MAC KIRK

“Your Faith Has Made You Whole”   Mark 10:46-52; Hebrews 7:23-28       How do people become Christians?   I like the word mystery for that explanation.   I know we have catechisms, doctrines, theologies, and confessions of faith which our church subscribes to.   And they can be helpful.   But is there a danger in too much detail?   I think there may be.   The bigger question is as we discussed last week is that God is Sovereign ( our King and Creator & Provider) in all His ways and He does things we cannot explain.   Human words are inadequate sometimes.   It may be an experience or how someone treats you that is important.   It may be you are at the end of your rope so to speak….       Today’s Gospel lesson about Bartimaeus is such a story for us.   First, he realized he a need.   Now that is where true religion begins or a path to wholeness if you will.   He was blind.   Imagine that!   Some of us never get to that point where we realize we have such a need for Go

God’s Sovereignty in our lives ----what is its practical meaning?      Job as we have seen in chapter 38 finds out from God directly about God’s wisdom and Job’s own creation.   “    Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”   God is the Creator and He formed us for His good pleasure and out of His own will He created everything from nothing.   God’s Sovereignty is seen in His creating power.   If He created the world from nothing then does He leave it without any direction or purpose?       Some have said so.   They see in the world a God who may have had a hand in its creation but has left it to its own designs.   This is called Deism.   In other words , God is only the First Great Cause but has no involvement after that.   Job in 9: 6 says of God , “ which commandeth the sun….and sealeth up the stars”        What does it mean to be Sovereign?   The root means” above or superior to all others ; chief, greatest; supreme in power, rank or authorit

Mark 10: 17-31      CS Lewis was won to Christianity by several things.   One was he had a good teacher in his youth who taught him to see the true from the false , a Scotsman named Kirkpatrick.    Another way was that he was” surprised by joy” ( an actual title on one his books later on), experiences of music, a landscape or a forgotten memory.   He came across the writings of a Scottish minister , George Mc Donald who led him to discover joy in imaginary worlds.   Then he re-encountered Christ .            The rich young ruler was attracted to Jesus.   Perhaps he had seen how he treated children earlier in Mark 10.   Jesus was a winsome figure to him.   His own life was full of everything he wanted but he lacked the one thing he needed. It was an empty life although he had enough of this world’s goods. Here is the question, “ are we winsome?”   Do people see something different about our lives and our attitudes?   The rich young ruler came running to Jesus .   He knew

Job 1:1; 2:1-10       A popular book called, When Bad Things Happen to Good People written by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner , a national bestseller came out a few years back .   I thought how nice that a learned man would take some lessons from the Scriptures and then help us with our faith.   But I was confused when I read passages like this: “ Innocent people do suffer misfortunes in this life. Things happen to them far worse than they deserve----they lose their jobs, they get sick, their children suffer or make them suffer.   But when it happens, it does not represent God punishing them for something they did wrong.   The misfortunes do not come from God at all.”     Rabbi Kushner bases a lot of his conclusions from the Book of Job.   Now when we read the Bible and the Book of Job in particular, we may ask, if God is not in charge as the good Rabbi says, then who is?   If God created the world and then just left men and women alone without any direction or planning on His part,