Seven Mile Road

Every one of us is, to some degree, a creature of habit.

When we find something that works for us, we stick with it.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it doesn’t mean we are no longer open to embracing change for the sake of gospel advance.

A gospel-shaped heart is always at the ready for a fresh work of the Spirit, and is willing to flex to be a part of it.

This Sunday Jesus presses this truth home with us.

An unlikely title?

There is a sense in which all of us are unlikely to be following Jesus, and any who are outside of Christ can seem so distant.

We see in the Luke’s gospel this week the way Jesus moves toward the unlikely and the truth that gives hope for everyone. As followers of Jesus, we are sent to similar unlikely people, and we can follow Jesus in the ways we love & gospel folks however seemingly unlikely.

Luke 5:27-32

Every story Luke gives us is like the richest, heaviest little piece of fudge you ever ate. How could so much (gospel) goodness be jammed into something so small?

This week is no different. Four friends hustle to get their paralyzed fifth before Jesus. How Jesus responds sends shockwaves through the room. Jesus drives through the physical to the spiritual, making a provocative statement about who He was and the redemptive mission He was on.

Christ has authority to forgive sin.
There is no better news.

Luke 5:17-26

In wisdom and love, our Creator infused five senses into the human experience, one of which is called “touch.” We were made to touch and be touched in holy, warm, appropriate, affirming ways. To never touch or be touched is to lose something essential about being human.

So, it’s no surprise that Christ touched people often. Or that when He healed a leprous man – a man would not have been touched by anyone in forever – He touched Him.

This Sunday we’ll think on this beautiful story and it’s import for our life as Seven Mile Road.

Luke 5:12-16

Salvation often looks something like this --> We are busy constructing a life for ourselves, and then Christ shows up in a crane and swings a wrecking ball through the whole enterprise.

He does this in love, because He has something infinitely better in mind for us. It's a glorious imposition.

This Sunday we'll see how Jesus did this with Simon Peter and, hopefully, with each of us.

Reference: Luke 5

Dr. Luke gives us an important scene of Jesus’ ministry that helps to signify much about the forthcoming message & mission in the book. This charged and very memorable scene takes place none other than in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. The critical lesson for all of us is to guard ourselves from making this “hometown gospel mistake.”

Sara, Matt, and Michael talk about Easter weekend, gospel communities, childcare and a few other things to get you updated this month!

As Bostonians, we’ve been taught to establish our own identity.
We proudly declare “I am” and fill in the blank as we see fit.

But in the gospel life things work differently.We don’t establish our own identity.
We receive it as God declares to us “You are.”

This Sunday we hear the Father speaking those glorious words to the Son as Jesus steps into His redemptive mission through the water of John’s baptism.

In Luke 3 we see Jesus’s cousin, aka John the Baptizer, aka John the Forerunner, aka John the Way-Preparer, burst onto the scene. He’s a Prophet, the last of the older covenant. This means he is sharp. Intense. Unlikable.

But he didn’t come to make friends. He came to ready people for Christ.

How? Why? And what does that have to do with all-set Bostonians like you and me?

In this sermon we’ll find out.

Unlike the silly apocryphal gospels with their many Marvel-esque legends about angsty superteen Jesus showing off His divine powers, Luke’s gospel gives us just one powerful but understated look at the person of Christ between the ages of 3 and 30. It’s a coming of age story, and by it we are all instructed in what it looks like to live with God (and the advance of His gospel) as the unrivaled driving-force in our lives.