I want to be the Man at the Top. I want to be admired and adored, envied and emulated, respected and regaled. I want to be the first entry in the search results, the guest on every podcast, the main speaker at every conference. “God, I want to be the Man at the Top.” But that’s not what God wants.
“Tim, I’ve made you to be a man in the middle. If you’re at the top, people have to look up at you because you’re above them. I want you to be beside them. If you’re above them you can teach them. But if you’re beside them, you can touch them.”
The Ten Commandments teach us the heart and the mind of God. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ touches us with the love of God. God is a Teacher and a Toucher. If the only thing God wanted to do was to teach us His heart and His mind, He could raise up the most effective communicator of Biblical truth and give him a digital platform that the whole world could log on to. We could learn all the principles and propositions – and the world would be full of junior theologians. Yet teaching you without touching you leaves you with an incomplete knowledge and experience of God. Moses was a Teacher. Jesus was a Toucher. Moses had to go up the mountain in order to teach us. Jesus had to come down to earth in order to touch us. Jesus was the Man In The Middle. Jesus is not only above us, He also came among us and beside us. As the Man At The Top, Jesus is the Consummate Teacher. As the Man In The Middle, Jesus is the Compassionate Toucher. We just don’t need Teachers, we need Touchers, too.
Following the example we have in Jesus, if you’re a man in the middle, the people don’t come to you, you go to the people. If you’re a man in the middle not only do people get to hear your voice, they get to see your life. And this is exactly the limitation with the voice from above – something is heard, but nothing is seen. This becomes the rationale for the Incarnation. This is one of the reasons Jesus became a man. There are some things He just could not do as the Man At The Top – He had to become the Man In The Middle. He became the God we could see. Jesus said, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.” Is there anything more remarkable than that?
John wrote – WHAT WAS FROM THE BEGINNING, WHAT WE HAVE HEARD, WHAT WE HAVE SEEN WITH OUR EYES, WHAT WE HAVE LOOKED AT AND TOUCHED WITH OUR HANDS… 1 JOHN 1:1
The Man In The Middle is God distributed among the people. Not only does He touch others, He can be touched, too. God doesn’t want you at the top – there’s only one Man At The Top – God wants you to be a man in the middle following the pattern of the Man In The Middle. I joined a gym about 8 months ago and have been pleasantly surprised at how many people from the church I serve have a membership there. Not only do we have a few moments of fellowship, but they have the opportunity to be a man in the middle and touch others for Jesus Christ. Just two days ago, a man came up to me while I was working out and asked, “Are you Tim Brown?” I had seen this man in the gym ever since my first time there. He is fit and has bulging muscles and it seems like he has a good relationship with a lot of the other guys that are fit and have bulging muscles. And so I was surprised to see him approach me (I am not fit and I don’t have bulging muscles). I told him that yes, I am Tim. He said that he had seen me at a preaching seminar where I spoke a few months ago and he has attended our Bay Area Calvary Chapels’ Men’s Retreat at Redwood Christian Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I discovered that he goes to another Calvary Chapel in the area. What a blessing this was. He is a man in the middle for so many of the gym rats. He is a follower of Jesus who can be seen and heard and touched. He’s not holed up in a castle somewhere – he’s out among the people bearing witness to Jesus Christ.
The ministry of the Church doesn’t mimic Moses on the mount, but patterns itself after Jesus on the earth. The Church isn’t the Man At The Top, we are a man (and woman) in the middle.
