Berean Baptist Church

You are on a journey with some pitfalls seen and some unseen, and you need the right traveling companions to help you along the way. This passage in Mark shows us that on our journey through this life, we need to keep in close contact with three important companions: faith, prayer and humility.

How do you see Jesus? Has He become too tame? He is entirely glorious! Jesus was the King, He is the King, and He will always be the King. Have you bowed your knee to Him?

Sometimes we only see what we want to see. Jesus is trying to teach His disciples that they could see, but not very clearly. Clear vision allows us to see Jesus for who He really is, and better understand our lives in relation to eternity. How is your vision of Jesus? Do you see Him for who He is?

We are surrounded by wrong beliefs and bad ideas have consequences. We must have faith in the Jesus of the Bible, and trust that His ways are better than our ways. If we are not careful, we can easily fall into "leaven" just like the Pharisees, Sadducees and Herod. Each are simple expressions of the same issue – faithlessness.

Jesus' words transform. When we encounter Jesus we are not left on unchanged. His Words make the blind see and the deaf hear and can change the human heart! In Mark 7:31-37 we see the power of Jesus' words to transform in the life of a blind and mute man.

God isn’t interested in your self-righteous acts of outward religiosity; He is interested in your heart. God cares most about not your appearance but the condition of your heart. Too often in the church we emphasize outwards things and judge people for what we see in this regard when what is far more important is that we have hearts that please God.

God isn’t interested in your self-righteous acts of outward religiosity; He is interested in your heart. God cares most about not your appearance but the condition of your heart. Too often in the church we emphasize outwards things and judge people for what we see in this regard when what is far more important is that we have hearts that please God.

Is Jesus enough for you? No matter what problem you are facing in your life, Jesus is the most important thing you need. We look to so many other things for satisfaction and purpose but our hearts will never be at rest until they found their rest in God.

This Sunday there is a 9:15am service at Berean and and an 11:30am outdoor service at the Lexington Blueberry Festival Stage. When we encounter God it always results in us taking steps, making moves, for His glory and fame. What steps is He calling you to make in this next season?

Who is God? Who do you believe Him to be? Is He the God Most High in your life? Only God is worthy to sit on the throne. Only He demands our complete allegiance in our lives.

When walking within the will of God, He gives us everything we need to overcome obstacles that would prevent us from doing as we are commanded.

God is a Provider. He provides out of love just like a Father – and His love isn’t transactional. Many people who received Jesus' grace, His teaching, and His miraculous sustenance would choose not to follow Him but He knew it all along and yet He graciously provides for our needs and we should seek to meet the needs of others.

The Gospel of Mark is written a lot like many of us live our lives. We go from one thing to another without much time to rest in between. Today we are going to look at the need to rest and finding that healthy balance of working and rest.

None of us like being rejected. If we are honest we all want to be liked, we want to fit in, we don’t want to disappoint people or be left out or shunned. We don’t like being REJECTED. But the reality is, as we look at Mark 6 today, following Jesus faithfully WILL result in rejection.

We are all sinners and in need of mercy. The mercy of God comes at a great cost but the cost wasn’t ours. The cost was taken on by the Creator of the world in Jesus Christ. Through Him we can receive great and unending mercy!

Spiritual darkness is a real thing. Have you ever experienced darkness in your life? The good news is that Jesus' power is far greater than any darkness! In what way has God’s power been demonstrated in your life? Are you moving toward the light? God wants us to tell the story of how He has called us out of darkness in His marvelous light!

What storms are you going through? In life, there are moments of calm, uncertainty, and severe turbulence. When the storms of life come, we must learn to turn quickly to Jesus. God is present in our lives no matter how difficult our circumstances get!

Now that the gospel has been received in good soil – what happens next? When the Word of God takes root in good soil, fruit will be produced. Fruit also results from faithful witness and the sharing of the Word!

What are you living for? What are you willing to die for? As followers of Jesus we get to tell those in darkness a light has come; to those in death there is life. Let’s be “all in” to share the good news about Jesus, the source of God’s grace! May the Lord help us to see and seize opportunities to testify of Jesus.

How is your heart? The condition of your heart could be the difference between a fruitful response to God's Word and it having no impact at all. God calls us to hear His word, receive it, and bear fruit. We must have hearts to hear the Word. It is also important to realize that someone's initial response to the Word may not pan out. The only thing that demonstrates a heart ready for the Wo...

Who is Jesus? C.S. Lewis famously said in Mere Christianity: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else He would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. Yo...

It is easy to miss the forest for the trees. The Pharisees were so interested in religious activity that they missed out on the joy of being with their Messiah. Religious activity is not inherently wrong but when we make it the substance of our faith instead of Jesus we quickly get off course and miss the heart of God.

Jesus demonstrates God's amazing grace by being a friend of sinners. Even the worst of sinners is not out of the reach of God's grace found in Jesus. Christ. We are reminded that none of us deserved God's grace, it is an amazing, free gift to sinners.

If we want to be used by Jesus to bring people to Him, we must be willing to do whatever it takes. You have been commissioned by God to be a Spirit-filled ambassador to a lost and hurting world! Jesus is exalted when we do whatever it takes to bring those around us to Him.

Jesus did not wait for a lost world to come to Him. He came down from heaven and even left the synagogues and religious places to meet those who were far from the Father. We are called to imitate Jesus by leaving the building and going to share the gospel with those who are far from God and the church.