Sermons About Flesh
Our Desires and Jesus' Control
Mark 3:20-35 Our reaction to the person of Christ requires action of us: either rejecting His claims, or embracing His Lordship. Indifference is not a plausible, logical, or valid response. How have we distorted who Christ is in our own lives? Are we deceived and missing out on the fullness of life in relationship with Christ?
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Mark 3:7-21
Mark 3 details why there was such hope and anticipation built around the person of Christ in His early ministry, not unlike the expectation that currently has been placed on President Obama. James Sutton explains the significance of Christ strategically choosing 12 disciples, and the personalities that accompanied them. Mark 3 illustrates that God always has permanent solutions in mind when we may only desire immediate fixes. Are your desires too small for Jesus' objective sometimes?
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Death That Leads to Life (Romans 8:12-14)
As Christians, we are debtors; not to the flesh, for it has never been our friend, but to the Spirit, who has given us life. This joyful obligation, as those who have received a precious gift, calls us to put sin to death -- to kill, or "mortify" it. This is a real battle that we must fight continually, but we do it not in our own strength, but in the strength of the very Spirit who gives us life.
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The One Who Brings the Kingdom
The One Who Brings the Kingdom is the second sermon in our series "Who is This? Discovering Jesus in the Gospel According to Mark." Listen as Rev. Grudem points out what we can learn from the seemingly abbreviated account of Mark.
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Son of God and Son of Man
Who Is This? Discovering Jesus in the Gospel According to Mark Son of God and Son of Man
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Categorically of the Spirit (Romans 8:5-9)
Paul draws a stark contrast between the person who is of the flesh and the person who is of the Spirit. The person who is of the flesh lives a life of death, and ends in death. The person who is of the Spirit lives a life of grace and mercy and peace, and ends in eternal life. By his own power, a person of the flesh cannot become a person of the Spirit. The flesh can be overcome only by death -- either our own death or the death of another. Praise God that this life of the Spirit has been purchased by the death of our Savior! Through Him we are now able to obey, to please God, and to enjoy the blessings of this abundant life in him.
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God's Initiative in Justifying the Sinner (Romans 8:3-4)
God has made all those who are in Christ to be righteous. The law proclaims God's righteous standards and convicts us of our sin. However, as much as it demands righteousness, it cannot produce righteousness in us. But what the law could not do, God did! He put his son to death so that we could be declared righteous through his death, and made holy by giving us the Holy Spirit. Christians are those who walk according to the spirit.
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The Liberation of the Sinner (Romans 8:2)
Apart from the Spirit, our experience with the law is governed by our sin. Even though we may agree with the law in our minds, our slavery and bondage to sin causes us to disobey the law -- and in fact, sin allows itself to be incited by the law to greater disobedience, leading only to death. However, as those who are in Christ, we have the Holy Spirit at work in us, giving us life and empowering us to overcome sin. The Spirit sets us free from any power other than Christ that would rule over us. Unlike the unbeliever in Romans 7, the Christian is never said to be wretched; instead, the Christian is said to be a new creation, an overcomer, one who is free and victorious. As believers, the reason that we sin is not because we are still in bondage to sin; the reason we sin is because we refuse to walk in and find our strength in the Spirit. We will walk in victory as we walk in the Spirit.
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Light
Because this light was God in the flesh, and because He came into the world to give us life through fellowship and to destroy the darkness in our world by taking away our sins on the cross (the moment of ultimate darkness) we are compelled to preach the gospel and raid the darkness.
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House Rules Part 3
If you are even a casual student of scripture, you will find that there are just some verses and commands in the Bible that just seem...well...hard. There are just some verses that seem practically impossible to obey and some almost don't even make sense. We look at them and think, "Well God, you will just have to do that in me if you want me to do that because I don't see that happening. For example: - Luke 14:26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. o Are you kidding me? Why would I hate my parents? - Matthew 5:39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. o We devise elaborate explanations about why we don't to obey this one. - Philippians 2:3 Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. o We hear that and think, "Yeah, but there are few people that I know I am better than." There are always good, practical theological explanations for these verses, but when it comes down to it, obeying them is just flat out hard Here is thing. When we hear those verses and we think, "God is just going to have to do that if He wants me to obey," we are actually thinking correctly. We often fall into the mistake of thinking all the other verses in the Bible are easily within our grasp. If that was the case, Jesus surely didn't need to die. I Corinthians 15 makes it clear that Jesus' death on the cross was for the payment of our sin and His resurrection was for our new life. The only reason you and I can obey with a desire to glorify God is because Jesus' enables us to now. Otherwise we would be the dead men we've always been. You know there is an old hymn that sings, "I was sinking deep in sin/far from the peaceful shore." That hymn though sweet is completely wrong. We aren't sinking deep in sin; we are dead in our sin. The hymn really should sing, "I was lying dead in sin on the bottom of the ocean floor." If we are going to obey any verse, hard or not, it is because the Spirit helps us to obey. We don't discount the hard work obedience is, but as soon as we get away from dependence on God for that obedience, we have become lazy in our walk with Christ despite the contrary. Well this week in the book of 1 John, we are going look at one of these hard, nearly impossible passages of scripture. We want to pursue it well and understand its application for us, and then we want to ask our God to help us to obey.
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