Tuesday’s reading is Mark 11:1-14, which offers a new vista into just how utterly remarkable our Master is truly. How fortunate we are to be His apprentices. Good stuff here from a little known backwoods preacher from somewhere called Manhattan.

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, people laid down their cloaks on the road in front of him and hailed him as a king coming in the name of the house of David. This type of parade was culturally appropriate in that era: A king would ride into town publicly and be hailed by cheering crowds. But Jesus deliberately departed from the script and did something very different. He didn’t ride in on a powerful war horse the way a king would; he was mounted on a polos, that is, a colt of a small donkey. Here was Jesus Christ, the King of authoritative, miraculous power, riding into town on a steed fit for a child or a hobbit. In this way, Jesus let it be known that he was the One prophesied in Zechariah, the great Messiah to come:

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9)

This odd juxtaposition demonstrates that Jesus was King, but that he didn’t fit into the world’s categories of kingship. He brought together majesty and meekness. One of the greatest sermons ever written and preached in 1738 by Jonathan Edwards, titled “The Excellency of Christ.” Edwards’s imagination was captured by the prophetic vision of Jesus’s disciple John in Revelation 5:5-6: “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’ Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne.” John is told to look for a lion, but there in the midst of the throne is a lamb. Edwards meditates on this:

The lion excels in strength and in the majesty of his appearance and voice. The lamb excels in meekness and patience…is [sacrificed] for food…and clothing. But we see that Christ is in the text compared to both, because the diverse excellencies of both wonderfully meet in him….There is in Jesus Christ…a conjunction of such really diverse excellencies as otherwise would have seemed to us utterly impossible in the same subject…

Edwards goes on to list in detail all the ways that Jesus combines character traits that we would consider mutually exclusive.
In Jesus we find:
–infinite majesty yet complete humility,
–perfect justice yet boundless grace,
–absolute sovereignty yet utter submission,
–all-sufficiency in himself yet entire trust and dependence on God.

But in Jesus the result of these extremes of character is not mental and emotional breakdown. Jesus’s personality is a complete and beautiful whole. 

(From Timothy Keller’s King’s Cross)

Sunday we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper together during our 9 & 10:30 worship services. There are many ways to prepare yourself to participate in Holy Communion. One of those ways is by fasting. Perhaps you fast from media for a couple of hours before bed Saturday night, or from food starting sometime on Saturday. Remember, we never do these things to earn God’s favor, because we have it in Jesus. We fast because:
— Jesus commended fasting as a normative act of humility and devotion to God (see Matthew 6:16-18). Note particularly that he says, “When you fast…” not “If you fast…” (Seems like fasting is SOP for apprentices of Jesus.) Take a look at Matthew 9:14-15. The first Christians fasted (Acts 13:2-3; 14:23).
—At heart, fasting is an intensification of prayer. It’s a physical exclamation point at the end of the sentence, “We hunger for you to come in power.” It’s a cry with your body, “I really mean it, Lord! This much, I hunger for you.”

Today’s reading in Mark, 7:24-37 contains a crazy encounter between Jesus and a woman who just needs help for her daughter.

Read the passage and come back. Did Jesus just call this woman a dog? Or did Jesus tell a parable and give her a challenge and an offer. Tim Keller has great insights here:

On the surface, this appears to be an insult. We are a canine- loving society, but in New Testament times most dogs were scavengers—wild, dirty, uncouth in every way. Their society was not canine-loving, and to call someone a dog was a terrible insult. In Jesus’s day the Jews often called the Gentiles dogs because they were “unclean.” Is what Jesus says to her just an insult, then? No, it’s a parable. The word parable means “metaphor” or “like- ness,” and that’s what this is. One key to understanding it is the very unusual word Jesus uses for “dogs” here. He uses a diminu- tive form, a word that really means “puppies.” Remember, the woman is a mother. Jesus is saying to her, “You know how fami- lies eat: First the children eat at the table, and afterward their pets eat too. It is not right to violate that order. The puppies must not eat food from the table before the children do.” If we go to Matthew’s account of this incident, he gives us a slightly longer version of Jesus’s answer in which Jesus explains his meaning: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Jesus concentrated his ministry on Israel, for all sorts of reasons. He was sent to show Israel that he was the fulfillment of all Scripture’s promises, the fulfillment of all the prophets, priests, and kings, the fulfillment of the temple. But after he was resurrected, he immediately said to the disciples, “Go to all the nations.” His words, then, are not the insult they appear to be. What he’s saying to the Syrophoenician woman is, “Please understand, there’s an order here. I’m going to Israel first, then the Gentiles (the other nations) later.” However, this mother comes back at him with an astounding reply:

Jerram Barrs.  Dude put his mark upon me. So many memories of things he taught me about knowing, loving, and walking with Jesus in humility. How I wish I learned it more deeply! Anyway, when thinking about the taking up cross passage I found myself wondering what he thought.  Per usual, he was so thoughtful and helpful.  Here’s an extended excerpt from a book he co-authored w/ Ranald Macaulay

This attitude—the willingness to give oneself away, to give up good things for the sake of better—appears at first sight to be negative but is in fact positive. It is the affirmation of one’s true, human identity. The “unnatural” existence, the denial of one’s true identity, is the self-centered existence.
Some measure of this reality must be present in every believer.  The degree is not the central issue, and care must be taken that this never becomes a principle of self-glorification or a basis on which to condemn others who have not spent themselves to the same degree (1 Cor 4:5). But the church and the individual ignore this principle at their peril. We are to be concerned about this principle of giving ourselves away not only because the law of God states that we should love in this way, and not only because Scripture points us to Christ as our great example (though both are true), but because that is in fact what love means, and what in fact we were created to do.  It is our nature. Only as we learn to live in this new way will we be fulfilled.

We ought to be careful as we come across passages in the NT which appear to give a negative slant to the Xn life.  Negative they may be, in that they involve the eradicating of what is wrong or the enduring of persecution or the laying aside of pleasurable and legitimate experiences.  But when seen in the context of the biblical view of humanity, the negative element fades away and these experiences, though painful, are seen to be positive—the recovery and the expression of our true identity and dignity.  –Jerram Barrs, Being Human

If you’ve missed the notebooks at the Vision Event or on Sunday, feel free to print your own from home or use this PDF as you read and study with your church. Access the PDF here, or email me to request a printed notebook this Sunday!

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