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“Peter, with his last opportunity to teach, wants you to know God is at work in you by His great power. Therefore make every effort to grow in Christlikeness. It is Peter’s hope and expectation that they would have faith in God that would propel them forward into action…This is not a myth, but it is a reality…We have been taken out of the rat race. Our life is for - and our fulfillment is in - Jesus.”
“I’m a Baptist, so I’m not a dancer. I have seen it. I can appreciate it, that it has this lovely cadence to it. But I don’t have the feet for it I suppose. I would like to say something around the realm that the Gospel in our lives is something like a dance though - where we learn something new about God, and we have to respond. And as we learn more about God we are required to submit more about we know about ourselves. And it’s this step after step after step in our lives that changes us, that completes us, as we walk this road. So this is an interesting passage that reveals more about our Lord…”
“There were these famous stories Paul’s audience would have been familiar with. The Greco-Roman world loved them a good ‘bromance’. Stories of friends so close and committed that one was willing to die for the other. This is not at all what God has done for us. Christ laid his life down for us, according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, while we were still weak in nature, ungodly in character, still choosing to sin against him, his enemies rather than friends…Our conviction this morning is that we have not appropriately rejoiced in what God has done for us.”
Pastor Leighton continues taking us through the Gospel of Mark, by looking at the well known story of the feeding of the 5000. He shows us that this is so much more than a well-known Sunday school story, but a story of how Jesus was like a shepherd was providing food for his sheep (v.34). Leighton shows us how Jesus is the fulfillment of: a)’The Lord is My Shepherd’ from Psalm 23, b)the ‘Rejoicing Shepherd’ from Luke 15 who searches for the lost sheep, c) the ‘Good Shepherd’ from John 10 who lays down his life for his sheep, d) the ‘Chief Shepherd’ from 1 Peter 5 who honors his servants, and e) the ‘Great Shepherd’ of the sheep from Hebrews 13 and Revelation 7:17.
“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…”
