Watermark Bible Church, Portsmouth, Virginia

November 20, 2022

This Sunday we look into Mark 7 and compare those with faith and those with tradition.

Have you ever felt like you just needed some time alone and then your “alone time” gets interrupted? The disciples experienced that. So, they saw the problem and the obstacle. Jesus would teach them to the people and the opportunity. He does the same thing for us.

Do you want the good news first or the bad news? We’ve all had that question posed to us at different times. As we continue in our “Empowered” study through Mark’s gospel we come to some good and some bad news. Two events that seem almost unrelated, but Mark strings them together on purpose. Let’s explore why that is and how this passage is so timely for us today.

Have you ever had an interruption that seemed like it couldn’t have come at worse time? Maybe you endured some negative consequences due to the delay. What can we learn when things don’t go according to plan, or our plans get interrupted? As we continue our empowered series, Mark chapter 5 will speak to just that.

Maybe the most dreaded time during school was when the teacher said there was going to be a pop quiz. No time to study, no time to prepare, in the moment you had to demonstrate what you remembered from your studies. The time had come for Jesus to give his disciples a pop quiz. Their reactions reveal they hadn’t really learned the lessons. These are hard lessons to learn, so let’s study together.

Everybody loves a good story. Jesus was a master storyteller and all of his stories were embedded with deep truths about life. This week, we get took look at a story that Jesus said is foundational to understanding all the other stories.

Sometimes the language we use in the church sounds a little funny. Maybe it’s seemed strange to you that you’d call people brother and sister who never showed up when it was time to clean the house, or bathe the dog, or take out the trash. Well, this week Jesus will talk about family and we’ll see just how meaningful those terms truly are. So, come celebrate with the family of God this weekend. It really is a special thing.

This week we will continue our Empowered study through the gospel of Mark. We will see that Jesus is the ultimate authority.

Have you ever noticed, that most of the time as people become more and more popular they become more and more isolated. Not so with Jesus. He was always ready to teach, always ready to heal, always ready for the needy, for the outcast, for his critics. I hope you’ll fall a little more in love with the Savior as you see that he’s always ready for you.