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“Crazy story…can’t make a movie about this one. It’s everything, right: It’s seduction, it’s murder, it’s adultery, and stupidity…all the vices wrapped into one story. But here it is. It’s scripture. And we are charged to read it and to find its meaning for us this morning.” Mark intentionally puts these two accounts together. The beheading of John the Baptist, sandwiched by the sending out, and return, of the twelve apostles. Tune in to find out more.
“Authentic faith trusts in God’s righteousness. It trusts in the character of God - who He is. We have a God who is totally reliable. Wholly good…And the faithfulness of God is not reliant on our faithfulness!! The exact opposite is true!! Our faithfulness is fully reliant on the steadfast covenant love and faithfulness of God.”
“My professor says ‘the Law is like soil that always produces wrath, while faith is like soil that always produces righteousness and blessing.’ …Behind all this stands the expressed purpose of God: ‘That is why it depends on faith!!!’ (v.16)…It is imperative that the church resists all such efforts to enforce any distinctions between persons. Whoever you are, where ever you live, whatever land is your homeland, whatever your racial or ethnic background, if you place your trust for your standing before God in the work of Jesus Christ: Abraham is your father. You too are numbered among the people of God, those who believe and are justified by faith.”
“…There is one church in Christ, not two. Do you know what the messianic Jews in the first century were called? Christians. Or the gentile believers? Christians. The church was not separated by culture or ethnicity. Paul is not only tackling that issue here in Romans — not only does he put Jews and Gentiles in the same boat, but he also forces us to see ourselves to in the same boat as unbelievers today. It forces us to see ourselves as no more deserving of God’s grace than all those ‘ungodly’ people around us, with sins and lifestyles we find most offensive. God is in the business of justifying the ungodly - because no one is righteous, no not one…”
“So this church (in Rome) that is struggling with this unity because they are of mixed ethnicity (Jew and Gentile) and they can’t get along, they think that some are superior to others — Paul puts everyone in the same boat. Some of us grew up in church. We learned the rules, we got the Sunday School lessons, we had the Word. And we are in the exact same boat as those who just discovered it today!! All are in desperate need for God to save.”
“Don’t you want to lack in nothing? I know I do. But the path, according to scripture, to a life lacking in nothing is paved with struggle…Jesus was a prophet without honour in his hometown. We are to be prophets in our hometowns…We are to live and share the good news, in season and out of season, when its convenient and when it’s totally awkward. Know that the world will reject you - but some won’t. So we tell all. And we win just by being faithful, just by saying “Jesus saves”, just by living that out, day-to-day.”
Pastor Leighton takes us through the connected stories of the death of Jairus’ 12 year old daughter, and the nameless woman who was afflicted with 12 years of bleeding and sought to steal a miracle, in Mark 5:21-43. One had life begin 12 years ago and had it tragically cut short, and the other began the process of dying 12 years ago and stands as a social outcast due to her affliction. He shows us how the Gospel of Mark repeatedly emphasizes that when Jesus touched unclean persons rather than making him unclean, like the Jewish Law dictated, he makes them clean. How this duet of stories demonstrates that both persons of means (the synagogue ruler) and persons without means (the impoverished nameless woman) are all in the same boat: death awaits us all - and we are all in need of a rescuer.
“There is no good news without this bad news…Only this kind of ultimate bad news will lead you to despair of yourself and turn in utter dependence to Jesus, for outside of union with Him, no human being can rightfully be called righteous…You can say I’m a Christian and I believe in Jesus, I love Jesus, Jesus has done so many great things for me — what is really hard about sharing the gospel is to share the whole truth. To actually say: And you need this. Here’s why…”
“Obedience is the commanded and necessary consummation of our faith…But How? How do we obey? How has God availed his great power to us to give us all things we need for a life of godliness? Look at the passage this morning (v.3): It is through a knowledge of Him! Colossians 3 would supplement this passage and say that we are being renewed in knowledge after the image of our Creator. We must realize that partaking in life and godliness is not some mystical, secret, complicated, higher knowledge sort of process, but rather it is simply a growing and experiential knowledge of our Great God.”
“There developed in the history of Israel a belief that circumcision, the sacred rite which was the sign of the Old Testament covenant, was all it took to be saved. We have a similar confusion in the Christian church today where some people believe that they are automatically guaranteed salvation by some rite or response. This passage in Romans refutes any thought that one gains membership into the people of God by baptism (infant or otherwise), or that any other rite of passage can grant us assurance of salvation. The New covenant counterpart to circumcision is not baptism, or any other thing which can be accomplished by human choice and human hands— but circumcision of the heart, and that is accomplished only by God.”
