“I was afraid and hid your talent in the ground” (Matthew 25:25).
“Why did you fear? Where is your faith?” (Matthew 8:26).
The storm was raging, the sea was crashing about them, the boat was going down and they were going to die.
The disciples decided it was high time to awaken Jesus. He needed to do something.
Exactly, what they had in mind for Him to do, they did not say.
“Lord, save us! We’re going to die!”
Do something He did.
“Who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, and of the son of man who is made like grass?” (Isaiah 51:12)
We are reading through the gospels, watching the interaction between the religious bigshots as they bully the Lord Jesus Christ–imagine that!–and are brought up short by noticing the prominent role fear played in the lives of these people. Consider…
–“Herod feared the multitude” (Matthew 14:5). Ah, a good reminder that tyrants always fear their subjects. Always.
–“The Pharisees feared the multitude” (Matthew 21:46). And so do religious bigshots fear their people.
–King Herod feared John the Baptist (Mark 6:20). Wickedness fears righteousness because it cannot understand it, cannot control it, can’t intimidate it, and cannot silence it. God’s faithful people must never forget this for one minute.
–The chief priests and scribes wanted to destroy Jesus, but “they were afraid of him, for all the multitude was astonished at His teaching” (Mark 11:18).
–The Lord Jesus said to the disciples, “Why did you fear? Where is your faith?” (Mark 4:40). Even the Lord’s closest friends were filled with fear.
Nothing speaks so eloquently about who you are as what you fear. And whom you fear.
We are literally defined by our fears.
“For if anyone is a hearer of he word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was” (James 1:23-24).
I asked my friend Freddie Arnold what to do about the mildew on my concrete.
Our water heater had busted and water leaked everywhere in the garage. After we mopped it up and replaced the heater, I noticed that the water had soaked into some things stored in the cluttered garage and we had a mildew problem. Freddie would know what to do.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s flooding of metro New Orleans, the procedure for restoring many of the damaged homes was to throw away all the furnishings, mud out the floors, then strip out the sheetrock down to the studs. At that point, you treated everything for mildew. Only after you were certain there was no mildew would you start to rebuild. Because Freddie Arnold was knowledgeable about these things, in his role as Disaster Relief foreman and NOBA assistant DOM, he led in the salvaging of hundreds of homes.
I called Freddie at the East Baton Rouge Baptist Association where he’s working these days in semi-retirement. (A joke. Freddie has never done half a job in his life. Pay him for half a day’s work and you will get far more than you expected.) He told me what to buy to treat the mildew and I wrote it down.
And promptly forgot what he had said.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed…” (Matthew 13:31)
“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much….” (Luke 16:10)
When the Heavenly Father gets ready to do something major, He loves to begin in tiny, unseen ways.
When He was ready to deliver Israel from slavery in Egypt, He called an 80-year-old has-been who was keeping sheep on the backside of a mountain. When the Lord got ready to redeem the world, He sent a Baby.
When He decided to do something grand, He called you.
So many scriptures make the point that God specializes in using the tiny and insignificant to accomplish great things. The parable of the mustard seed in Matthew 13:31-32 says it. The question of Jonathan in I Samuel 14:6 says it. The Lord’s approval of the widow who brought her tiny offering says it (Mark 12:41ff). The little boy’s lunch in John 6:9. Old Simeon and Anna in Luke 2. Mustardseed faith in Luke 17:6. Ordinary people in I Corinthians 1:26.
Zechariah’s question–“Who has despised the day of small things?”–lays the matter squarely before us (Zech. 4:10).
Who despises small things? The unthinking and the shallow-minded, that’s who. The carnal-minded who wants glitter and drama, who prizes celebrity and gaudiness.
We have learned about the power of small things. There is the atom. Nuclear energy. The hummingbird. Honey-bees. Bed bugs. Viruses. Babies. Puppies. Words of encouragement. And a hug.
“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” (Matthew 23:13,14,15,23,25,27,29). “Woe to you, blind guides!” (Matthew 23:16,24,26). “You serpents, you brood of vipers!” (Matthew 23:33).
The Lord has this thing about hypocrites.
He doesn’t care for them much.
You and I have learned something God hasn’t managed to do: to accommodate ourselves to those who say one thing and do another.
Take the beer company of St Louis, for instance. We read this and it sounds normal to us. It took a secular writer to point out the hypocrisy in their moralizing.
“We are not yet satisfied with the league’s handling of behaviors that so clearly go against our own company culture and moral code.” –Anheuser Busch, responding to recent scandals in the National Football League (TIME magazine, September 29, 2014)
Humor writer Ian Frazier nails the famous beer company for its duplicitous moralizing in the same issue of TIME magazine.
In recent weeks the NFL has been under attack for its mishandling of the serious misbehavior of players who, among other things, knocked out a wife in the elevator and was caught on tape doing it, and beat a four-year-old child leaving whelps and open wounds on his skin.
The famous beer company, known for its massive advertising throughout every sporting event available, takes the NFL to task for its pitiful reaction. Such behavior is against Anheuser-Busch’s moral code and culture.
“If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46).
The politician convicted of racketeering tells the press that since Jesus is his Savior, he will be all right.
The businessman who taught a Sunday School class and gave millions to the Lord’s work is convicted of running a Ponzi scheme and swindling millions from people who trusted him.
The preacher found guilty as a child molester insists that his faith in Jesus will see him through this crisis.
God’s people trying to get this right want to say to them, “Would you just shut up about being a Christian! This is a time to keep it to yourself. You have not earned the right to go public with your testimony.”
Those who bring shame upon the Lord have no right to a public declaration of faith. Let them repent and “bring forth fruits meet for repentance.”
“Sirs, we would see Jesus” (John 12:21).
Nothing tells the story on you and me like what it takes to defeat us.
Some of us, like the Saints’ Jimmy Graham, have to be double- or triple-teamed to stop us from serving Christ. Others of us can be safely ignored because we’re no threat to the devil.
I am impressed in reading the gospels at the people who did whatever was necessary to get to Jesus. Here is a partial list. You may think of others….
1) In Mark 2, four men brought their paralyzed buddy to Jesus. Unable to get into the house, they carried him onto the flat rooftop and tore open the tiles and lowered him into the room. I am impressed by their perseverance.
2) In Mark 5, the woman with a 12-year hemorrhage worked her way through the crowd to get to Jesus. “If I can touch but the hem of His garment, I will get well.” People with her affliction avoid crowds, but look at her. I am impressed by her determination and pushiness, even.
“Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins” (Psalm 19:13).
In the months leading up to the U.S. involvement in the Second World War, we had broken the Japanese secret code. Army and Navy personnel were reading their messages. We actually knew where they were most of the time and what they were planning.
All signs indicated they were going to attack the U.S. at Pearl Harbor.
And yet, when they did just that–December 7, 1941, that day of infamy–they caught us completely unprepared. All our battleships were parked side by side close up and made a great target for the Japanese torpedo bombers. All our planes were parked in rows, as though for the sharpshooters at the county fair.
The Japanese had a field day.
How had this happened? How had they managed to catch us so completely off guard when we were reading their coded messages and knew what they were up to?
The short answer is we did not believe what we were reading. It was unthinkable that their aircraft carriers could get close enough to attack Pearl Harbor. So, we stupidly walked into that ambush.
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore, be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
This is a brief Bible study. (Just so you’ll know. Smiley-face here.)
For Christian workers, one of the most significant Scripture passages is the commission the Lord gave His disciples just before sending them out on a short-term assignment. This is found in Matthew 10 and Luke 10. In Luke’s account, the commissioning takes 16 verses, but in Matthew’s, it’s a full 42 verses–so therefore, my favorite, since it’s far more helpful.
At that point the 12 apostles were something like seminary students, preachers in training with diverse backgrounds and limited experience. (Some of us used to stand on the street corners in the French Quarter preaching. And, we roamed up and down the sidewalks with handfuls of tracts talking to strangers. We were in boot camp, learning how to talk to people about Jesus.) That’s what was happening with these disciples.
“If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:12)
I don’t know what you think about when lying awake at night unable to sleep, but recently my mind has dwelt on the wonders of there being a planet Earth in the first place, and all that this means for the children of God.
The Psalmist said “I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). I read that and think, “If you only knew, King David. You spoke those words three thousand years ago. What if you knew what we know now! The human body is truly the marvel of the ages.”
And yet, the earth is also just as fearfully and wonderfully made. Just as awe-inspiring, with as much the signature of the Divine on it as any human carries.
Consider this one thing: HOW MANY FACTORS ARE REQUIRED FOR EARTH TO SUSTAIN LIFE?
Any one of the following not being in place could kill the whole deal. And yet, they’re all there, in place, doing their job, while I sit here at a laptop in my dining room, with a cup of Dunkin Donut coffee to my right and earth all around me, requiring absolutely nothing from me. I am completely in awe of this.
What makes life on Earth work? Some factors include….