you have heard it said, but I tell you.”  And then he would take the law to the heart, where the scribal fence had gaping holes.  Jesus minced no words, calling proselytes of the scribes and the Pharisees, “twice as much a child of hell” as they were.

Grace and works-righteousness simply cannot coexist.   And the collision of these views accelerated Jesus’ controversy with the religious leaders to the point that very early they are plotting his death.   Why don’t you fast like us?   Why don’t you observe the Sabbath like us?  Why don’t you wash your hands like us?  They wanted Jesus’ teaching to conform to the shape of their dried out old wineskins.   But the Gospel explodes the old wineskins of self-righteous, works-righteousness.  And shreds the worn-out garments of grace-plus-works salvation.   The Gospel gives the joy of a wedding feast, not the sorrow of a fast. 

Join us as we examine Mark 2:18-22 and consider Jesus’ response to demands that the gospel coexist with somber, self-righteous religion.  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 us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.  

We all fear it.  We are only rarely able to relieve it.  Watching someone go through it is gut-wrenching.  Few things feel more helpless than the suffering of a loved one.  We try to stay positive and struggle to know how to help.  But we rarely have what is needed.   Sometimes only in suffering’s aftermath are we able to find a way to help others. 

In 1983 a young man named Michael Aureli wrapped his mother, suffering terribly from ovarian cancer, in a blanket and carried her to the emergency room only to hear, “There is nothing we can do.”   Her death was agonizing.  After her death he determined to find a way to do more for the suffering of the terminally ill.  In 1992 he co-founded Arkansas Hospice.  Michael’s motto was, “when you are told, ‘there is nothing we can do,’ there is more that can be done.”

Nancy Brinker’s story was similar.   When her younger sister, Susan G. Komen died at the age of 36 of breast cancer in 1980, Nancy became a tireless advocate for education and research into breast cancer and its treatment.   In 1982 she founded the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.  Her foundation was known for its iconic “pink ribbons” and its signature fundraising event, the Race for the Cure.  And though controversial, it has been instrumental in raising awareness and advancing research into breast cancer treatment. 

We will do almost anything to relieve the suffering of our loved ones.  Mark 2 recounts a remarkable story of four men who go to extremes to help a man crippled by palsy.  Jesus arrived home from his first preaching tour of Galilee, and it did not take long for word to get around that he was back.  The house was soon filled with both disciples and detractors.   Luke records that critics from as far away as Jerusalem were present in Jesus’ home, waiting to catch him in some condemnable heresy.   As Jesus speaks to them the Word, the four men arrive carrying their friend on a mat, confident that Jesus can heal him.

It is impossible to even get to the door, let alone through it.   But they will not be deterred.  These are men we would want in our corner and on our side.   They go up on the roof, dig through the ceiling and lower their friend in front of Jesus as he is teaching.  There is no word of request, no plaintive plea from either the friends or the invalid, no apology for the damage.  Before a word is spoken, we read that “Jesus saw their faith, [and] said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’”

It was a stunning moment.  The man’s suffering was much deeper than his friends knew.  They knew he was bed-bound.  But Jesus knew that a more debilitating, insidious, terminal condition bound this man.  His suffering went far deeper than his lifeless legs.  His most pressing affliction was a lifeless heart and soul.   Seeing the faith of the man and his friends, Jesus speaks words we all long to hear. “Your sins are forgiven.”

Everyone’s expectations are rocked.   The man is free, the friends confused, the scribes indignant.  What just happened?  Despite their motives, the theological instincts of the scribes are correct.  “Who can forgive sins but God alone? Why does this man speak like this?”   Why indeed?  Who is this who speaks the word with authority, who commands evil spirits, who rebukes fever and cleanses leprosy – and who forgives sins.    More is needed than healing.  And Jesus is more than a healer.  Much more.

Join us as we examine Mark 2:1-12 and consider our greatest need and the only one who can meet it. 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 us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.