When we last left our old friend, John the Baptizer, his faith was in a free-fall.
He was here last week, sort of, in my place (while I am away speaking at a High School Camp) to tell you his scintillating story in his own words. (If you have not heard that PODCAST, may I respectfully request that you listen? A story that I promise you, you will never forget.)
Think of it. John… The man whose coming was predicted by the prophets… Whose birth was foretold by an angel… Who identified and introduced Jesus to the world…
John the Baptizer didn’t believe in Jesus any more.
His situation was dire, languishing as he was in Antipas’ Dead-Sea-Side prison (on Eastern side of Dead Sea), his life literally dangling by a thread. The madman Antipas holding in his bloodstained hands the frayed ends of that thread…
Tormented, no doubt John was, by the unobstructed view he had of his boyhood home. directly across the Dead Sea on its Western shore, adopted and raised as John was by Essenes of Qumran…
John had to have THE answer to his doubt-fueled, double-edged question, and only Jesus was the only one who could provide the answer that he (and sometimes we) sought.
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While I am away speaking at a Middle School Camp on the East Coast, I have left you in wonderfully capable hands. Those of our old and dear friend, John the Baptizer.
John the Baptizer is, by his own admission, a walking contradiction. As you will hear in this PODCAST, he had a remarkable beginning, and yet a dismal crash and burn.
In a word, his faith in Jesus COLLAPSED, completely.
His is quite the story to tell. But as you will hear me say, it is John’s story to tell, not mine.
So, if you can employ a little sanctified imagination, I will do my best to be true to John’s story, and respectful of John’s memory, as I sort of try to “become” (if I can put it that way) John the Baptizer.
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As you will hear in this PODCAST, Jesus knows it. He understandably recoils from it. But He must now prepare His disciples for it.
Here in Matthew 16, and its parallel passage in Mark 8, we have reached a crucial moment in the life and ministry of Jesus. Make no mistake about it. These words here in Matthew 16 are a game-changer…
One that reveals much to us about the character of Jesus and the strategy of Satan.
An intriguing story that raises our understanding of spiritual warfare to a whole new level.
One that will impact YOUR life just as it has my life, in a profoundly insightful way.
As always, we have much to talk about. And trust me, you will be encouraged as you and I study this watershed passage together.
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The disciples were never at their lowest. Yet our friend, Peter, was never at his finest.
As you will hear in this PODCAST, Peter made a declaration the reverberations of which have echoed down through the two thousand years of church history. This was HUGE.
What Peter said and where he said it are mind-blowing in their impact upon our world and in our lives.
This might just be my very favorite passage in all of the Gospels. Perhaps after hearing this, it will be yours too.
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Enjoy! And may God richly bless you as you listen.
You are in for a rare treat! One PODCAST consisting of two precious parables.
While I am away ministering to some pretty special people at Hume Lake Christian Camp, you have the opportunity to listen in on a past podcast that brings with it a present and priceless blessing. Two of them!
Why these two parables don’t get more attention, I’ll never know. For contained within them are two of the most blessed truths of our faith.
The two parables of which I speak: The Parable of the Buried Treasure, and the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price.
Two parables that, despite their similarities, reveal two totally distinct but equally precious truths.
If you need a jolt of overwhelming encouragement, you need look no further.
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God bless you as you listen.
And PLEASE share a link to this podcast with your friends.
We are going to begin this week’s PODCAST precisely from where we left off in last week’s podcast.
We left off last week by considering together this most enigmatic verse (Hebrews 5:8):
Even though Jesus was God’s Son, He learned obedience from the things He suffered.
If you are at all uncomfortable with that, then the rest of this story will make no sense, and will leave you with an even greater discomfort.
But if you are willing to allow for the fact that “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, He learned obedience from the things He suffered,” then you are in for this great big blessing: The grand and glorious realization that Jesus, just like you and just like me, learned in real time what it means to live a life of obedience to God the Father.
We stressed last week, and I will ever-so-briefly remind you now, that Jesus was fully human, just like us. Last week we discussed some of the implications of Hebrews 4:15, where the writer emphatically affirms this ever-so-comforting reality:
Jesus understands all of our human weaknesses, for He faced all of the same testings and temptations we do, yet He did not sin.
Jesus experienced every human emotion, felt keenly every human feeling — including our feelings of fear, insecurity, uncertainty, abandonment, betrayal.
I mean, you just wait until we get to the Garden of Gethsemane, at which time there will be no doubt that in Jesus 100% deity meets 100% humanity, with all that that word humanity implies.
As we saw so vividly last week, life threw at Jesus unexpected challenges, unanticipated conflicts, undeserved difficulties, uninvited troubles… Just like life throws at us.
Jesus learned, just as so many of us are now learning, that sometimes, perhaps even most times, our richest life lessons can be taught only in the crucible of calamity.
By the reading of books our minds become broad. But it is only as we walk the pathway of pain that our souls become deep.
Something that Jesus learned.
Something that we are each learning.
Even though Jesus was God’s Son, He learned obedience from the things He suffered.
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Welcome to one of the strangest stories — many would call this a troubling tale — in Jesus’ entire life and ministry.
As you are about to hear in this PODCAST, what happens here in Mark 7, and its parallel passage in Matthew 15, seems highly uncharacteristic of Jesus; uncharitable to a tragically needy-yet-remarkable mommy; and unnecessarily cold and calloused as far as a Jesus is concerned.
A Jesus, I will humbly remind you, who defined Himself as “gentle” in Matthew 11, and who described His mission as one “to seek and to save the lost in Luke 19.
As you read this story, at first blush anyway, Jesus was Anything.But.Gentle in the way He spoke to this panic-stricken mother who was understandably distraught over the condition of her daughter.
Tell you what: If His mission was to seek and to save the lost, you couldn’t find anyone more lost than this woman.
As we read this story together (it’s only 8 verses in Matthew’s account), you tell me if you find this encounter between Jesus and this mom at all unsettling or unnerving. Put yourself in the mom’s sandals for a second and imagine that Jesus is talking to you about your little girl.
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
A happy ending to be sure.
But what an insensitive, ungracious, uncaring way to get to that happy ending..
You talk about showing a little kindness (as we did last week), there was no kindness shown to this woman; no kindness of any kind was shown to her at all. Until the very end.
Jesus (apparently) ignored her (“Jesus did not answer a word.”), then (apparently) refused and rebuffed her (“I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”), then (apparently) belittled her (“It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”).
Curiously enough, that’s it as far as Jesus’ road trip up North into what is today Lebanon, what was then Phoenicia, was concerned.
This one strange story.
And as always, my friend, we have much to talk about.
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I’ll keep this short but ever so sweet. In this PODCAST, you are about to see a side of Jesus that you’ve likely never seen before.
Get ready! Your love for Jesus is about to grow exponentially. And rightly so.
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How much thought do you put into the gifts that you give at Christmas?
I have no doubt that the Wise Men put a considerable amount of thought into theirs.
The three gifts that these mysterious visitors from the East presented to Jesus — Gold, Frankincense, Myrrh — tell a remarkably riveting story. Indeed, the single most compelling story that has ever been told.
This story that was so beautifully symbolized and so clearly communicated in a curious combination of three unusual-yet-fascinating gifts.
Spoiler Alert: After hearing this message, you may never look upon a manger scene the same way again.
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With this PODCAST, we break the seal on the last year of Jesus’ life here on earth.
And admittedly, His last year begins on a rather ominous note.
Immediately following this story, Jesus will leave the country. That is no exaggeration. For the first time in His storied 3½ year ministry, Jesus now has to get out of Dodge, fast!
As we have seen in past podcasts, Jesus was run out of His adopted hometown of Capernaum. He was then run out of Nazareth, His boyhood hometown. On top of that, Herod Antipas was hunting Jesus in order to kill Him (this in the wake of Herod’s senseless execution of John the Baptizer).
And NOW we read this in Mark 7:24:
Then Jesus left Galilee and went North to the region of Tyre (in modern-day Lebanon).
Yes, indeed. Jesus was literally run out of Galilee and run out of the country. Something significant happened in this story, here in Mark 7, that forced Jesus to go North and out of the country, rather than South to the familiar environs of His beloved Jerusalem.
What in the world happened?
What did Jesus do?
Or more accurately, what did Jesus fail to do?
A failure that caused a cataclysmic religious scandal. A scandal so serious that Jesus fled to the North. Which, by the way, is the exact same word that Matthew used in his telling of this story: “scandal.”
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Dewey Bertolini 