Open your Bibles to Mark chapter 9. The title of my sermon this morning is Our Lord’s Most Aggressive Demand For Holiness. Mark chapter 9 verse 43. Before we read let’s pray once more.
Well, open up your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 4. It seems like every time I preach, either you’re getting farther away from me or I’m getting farther away from you. I don’t know which it is. Let’s look at chapter 4 verse 3, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality.”
Romans chapter 1 verse 16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
This same Jesus who was crucified – He has risen from the dead. And it is God’s public declaration that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God and that His death on that tree satisfied justice once and for all. And this Jesus has ascended up and sat down at the right hand of God. And He is King of kings and He is Lord of lords. All the empires of this world come and go like the wind.…
I want you to turn there. Luke 13. It’s the words contained in the portion of Scripture that I want to look at, where Jesus says, “Strive to enter in.” That’s the name of my message. Strive.
Once again, it is a great privilege for me to be here with you. And just to spend time and fellowship today with so many of you and hearing your stories about how God has saved you and changed you, it is remarkable. What a Savior. What a Savior.
Welcome to our series Looking Unto Jesus. I want to remind you that that title, it didn’t originate with me, but it comes from Isaac Ambrose’s work on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I strongly recommend the work. He spent a great portion of his life simply studying and meditating upon the person and work of Christ, and you will greatly benefit from what he has written.
“Dear Pastor Tim, I wanted to ask about the place of giving, saving, and investing for the Christian. The Bible obviously has a lot to say about giving, but I’m not so sure what the place of saving or investing is for the Christian. Is there any time it would be appropriate to save a large sum of money, especially given Matthew 6:19?”
Ephesians 2:1-3. We are still here. We were here last week. We’ll be here today. Likely, we’ll be here next week as well. Ephesians 2:1-3. I’ll just tell you right upfront, the title of my message is: “How Dead is Dead? The Five-Fold Fallenness of Man.”
We do have a great God, don’t we? I did not come this year to preach. I came to soak up. And I appreciate everything I’ve heard. I was a little bit confused about Brother Charles’ message last night. I was wondering why we all weren’t on our faces, including me, when he preached on the majesty of our God.
Ephesians 4:17, “Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you, Christians, must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned…
Be turning with me this afternoon to the book of Hebrews 11. While you’re turning there, I want to read to you from Colossians 2:6, where the Bible says, “As you therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.”