Mark
Is the Gospel the beginning of the story or is it the conclusion? How you answer that question will determine how you live in 2012.
Jesus calls his first disciples to be fisher's of men. But what if they never caught any "fish"? What if they never even went to the lake?
We either observe the sabbath because it is something we must do to please God, or something that we get to do because God is already pleased with us in Jesus. In this message, we'll consider Jesus actions on the Sabbath day and how he redefines for us what it truly means to rest.
In this message we'll consider two types of fear. The fear of the known, and the fear of the unknown. Jesus stands between the two and promises to make the unknown, known. "Don't fear, just believe."
Every person has a desire to know that their actions are just or right. We have some standard by which we measure whether what we are doing is good or whether it is bad, and like a scale, we weigh our good deeds against our bad deeds to see how we measure up. In this message we'll consider the scale that the Pharisees used, and what Jesus thought about their system and how a person can truly be justified.
All of us experience moments in our faith journey where we face a crisis: do I really believe what I thought I believed? Is what I believed really true? In this message, we'll consider how Jesus responds when he comes face to face with a faith crisis moment.
Our default setting is to believe that we are the greatest. Jesus comes and introduces a new way: in the new kingdom economy, it's "last is first", not "first is first". In this message we'll consider why it is so difficult for us to grasp this teaching, and why it is so important that we do.
What is the chief sin of humanity? Idolatry. Jesus comes to break the grip of the idols of our hearts that we believe are more precious than Jesus. The rich young ruler asks Jesus, "What must we do to have eternal life?" Jesus' implicit response is this: You must have no other gods before me.
Jesus tells a parable of some tenants in a vineyard, and the religious leaders know he's talking about them. In the story, the tenants refuse to give the owner his just due, and when the owner sends his son to them, they kill him hoping to obtain the inheritance. The tenants end up being removed from the vineyard, they are destroyed, and the owner gives the land to someone else. If we understand that the Father is the Owner, and the Son is the heir, how should that impact the way we live in this new vineyard built on Christ?
The fear of abandoment manifests itself in the inability to commit and the inability to love. When we fear abandonment, we close in on ourselves. Jesus frees us from that fear when we have faith in him, so that instead of closing in, we can open up to love and be loved.
