At the peak of His fame, Jesus returns to His hometown. But rather than receive Him gladly, the people reject Jesus because they’re stuck in their own version of who they think He is. Today we face the same struggle when the real Jesus comes crashing into our ideas about Jesus. Will we, like the people of Nazareth, reject the real Jesus or will we by faith come to Jesus to experience His power and healing grace?

As Jesus has traveled along the sea, he has performed incredible feats. He has commanded the wind and the waves, the demons and the spiritual powers, but as he arrives at the shore he will face his biggest test of power yet: disease and death. Will Jesus power be enough? Can he defeat sickness and death?

Jesus encounters an army/legion of demons in a man and sets him free giving his humanity back. The demonic is real and evil oppression happens around us, how should we respond? Ignore and push it to the margins of society, or run to Jesus who can set us free?

Life is filled with storms — financial, physical, relational, vocational, etc. While we often respond to the storms of life with fear, Mark shows us how Jesus calms a mighty storm and gives us a new way to respond.

As the crowds continue growing, Jesus tells a story about a farmer scattering seed on different kinds of soil. The seed is God’s Word, and the soils represent the hearts of different people and how they receive it. How is the soil of your heart? How are you responding to God’s Word?

Different people had different reasons for being around Jesus. The crowds wanted what they could get from Jesus, the critics wanted to stop Jesus, and out of these groups, Jesus calls a diverse group of disciples to be with Him and join Him on mission. Jesus is still at work today, calling a diverse group of people and bringing us into God’s family called the church, where we are increasingly changed by Jesus in all of life. Jesus makes us family.

In Mark the greatest source of opposition to Jesus is the religious leaders. While it's easy to judge them, we’re all prone to the religious mindset--believing we can earn the good life through our moral performance. True freedom is found as we continually distinguish between the gospel of Jesus Christ and the pull of religion.

Now that Jesus has gone public with His ministry, He begins calling followers. In this sermon, we see that a disciple of Jesus is someone who increasingly orients all of life around Jesus, because Jesus changes everything.

Jesus is the most significant person in the history of the world. While there’s no shortage of ideas about who Jesus is, Mark relies on eyewitness testimony from one of Jesus’ closest followers and friends to tell us who Jesus really is, what Jesus really said, what Jesus really did, and what this means for us today. In Mark’s introduction, we learn that the story of Jesus is good news, not good advice.