Christ the Controversialist

The Gospel of Mark, chapter 2. It’s page 708 in the church Bibles, which you will find around you in the pews, and if that’s helpful to you, please take one and turn to it. It’s always good to… I always like to follow along when I’m in the congregation and find out if what the fellow is saying from up front is actually in the book, and I would encourage you always to do the same. Never take anything on my word or on the word of any of my colleagues, only on the—when it comes to the Bible, that is—only on the authority of what’s in the Bible.

Mark chapter 2. We’ll read from verse 18:

“Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, ‘How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?’

“Jesus answered, ‘How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he[’s] with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.

“‘No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.’

“One Sabbath Jesus was going through the [corn]fields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some [ears of corn]. The Pharisees said to him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’

“He answered, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.’

“Then he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’

“Another time he went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’

“Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent.

“He looked [round] at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”

Thanks be to God for his Word.

And our prayer before we turn to the Bible:

Speak, Lord, as we wait upon you, so that beyond the voice of a mere man we may actually hear from you, the living God, as a result of your Word coming home to our minds. And we ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.

Jesus was not an establishment figure. And the fact that he may be regarded as such today is as a result of all kinds of ideas and notions, but those ideas and notions are challenged by the teaching of the Bible itself as it introduces us to the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, along with his followers, spent the larger part of his three years of earthly ministry in dialogue—indeed, in conflict—with the religious authorities of his time. And when you read the Gospel records, it is clear that in bringing the message which he brought of the kingdom of God breaking in upon time, the call to repentance and to faith, he was challenging, very straightforwardly and very forcibly, the man-made traditions of the religious leaders of the day.

And as we have begun to study Mark’s Gospel, we realize just why it is that Jesus has been described by some as “Christ the controversialist.” “Christ the controversialist.” That actually was the title of a book written by John Stott, published back in 1970. And as he introduces one of the chapters, he writes as follows:

The popular image of Christ as ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ simply will not do. It is a false image. To be sure, He was full of love, compassion and tenderness. But He was also uninhibited in exposing error and denouncing sin, especially hypocrisy. Christ was a controversialist. [And] the [Gospel writers] portray Him as [such].[1]

Now, those of us who lived through the ’60s—and you don’t have to put up your hands and admit it—but those of us who lived through the ’60s, if we have any perception at all, even if we were not involved in it, we will know that we lived through a peculiar era, for all sorts of reasons. This was the era of experimentation in issues of sexuality, in freedoms of expression in terms of drugs and the notion of love that was unbounded by any constraints at all. Indeed, there was much to alarm in the ’60s.

But some of us recall that it was in the midst of that peculiar decade that we either were part of or we were confronted by what was referred to as the “Jesus movement.” The Jesus movement. And from the West Coast of America, where there were longhaired, barefooted creatures gathering to sing new worship songs on the beaches, all the way across the nation and out and across the Atlantic Ocean and into the United Kingdom, where some of us were gathering in public squares to celebrate the Festival of Light, when we were marching through the streets of London from Trafalgar Square to Hyde Park so that we could stand in Hyde Park and declare that in Jesus there is life and there is light—and some of us stood, amazed at the fact that those who were on the stage, who were our leaders, who were the Christian pop singers of the time, found themselves not only followed by others of us who were younger and with them but also opposed by those who hated this story of Jesus.

And I remember, memorably, one of the singers standing playing his guitar, and as he sang a line, then he would move to the side one way and then move to the side the other way. This was not a form of dancing; he was avoiding the eggs and the tomatoes. And they were coming at him from, at that point, the homosexual lobby, who said, “Do not come here with the story of Jesus, with the story of light and of life. We are opposed to all you have to say.”

And here we are today, all these years later, and we have discovered, some of us, to our great benefit that when we turned on and we tuned in and we dropped out in relationship to Jesus, it was a whole new discovery. I met somebody just yesterday. She was wearing a T-shirt. It reminded me of this, because that was what it said on her T-shirt. It said, “Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.” And I said, “So you lived in the ’60s, did you?” And she said, “What?” I said, “Well, you don’t think somebody invented that in the first decade of the twenty-first century, do you?” She said, “I didn’t know.” I said, “Well, no, that’s it.” I said, “That’s the ’60s. You should have been there.”

And some of you—some of you were turned on to Christ. You tuned in to the Bible, and you dropped out of a lifestyle of sexual promiscuity and drug addiction into the liberating bondage of Jesus Christ as Lord. And today you’re in absolutely no doubt that Christ is a controversial figure, that he has not come to prop up the religious establishment, that he is not here on the side of that which is man-made and organized and palatable and easily absorbed, but as then, so now: from the pages of Scripture, Christ, as it were, moves up and down the high streets of our cities, in and out of the rural areas of our country, and says, “I am the resurrection and the life, and whoever believes in me will live, and whosoever believes in me will actually never die.”[2] And men and women are forced to somehow deal with a succession of controversial statements.

And in this little section that we read this morning—and we’ll only get to part of it (I say that for your encouragement)—all of the promise and prospect that was in Jesus is described here in terms of a newness, a newness that just bursts through the old wineskins that had been so quickly and easily rendered obsolete. And to the extent that we enjoyed something of that kind of movement in the ’60s, we might ask Jesus to come and begin another movement at the end of this first decade in this millennium.

How we need Jesus to come! We don’t need any more political movements. Those of you who are all exercised about that again, you know, I’m forced to say to you, “Have I been with you so long, and still you do not understand?”[3] Here we go again, the same old stuff—new names, new faces, new targets, same old agenda. Look in your Bible and see what Jesus did. Is there a moral component to faith in Christ? Yes. Is there a political dimension to it? Yes. Is it the issue? A thousand times no.

And what Jesus was confronting here was not ultimately the morality of the people whom he addressed, but it was the theology of the people that he addressed. What he was confronting here, and what was so controversial, was his view of the nature and character of God. Jesus steps onto the stage of human history, and he says, “This is how God may be known. This is how God provides forgiveness. This is the only way that he may be known, and this is the only way in which he provides forgiveness.” And the people who were opposed to him from the side of organized religion absolutely were opposed to the idea.

And so, in his words and in his works—that is, his miracles, his signs—Jesus, as you read the first two chapters of Mark, is seen to be challenging the power and the authority of the religious leadership.

Let me just point that out to you without going out of chapter 2. Look at how you have this conflict that is beginning to build. Verse 7 of chapter 2—the context is the healing of the man who was paralyzed—and the “teachers of the law were sitting there,” Mark says, “thinking to themselves, ‘Why does this fellow talk like that? He’s blaspheming!’”[4] “Who does he think he is?” That’s essentially the question. It’s a good question. It’s a question that many are asking today, if they think at all: “Who does this person think he is? Who is Jesus? Just another political figure? Just another great teacher? Just another religious guru? Who does he think he is? He actually believes he could forgive sin? He can give me a fresh start? A brand-new heart? Cleanse me from every record of my past? Set me on my feet? Who does this fellow think he is?”

Verse 16: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?” “The … Pharisees saw him eating with the ‘sinners’ and [the] tax collectors,” and they said to the disciples, “‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and “sinners”?’” And Jesus is going to have to tell them, “Who do you think I’m going to eat with? You? Not only are you boring, but you’re wrong. I didn’t come to put a religious club together with people like you that look like you’ve been eating those horrible pickles that they give you with every sandwich here in America. No,” he said. “I didn’t come for that. I actually came to call sinners! I love the chance to speak to Levi and all of his friends. That’s why I came.”

Thirdly, verse 18: “Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. [And] some people came and asked Jesus, ‘How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, [and] yours are not?’” And then verse 24: they saw the disciples walking along; “they began to pick some [ears of corn]”—which, from a Pharisaical perspective, was regarded as a breaking of the Sabbath. It was one of the many, many laws that they had attached to the law of God. And “the Pharisees said to [Jesus], ‘Look, why are [the disciples] doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’”

You see this kind of dialogue, this conflict, that is there? And then, in the next chapter, in 3:4, it’s Jesus’ turn to ask a question now, and he says to them, “Well, you seem to be the ones who know what you should be doing and what you shouldn’t be doing. Since you’re such geniuses at that, let me ask you a question: Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” And “they remained silent.” Why? Because he had them. He had them. It was like a great closing argument, in terms of the prosecuting attorney. Nothing could be said.

Now, in each of these incidents—and we’re only going to be able to look at the first of the three of them this morning—in each of these, what Jesus (Christ the controversialist, if you like) is exposing is essentially the Pharisees’ unique ability to turn blessings into burdens; to take things which God has given to us richly to enjoy[5] and for our benefit and to make them a wearisome burden on the backs of people. We’ll see that particularly when we come to the Sabbath, next time. Here God has provided the Sabbath principle in order that there might be rest, in order that there might be enjoyment, in order that there might be all of the benefits that attach to it, and the Pharisees come along and say, “No, we don’t want you to be blessed as much as we would like you to be burdened.”

And so the three incidents are as follows: incident number one, verse 18 and following, which emerges because the disciples are apparently failing to do what they should; incident number two, which begins in verse 23, is on account of the fact that the disciples are apparently doing what they shouldn’t; and then incident number three is when Jesus, of course, says, “Well, let’s just try and sort this whole thing out.”

The First Incident

So, here we are in verse 18: “Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. [And] some people came and asked Jesus, ‘How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?’” Just in case we don’t know what this is, to fast was simply to forgo food for a period of time, either as an expression of abasement, perhaps as an indication of sorrow, sometimes as a recognition of God’s intervention, and so on.

The fasting that was taking place here was taking place from two camps. One, the Pharisees—those who were the pupils of the Pharisees, those who would have been as orthodox as they possibly could be—they were obviously fasting. And then we’re told that the disciples of John the Baptist, they were fasting.

Now, whether they were both fasting for the same reasons or not it isn’t possible for us to say, although I think it’s unlikely. It’s possible that the disciples of John were fasting because John had been taken into prison, and they were perhaps fasting, asking God to intervene. We can’t say that with authority, because Mark does not set this in a time frame. It may also be simply that they became fasters, if you like, because of the austerity of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was an austere character, he was an unusual character, he wore an interesting garb, he had an interesting health food diet, and it’s not difficult to see that somebody who would go down into these remote regions of the wilderness and send out such a striking message and call people to be his followers would not actually say to them, “And if you’re really going to take this repentance stuff seriously, if you’re really going to take following me seriously, then I suggest that you do this. It will, you know, do your soul good, and, of course, it will help you with your health food diet as well.” And you will know today that some people in the secular world have discovered fasting. They went into the Bible, and they said, “Wow, look at this! If you stop eating, you might lose weight. What a genius idea!” And here they’re able to interweave all these kinds of notions.

And the issue was this: the people are looking around, they see the Pharisees’ disciples fasting, the disciples of John fasting, the disciples of Jesus partying. True! Levi’s house: party time! “What’s going on here? One group’s fasting, another group’s fasting. What do your guys do? They seem to have chosen the easy path. That can’t possibly be right. If a person’s going to be accepted with God, there’s so many things he has to do. And we, the Pharisees, the organizers of religion, the custodians of that which is external and orthodox, we know what they should be doing, and your boys aren’t doing it. And we want to know why.”

You see, the Pharisees were legalists. What that means is they believed that they could put themselves in a right standing with God as a result of what they did. Jesus was coming to say, “You can’t ever put yourself in a right standing with God as a result of what you do.” He was coming to say, “The issue is not what you’re doing, but the issue is what I have done, or what I am about to do. And on the strength of what I am about to do in making an atoning sacrifice for sin, there will then be forgiveness and a place with God.” Every other attempt to make ourselves acceptable to God as a result of our own endeavors is ultimately a worthless task. It doesn’t stop people from trying it, does it? And there is nothing that infuriates a legalist more than people who don’t obey their rules. So this would tick them off. “Why don’t your disciples fast?”

On the strength of what Jesus did in making an atoning sacrifice for sin, there is forgiveness and a place with God.

Now, if you think about this, in Luke 18—and I’ll only give you this one… Well, I might give you two cross-references, but this is just one. Luke chapter 18. If you turn forward one book. Let’s just set this in context, because I think this is helpful. And the context is absolutely crucial.

Luke 18:9: “To some who were confident of their own righteousness…” Okay, “their own righteousness.” In other words, a righteousness that they themselves created, established, maintained, by what they did or didn’t do. “To some who were confident of their own righteousness…” We’re either going to stand before God on the basis of our own righteousness, or we’re going to stand before God on the basis of the righteousness of another. These folks were confident in their own righteousness. And as a result, notice, they “looked down on everybody else.”

So Jesus looks at this group; he says, “Here they are: Mr. and Mrs. Smug and all his Smug little children, doing all of these things and despising all these other people, just able to look down on them all.” He says, “Let me tell you a story.”

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one [was] a Pharisee and the other [was] a tax collector.”[6] The people, the listeners, loved these stories. They just must have waited for the punch line every time. It was so exciting: “Here we go again! Jesus has got another ‘the Pharisee versus the sinner’ story. Wonderful!”

So next we have the Pharisee: he “stood up” and he “prayed,” verse 11, “about himself,” or to himself, “‘God, I thank you that I[’m] not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector [here].’” “What he’s doing up at the temple to pray, I will never know.”

You see where his confidence lies? In what he doesn’t do, and then in what he does. What does he do? Verse 12: “I fast twice a week and [I] give a tenth of all [that] I get.” “I’m a tither, and I’m a double faster. I’m twice as fast as anybody else. Here I am, twice a week fasting, tithing—not like this joker.”

Well, who told you to fast twice a week? No one. There’s only one place in the whole of the Old Testament where fasting is demanded, and that’s recorded in Leviticus chapter 16, in relationship to the Day of Atonement. Fasting appears all over the place for all kinds of reasons—good. But in terms of God actually saying, “This is what I want you to do,” it only comes there, in relationship to the Day of Atonement.

You see, the issue here is not fasting per se. It is that fasting represents the way in which the Pharisees, with their systematized, organized religion, believed that they could be and would be accepted by God. So as long as they kept doing all these things meticulously, then God would be pleased to look on them with favor.

And so, in answering the question—and we’re back now in Mark 2—in answering the question, Jesus absolutely disarms the questioners. Why are they not fasting? “Jesus answered, ‘How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them?’” In other words, “You don’t fast at a wedding,” he says. My wife and I were at a wedding yesterday. We went to the reception. There was a wonderful meal. No time for fasting! No! There was no fasting; there was eating. Man, it was fantastic! It would have been highly inappropriate, wouldn’t it? And if the father of the bride had said, you know, “I hope you enjoy these Ritz crackers, and help yourself to a second glass of water,” people would have said, “What kind of party is this?” And justifiably so—which is what Jesus is saying.

Now, you understand that he’s pointing out that he is the Bridegroom. He’s already noted the fact that John the Baptist is the best man. Mark has told us John the Baptist is the best man. He stood on the stage of history, spoken for a moment, got out of the way so that the Bridegroom might be introduced. Christ is the Bridegroom, is amongst his friends and followers, and he says, “There’s no way that my disciples are going to be fasting while I am here with them. It would be entirely inappropriate.” He says, verse 20, “[There’s going to come a day] when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.”

Now, some people are taking that as a mandate, but it is actually an observation. Jesus is saying, “When they have reason for sorrow, when they have reason for disappointment, whatever might be, then on that day, fasting may be appropriate, but it’s not appropriate today. Right now, it’s party time. It’s party time.”

In fact, the more I read the Gospels, the more I realize this. I said there would only be one cross-reference. I’ll give you a second one. You read it for yourself. Luke chapter 15. You go home, do that this afternoon—the Memorial Day reading for the afternoon. Luke chapter 15.

And you remember how Luke chapter 15 begins? It says that the tax collectors and the “sinners” were gathering near, were all coming around, to listen to Jesus.[7] So all the people who were messed up, left out, burdened by their sin, aware of the fact that their life was a walking mess, they are all coming, said, “We want to hear from Jesus.” But the Pharisees, the religious establishment, they were muttering to one another. And what were they muttering to one another? “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”[8] You see what they’re saying? “So if he is the person… He couldn’t possibly be the person he claimed to be! You couldn’t possibly have a Messiah who did this. You couldn’t have someone who fulfilled all of the Old Testament expectations and did this. Surely when our Messiah comes, there will be none of this in him. He will be absolutely fastidious. He will have all the rules and regulations kept. All of his followers will be marked by all of these things.”

And Jesus said, “Well, let me just tell you a few stories. There’s a lost sheep. There’re ninety-nine safe; shepherd went for the one that was lost.[9] Lady broke her necklace or her coins or whatever it was, and she had nine-tenths of it intact, but a tenth of it was gone. She scoured the entire house looking for it.”[10] He says, “The reason I told you that is because that’s God’s disposition towards those who are lost.”[11] He goes out looking for the lost one. He’s an initiative-taking, seeking God. He’s not hiding behind a corner, the way that it is suggested on the media: that somehow or another, God has gone, is in disguise somewhere, or is hidden off somewhere, and we’re all looking around for him. No! No, the Bible says that God is actually… He came down. He’s [makes knocking sound], “Good morning! May 24. I’m here to speak to you today. So glad you came to the service. Are you listening to what that funny Scotsman is saying? Are you listening to this?” God says inside of you.

How are you going to stand before God? Are you going to stand before God on the basis of your goodness? Or are you going to stand before God trusting in the goodness of someone else? That’s the question he’s asking. That’s the question Jesus is posing. That is the vital question.

The worst, most miserable, lying, cheating, scornful, immoral person is, in Christ, covered over with his righteousness, accepted, redeemed, restored.

And you’ll remember, when he finally gets to his third story, he says, “And there was a certain man had two sons. And one of them went off and blew it out, and another one blew it out while he was still in the house—externally present, externally correct, doing everything that was expected of him, but doing it like a slave. The other boy went off and went totally hog wild. But he came to himself, and he repented, and he came back to his father, and his father forgave him and gave him a wonderful party. And with the singing and the dancing going on, the elder brother, he came and he heard the singing and the dancing, and the servant said to him, ‘Your brother is back.’”[12] And there the line reads “[But he] refused to go in.”[13]

Why did he refuse to go in? For the same reason that some of you still do not trust Christ: because you like the idea of earned acceptance with God, because it puts you in a better light. You don’t like this idea that the worst, most miserable, lying, cheating, scornful, immoral person is, in Christ, covered over with his righteousness, accepted, redeemed, restored—and all because of another and not because of him, or not because of her. That message will always stick in the gullet of a pharisee. And that, you see, is what makes Jesus so controversial.

That’s the significance of what he says about the shrinking of the garment and the bursting of the wineskins. It’s very simple. You don’t need to beat it up. You don’t cut up a new garment to make patches for an old one. It won’t work. The shrinkage will tear it apart. You don’t put new wine into old wineskins, because the wine that is new has still a fermentation process, and if the wineskins are old and brittle and so on, old leather wineskins, then the fermentation process will actually blow the wineskin apart.

What is Jesus saying? He’s saying the wine of new life, which he has come to bring, cannot be contained in the shrunken, brittle old wineskins of a man-made religion. What he is saying is that the liberating, life-transforming message which he has come to proclaim—that of unmerited favor with God, with free forgiveness—it cannot be stitched into their form of established religion. It actually tears it away. In other words, Jesus is controversial because he is pointing out that the two approaches, one represented by the Pharisees and the other represented by himself, are mutually incompatible. They are mutually incompatible. That’s what he’s saying: “You’re not going to be able to come up with a hybrid. You can’t do it. It won’t be done.”

You say, “Well, we’re far removed from the Pharisees. We’re not Pharisees.” Well, I hope you’re not. But let me tell you what pharisees believe, just in case you might believe this. Pharisees essentially believed that a good God will reward nice people for doing their best. A good God will reward nice people for doing their best. Now, I wager that if I go with you this afternoon to all the little festivities over here in Chagrin Falls and we just go up and down amongst the crowd, that will be the prevailing view of people that we meet: “If there is a God, how will he ever accept us?” And it will come back to you again and again: “Well, if he’s a good God, he’ll be happy if nice people like us just do our best.” And then that begs the question: What in the world was Jesus of Nazareth doing hanging up there on that cross?

You see, Jesus was proclaiming a salvation that depended entirely upon God. The Pharisees were proclaiming a salvation that depended largely upon them. Jesus was asking men and women to face up to the fact of their leprosy—stained and spoiled by sin—and then to realize that he is the one who makes them clean. He was asking them to face up to the fact of their paralysis, as it were, in terms of the healings that have taken place, and then to realize that he is the one who is able to set us on our feet. But the two notions are incompatible.

Let me finish with two quotes—one from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening, which you can find in the bookstore, from yesterday morning’s reading, May 23. And Spurgeon is writing concerning the trust of the psalmist in God, the Rock of Ages. And he says of the psalmist, “The Psalmist was wise; he rested on nothing less than the Lord’s work.” And then he wrote this: “It is the Lord who has begun the good work within us; it is He who has carried it on; and if He does not finish it, it never will be completed.” Now, here’s the sentence that I didn’t mark, but—I didn’t scribble, but I marked it in my mind. Listen to this sentence: “If there is one stitch in the celestial garment of our righteousness that we must insert ourselves, then we are lost.”[14] “If there is one stitch in the celestial garment of our righteousness that we must insert, then we are lost.”

Do you see what he’s saying? Jesus did not die upon the cross to get us started so that we might contribute to our acceptance by God as a result of good things that we do. Jesus died upon the cross bearing all of our sin in himself and providing for us a free and a full salvation and a robe of righteousness which is all his righteousness, all his acceptance with God, all of his keeping of the law, all of his sacrifice for sin—so that if we actually think to ourselves that we are stitching into the celestial garment of righteousness our own stitches, then, says Spurgeon, we do not understand the gospel. And I am fearful that some of you, particularly from a Roman Catholic background, are just about exactly there.

Let me give you my final quote, from the eighteenth century: a vicar in England, in Bedfordshire. His name was John Berridge. He was an interesting man. He wrote his own epitaph, and I’ll read the epitaph, and then we’ll be done. This is what is written on his tombstone: “Here [lie] the earthly Remains of John Berridge, late Vicar of Everton and an itinerant Servant of Jesus Christ who loved his Master and his Work and after running on his Errands many Years was called … to wait on him above.” Okay? So, we walk through the graveyard and say, “John Berridge has gone.” Where has he gone? He’s gone to serve Jesus. He’s just doing it somewhere else. Okay?

What else has Berridge left for us as we walk through the graveyard? Well, now he addresses the reader. It actually says “Reader” in big, bold letters. “Reader, art thou born again[?] No Salvation without … new Birth[!] I was born in Sin Feb. 1716. Remained ignorant of my fallen State till 1730.” So, what is that? He was fourteen? I don’t know, thirty minus sixteen. Fourteen. You must help me with this. It’s not rhetoric. When we do the math, you’ve got to stay right with me. These are real questions. So, “Born in Sin Feb. [’16]. Remained ignorant of my fallen State till 1730.”

Now, listen to this one: “Lived proudly on Faith & Works for Salvation till 1754.” All right? So from 1730 to 1754, twenty-four years—twenty-four and fourteen is thirty-eight—until he was thirty-eight, he “lived proudly on Faith & Works for Salvation.” Was “admitted to Everton Vicarage 1755,” when he was thirty-nine. He becomes the minister in a church. “Fled to Jesus alone for Refuge 1756.” After he has been preaching for a year to his congregation, he finally gets it himself: “It is solely on account of what God has done in Christ that I am ever accepted by him. And therefore, nothing in my hand I bring, simply to his cross I cling, naked come to him for dress, helpless come to him for rest. And therefore, stinky old me to his fountain flies, saying, ‘You’d better wash me, Jesus, or I’m a dead man, I’m a dead girl.’”[15]

And you see how insidious the sounds of established religion are, ringing in our ears? “Oh, you don’t need that silly old stuff. You’re a good fellow. You’re a fine girl.” How dreadful it would be, wouldn’t it, to be kept from all of the wonder of what Jesus came to do—kept by our goodness? Kept from him by our goodness! Kept from him by our badness: “I’m so bad he could never fix me.” What? Who do you think you are?

Somewhere here I have a little booklet; it’s called Becoming a Christian. There are many of these through in our prayer room, through the doors to your left, and they’re also in the bookstore. It’s John Stott’s (who wrote the book Christ the Controversialist) very helpful pointer to what it means to trust in Christ alone. And if you’ve never thought this out, then maybe you would like to have one of these booklets. We’ll gladly give it to you. And perhaps today, May 24, 2009, you might be able to enter into your journal, “I’ve been living for so many years proudly on the strength of faith and works. May 24, 2009: cast myself entirely upon Christ. Cast myself unreservedly on Christ. Told him, ‘I have got not a hope in the world, Jesus, apart from you. Apart from you.’” That’s what it means to be a Christian.

Father, thank you so much that on this Memorial Day weekend we can remember the wonder of your redeeming love, the challenge of your perfect life, the clarity of your instruction, and the warmth and passion of your love for those who feel themselves to be beyond hope, and your stinging rebuke for those who hide behind the hypocrisy of externalism. Only you, God, know who we are. You know what we are. You know what we need. And we pray that you will come and meet us and give us no rest at all until we rest entirely in Jesus and on his work alone—find that wonderful freedom in all that he has accomplished.

And may the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with all who believe, today and forevermore. Amen.

[1] John R. W. Stott, Christ the Controversialist: A Study in Some Essentials of Evangelical Religion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1974), 49.

[2] John 11:25–26 (paraphrased).

[3] John 14:9 (paraphrased).

[4] Mark 2:6–7 (NIV 1984).

[5] See 1 Timothy 6:17.

[6] Luke 18:10 (NIV 1984).

[7] See Luke 15:1.

[8] Luke 15:2 (NIV 1984).

[9] See Luke 15:1–7.

[10] See Luke 15:8–10.

[11] Luke 15:7, 10 (paraphrased).

[12] Luke 15:11–27 (paraphrased).

[13] Luke 15:28 (NIV 1984).

[14] Charles H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening, revised and updated by Alistair Begg (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), May 23 morning reading.

[15] Augustus Toplady, “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me” (1776). Paraphrased.