Edgefield Church Nashville – Sermons

Typically stories about national founders?stories designed to give a nation identity and purpose?talk up moral virtues worthy of emulation and play down embarrasing flaws. Israel?s origin stories?perhaps especially stories about Jacob, Israel himself?provide a noticeable contrast to this pattern. That?s because Israel?s national identity?and now the identity of the church?rests upon a different so...

One of Christianity?s great challenges is the call to walk by faith and not by sight. It?s the call to believe God?s loving and gracious promises are true even when the circumstances of your life cast serious doubt on those promises. There is perhaps no more vivid?certainly no more mysterious?illustration of this sort of odds-defying faith than the story of Abraham?s call to sacrifice his son. Whe...

God is faithful to the promises He makes in the Bible. Since we are grafted in as Abraham?s descendants through faith in Christ, we have confidence that he is working for our good despite our circumstances.

sin, is inseparable from these ancient promises. They speak of the content of salvation, the vehicle of salvation, and the scope of salvation.

The strange little story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of Israel?s neighbors as the result of a clash between the unfettered pride of humankind and the unmatched sovereignty of God. Rich in irony, it juxtaposes the united human drive for security and significance with God?s effortless sway over the best of human ingenuity. But more than that, like all of Genesis 1-11, the story of Bab...

The story of Noah and the flood is far from a nursery rhyme. It?s a story of cataclysmic judgment mixed with mysterious divine grace. Like everything else in the opening chapters of Genesis, this story is meant to introduce key themes that continue to play out in the storyline of the Bible, and it raises crucial questions. How should this story of terrible and intentional judgment affect our view...

The message of the cross will always be foolishness to the world, but true foolishness would be loving the respect of our peers more than we love the gospel.

When the apostles preached about Jesus they preached him as crucified and as risen from the dead. In his letter to the Romans, Paul explains why the gospel is incomplete apart from Jesus?s resurrection. In theory, the resurrection is the foundation of our faith that God accepts us because he accepts Jesus. In practice, it means ours is a peace and a hope that should hold fast no matter our circums...

Genesis, as a story of beginnings, explains the roots of a reality we can?t reasonbly deny: this world is not what it ought to be. Genesis 3 explains something of the nature of sin, that it replaces God?s authority with ours; the results of sin, that it destroys relationships, separates us from God, and ultimately brings death; and the solution for sin, that one we now know to be Jesus would come...

The conclusion to Genesis 1 claims that humans are unique among God?s creatures because they?re made in the image of God. That was a counter-cultural claim when first written and, in some ways, remains so today. But unique how? This text suggests the image of God gives us unique dignity, unique responsibility, and unique accountability.

The story of Genesis?a book of beginnings?opens with a poem that answers questions as old as time: Where did we come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? And who is in charge?

Mark concludes his story with an earth-shattering claim that launches the life of the church: Jesus was really dead, but now he?s alive. He leaves us to ask two questions. Is it true? And if it is true, if Jesus really is alive, what are the implications?

must Jesus die? Mark?s telling of Jesus?s trial and crucifixion removes a couple possible explanations. Jesus didn?t die because he was guilty: the trial of Jesus shows no one found any legitimate legal reason to kill him. And Jesus didn?t die because he was powerless: Mark?s readers know Jesus is innocent and has power to overcome his captors, but he doesn?t defend himself. So why then? Jesus die...

Describing the events leading to Jesus?s arrest and crucifixion, Mark tells us a great deal about what Jesus came here to do: He came to be abandoned so we won?t have to be. Jesus was abandoned by everyone? Judas, Peter, his disciples, even his Father?and, remarkably, he chose to have it that way. Why did he choose this path of excruciating isolation? Because through his death?the ultimate abandon...

In the longest section of teaching recorded in Mark?s Gospel, Jesus turns to questions asked by the religious and the philosophical since the beginning of time. What does the future hold, and how should we live now in light of that future? The details of Jesus?s predictions?about the destruction of the Temple in the near future and about his final return in power and glory?have always baffled inte...

After a parable of judgment that sets the stage for his confrontation with Israel?s religious leaders, Jesus fields challenges from each primary group of leaders: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes. In each case, Jesus?s answers turn the tables on his challengers to expose their hypocrisy. In the end, Jesus proposes the only solution to religious hypocrisy: a love of God for God?s sake...

Chapter 11 marks Jesus?s arrival at Jersalem, an event laced through with prophecy fulfillment. Here, by an ?enacted parable? and by a dramatic confrontation in the Temple, Jesus shows more of what he?s come to do. As King, he?s come to purge and to restore.

To this point Mark?s narrative has promised that Jesus would, paradoxically, establish the kingdom of God through his death. So what does this mean for who belongs to the kingdom and how? Mark answers this question by contrasting stories on faith with stories on self-reliance. In short, the kingdom belongs to the desperate, not the self-reliant, because it belongs to those who rest only on Jesus.

Still on the road towards Jerusalem, Jesus shifts the focus of his teaching on discipleship to the subject of marriage and divorce. As so often before, he explodes standard religious convention. Jesus answers a question from the Pharisees about divorce with an explanation of God?s original design for marriage. Marriage viewed from the perspective of creation, in the eyes of God, is an unbreakable...

As Jesus makes his way towards Jerusalem and the death that?s waiting there for him, he narrows his focus to teaching his disciples what it means to follow a Messiah who suffers. The cross sets the pattern for Christian discipleship, and this text offers concrete examples. A life modeled on the cross is a life that puts the interests of others above its own, and it?s a life that fights a radical b...

In this story of demon possession and exorcism, Mark returns to one of his favorite questions: what must we do to claim the saving power of Jesus? It?s a story that illustrates what we know from our own experience: unbelief comes from many sources and in many forms. But in the desperate plea of a helpless father Mark illustrates another, even more powerful truth. It?s a decision to rest on Jesus?n...

Just after Jesus has told his disciples that he must suffer and die, and that following him means they will suffer too, Jesus reinforces their confidence in him with a glimpse of his glory, a mysterious event called the transfiguration. In this story and in Jesus?s discussion with his disciples about this event, Mark helps us understand a central Christian paradox: as Son of God Jesus is undeniabl...

The stories of Jesus?s life and teaching in Mark?s Gospel are designed to answer three main questions: who is Jesus, what did Jesus come here to do, and what does that require of us? Already, in chapters 1-8, we?ve seen the shape of Mark?s answer to those crucial questions emerge. First, Jesus is the divine Son of God, as shown in his unmatched words and actions of authority and power. Second, he...

To fully appreciate why Jesus?s birth matters so much, we have to understand where it falls in the overarching story the Bible tells about God?s work of salvation. Isaiah 9 offers one of the most important clues, hundreds of years before Jesus was actually born. The prophet claims that the people who walked in darkness have seen a light because a child was born. In other words, we?ve got to unders...

This exchange between Jesus and his disciples represents a turning point in Mark?s Gospel. Just after Peter?s climactic confession of Jesus as the Christ, Jesus explains what kind of Christ he would be and what that implied for all who would follow him. Jesus explains to his followers?and to us?that there is no Christ without the cross and resurrection, and there is no Christian discipleship witho...