Glory Hunger: God, the Gospel, and Our Quest for Something More by JR Vassar

Author:JR Vassar [Vassar, JR]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2015-01-31T08:00:00+00:00

Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. (Matt. 13:16–17)

We know and have seen something the author of Psalm 145 did not. He longed to see what we have seen and hear what we have heard. We have seen the greatness and grace and dominion of God in living color. God the Son has come in the flesh. He is the visible image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15). He has come to fully reveal, or exegete, the Father to us (John 1:18).

In chapters 4 and 5 of Mark’s Gospel we see the greatness, grace, and dominion of God in the person of Christ. Mark 4 ends with Jesus and his disciples in a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee. This large body of water is surrounded by large hills, and often the wind violently stirs up the sea. On this particular occasion, the wind has created a storm that even those seasoned fisherman could not manage. As they struggle against the wind and waves, Jesus lies sleeping. He is tired, because he is fully man, but he is about to do something that only God can do. His disciples wake him and ask him one of the most ironic questions ever asked in Scripture: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (v. 38). Yes, he does care, and he will show them that fully at the cross, when the tempest of God’s wrath against us breaks upon him. But in this moment he will show his disciples in a practical way that he possesses the power to save the perishing. He wakes, rises, and, with a word, he calms a raging sea. As the winds die and the water becomes still like glass, the disciples discover a new fear, an overwhelming awe at the greatness of God encased in human flesh standing in their boat.

As they land on the other side of the sea, Jesus encounters a demon-possessed man who is out of his mind, unclothed, and inflicting injury upon himself. He has been living in isolation among tombs. He is unclean, untouchable, and bound by the dominion of Satan. Everyone has given up on him, and he has had no hope for a better existence. But in a remarkable act of grace and power, Jesus exercises the dominion of God, casts out the demons, and sets up his kingdom in the heart of this one who had been ruled by darkness. The scene ends with the man clothed, unbound, in his right mind, and restored. Jesus gave him back his liberty and his life.

We see the power and grace of God in Christ as he heals a woman who for twelve years has suffered from an incurable disease that has rendered her unclean. Her condition has led her into a life of loneliness as a social and religious outcast.

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