August Gate Church

This week's text is one of the most famous of Jesus' parables. Jesus himself says that this parable is the key to unlocking all of the other parables he tells. It's about hearing and responding in our every day life.

Jesus lived in a culture where family was everything in the same way that it is for many in our culture today. He challenges this notion and leads us to see that God's will is to be above all things.

This week's text begs the question, who is Jesus? From John Duncan's trilemma (made famous by C.S. Lewis) we can work through this text; is Jesus a liar, a lunatic or is he Lord?

In this week's text we see to ancient doctrines; Christus Victor, Christ the Victor, and Christus Exemplar, Christ the example. Jesus won the victory over Satan, sin and death and he also provided us the example how to live this life.

In this week's text we see the truth that adding to God's goal of knowing him and making him known as well as disregarding it all together are both enemies of his Gospel.

In this week's text we find two stories with very similar outcomes. Jesus is questioned about spiritual disciplines and the answer is very clear; our aim in spiritual disciplines is knowing the Lord more, not the discipline.

In this week's text we see Jesus calling Levi (Matthew) to be a disciple. This short story has many profound implications on our lives. Pastor Todd walks us through as we see how Jesus is the perfect missionary who takes the worst people and makes the best disciples.

In this week's text we see Jesus doing the things that only he can do, forgiving sin and healing people. So to understand what this text means for our lives we have to look at the supporting cast of the friends and the Pharisees. Are we living out an active faith to see people come to Jesus or do we criticize everything and never get anything done?

The truth from this week's text rings loud and clear; Jesus has authority over everything. He is our holy King who has come to rule and reign. We see that He has authority in teaching the Word, authority over demons, and authority over sickness.

This week we see simply, Jesus calls. He called His first disciples to obedience in a process, with a purpose and all with authority. The question is, how will we respond to Jesus' call?

In this week's text we see that Jesus' primary work was to proclaim the Gospel. Before he performed miracles or rebuked the days religious leaders, he called everyone to repent and believe God's Gospel. This is our call today; repent and believe God's Gospel then proclaim the same thing to the world around us.

Fulfilling the promises of God from the prophet Isaiah, King Jesus came to be His people's Representative. The Gospel is God's grace is to retell our story with a different ending.

This week we begin a year-long journey in the Gospel of Mark. This week's text shows us that the proper response to Christ is to repent of our sins and to be baptized. We see this preached by John the Baptist and that call is relevant to us today.

This week we wrap up our Identities series with our final identity, missionaries. This is the purposeful culmination of all we do. We are to live sent lives as we go to share the Gospel with the world around us.

With this week's identity, learners, we can often be confused, thinking that it is all about what we feel instead of what we know. Pastor Noah shows us in scripture that Gospel change begins in our heads with what we believe and how we live with that knowledge as we learn how God desires for us to live.

This week we take a look at our identity as a steward. We must realize that God has created and is owner of all things and we are here to manage all of the resources that he has provided us for His glory.

This week Pastor Josh Jones preached about what it means to be a servant in our 11am service. We can see four things from this week's text; Our natural state is to serve ourselves but the Gospel leads us to serve with Jesus as our example and His exaltation is the glory of our service.

This week Pastor Todd preached in the the 9am service about what it means for us to be servants. As we look at the text we can see that our natural state is to serve ourselves but Christ is our example the glory of our service is His exaltation.

This week we take a look at how we are all parts of the body of Christ. When we recognize him as our head, it leads to health and harmony as we take the Gospel to the world around us.

This week we take a look at our second identity, worshippers. In it's most general definition, worship is the act of ascribing ultimate worth to something that requires our entire being. So as Pastor Noah takes us through the text we are able to answer the questions; why should we worship God? How do we worship God? And, where do we begin?