The Meaning of Water Walking

In this sermon, Jonathan Pennington not only preaches from Mark 6:45-52, but he details the way we are to read the gospels as narratives. An excellent sermon and expose of other problematic ways of preaching gospel narratives.

more about “The Meaning of Water Walking“, posted with vodpod

Don’t Be a Mercenary

At a time and place when worship of the Living God should have consumed the people of Israel, what actually held more sway was a commitment to make worship profitable. The Passover was a time for the people to delight in the gracious salvation of their God—with heart, mind, and soul—and to remember how He saved them. Instead, it became a rebellious spectacle of how a place of worship could be lost for pragmatism and profitability. 

What happens—then, and now—when God’s people become more consumed with making worship practical, profitable, and efficient, rather than basing worship on the God they love, adore, and find their joy in? They become mercenaries. And mercenaries Christ drives from the church. 

“And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:15-16).

On the other hand, we’re not mercenaries when what motivates us is our desire to be satisfied in God. A mercenary fights because he gets paid, but a patriot and a true soldier fights because his joy is in the country or cause he fights for. So a Christian’s joy is in worshiping and adoring God, not in turning the church into a profitable business.    

The only way not to be a mercenary Christian is to be motivated by our pleasure in God. The church needs more worshipers—people consumed with the beauty and worth of God—not more entrepreneurial types who have another end motivating them. The church needs godly men, not businessmen.

Come Away With Me

Jesus said that he was not honored in his home town, among his closest family and friends. 

“A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household” (Matt. 13:57). 

What struck me about this passage is that those who are often times most familiar with Jesus are most prone to unbelief. But why? 

It’s because they see Him all the time, and instead of responding in awe and faith, they merely say, “Yeah, there goes Jesus again, doing another miracle.” They have become so acquainted with Jesus that He doesn’t awe them anymore. 

I am reminded in my own life that, especially in the ministry, it is easy to become so familiar with the holy things of God that they no longer become awesome, faith-inspiring, joy-producing works of God. So what do we do? 

The same thing Jesus did—not because He was bored with Himself, but because He had weighty things going on in His life, like the death of his friend John the Baptist: 

“Now when Jesus heard [that John was beheaded], he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself” (Matt. 14:13). 

And, when we meet Jesus in a desolate place, just like the crowd that followed Him there, we are fed in abundance: 

“And they all ate and were satisfied” (Matt. 14:20). 

There is a time to minister. But there is also a time to go away, to a desolate place, and be fed spiritually by Jesus and renewed in the things of God. 

 

Who is sufficient?

The inadequacies pastors feel have, up until now, been a somewhat distant (yet real) theme for me. But now, after preaching and laboring amidst God’s people, I understand Paul’s cry: 

“For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:15-16). 

Who is sufficient to be the aroma of God? Who is sufficient to proclaim God’s perfect and wondrous Word to the church and to the world? Who is sufficient even to have a part, though but a means, to the spread of the aroma of God’s glory in Christ throughout the world? Not me.

But, Sunday afternoon, the soul cries out for the living God (Psalm 42:1, ff.), and these words are like a stream of cool, refreshing water on a parched land:

“[The knowledge of God's providence] cannot but bring strong security to the soul, to know that in all variety of changes and intercourse of good and bad events, God, and our God, [has] such a disposing hand. Whatsoever befalls us, all serves to bring God’s electing love, and our glorification together, God’s providence [serves] this purpose to save us…God [often] [disposes] little occasions to great purposes” (Soul’s Conflict, Sibbes, p. 206).   

Not in our sufficiency or strength, nor in our wisdom, but in the wisdom and power of God do we draw the courage to speak oracles of God, for His glory. And what hope this is, that even in the weakest, smallest effort to do justice to God’s Word, He is often pleased to do His bidding.