We really value our fellowship and friendship with Maddiston Community Church. It’s a church which I have spoken at many times, over many years, where we’ve done Solas evangelism-training evenings – and which contains quite a few Solas supporters. So it was a real joy to go back there on Sunday to preach at their morning service where they are working their way through the gospel of Mark. Mark’s gospel brings us face to face with Jesus – and this week in chapter 9 to the question of ‘true greatness’ – in fact what is life really all about! It’s a question we get asked a lot in Solas, because our speakers are often working outside the church, and in our culture today the search for the purpose of life is very much a live question.
In the sermon (which you can watch in full below) I attempted to do five things:
1) Show that the disciples had a distorted view of what greatness is, which largely matches our culture today
2) Explain how Jesus confronted them and us, with a radical, revolutionary idea that sacrificial service for others is in fact the nature of true greatness
3) Demonstrate that only Jesus has ever fully lived up to his lofty ethical teaching
4) Show how Christ shares his righteousness with us, by grace so when we turn to him we are forgiven
5) Show how Christ changes us so that we can live increasingly great lives (as Christ defines greatness)
You can judge how well (or otherwise!) I succeded in that by watching the sermon here:
