For years, I never used the word “sovereign” as a noun.  I knew it could be used in this way—”Like a sovereign,” writes Shakespeare “he radiates worth, his eyes lending a double majesty”—I just never did.  But trial and tragedy have a way of waking us to words and realities overlooked.  There was a time that whenever I closed my eyes to pray I was leveled by the image of the throne, and it was empty.  It was somewhere in the midst of this recurrent vision that I realized my neglect of the noun.  Was God indeed the Sovereign who spoke and listened?  I had often used the word as an adjective.  But adjectives, like good moods, seem to come and go.

The prophet Jeremiah depicts a Sovereign that cannot come and go, simply because He is. God’s sovereignty is not a coat that can be taken off when all is going well or when all is going poorly. God does not cease to be the Sovereign though the world refuses to bow or “distant” seems a better adjective. And God’s words are not stripped of their sovereignty though no one is listening or no one responds. The Sovereign of all creation is always sovereign, active, and near. It is we who are inconsistent.

Jeremiah chapter 6 begins with an image of the Sovereign speaking to a people unwilling to listen, an honorable Judge whose words are dishonored. “To whom shall I speak?” the LORD inquires. The question is a lonely one, reflecting both the prophet who speaks and the Sovereign whose words are ignored.  The inquiry also has the force of sarcasm:  Why bother speaking to a people who won’t hear? But the words are not a commentary on God’s behavior; God is not throwing his hands up and suggesting the route of silence. Rather, it is a commentary on God’s words themselves, which are weighted with the compulsion to be heard. Though our ears are closed and we scorn his warnings, the Sovereign speaks and his words go forth with power. “God is always coming,” says Carlo Carretto. “God is always coming because God is life, and life has the unbridled force of creation.  God comes because God is light and light cannot remain hidden.”(1)  God’s decrees from the throne create and sustain the world. There is a person enthroned in every word, bidding the world’s response to every call and every sound.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Nouns and Adjectives on the Throne →

I recently ran across three stories—and three individuals—in Mark 5 that surprised me.  Mark first introduces us to a demon-possessed man, who upon seeing Jesus on the shore at a distance, immediately runs to him and falls upon his knees before him.  Jesus heals him, sends him home to his family, and then gets back into a boat with his disciples.

Next Mark tells us, “When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake…one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there.  Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, ‘My little daughter is dying.  Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.’”  And how does Jesus respond to this man?  Mark says simply, “So Jesus went with him.”

However, before Jesus can get to Jairus’s house, a large crowd presses upon him, including another desperate person seeking his help—this time a woman bleeding for twelve years.  Writes Mark, “She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’  Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.  At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him.  He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’”

Jesus’s question prompts his disciples to ask with urgency and impatience, “You see the people crowding against you…and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’”  Do you hear what they communicate?  “Jesus, we are trying to get to the home of this powerful synagogue ruler before its too late and his child dies, and you stop to ask who touched you in this throng of people?  What does it matter?  Why do you care?”  But Jesus kept looking around, Mark observes, to see who had done it.  “Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.”

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Why Does It Matter? →

The massive Rembrandt measures over eight and a half feet tall and six and a half feet wide, compelling viewers with a larger than life scene. “The Return of the Prodigal Son” hangs on the walls of the St. Petersburg Hermitage Museum depicting Christian mercy, according to one curator, as if it were Rembrandt’s last “spiritual testament to the world.” Fittingly, it is one of the last paintings the artist ever completed and remains one of his most loved works.

The painting portrays the reunion of the wayward son and the waiting father as told in the Gospel of Luke. The elderly father is shown leaning in an embrace of his kneeling son in ragged shoes and torn clothes. With his back toward us, the son faces the father, his head bowed in regret. Clearly, it is the father Rembrandt wants us most to see. The aged man reaches out with both hands, his eyes on the son, his entire body inclining toward him.

It is understandable that viewers have spent hours looking at this solemn reflection of mercy and homecoming. The artist slows unstill minds to a scene where the parable’s characters are powerfully still. The kneeling son leans silently toward the father; the father calmly and tenderly leans toward the son. All is at rest. But in fact, this is far from the scene Jesus portrays in the parable itself.

The parable of the prodigal son is a long way from restful, and the father within it is anything but solemn and docile in his embrace of the wayward son. In the story Jesus tells, while the son was “still a long way off,” the father saw him and “was filled with compassion for him” (Luke 15:20). This father was literally moved by his compassion. The Greek word conveys an inward movement of concern and mercy, but this man was also clearly moved outwardly. The text is full of dramatic action. The father runs to the son, embraces him (literally, “falls upon his neck”), and kisses him. Unlike the depiction of Rembrandt, Jesus describes a scene far more abrupt and shocking. It is not the son who we find kneeling in this picture, but the father. The characters are not at rest but in radical motion. The father who runs to his wayward son runs without any assurance of repentance; he runs without any promise that the son is even home to stay.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – The Father Who Runs →