Keep Going

Mark 6:7-34

When you’ve been to your ‘Nazareth,’ possibly even expecting to be received with wonder and awe about the possibility and potential for your newly-expressed life in ministry – and been rejected as a poser – what is your response?

Well, I think we can safely say this is why Jesus went to ‘His Nazareth’ in the first place. It was to demonstrate to us what is likely to happen in our hometowns and in our hometown families; which is, in a word, unbelief.

Do not expect those who know you well to immediately believe your life has been transformed by God. If they disbelieved this happened in Jesus’ life, it is even more likely they will disbelieve it has happened in yours.

How are we to respond to this unbelief and doubt in our Godly transformation and calling – especially when it is expressed by those who know us better than anyone?

The example here is to spread the ministry. Deepen it. Broaden it. Call more people into it.

The thoughts of unbelief toward us in our hometowns should be employed as springboards to expand our ministry effort, and never to turn back or stop.

Following His rejection at Nazareth, Jesus greatly expanded His ministry by locating His 12 apostles and sending them out with the same authority of ministry He had been granted by the Father. His response was to expand His ministry 12-fold. He did not turn back, He kept going in an even broader way.

Upon hearing of John the Baptist’s murder at the hand of Herod, Jesus did not turn back. He gathered together with His guys to lick their wounds in private, and then He taught a massive crowd, publicly demonstrating He would keep going. Nothing could or would stop Jesus from delivering the gospel to those in need.

-Pastor Bill

What Did You Expect?

Mark 6:1-6

What did you expect God to look like?

We all have our pictures of God in our minds, and the imagery we visualize has a lot to do with how we expect God to operate.

This is the reason God has said NOT to make images of God. NONE. From the beginning, God has made it plain and clear for His followers to reject imagery in ALL its forms – because what we see with our eyes determines how we respond in our hearts.

God would have us respond by faith, and faith cannot take place in the realm of sight.

Imagine what an upset it was for God to appear as a man. How could that possibly be?

At least, if He is to appear as a man He should be a majestic one with a commanding presence that all would swoon in His presence…

Yet, the Bible tells us He made Himself of lowly appearance. Men would not be drawn to Him by His comely appearance - but by His Word.

When Jesus first appeared at Nazareth, His hometown, as God in flesh – what did you expect? Did you expect all the people to bow down to Him because of His majestic appearance, and because they have known of Him all His life?

Exactly the opposite occurs because of exactly those reasons. He is NOT of majestic appearance, and they do NOT expect Him as Savior BECAUSE they have known Him all their lives. He is very familiar to them all. They know all about Him.

He is not the God they expected God to be.

It is very interesting how our expectations of God limit God according to our expectations. Jesus could do no mighty work among those who knew Him well. Familiarity bred a certain contempt. Does this apply to us also?

-Pastor Bill

The Government

Isaiah 9:6-7

There has been much talk about the government lately, but that’s nothing new.

As our present government plunges ahead without listening to or acknowledging the wishes of the people it governs, we sometimes feel desperate in frustration.

But think how they felt in the dark ages, living under a wicked king. Or under Pol Pot in Cambodia. Or Stalin in the U.S.S.R. Or what life would have been like in Hitler’s Germany – or Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon.

The history of the world is filled with tragic and terrible selfishly self-serving government. In fact, some of the concern we share now for our present governance is because of the godless path we seem to be on that retraces some of those earlier footsteps of history.

When has there ever been a truly GOOD government – led by a man or men who were entirely benevolent and chiefly concerned with the needs of the people governed?

That would be never. There never has been one, because governments are always filled by men.

Until the birth of Jesus Christ. Until the coming to earth of The One Who is chiefly concerned for the needs of ALL others above Himself – even to the extent of willingly dying for ALL others.

If God had never demonstrated anything else of His love for mankind, He would demonstrate it in this: He would send His only begotten Son into the world to demonstrate His desire for supremely benevolent government of mankind – and He would place that government upon His Son’s shoulders; the only One capable of bearing that weight.

Word: Jesus’ government is entirely voluntary. He has volunteered to govern - and He seeks those who voluntarily desire His loving and benevolent governance. And His government is entirely apart from the government of man. Has nothing to do with it.

-Pastor Bill

Desperate

Mark 5:21-43

Desperate circumstances produce varying reactions in man.

Panic, fainting, fear, flight; all these are natural responses to those circumstances in life we have no natural recourse for. There is no defense, and no offense, and confusion and dismay often envelop those who are desperate.

There is one thing desperation always produces, and that is a laser-like focus on anything and everything that may have even the slightest, remotest, or least possibility of bringing ANY relief to the desperate situation you find yourself in.

This passage in Mark 5 is a study in desperation, and what it produces in man.

There are two people who appear prominently, and both are intensely desperate for anyone who can help. (The problem is there is no one who can…)

We see Jairus, who is the ruler of the synagogue, (most likely at Capernaum,) who is desperate for healing for his 12 year old daughter, and we see a woman who has tried every doctor and spent every dollar she can find seeking a cure for a flow of blood that has kept her physically anemic and ceremonially unclean for 12 years.

Both of them come to Jesus out of desperation. Jesus is not only their last hope – He is their only hope. We do not know the back story about how it is each of them have heard about Jesus, but we do know that what they have heard has produced a degree of hopefulness in the midst of a very dark situation in their lives. Jesus is that ray of Light they have been seeking.

We are left to wonder what may have happened in each of these lives if there was no sense of desperation. If Jairus’ daughter had not been sick to the point of death, would he have sought Jesus? If the un-named woman with the flow of blood had instead been healthy, would she have sought Jesus?

In the same way we may ask: Have you sought Jesus with a sense of desperation? (It changes everything about the seeking process.) Are you PERSONALLY aware of the desperate nature of your sinful condition – and where you will spend eternity unless you come to Jesus?

-Pastor Bill