Arguing with Jesus

Arguing with Jesus – June 16, 2024

Mark 2:23-27;3-6

The Bible gives us instructions for a good life under the reign and love of God, BUT it has a lot of rules. And no one likes rules. For example, there’s something very wrong with my soul here but if I was about to grab an apple to eat, and my mom said, “Yeah! Good! You have to eat apples everyday”, I will not eat that apple anymore. I hate rules.

But what if God gave us rules because he knew what he was doing? Let’s say God isn’t just powerful and divine and stuff, what if he was also smart? Smarter than any business person. Smarter than any scientist or influencer. Smarter than Andrew Huberman and Elon Musk and whoever else you look up to. Would we dismiss his rules and his words as fast as we do, IF we assumed God was smart?

What if, instead of being a list of restrictions meant to oppress us, Jesus’ way of life and God’s rules for living with Him and with others was made for us to thrive in the best life possible?

What if? Let’s explore that today.

How can God’s rules lead us to abundant life? The answer that we find today is when we honour the INTENT of God’s rules because:

1. Rules use wrongly are weapons
2. Rules used rightly are gifts

Arguing with Jesus – June 9, 2024

Mark 7:24-30

Most Christians know about God’s devotion to us. We believe this. If we’re honest though, sometimes it doesn’t feel like he loves us. Sometimes when we ask God for help, he doesn’t help us in the ways we might expect and its frustrating.

It feels like God doesn’t care and he is doing nothing. So, my big question today is: How can we get help from God? That’s what our Bible story is about today.

Our passage today gives us two keys for finding help from God:

  1. Seek his presence boldly
  2. Work with what He gives you.

Arguing with Jesus – June 2, 2024

Mark 6:30-37

Problems in our work, and problems in our relationships. Problems are everywhere. And problems matter/ Even ordinary problems matter to God, because for a Christian every problem is connected to the stuff of eternity. Everything we do is meant to be part of God’s work, and it’s all meant to be holy. And when we have that mindset, we can experience the presence of God and the power of God even when we’re doing ordinary things.

So my big question today is: how should we respond to problems?

My big idea today is:

1. We should start with faith
2. We should continue with faithfulness.

Arguing with Jesus – May 26, 2024

Mark 12:18-27

Everyone has a different story when it comes to their journey toward faith or away from faith. We all know people who are like James Wallace who come from a skeptical background. So, it naturally creates some tension in our conversations because our skeptic friends don’t want to believe.

Yet, as Christians we really want to help our friends find Jesus. So, my big question today is: How do we talk to skeptics?

Fortunately, the Bible is no stranger to skeptics. Our Bible story is about some skeptics who have a conversation with Jesus, and when we study this conversation, we see a good way to talk to a skeptic.

My big question today is: How can we answer skeptics? Our story teaches us two things we need to expect in those conversations:

  1. Expect apparent contradictions
  2. Expect brilliant resolutions

Arguing with Jesus – May 19, 2024

Mark 12:13-17

I want to ask: what is the best way to manage all of our responsibilities? I’ve found an idea in the Bible, and it works really well for me. And the Bible’s answer helps me to stay calm and optimistic even when life is really busy. My answer is: we need to focus on giving everyone what we owe them. More specifically we need to give people what we owe them, and we need to give God what we owe him. And we’ll see this answer in our Bible story today.

Today we’re starting a new sermon series called Arguing with Jesus. And over the next few weeks we’ll be following some of the toughest conversations that people had with Jesus in the Bible. And we’ll see brilliant answers from Jesus that still mean a lot today.