“Church, this is the ultimate question, there is none greater: Who do you say this Jesus is? Who is the Christ? …Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (quoting C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

“Christian, the cross has freed you up, you have nothing else pressing. Because of Jesus, you can now love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. Anything less shows you have not yet understood the grace and freedom you are now in. You are free now to fully obey and to love and to serve the Lord. If this is hard, your job is not to try harder, but to study the word and sit with God and his son more. Love cannot be forced, but when you know him more and more deeply, you will love him more and more deeply.”

“Now the piece you need to know, the block that’s missing in all this is that, besides denying the resurrection and angel and spirit, the Sadducees only believed that the books of Moses were authoritative, so just the Torah. Meaning they only looked to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy as scripture!…Christian, herein lies one of the biggest threats to the modern church. The dropping inconvenient verses, the constant shaping and reshaping of doctrine to suit what we as humans like, and the refusal to preach the whole gospel of God. And it’s rampant….Friends, itching ears have no problem finding smooth talking lips, for every group of people that just wanna hear easy soothing bible stuff, there are a dozen preachers and so called bible teachers ready to dole out such sap. And the world isn’t getting any better…”

“Our passage today is found right in the middle of this week in Jerusalem. Having been put in their place by the parable of the wicked tenants, the elites now send wave upon wave of their most intelligent representatives, their most adept thinkers to defeat Jesus in his understanding of the law. Mark chapter 3 tells us they just really wanna kill him, but I think it shows their pride and arrogance that they should want to intellectually humiliate him first. As in their day, and perhaps even now, the highest calling of Jewish wisdom was to be able to know the law and be able to defend it. So to all onlookers, it becomes no small thing that this formally uneducated man from the sticks of Galilee, would even engage the ruling’s lead lawyers, let alone best them at their zenith. But in the next three or four interactions that’s exactly how things play out. Jesus meets the Jewish leadership day after day, in unfair argument, and beats them on their own turf.”

“Here’s the crassest way I can put it: the rulers could no longer make money at the temple if John’s giving forgiveness away for free. The temple was already a pile of rubble, the custodians just didn’t know it yet…The old covenant systems had to be fully dismantled, because the coming Messiah would be bringing such a radically different covenant, that no structure from before could stand. And this Gospel is so beautiful…”

“The tree advertised life and fruit, but it had none. The temple advertised life and fruit to a dead and hopeless world, but it had none either. And I’ve done the same.  You and I have done the same. In fact, the mainstay, the call sign, the common thread linking all lukewarm Christianity that I have ever seen (or perpetrated), practices this same crooked theology; saying I know what I’m doing is wrong but… I’m basically a good person. or…I know it’s a sin, but let me have this one vice. or: I know it’s wrong, but God will give me a pass, God’ll just forgive me later.  We conveniently misunderstand the word grace to mean God will let it slide. And like Joab we hold onto the horns of the altar and falsely trust that because we say you can’t get me here, we think we are safe. It’s a lie as old as the devil in the garden. But grace isn’t a den for foxes. It’s not a refuge if it’s used as a shield against God. It’s not a sanctuary to hide our sins in. No, It’s a full force burning away of our sinful selves. The grace of Christ Jesus, bought at the cross, is the source and wellspring of our salvation and sanctification. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve - trading sin and death for new life and holiness.”

“Mark is keen to show, almost word for word, that absolutely everything went according to plan. That everything occurred just as Jesus said it would. Ever, always in Mark, Jesus is shown to be in control of every situation, he is always the authority in the room, he is always in command of what happens around him. It’s one of Mark’s big themes that grows throughout his book, guiding his readers to readily acknowledge Jesus, not only as the King of kings and Lord of lords, but personally so. You and I are to witness these moments and proclaim, Jesus is my King. He is my Lord…”

“…This could well be our spiritual constitution. Every kingdom needs a constitution, and this is as fine a summary as ever there was. In the kingdom of God, only God is king, everyone else ranks the same, and even though upon which he confers some role of authority is only just a servant. None higher, none lower. We are all just servants. Slaves even. Happy, well-looked after slaves of the king. If God is good, providing for our every need, and is our leader, keeper, and guide, there’s no need to jostle for position, there’s no point in jockeying for rank…”

“This week Josh pointed out to me that the phrase ‘faith like a child’ isn’t in the bible. ‘A childlike faith’ is actually bad theology given Hallmark-like ubiquity. So what is the common thread? What do all kids have? It’s need. Children are completely dependent on others. They are not self-sufficient. In a culture of doers, a society of adults, because a child can not do anything for themselves, they are the least important, have the least status, smallest value. And, according to Jesus’ social handlers, the least right to approach him. And more than saying let them come, Jesus says to his very grown up disciples; ‘one thing you lack: be like them’.”