Cities Church Sermons

We can hardly overstate what is happening here, because for the first time in the Gospel of Mark, someone understands a parable from Jesus. And it wasn’t the Jewish leaders of the day, it wasn’t the men skilled in understanding the Hebrew Scriptures, and it wasn’t even the disciples who had been living with Jesus; instead, it was this Syrophonecian woman with a demon-possessed daughter who lived o...

It’s okay for this to feel surprising. How quick might we be today to say, “C’mon, Jesus, focus on the family.” Well, a time will come to woo his brothers and to make provision for his mother’s care as he hangs on the cross, but now is a time to graciously, firmly resist his own family’s worldly desires for him. God’s call on him can’t be held back by their ability to understand him at this stage.

Paul wants for the Colossians, and for you and me, to be mature in Christ, and that means not centering our lives on anything else.

It’s a sin to invent sins. Put another way, it’s a sin to establish your own righteousness. This is why Pharisaism is popular in every generation, and comes in every size, shape, and color. There is great power in being the cultural gatekeeper. If you establish your own tradition, and you fulfill your tradition, and you can convince others to follow your tradition, you’ve got a lot of power, espec...

Because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, because of Easter, we have hope. That’s what we celebrate today. And Paul’s point here is to strengthen our hope by telling us that it can never be taken away.

This is one of the greatest events in the earthly ministry of Jesus. It’s actually the only miracle that’s told in all four Gospels. And I want us to look at it this morning at a couple levels. First, there is just the reality of what happened; so I want us to just walk through how this story unfolds. But then, second, there is something that Mark wants us to know about Jesus here, and that’s main...

What can we learn from John’s witness here? First, we can be encouraged and perhaps convicted by John’s faithfulness and courage. He was faithful to preach the word that God had given him to Israel. Because of that, God gave him a promotion; he got an audience with the king.

In Jairus’s heart for his daughter, and Jesus’s heart for these women, we catch a glimpse of God’s father-daughter love for his people, alongside the other distinct aspects of his love. He looks on us with the compassion, affection, and protection that a daddy has for “my little daughter.” It is so good, for women and men alike, to know ourselves loved by God like a father loves his daughter, and...

So that’s our story today. A bad guy, stripped of the evil oppressing him, becomes a good guy by the word of the one true hero. But that’s not all. Let’s not miss the secret here. How does Jesus forgive this man so easily? How does he forgive us? Because, let’s not forget, we are all like that man. Without Jesus, we are alone. We are dirty. We are addicted to and controlled by our natural desires,...

And I can’t help but think about how much we do this same thing. We’re just like these Galilean fishermen in 30AD — because a lot of times when things get hard for us, when the storm sets in, we can come to Jesus saying, “Hey, Jesus, I’m doing my part here. I’m working hard here with my bucket. Can you pitch in a little effort?

In other words, there are some who trust in Jesus not because they find Jesus glorious and wonderful in himself, but they trust in Jesus because they think Jesus gets them other things they find glorious and wonderful. They are using Jesus for other things, and therefore, when those other things disappear, they don’t need Jesus anymore, and so they fall away.

First, remember the pattern in these stories. A question from the scribes and Pharisees (and in one case, from the people): “Why does he speak like that? Why does he eat with them? Why don’t his disciples fast? Why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?” And Jesus answers these questions with his own question or a pithy proverb or both. “Which is easier to say? Sick people need doctors. D...

So the paralytic man gets to Jesus. And let’s be clear: he comes, expecting healing. He can’t walk. They brought him there because they want him to walk and they’ve seen and heard of Jesus’s authority. They believe he can heal. And then, Jesus surprises them. He overturns expectations. He doesn’t immediately heal the man, like he’d done dozens of times before. Instead, he forgives the man’s sins....

The church is a home for sick people — that’s why you’re here — I want you to know: it’s okay not to be okay. And I want that to be true about us. This is really a culture thing. I want this to be in the air of Cities Church. And this is where our language really matters.

For most of the rest of Mark’s gospel, Jesus will never be alone again. He will always be traveling and ministering with his disciples, showing them how to fish for men. And thanks to Mark, just like them, we’ll have a front-row seat to see how Jesus fulfills God’s promises, overturns everyone’s expectations, and shows us the surprising character of God’s kingdom.

The gospel, by its nature, is an announcement that intrudes whatever it is we already had going on. That’s the way it happened back in the first century, and that’s the way it still happens today. Here we are going on with our lives, doing our own thing, and then all of sudden we are confronted with the gospel of Jesus, the Son of God, and we can’t ignore him because he’s right here! See, Mark’s G...

The race that we are running is infinitely more important than The Olympics. It doesn’t merely have repercussions on this side of eternity, but forever. It echoes into eternity. It’s a race that if you do not finish, you do not live. It is infinitely more valuable, more important.

When the magi came to Jerusalem asking, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” little did they know that they were asking for the very title that will be written above his head as he hung on the cross dying for sins not his own: “the king of the Jews”

Overall, God is telling Isaac to stay put in the land of Canaan. He’s telling him not to leave. God told Abraham back in Genesis 12:1 to leave his homeland for Canaan, and here in Chapter 26 God is telling Isaac to stay in Canaan, “in the land of which I shall tell you.”

The Bible is a story of glory to glory. And it is the glory of the first to prepare and give way to the second. This is not identical glory. There is a glory in being first, in being the older. But that glory serves and strengthens and then relinquishes to the glory of the second, the last, the younger. And we catch glimpses in the Bible. We see Jonathan, Saul’s son, gladly give way to David, God’...

And a key lesson to learn in this chapter is that God’s providence doesn’t typically bring about his will despite his people — though that is the case sometimes — but God’s usual pattern is furthering his purposes in history through his people and their faithful engagement (mind, heart, will, actions) in the world he made.

The highest point in Abraham’s story came last week in Chapter 22, when God tested Abraham in the sacrifice of Isaac. That was the climax of Abraham’s story, and now the narrative of Genesis is going to begin focusing on Isaac.

Because of Genesis 22, I think many of us treat Abraham with some hesitation. We know that we ought to admire him. He’s Father Abraham, the man of faith. And yet, because of this story, we don’t want to get too close. We don’t want to be too like Abraham. We shrink back, lest God call us to do the unthinkable.

This is the scene that happens: Abraham throws a party for Isaac after he was weaned. So he’s a young boy here, probably a toddler. And during this party, while everyone is having a good time, Sarah looks out and she sees that Ishmael, who is a teenager, is “laughing.” That’s all the text says.

There’s no two ways about it. This is a puzzling and troubling passage of Scripture. Four thousand years removed from Abraham’s time, we struggle to understand what’s going on in these three passages. It’s clearly significant. God records three different occasions where one of the patriarch’s pulls this stunt. We skipped the event in Genesis 12, and we haven’t gotten to Genesis 26. The aim of this...