St Marcus Mke Sermons

Our theme for this week is “Jesus: Sends Out The Weak.” Last week we said that if you’re a Christian, that means that you’re called. But God always calls people in for the purpose of sending them out. YOU will be his witnesses! What will we accomplish? How should we prepare? What can we expect? We learn all of that as we see Jesus send out his disciples for the first time in Matthew 10:5-22.

Our theme for this week is “Jesus: Calls Sinners.” Since Matthew is writing predominantly to Jewish leaders, he’s often pushing the angle of how the good news of Jesus and following Jesus is different from traditional religion. This week, that tension is highlighted by the phrase, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matt. 9:13) When Jesus calls us, what is he calling us away from? And what is he calling us to? We’ll discuss all of that and more as we examine Matthew 9:9-17.

This week we get to look at a collection of Jesus’ miracles as we worship under the theme “Jesus: Healer of Wounds.” What is the goal of Jesus’ miracles? What is the environment in which they take place? What do they teach us about the character of Jesus and where we’re going? What do they tell us about how we should be spending our time on earth? We’ll discuss all of these as we do an overview of Jesus’ Miracles while studying Matthew 8:5-17.

We finish up our look at Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount this week by learning the difference between real & false Christianity. The Sermon on the Mount is less a tale of good vs. evil and more a tale of authentic vs. counterfeit Christianity. And Jesus, this week, teaches about the marks of genuine faith, as we study Matthew 7:15-23.

Our worship series in early 2019 is titled The Gospel of Matthew: The One You’ve Been Waiting For.  This week, we move into Jesus’ famous “Sermon on the Mount.” We live in a society that tells us we must never make judgments upon others and sometimes even says this is fully a biblical sentiment. What does Jesus really teach about making judgments? He offers a brilliant, somewhat controversial teaching on the spiritual discernment of others in Matthew 7:1-6.

Our worship series in early 2019 is titled The Gospel of Matthew: The One You’ve Been Waiting For. This week, we encounter the famous story of Jesus’ Testing in the Wilderness. It’s the single best blueprint he gives us in the Gospels for overcoming temptation. But his endurance also helps us understand the depths of his love. This week we’ll be studying Matthew 4:1-11. 

As we start a new year, we start a new worship series, titled The Gospel of Matthew: The One You’ve Been Waiting For.  As we begin Matthew’s Gospel, we’ll study a young Jesus’ flight from Bethlehem to Egypt and back to Nazareth. This story tells us something very interesting about the journey not only of Christ, but of our lives. We will face opposition at every stop, and glory will come from unexpected places. Our teaching will be based on Matthew 2:13-23.

The end of the year is a nice time not only to remember, but also to let go. The biblical concept of forgiveness is primarily letting go of holding things against others any longer. This doesn’t come naturally. And when it doesn’t come at all, this bitterness turns into what is called WRATH. It’s the same impulse that led to Esau desiring to kill his own brother. We need to learn how to forgive in order to find peace. And this week, we’ll learn how to do that by studying Hebrews 12:12-17.

Without question, perhaps especially this time of year, the world struggles with ENVY. And for many of us, it’s not nearly as simple as wanting more material things. Sometimes it’s the charm of a seemingly perfect family. Sometimes it’s the talents of someone who objectively just has more gifts than us. Or sometimes it’s simply the nostalgic longing for “the way things used to be.” But that yearning for MORE easily turns into a despising of what we currently have, and this eats away at our souls. It definitely happened with the Israelites. And this week we’ll see what to do about it as we study Numbers 11:4-6.

If the world has a definition of “sin” anymore, it’d probably be something like doing bad things. That’s partially true. In Catechism classes, we might call that “Sins of Commission.” But more subtle, and sometimes more offensive, are what we might call “Sins of Omission.” This is not so much doing the wrong thing, but failing to do the right thing. This hurts people just as much. And these are the sins that are the easiest to forget about. We’ll be discussing this concept of the deadly sin of LAZINESS/SLOTH as we tackle the case study of Jacob in Genesis 34:1-7. 

The concept of the Seven Deadly Sins is not so much that we love bad things, but that we hyper-love and over desire good things. It’s an excessiveness and misguided prioritization of the heart. The sin of LUST is primarily a sin of craving the excitement and pleasure of human sexuality in a way outside of God’s beautiful design. This week we’ll be looking at a case study on LUST in the story of Joseph & Potiphar’s Wife from Genesis 39:2-21.

The concept of the Seven Deadly Sins is not so much that we love bad things, but that we hyper-love and over desire good things. It’s an excessiveness and misguided prioritization of the heart. The sin of GLUTTONY is primarily a sin of the excessive craving of a good thing.   This week we’ll be looking at a case study on GLUTTONY in the person of Achan from Joshua 7:19-25

Our WLS senior pastoral assistant, Sam Jeske, preaches under the theme “Life In the Face of Death” – the story of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus back to life, from John 11:32-45.

The concept of the Seven Deadly Sins is not so much that we love bad things, but that we hyper-love and over desire good things. It’s an excessiveness and misguided prioritization of the heart. According to the Bible, the simplest thing to over love in the world is wealth. Why is giving ourselves (and our wealth) away an essential component to a Christian’s life? What does generosity accomplish? For that matter, why is the spread of the gospel an important thing to be generous about? This week we’ll be looking at a case study on GREED in the person of THE RICH YOUNG RULER from Matthew 19:16-26. 

For the rest of 2018, we’ll be working through a worship series on The Seven Deadly Sins.  SUMMARY: My first exposure to the Seven Deadly Sins came in 1996, when I sat mesmerized, watching a film based on the premise, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. I came to find that even more fascinating than the movie itself was the concept of behavioural vices. Humans have a horrific capacity to excessively pursue their natural passions. We don’t just want what is bad – we hyperlove that which is good, distorting it in an ungodly fashion. Great writers throughout history, like Chaucer and Dante, have also understood this perversity, which is why the Seven Deadly Sins became a major theme of their most famous works. In 590AD, Pope Gregory revised the work of several earlier church fathers and, in his Summa Theologica listed “capital sins” that all others flow from, which is what gave us our modern list of 7. Many preachers throughout history have preached their way through the list. This is my first attempt.   This

2 Timothy 3:10-17 You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of thingsv happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (NIV)

Psalm 150 1 Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty heavens. 2 Praise him for his acts of power; praise him for his surpassing greatness. 3 Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, 4 praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, 5 praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals. 6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. (NIV)

1 Corinthians 2:1-5 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. (NIV)

This is the final week in our St. Marcus CORE VALUES worship series. We’re looking at our 4th Core Value: Radical Expectations. And this week we’ll be noting how a lack of courage, a lack of expectation, is actually an offense to God as we study Joshua 1:6-11,16.

In our St. Marcus CORE VALUES worship series, we’re looking at our 4th Core Value: Radical Expectations. Many hard workers and organizations possess high expectations for themselves, but in what ways should a Christian Church’s expectation for itself differ from worldly expectations. This week we’ll take a look at Colossians 3:18-25 as we start the study of our final core value.