Jesus watches over his people. In this passage we see Jesus rebuke the pride and arrogance of the scribes who love the seats of honor and status, but we also see him receive the lowly. A poor widow offers her tithes unnoticed and in such a small amount, yet in the economy of Jesus’s kingdom, she offered a fortune.

Mourning is a reality of life yet something we avoid. The psalmist teaches us about the importance mourning the devastation in our lives because that’s the place where God desires to meet us. Throughout the Bible, we see profound acts of God’s power and might be preceded by profound moments of mourning.

Jesus entered Jerusalem and was received like a conquering hero. The people expected the rise of a new Israel as the most powerful nation on the planet, yet Jesus came for a different purpose. Not to kill the Romans, but sacrifice himself. What does this teach us about our own expectations about Jesus and knowing our true problem?

Jesus called himself the ‘son of man’ more than anything else. What does this mean and what does it tell us about Jesus’s ministry?

In this sermon we see how Jesus came to serve, not to be served. We often miss Jesus in our lives in the same way as the disciples, we aren’t about what he’s about. The disciples were looking for power and an earthly kingdom. They each wanted to be the greatest in that kingdom, yet Jesus shows us that his kingdom is unlike anything else.

On the Mount of Transfiguration three disciples saw Jesus in the brilliance of his glory. The description of Jesus in this passage tells us something important about him and the purpose of his ministry.

In this passage Jesus heals a blind man. Mark pays special attention to how Jesus healed this man and wants us to see something important. What does this man’s physical condition teach us about our spiritual condition?

Jesus disrupts our systems of self-righteousness. The Pharisees were known for their adherence to the law and ritual washings for purity, yet Jesus places no value on their legalism. Jesus teaches us what truly makes us unclean and broken and how no effort of ours can fix it. Instead, we need One who can cleanse our hearts, not our hands.

Jesus is more than we could imagine. In this passage we have two powerful stories of the woman with the issue of the blood and Jairus whose daughter was ill and died. Both of them came to Jesus and both of them got far more than they were looking for when he met them in their suffering.

How does Jesus display his divinity? In Mark 4 we see Jesus calm the storm as the disciples are afraid that they are going to die. They marvel at the fact that even the wind and waves obey him and they were greatly frightened. What does this tell us about who Jesus is in our lives?

What is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit? At this point in Jesus’s ministry he had become a phenomenon and was constantly surrounded by the crowds. He was blamed for using the power of Satan to cast out demons, but Jesus responds with a far more radical answer.

Jesus begins his ministry with many signs and wonders and healing of the sick, but the Pharisees were skeptical of Jesus. When they saw his disciples eating grain on the Sabbath in the fields, they put Jesus to the test. But Jesus says he is the Lord of the Sabbath and teaches us why the Sabbath, true rest, is given and commanded by God.

How would you define the gospel? Is it just the good news that Jesus died for your sins and you get to live forever, or is it something far bigger and better? Mark tells us that Jesus began preaching the gospel from the very beginning of his ministry. So what is the gospel if Jesus was preaching it before he ever died on the cross?

Mark begins with John the Baptist announcing the arrival of the Messiah. Jesus is first introduced to us as the beloved Son of God with whom the Father is pleased.

The Christian community is a healing community. The love that we are called to exhibit to one another allows us to empathize with the suffering and associate with the lowly. Our lives are to be so intertwined that we rejoice and weep with another.

To be a Christian is to be called to a radical new life. Paul teaches us how this new life together is marked by genuine love, patient in hardship, and caring for the needs of one another. This new life allows us to enter into the suffering of others and to resist evil and avenging wrongdoing.

In Romans 12, Paul tells the church to present itself as a living sacrifice to God. That wasn’t just an individual call, but a call to the entire church, to offer itself in service unto God as a unified, corporate body. This lies at the heart of the community of faith: being renewed in our minds and laying aside the ways of the world together.

How can we face whatever comes our way, whether we are blessed or brought low? Paul teaches us the secret of contentment and how he has come to know how to face whatever happens in his life. The secret is Jesus and finding him in every circumstance and trusting that he is in control and writing your story.

God is a God of peace, yet we don’t often feel at peace. Paul exhorts those in the church to be reconciled if they are at odds. He encourages those who are anxious to lay their concerns before God so that they might know the peace that surpasses understanding. How can we access this peace that’s available to us?

How can we let go of our past and lay hold of what Christ has for us in the future? Paul teaches us how to look forward to the prize of God’s upward call, when we will be fully with Christ in transformed bodies. The glory of what awaits us is beyond measure and offers comfort when we look at the past and hope when we look to the future.