St Marcus Mke Sermons

This week we'll be studying Luke 21:1-4 under the worship theme of "Generosity is for Everybody." The concept of generosity is not about amounts, but about the heart. Consequently, every human is equally capable of and responsible for generosity. And every soul that has been graciously saved by Jesus has special reason to express generosity. We'll see one of my favorite examples of that this week when we look at the poor widow who offers to God her last two copper coins.

For the next 5 weeks we'll be hitting the pause button on our Gospel of John series so that we can do something for the first time in my experience at St. Marcus - we're worshipping under the same themes & lessons across all of our services. The series is called "ALL IN" and is a study of how Christ sacrificed EVERYTHING for us, and how the appropriate response is that every aspect of our lives would fully belong to him as well. This week we'll be studying Exodus 16:10-18 under the worship theme of "Leaving a Legacy." There are some amazing concepts embedded in this account of God's miraculous provision to the Israelites. We're going to narrow down how the Israelites' story in the wilderness correlates to our story today. And we're going to see how God's rules for collecting that provision correlate to life principles for the management of blessings today. Tremendous wisdom in here about how God takes care of us and we take care of one another. 

For the next 5 weeks we'll be hitting the pause button on our Gospel of John series so that we can do something for the first time in my experience at St. Marcus - we're worshipping under the same themes & lessons across all of our services. The series is called "ALL IN" and is a study of how Christ sacrificed EVERYTHING for us, and how the appropriate response is that every aspect of our lives would fully belong to him as well. This week we'll be studying 2 Corinthians 9:6-11 under the theme of "Confident Generosity." This portion of 2 Corinthians is arguably the most extensive teaching in all the Bible on generosity and any Christian who presumes to be generous must do some wrestling with. 

In the opening weeks of our series, Jesus is clearly making the case of his Messiahship. This week something happens that is somewhat shocking and disappointing, but is nonetheless quite revealing - Jesus miraculously heals a man who doesn't appreciate him, doesn't worship him, and actually turns him in to the authorities. And the Apostle John, in his own way, is teaching us this is the basic way humanity reacts to the GRACE of Jesus Christ. The gospel is never what the flesh expects, often what the flesh isn't asking for, and we'll figure out what that means as we study "The Miracle at the Pool by an Unrecognized God" from John 5:1-30.   

In the opening weeks of our series, Jesus is clearly making the case of his Messiahship. He's made his case to his early disciples and the Jewish Leadership, and this week he's making his case to the Samaritans. Specifically, Jesus here encounters a woman who has been ostracized from her community due to her lifestyle choices. But Jesus refuses to avoid her. He travels directly to her and states that his gospel is for her as well. This week we seek a perfect template for evangelism as we study John 4:1-24. 

In the opening weeks of our series, Jesus is clearly making the case of his Messiahship. Last week he made his case to and through John the Baptist and his early disciples/followers. This week, Jesus is making his case to Jewish leadership. Specifically, he has an encounter with a religious leader named Nicodemus, who he tells to be “born again.” This interaction offers us fascinating insights on the difference between religious moralism and the gospel life. This week we’ll look at “Nicodemus and Being Born Again” from John 3:1-15.

A special Christmas Eve message from Pastor Hein. 

From Christmas till Easter, each year, we’ve been working our way through a Gospel. 2 years ago we did Mark. Last year we did Matthew. This year we’ll be taking a look at The Gospel of John. The Apostle John was in the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples. He was an eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry and resurrection and his Gospel is the last recorded of the four. The purpose of his book is to see the clear evidence that Jesus is the Son of God, God himself, and experience the abundant life that comes as a result.   For the first 5 weeks of this series, we’ll be looking at Jesus making his case of his Messiahship, to a variety of different groups. This week Jesus is making his case of Messiahship to his early followers. We’ll open John’s Gospel with a brief study of John the Baptist (different guy from the author). John the Baptist gets the insane distinction of being the greatest human ever born (discounting Jesus himself). What made him so special? Well, of course it was God’s grace. But comparatively, John the Bap

We are in our last week in Genesis. And we’re closing with one of my favorite stories of the Bible. It was not until I was an adult, and I comprehended God’s activity in the story of Joseph & his family, that I started to understand the power of God’s sovereignty in my life. This week’s lesson teaches us not merely THAT we should forgive others or THAT we should be content in all of life’s circumstances, but it explains WHY it’s so reasonable. This week we’ll be studying the infinitely deep and beautiful lesson of “Joseph Forgiving His Brothers” from Genesis 50:15-21.

For 2 weeks, we watched Jacob move from being a casual believer, to experience an encounter with God’s grace at rock bottom, to struggling with life, wrestling with God, and ultimately holding on to God until he experiences God’s blessing. But how would all of this affect Jacob’s family? The good and the bad travels with Jacob. And this week we move a bit from contemplating our faith in the dark, individual moments, to contemplating how it operates in the communal, relational moments. We’ll be studying “Joseph’s Dreams” from Genesis 37:2-11, 23-36.

Last week we saw Jacob experiencing his first encounter with God. We learned that it’s one thing to know about God, but another to know God. This week, 20 years later, we see that Jacob has only come to truly trust God after struggling him. And we learn that an essential part of developing a relationship with God can only come in wrestling with him. This week we’ll be studying “Jacob Wrestles With God” from Genesis 32:22-32.

Jacob is the perfect illustration of what happens when you don’t get loved the right way and you start self-medicating. You’re become both a victim and a criminal – i.e. you hurt from problems you didn’t create, but then you take matters into your own hands and try to solve things, only to end up making the situation worse. The real solution is that God’s grace drives him into our brokenness. That experience of grace is what leads to heart transformation. This week, we’ll see what that looked like in the life of Jacob, and what it can mean in ours as well as we study “Jacob’s Ladder” in Genesis 28:10-22.

The only way to truly measure love is to see what you’re willing to endure in order to bless someone. In other words, true love can only be measured by sacrifice. The Bible says this is how we know the extent to which God loves us (1 John 3:16). There is likely not a better image in the Old Testament that depicts the gospel than the story of “Abraham Offers Isaac to God,” from Genesis 22:1-18, which we’ll study this week. We learn here something about the necessity of sacrifice for meaning in life, for reciprocating God’s love, and, most importantly, God’s sacrifice for our salvation.

One of the most divisive stories in the Bible is that of “Sodom and Gomorrah Destroyed.” Often, the reason for the controversy stems from each of us looking at the account through our own narrow lens. In reality, the account is one of undeserved, gracious, miraculous deliverance. This week we’ll see what we can learn about the “Sin of Sodom”, the erosion of godliness, and the integrity of our Christian witness as we study Genesis 19:1-17.

One of the principle teachings of the Reformation was the Doctrine of Vocation – the idea that there aren’t spiritual classes, but rather, that God has called EVERY believer to meaningful work. Much seems mysterious about this “calling” thing, so we’ll clear up some confusion about God’s call, we’ll wrestle with the implications of what it actually means, and we’ll see the grace that exists in the Christian call. We’ll do this as we worship under the theme “The Call of Abram” and study Gen. 12:1-9.

This week, we’re hitting the pause button on our current worship series to hold an October Missions Festival. We will be praying for home missions, world missions, and the personal mission fields in each of our lives. We will be studying Colossians 3:1-2, 16 and applying what it means to let the message of Christ dwell deeply within us and within our congregation

In our 4th week of the series, we yet again hit another major turning point in human history – the story of Noah and the Flood. We’ll learn that the “Floods” of a fallen world are primarily caused by human selfishness. The only way to find shelter in the midst of the inevitable storms is still in the Ark. And the way to be confident that God has turned away his anger from humanity is by focusing on a sweet-smelling sacrifice from his Son. We’ll be studying a whole bunch of verses from Gen 6-9.

We’re in our 3rd week of the series, and this week we’ll be dissecting the story of Cain and Abel. Envy and bitterness result in a highly religious guy, a guy who knows God, killing his own brother, with painful consequences. Already in a fallen world, we discover how sin, God’s grace, and hope for salvation are present in every human story. We’ll be studying Genesis 4:1-16.

Outside of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the most classic, most famous story of the Bible is likely the Fall of Mankind. It is the quintessential story of INFINITE DEPTH. The exact same dynamics that happened with Adam and Eve in the Garden at the Tree has happened to humans billions of times since. And the solution is the same. What are those dynamics? We’ll dig into it as we examine Adam and Eve’s Fall from Genesis 3:1-9.

We all have a lot of stories that we perhaps studied as kids in Sunday School, but we’ve never really, fully reexamined them as adults. These stories do have superficial morals, which we probably learned when we were young, but we may not have understood how the stories fit in to the greater story of Jesus and salvation, nor how our daily struggles resonate with these ancient characters. They are INFINITELY deep. So, we revisit them, not because the stories are new, but because we are continuously being made new.  This week we’ll examine the Creation Account from Genesis 1:1-25.