This week sees us progressing through a series of events leading up to the Transfiguration with a few events following. There is a real progression in what the Lord is teaching the Twelve also, which is interesting to watch unfold and has much application to our own development as disciples. There is a lot of repetition in the events that we covered this week. Several commentators notice a cycle in Mark which I think is relevant here:<\/p>\n
1. First cycle:<\/p>\n
2. Second cycle:<\/p>\n
Why are there two feedings of crowds? The Lord is teaching the disciples the same lesson: faith and trust in him.<\/p>\n
The first message picked up on the theme from Wednesday night with some alteration, but still generally the same basic theme. The title was ‘Messiah Under Attack<\/span>‘ covering these passages: Mk 6.53-8.13; Mt 14.34-16.4, with a subtitle this time: ‘training the twelve in the midst of crisis<\/span>‘. The proposition: The essential spiritual quality to sustain ministry under pressure is absolute faith and dependence on God. In this message we moved from the first conflict with the Pharisees (and scribes from Jerusalem) and the second conflict with the Pharisees (and Sadducees from Jerusalem – first mention of Sadducee opposition, which means the chief priests are getting involved and are closing ranks with the Pharisees, normally their opponents). Most of these events occur outside of Galilee, partly in response to the interest of Herod and partly in response to the growing Pharisaic opposition. The Lord isn’t afraid, but he is in control of events and will be heading for Jerusalem in short order. His interest at this point is developing the faith of his disciples in the midst of increasing opposition.<\/p>\n The second message was entitled ‘Slow to Understand<\/span>‘ from these passages: Mk 8.14-9.13; Mt 16.5-17.13; Lk 9.18-36. As the faith of the disciples is growing, wavering, taking shape, I preached on the theme of spiritual growth. The proposition was: The process of spiritual growth is often slow and painstaking, but if you keep looking to Christ, the process leads to full revelation. Picking up on the cycle of events noted above, we moved from the second conflict with the Pharisees to the confession of faith and subsequent rebuke of Peter for his rash argument about the Lord’s new teaching of crucifixion, to the Transfiguration. The message covered these points:<\/p>\n I. The miracle of spiritual growth occurs in stages II. The maturity of spiritual growth is not always entire III. The heights of spiritual growth are not easily discerned The point of this message is to encourage believers who struggle with their own spiritual failures. At times we seem to have insight and maturity, accompanied with all too apparent weakness and immaturity. If we keep looking to Christ, we will see clearly in the end.<\/p>\n The third message dealt with “The King of kings and Taxes<\/span>” as we trace the Lord’s steps down Mt. Hermon from the Transfiguration to Capernaum and the payment of the voluntary temple-tax. Our passages were: Mk 9.2-32; Mt 17.1-27; Lk 9.28-45, although we primarily stayed in Mt 17. In these passages, we proceed from the glorious to the mundane. (What could be less glorious and more mundane than paying taxes?) The proposition then: Without divine condescension, there could be no redemption. The subject was the nature of Christ: at once the glorious divine God-man and the obedient, devout Israelite, paying his temple taxes. Our object in the message was to highlight once again the glory of God becoming man for our sake.<\/p>\n All in all, we had a great day in the Lord this Sunday.<\/p>\n Regards, This week sees us progressing through a series of events leading up to the Transfiguration with a few events following. There is a real progression in what the Lord is teaching the Twelve also, which is interesting to watch unfold and has much application to our own development as disciples. There is a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-5w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
(In this point, I noted that the two stage healing of the blind man was a parable for spiritual growth – the disciples had been blind spiritually, but were now seeing truth “as trees walking”, and would see clearly if they looked to the Lord in faith and obedience.)<\/p>\n
(In this point, Peter’s Great Confession and then the Lord’s rebuke were highlighted.)<\/p>\n
(In this point, the disciples are confused after having seen the glory of Christ at the Transfiguration, they don’t quite get it all and are puzzling over the meaning of the Lord’s statement about resurrection.)<\/p>\n
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"