Cities Church Sermons

Just like we’ve already seen so many times in Genesis already, brothers are against one another. It goes back to Cain and Abel, and then of course there’s Isaac and Ishmael, and then there’s Jacob and Esau, and then in Chapter 37 we’re supposed to see right away that once again the whole brothers thing is not working out.

For Israel’s life as a nation, Edom served as a kind of control, or point of comparison, to show the electing love of God. Jacob and Esau were twins. God gave Edom a land, not in the promised land, but a neighboring territory to the southeast, and he preserved the nation for centuries. Edom shows what Israel might have been apart from God’s covenant.

I think there are at least two important things we learn in Chapter 34. One is an important allusion we see elsewhere in the Bible, and then the other is the main theme of this particular story.

This is the chief challenge for us. When we’re wrestling and struggling in a cursed world, our struggles feel more real to us than God. Laban’s tricks are more real to us than God. Esau’s fury is more real to us than God. Barrenness and infertility is more real to us than God. When Rachel cries out to Jacob, “Give me children or I die!” she is showing that Jacob is more real to her than God. When...

The promises of God to us are promises that he keeps in our details. God is at work in the tiniest things you do, whether that means picking up glass or setting up sticks. So brothers and sisters, take heart and keep on with the tiny things.

There’s more to say, and two more sons, to Leah’s story. But let’s ask about the connection to us: Have you felt hated? Have you been overlooked by someone who mattered to you? Have you been painfully under-appreciated? Take comfort in this: God loves to choose the overlooked. He loves to love the hated, to comfort the neglected. He loves to take special notice of those who don’t get noticed. Vers...

This whole thing really is a mess; it seems chaotic and fragile — but then here in verse 3 we get this little sneak peak into God’s plan. We see that there’s a single thread of continuity that reaches back to the very beginning. In the middle of all this confusion, simultaneous to the conflict and inconvenience, God is actually working to fulfill his purpose for humanity through Jacob.

In other words, Isaac has come around. He now freely and gladly offers to Jacob the blessing of Abraham, as God had promised. The repetition of the blessing, and the explicit reference to Abraham, is meant to tell us that Isaac has realized his error and repented.

And this is why it’s never a throwaway word. Glory is always talking about something real and something vivid. God’s glory is the showcase of his heart, and historically he has shown us his glory in more vivid ways than others.

That’s the promise of what’s called the New Covenant. God is going to give his people a new heart with a new power. Because we cannot truly love without that power.

But that’s just not the way the Bible puts it. In the Bible, the love of God for his children is a particular kind of love. It is love that we are given as a gift, not love that we are entitled to.

But God has made it so that we never have to think this way. God has shown his love for us. He has made it plain. He has spelled it out. God has demonstrated his love for you. How? Jesus died for you. God’s love is demonstrated.

Christianity’s hope isn’t that we’ll simply go to heaven when we die. It’s not that that’s a wrong statement but it’s just incomplete. The resurrection gives us hope in all those stories that Jesus has told about God’s kingdom, all of those prophecies of old in the scriptures proclaiming that there will be a time when all things will be made right, that there will be a world where there is no deat...

In these moments on the cross, Jesus is drinking that cup. He’s draining it to the bottom. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says that “For our sake [God] made him to be sin,” and in Galatians 3:13 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” So Jesus is being treated by God as Sin itself, as a very Curse to be wiped out. And it is for our sake.

Here is why this matters to you. This is the most faithful human being who ever lived. Beloved son of a happy father. And he’s coming to God, believing. “All things are possible for you.” And he is praying a big, bold prayer to a sovereign God. “If it’s possible, let the hour pass. Remove this cup from me.” And God doesn’t take the cup away. He doesn’t let the hour pass. The man came to Jesus and...

In the longest section of teaching in the Gospel of Mark — Mark 13 — Jesus’s central command, which he repeats six times, is to wake up. So what does that mean and why? The goal today is to answer that question.

And so that’s the tension we see over the next couple chapters. The Jewish leaders want to arrest Jesus, but they have to conspire and maneuver how to do that — and later in Chapter 14 they figure it out, but here in Chapter 12 is the place where we learn why these Jewish leaders hate Jesus so much. Why do these Jewish leaders want to destroy Jesus?

That’s what all of this thick symbolism is designed to say. From riding on the colt, to cursing the false fig tree, to turning over the tables, Jesus is attempting to remind God’s people what the temple was for. It’s not for show. The size was fine. What provoked him was the substitution of hustle and bustle, of all kinds of economic/spiritual activity for the real purpose of the temple, which was...

Jesus is addressing a problem here, and it’s not a problem with just James and John, it’s a problem in all of the disciples. And it’s not just a problem with their motives in this isolated event, it’s a problem with their understanding of greatness in general. The problem is that the disciples think the way the world thinks, which is not the way God thinks.

When Jesus says, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God,” he’s not just talking about his Father in heaven making it possible, but himself. That’s why he says, “Follow me.” He is good, because he is God. All things are possible with Jesus.

When it comes to the topic of divorce, the Pharisees refer back to a permission in Mosaic law, but Jesus refers back even before that to the intention of God in creation. Jesus goes back to Genesis, and he quotes from Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24.

Jesus doesn’t want his disciples to announce his kingdom until they get it, until they understand the upside-down nature of the kingdom. So, for example, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus then says, “Good. You’ve got that I’m the Messiah. Now let me tell you what kind of Messiah I am. Let me enlarge your understanding of Messianic identity.” And so he begins to teach them about his c...

And here in Mark 9, Jesus, who had the appearance of average-looking First Century Jewish man, suddenly changed into something else. His clothes became radiant and intensely white — and this was not your mother’s bleach. Mark says that. This was an other-worldly, intense, shining kind of white. And because we have an imagination, we can kind of get the idea. This would have been stunning to see.

Shame is a painful emotion we feel in the presence of others for not living up to their expectations. And the intentional effort to bring shame on someone in public is nothing new to the twenty-first century.

So here are three basic facts about reality. You are here and now. God—your Maker—is here and now. And this God, the living God, is pursuing you. These three facts yield a fourth—every moment of every day, we are confronted with a Choice— either embrace and welcome this reality, surrendering ourselves to the eternal, omnipresent, and pursuing God, or we can vainly try to hide from him, to resist h...