Mark 10:31 - The Right-Side-Up Kingdom

Mark 10:31
But many who are first will be last, and the last, first.

Message:  The right-side-up kingdom.

Time: Mark's personal connection with Peter gave him the source material for this book. This book was composed probably between AD 57 and AD 59. It's a book that is on the move, leading to the cross. 39 times is the word 'immediately' used. Mark reveals Jesus as God's servant, reaching into the lives of people and effecting physical and circumstantial change.

What the Lord is Saying: 

Preface -  Jesus has concluded this lesson on salvation by reminding his audience that the heart must leave behind all that it holds dear and go in the opposite way. And we need to realize that persecution may come. And the reward for this type of commitment is eternal life. 

Jesus continues to speak in a way that is different. He started chapter 10 talking about marriage and basically that a man and woman, when brought together by the Lord, will make the extra effort to stay together. He then remarks the favor he places on little children. They are indeed precious and important to him when often they are glossed over in the world. And then he speaks to the idea that all must be surrendered to him, even in our money, if we are truly going to be his followers. 

This passage now centers on a very small verse - But many first will be last, and the last, first. 
Again, at first glance, this passage does not make any sense. In a race, the last finishers are not first, they are last. In a race, the first finishers are not last, but they are first. So, how are we supposed to understand this from Jesus?

Jesus provides these words on the heels of his message to the disciples and followers and even the rich young ruler about the how salvation happens, how entrance to the kingdom of God occurs. It is a conclusion of that message by saying the first will be last and the last first. DeGarmo and Key wrote a song called All the Losers Win. It is this idea that those who are often considered last in this world will be first in the Kingdom of God (the poor, the children). When we forsake all and follow Him sometimes we give up our riches to do this.

Summary - Jesus wants to express something to his disciples and followers and that is His way is different, unique from the worlds way and when we love others the way he has loved us, hopefully they people will see that we are different. In this lesson, the last are first. It is not the wealthy that automatically enter the kingdom of God as wealth can make you feel like you are in need of nothing.

Promise: Our churches should look different to the world. We should have a way of conducting ourselves that stands out, rather than mirrors what we are seeing in the World.

Prayer: Lord, your messages are indeed different. They are unique. Help me God to be this type of person. Help me to be sensitive to my wife's needs and not to be so focused on fulfilling my needs. Lord, I am weak. I need your strength to help me through this type of living. I am a selfish creature that often thinks that getting my way is what will make me happy. But, serving others holds a greater role in our lives.

Psalm 139:1-12 - Our All-Knowing, All-Seeing Lord

Psalm 139:1-12 - O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,” even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.

Message: He is there, I don't understand, but He wants to lead me.

Time: The psalms were written by many different people across a period of a thousand years in Israel's history. They are thought to have been compiled and put together in their present form by some unknown editor shortly after the captivity ended about 537 B.C.

What the Lord is Saying:

As I think about the Psalmist, as I think about him stopping for a moment and capturing these words, they actually seem very familiar. The Psalmist is expressing thoughts and ideas that have enveloped me at various times. The Psalmist has a union with the Lord and in his words, denotes a familiarity and closeness to the Lord. The Lord is not a distant creator, but the Lord is near. The Lord is present with him. As he lives, the Lord is there, by him. It doesn't matter where he goes in life or what he experiences, God is there. There is a simple way about these verses. 

Our time is busy and filled with so much. My body screams for rest, like it did last night, with my stomach hurting and back hurting, as the day had too many stresses associated with it. I was cloudy with worry and anxiety, that did me no good. I had work thoughts, child thoughts, commitment to preparing for a party thoughts, family together thoughts; there was so much going through my head. And yet, was the closeness of God in those situations of life there? 

What stands about regarding these verses is the simple idea that yes God is all-knowing and all-seeing, but He is that way, because He is near. He cares. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. God is present with me. As one person on this earth, he is making me feel like I am the only person on this earth. No one values me more. No one knows me better. He is there with me. 

It is words like this that, undoubtedly, I do not comprehend. Knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain to it. This recognition that the Lord is this close to me, where I am, what I am saying and thinking, that is the kind of idea that is hard for me even to realize. That anything would be near to me like that. It is hard to comprehend. 

But, God is not simply present and near me and listening and knowing of my thoughts. Even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me. He is beside me to direct me. He knows me so that he can show me what to do. Lord, this is what escapes me so often. This is what I have difficulty capturing. That by being close to me you will lead me. Lord, the events of my day are too much for me to handle. I do not simply want to learn to be more efficient and more self-sufficient. My ideal is to not learn to stand up for myself, all the more. To be honest, that is not my ideal because then I will think I can do it all without you. Yes, I am a hard worker and yes, I care about my work and people and quality, but Lord, I need Your help. I need Your leading. I need Your right hand to lay hold of me. 

You are not nearby to just keep up. But, you are there to guide me. I need this guiding Lord. Forgive me for thinking I can do it on my own. 

 

Promise: God is greater than we are; he is not like us; he has not just more knowledge but a different type of knowledge. Learn to know Him and depend on Him.

 

Romans 3:18 - No Fear of God

Romans 3:18 - “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” 

Message: The picture of no fear of God.

Time: Paul probably wrote Romans between A.D. 57-58 while he was at Corinth in the home of his friend and convert Gaius. He planned to go first to Jerusalem to deliver a gift of money from the Gentile churches to the poor in Jerusalem. Then he hoped to visit Rome on his way to Spain. His hopes were later realized, but not as he had expected. When he finally arrived in Rome in early A.D. 60, he was a prisoner under house arrest (Acts 28:11-31).

What the Lord is Saying:

Here in verse 18 is sort of an interesting, though apt, culmination of man's departure from God. It is somewhat similar to chapter 1. I am always reminded that as my turns from God, he stops giving thanks to God for His hand of providence in life. And here is the calling card of the sinner. We have seen that no one is righteous, the tongue is poison and our feet are swift to shed blood. 

But, more directly now before God, there is no fear of God. This statement really could be a summary statement of the problem with all men: no fear of God. This is a quote from Psalm 36:1, "Transgression speaks to the ungodly within his heart; There is no fear of God before his eyes."

The stark reminder of this verse is man really doesn't care about God. Fearing God causes us to turn away from evil (Proverbs 3:7). The fear of God means our sin is constrained so without it, sin is unleashed. It always amazes me the surprise it seems the Christian world has in the world's sins. They don't fear God. How can we expect them to follow through on God's commandments when they don't fear Him? 

Deuteronomy 4:10 -  Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, ‘Assemble the people to Me, that I may let them hear My words so they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.
-- with an absence of God's words in our life, there is going to be an absence of the fear of God. 

Why is the fear of God so important? I think it is a recognition that God is there. It is interesting that when I'm breaking the law of speeding, I fear the police catching me. In a dark room, sometimes I fear not having light. Sometimes I fear being found out for not being as smart as people think I am. I fear people often, not wanting to talk to them about God, because I don't want their rejection of me or their verdict upon me. I think of money too much because I fear being without it. I have fears that my children will not walk with the Lord. But, I wonder if I really fear God. What often motivates me to not sin is the consequences of sin. I hope that what begins my desire to avoid sin is the realization that God is there. He created me. He has a purpose for me. He is in control. In some ways, I think fear of God is respecting who God is. It is recognizing that He is there, always. It is knowing that He is Holy. It is believing in Him.

Promise: Without fear of God, there is no foundation. Man is in chaos.

Romans 1:26-27 - Giving Up What is Natural

Romans 1:26-27 - 26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Message: Giving up what is natural

Time:  Written sometime in AD 57-58, probably from Corinth, at the end of Paul's third missionary journey.

What the Lord is Saying: 

These verse are on the heels of verse 24 where it states that God gave the people over to their sins. Basically that is the thought. People had been given an awareness of God in their life, but exchanged it for a lie and worshiped the creature rather than the creator. Verse 24 mentions that "their bodies might be dishonored among them." John MacArthur states, "The more he (man) exalts himself, the more he declines. The more he magnifies himself the more he diminishes. The more he honors himself, the more he becomes dishonored." And so this verse that speaks of bodies being dishonored among them partly seems to speak of sexual sin. Preceptaustin.org states on this verse, "Remember that Paul was writing Romans from the city of Corinth, where every sort of sexual immorality and ritualistic prostitution was practiced promiscuously. In fact things were so vile in Corinth that the expression “to live like a Corinthian” came to mean “to live a life of moral degradation”! Corinth’s idol temple had more than one thousand so called priestesses dedicated to gratification of lust."

Thus, we come to verse 26 and 27, two verses that I have always spoke of homosexuality or practicing the gay lifestyle. The homosexual would say that these verses instead speak more of idolatry that has been referenced in the verses previously stated in Romans 1:19-23. My thinking, however, is the words that are being used, specifically the words found in the New American Standard translation. In 24, it is "lust of their hearts to impurity" and "bodies dishonored." And even in 25, it gives the idea that the relationship with a person supersedes the relationship with God.

And verse 26 refers to passions.The Greek word for passions is pathos and has 2 other references in the new testament in Colossians 3:5 and I Thessalonians 4:5 and both instances refer to sexual passions. Again, Paul is writing from Corinth which was a mecca of sexual sin and in Greece homosexuality was rampant and even because a lifestyle that people that was cool. I believe now we are seeing the same thing to do. It has become almost cool to be gay.

I don't know how this passage could be anything but about homosexuality but I am sure many will try to make it out to be something different. Homosexuality is against nature. It is a choice people make. Over time, men and women may have a predisposition to that choice, but it is still a choice. One thing I notice about my life is the more time I spend in the Word, the more time I spend reading the things of God and praying and engaging in communication with others, the more I become aware of the sin in my life and the wrongdoing. The closer I get to God, the more I see how awful of a person I am. So, for people to not see this in themselves must mean that they are not reading the Bible or not reading it to conform to God and His ways, but instead just read it like a school book. God's word must be read with an eye toward change and conforming to the will of God. As we do, God changes us. This entire chapter of Romans is a progression from being near God to being away from God and it is a chapter that describes what happens to a man that over time exchanges the truth of God for a lie. But, that lie ends up becoming that person's truth. We can't be surprised at sin in the world and the way people embrace it. They are spending their days without God so they are naturally moving in that direction. The challenge of the disciple is to continually help people see that their is a God and Gospel and God does care about us and our entire life and how it is lived. It is so easy to get comfortable in life and feel like all you are doing is okay and decent. But, God is just not on the throne so clearly. And more and more we need Him and He needs to be in the center of our life. O wretched man that I am. Lord, bring people to their knees. Yes, we need a revival, but that revival needs to start within the Body of Christ. Yes, the masses of Society need to change, but God, change me. Change us.

Promise:  God has an order and a way for male and females. Don't adjust it or change it. Accept it and God will bless us.