Sermons on Jesus (Page 3)
A Light Has Dawned
Writing 700 years before Christ, Isaiah spoke of people who “walked in darkness”–certainly true of his own day, as even God’s people sought “mediums and necromancers” instead of God (mentioned in the verses at the end of chapter 8 just prior to our text). And it was also true of the early days of the Roman Empire to which Isaiah pointed, when the Israelites also lived in dark times–those who were clustered in Judea as well as those scattered throughout…
Christ Over All
When we suffer, we’re tempted to question God’s presence and sovereignty, even more so when the suffering is directly tied to our following Christ. Where is God? Does he know? Does he care? Why isn’t he doing anything? Peter’s response–as it so often is for him and other biblical writers–is to go to Jesus, specifically to his death, resurrection, and exaltation. There’s a significant interpretive difficulty in this passage, and we’ll spend a little time with it Sunday, but even…
Who Do You Say that He is?
Mark begins his gospel by making it clear who the subject of his narrative is: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (1:1). Near the end he includes this confession–from the mouth of a calloused, pagan centurion: “And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’” (15:39). And in all the chapters in between, he’s concerned about…
A God Who Cries
Next week our theme in our One Word devotional readings is Grief, so Sunday we’re going to study the story about Jesus’ weeping near the grave of his friend Lazarus. Grief touches us all sooner or later, so there’s a good chance you’ve felt its burden. It’s real, it hurts, and to some extent it’s inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be debilitating. One aspect of the Lord’s incarnation is that he experienced fully what it means to be human.…