Here is the sermon I preached last Sunday entitled Scandalous Grace from Mark 2:13-17.

11012301 by My Recording

We come to our reading of the Bible with our own agenda, bias, questions, preoccupations, concerns and convictions, and, unless we are extremely careful, we impose these on the biblical text.  We may sincerely pray before we read, ‘Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law’ (Ps. 119:18), but still the same non-communication may persist.  For even that introductory prayer, though to be sure it is taken from the Psalter, is suspect because it lays down the kind of message we want to hear.   ‘Please, Lord, I want to see some “wonderful thing” in your word.’   But he may reply, ‘What makes you think I have only “wonderful things” to show you?  As a matter of fact, I have some rather “disturbing things” to show you today.  Are you prepared to receive them?’   ‘Oh no, Lord, please not’, we stammer in reply.  ‘I come to Scripture only to be comforted; I really do not want to be challenged or disturbed.’ –From “The Contemporary Christian” (London and Downers Grove: IVP, 1992), p. 190.

One way that I am helped in this is preaching through entire books of the Bible (rather than select passages), so that I must deal with the text as it is and as it follows what comes before and precedes what comes after.  May God be gracious to me as he disturbs me and confronts my gospel negligence through his living and active Word.

“A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.  Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.  They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.  For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony.  It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”  (G. K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy)

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Here is the sermon I preached at Grace Hill from Mark 2:1-12 entitled, “What You Need Most”

“It is the effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous man [that] prevails.  But what renders prayer “effectual”?  Not its length, nor its vehemence, nor its eloquence, nor its passion, but simply the living sympathy which is established between the soul pleading in the closet, and the Savior interceding in the heavens.”