Jesus’ parable of the Sower is often treated as the parable of the Soils. We spend a great deal of time analyzing the different soils in the passage, because after all, the Sower and the seed are always the same; it is the quality of the soils that results in different levels of responsiveness. Jesus […]
The Lord of the Sabbath is Here! (Mark 2:23-3:6)
This passage opens with Jesus simply walking through a field with His disciples. Mark, along with the other gospel writers, takes note of several times when Jesus is just walking along, going from one place to another, and along the way things happen and lives are changed. Recall the time Jesus was walking along on […]
The Temple is Here! (Mark 2:1-12)
We have seen in the first chapter of Mark that Jesus speaks as God speaks, sees as God sees, and touches as God touches. Mark is revealing the character and divine dignity of Jesus Christ at a breathless pace. Jesus is turning the tables on sin and disease and the power of Satan. As this […]
Jesus Sees as God Sees (Mark 1:29-45)
In this passage, we witness Christ’s first public healings. The whole town gathers at Jesus’ door to bring their sick and demon-possessed to Him. The apostles observe this and begin to realize that Jesus has the power to draw a really big crowd. They put themselves forward as managers to help schedule and maximize His […]
Jesus Speaks as God Speaks (Mark 1:14-28)
We have heard Jesus’ identity attested to by John the Baptist, the ancient prophets, the Holy Spirit, even the Father Himself at Christ’s baptism. We have witnessed the emergence of Jesus on the stage of human history, but we have not yet had a single word uttered from the mouth of Jesus Himself until here. […]
The Messiah is Revealed! (Mark 1:1-13)
During the Christmas season, we reflect upon the mystery of the incarnation – God Himself becoming a man. In these next few blog posts, I would like you to reflect with me upon that mystery through the eyes of Mark, the writer of the second Gospel. We will walk together through a few of the […]
Rebuilding the Pulpit
One of the abiding values of God’s Word is that we are privileged to see the true people of God being the people of God in a wide variety of situations. We see them dancing on the shores of the Red Sea with tambourines in their hands… “I will sing unto the Lord for he […]
For Such a Time as This
The following is the my Inauguration Address from Monday, November 9, 2009. You can listen to the address on iTunes by clicking here. __________________________________________________________________________________________ The ancient Greeks had two different words for time, chronos and kairos. The first word, chronos, is where we get our word chronology from. It refers to ordinary “clock time” which is measured […]
The Church’s Ultimate Identity
Andrew Walls tells the story about an imaginary scholarly, intergalactic time traveler who gets periodic grants to travel to planet Earth to study the Christian religion.[1] He studies Christianity in Jerusalem at 37 C.E., again at Nicea at 325 C.E., in Scotland in the 7th century, London in the 1840’s and, finally, in Nigeria in […]
More Than a Command
Since the advent of Protestant missions, the dominant motivation for missions has been an appeal to the “missionary mandate.” Thus, missions became a response of obedience to a particular set of commands, most notably those texts commonly referred to as embodying the Great Commission. In contrast, Lesslie Newbigin has pointed out that in the New […]