Let's pray. Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your holy spirit, that as the scriptures are read and your word proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen. The Old Testament reading is from Amos 7715. Thus he showed me, and behold, the Lord was standing by a vertical wall with a plumb line in his hand.
The Lord said to me, what do you see, Amos? And I said, a plumb line. Then the Lord said, behold, I am about to put a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel. I will spare them no longer. The high places of Isaac will be desolated and the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste.
Then I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is unable to endure all his words. For thus Amos says, Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will certainly go from its land into exile. Then Amaziah said to Amos, go, you seer, flee away to the land of Judah, and there eat bread, and there do your prophesying, but no longer prophesy at Bethel, for it is a sanctuary of the king and a royal residence.
Then Amos replied to Amaziah, I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet, for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, go, prophesy to my people Israel. The New Testament reading Ephesians 1314 blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before him in love. He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, to himself according to the kind intention of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished on us in all wisdom and insight, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his kind intention, which he purposed in him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times.
That is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens, and things on the earth. In him also we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to his purpose, who works all things after the counsel of his will to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of his glory in him. You also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of his glory. Let's stand for the gospel reading, mark 16 1429. And King Herod heard of it, for his name had become well known.
And people were saying, John the Baptist has risen from the dead, and that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him. But others were saying, he is Elijah. And others were saying, he is a prophet like one of the prophets of old. But when Herod heard of it, he kept saying, john, whom I beheaded has risen. For Herod himself had sent and had John arrested and bound in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, because he had married her.
For John had been saying to Herod, it is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife. Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death and could not do so. For Herod was afraid of John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man and he kept him safe. And when he heard him, he was very perplexed, but he used to enjoy listening to him. A strategic day came when Herod, on his birthday, gave a banquet for his lords and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee.
And when the daughter of Herodias herself came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests. And the king said to the girl, ask me whatever you want and I will give it to you. And he swore to her, whatever you ask of me, I will give it to you up to half of my kingdom. And she went out and said to her mother, what shall I ask for? And she said, the head of John the Baptist.
Immediately she came in a hurry to the king and asked, saying, I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And although the king was very sorry, yet because of his oaths and because of his dinner gift, he was unwilling to refuse her. Immediately the king sent an executioner and commanded him to bring back his head. And he went and had him beheaded in the prison and brought his head on a platter and gave it to the girl, and the girl gave it to her mother. When his disciples heard about this, they came and took away his body and laid it in a tomb.
The word of God for the people of God.
You can be seated.
Peace be with you.
Let us pray. Father, may your will be done. Jesus, may your word be proclaimed. And, holy spirit, may your work be accomplished. In us.
We pray. Amen. Well, every week I come to the gospel, we've been going through the gospel with Mark, and every week I come to it, I come with fresh eyes, meaning if I preach the passage before, I'll pretend I've never preached it. And I like to come with fresh eyes because I don't believe that God's word can be exhausted, meaning I can read the same thing over and over again, and I can find a new thing that God wants me to know about himself and how I can love others better. And so at the beginning of this week, I thought I discovered a treasured trove of significance and meaning that was greatly going to impact our lives this Sunday.
And if you know me, or as you get to know me, you're going to know that I can't keep a secret. So I'm sitting down at the dinner table and I'm telling Melissa, like, oh, wow, this is a really nice passage we got here. She goes, oh, yeah. And I said, yep, but I'm not going to tell you. You're just going to have to listen to the sermon.
And then I told her. And so I couldn't keep my mouth shut. And because this passage is really unique, it's very interesting when you look at it, because here we're given a flashback to how John the Baptist dies. And I've looked at this many times, and it's very interesting because the story of John the Baptist is pregnant with a lot of stories pointing back to, like the book of Esther, pointing back to the story of Elijah, where Jezebel, Queen Jezebel, is going and pursuing his life. It's also pointing forward to Jesus own death and how John the Baptist and Jesus death are kind of like twin narratives.
But then it also looks down the passage is pregnant with just right there what's currently going on as Mark is penning this gospel. And that's what I want to focus on today. I wanted to steer so much because it just overly excited me that we could be talking about an entire two Old Testament stories and how this passage relates to those and all the deep meaning significance that comes out of that. But then the Lord brought me to a different way about halfway through the week, he says, no, I want you to focus on what Mark is doing with this sandwich. This passage of John the Baptist dying comes in between these two brief episodes of Jesus sending out his disciples and then receiving them back from the field.
And right wedged in the middle, the meat of the sandwich is about the death of John the Baptist. And that's what I want to focus on today. But before we do that, I need to share with you a story, a story of how Melissa and I came to be married together. All right, there's a point in the story. When I asked Melissa's parents for our hand in marriage, I began to strategically plan what I believe is the most romantic proposal in all the world.
Of course I believe that. Right? And it's something I'll never forget, but not for the reasons that you might think. Because on this day, I planned this whole entire day. Melissa's friend Julie was going to take her on a girls day out, and I said, I don't know what girls do together on a day they spend together.
Go and do that. But make sure that you bring Melissa to the trailhead of Camelback Mountain. We were in Phoenix, Arizona, because that's where we went on our first date. We went on a hike on Camelback Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona. And I said, that's where she's going to meet my best friend, Eddie, and his wife, Lauren, who she hasn't met yet.
And they're going to greet her. They're going to send her up the trail and high hills. And there I am. I'm going to be playing these beautiful songs, and I'm going to receive her, and I'm going to ask her to marry me. And so I had all this planned out, and everything was going according to plan.
Eddie and Lauren flew in. I picked them up from the airport. We all start getting into the car and making our way to Camelback Mountain. We're at a stop sign, stop light, and we're at a stoplight. And as we're getting ready to turn left, there is this bus that's turning, and there's this little convertible Seabree in front of us that just pulls out and gets smashed underneath the bus.
And Lauren's a nurse, so all of a sudden, we had to pause. And I'm on a time schedule here. We had to pause because this lady almost got decapitated. And so Lauren has to get out. She's tending to the woman.
I'm over here trying to be a good Christian who's concerned for the life of this woman, but also at the same time, thinking, well, I need to get on with my life and get a wife. And so I'm kind of, like, in limbo here. I'm struggling a little bit. And then next day, like, 30 minutes goes by, the police show up, ambulance shows up. I'm like, okay, we got to get on the road.
And so we're released. We go, we start making our way down, and then, wouldn't you know it that if you've never been to Phoenix, Camelback Mountain is like a destination. Everybody goes, it's the one mountain in Phoenix that looks like a camelback, and everybody likes to go hike it. And on this particular day, everybody wanted to hike it. And so I have to drop Eddie and Lauren off at the trailhead so that I know they are at least there.
And then I park what seems to be, like, in the next state down the other way. And so I'm parking. And I don't know if you guys know this, but Phoenix is really hot, and I'm an alaskan, so that I'm sweating is what my whole point is. So I'm walking 2 miles, what seems like 2 miles up to this trailhead to get this plan in action. At the same time, Julie texts me and says, hey, we're heading to the trailhead.
I'm like, okay, that's great. I should make it in time. But I'm going to be all sweaty and probably smell, and this isn't going to be as romantic as I'm thinking it is. But as I'm walking up, right, Phoenix, Arizona, desert sun. All of a sudden, randomly, a monsoon just comes in.
I'm walking to the trailhead, and it is monsooning. And then I also get a text message from julie saying, hey, we're here. But she was at the wrong trailhead. And so it's raining. I couldn't find a place to park anywhere near.
And we had this accident that happened. And all of us, I think, are guilty of having this theology about how God likes to shut doors all the time. At this point in my mind, as I'm walking, huffing and puffing and kind of shaking my fist like, dern, you, monsoon. When I've never seen a monsoon in Phoenix. And then the day I'm proposing to my wife is the day you're gonna show up.
But I'm asking God. I said, God, like, I wanna give up. Like, I mean, are you showing me that maybe I shouldn't marry this woman? Cause that's how oftentimes we interpret that's why our theology is, this door's closing. This.
It seems like nothing's working right and everything's a battle and everything's a struggle. But then, for whatever reason, in my spirit, I had boldness to kind of come back at God and said, look, I've been through a lot of my life. I've been married once. I failed. I know what it's like.
I know what struggles are. I know all the things. And I believe that Melissa is a good, godly woman and it is right and good for me to marry her. And I want to marry her. So you can bring the monsoon, you can bring the accidents, you can stop me, but I'm going to marry her.
And at that moment, the rain stopped and I walked enough to where I was able to dry off. I saw Eddie and Lauren at the trailhead. I said, she should be here in a couple minutes. I'm going to go up the path and walked them through everything. And then that's what happened is Melissa got there, she was wearing high heels, and she walks up the trail and I get down on one knee and I had this poem.
I read her the poem and then I'll, you know, won't spoil the ending, but we got married. And it's been that ever since. A good marriage with trials and struggles and everything. But what the Lord was teaching me that day was not that he needed to know if I was committed and willing to do whatever it takes to be faithful in my marriage. He wanted to demonstrate to me that, hey, what are you going to do?
Are you going to be easily deterred before I give you my daughter? Are you going to be easily detoured when it rains really hard, when you have to park far away, when you have to get up early to tend to her? What are you going to do for my daughter? Are you going to remain faithful, steadfast? Are you going to endure?
And I showed him, I'm going to be faithful. I'm not going to accept that this good and right thing that I can do, I'm going to do. And the reason why I'm sharing that story is because God didn't need to know. But I need to know, stepping into this marriage, that it's going to require a lot of sacrifice. There might be seasons of suffering, there might be struggles, but we've got to endure, we've got to persevere, we've got to push through that.
We just don't accept that. Maybe the Lord's closing doors, but maybe he's testing us. The genuineness of our faith. Are you willing to do whatever it takes to love your wife? And I was, and I still am.
And the reason why I'm sharing this is because this is why I believe Mark puts the death of John the Baptist right in the meat of this sandwich to say, here are the disciples, the ones following after Jesus being sent out to proclaim and make Jesus famous and to heal people and to cast out demons and to call people to repent. And then right in the middle of that, we get this very sobering story of a prophet of God losing his head. And what I believe Mark is saying is he's writing to an audience. Think about this. We often forget about who he's writing to.
Mark is writing his gospel so that people can come to know the stories about Jesus and come to believe in him, but also to write the gospel so that those who do believe in Jesus know what the requirements of following him are going to be. And so if you look, if you look at this sandwich, in Mark 612 13, it says this. When they went out, that's his disciples, and preached that men should repent. And they were casting out many demons and were anointing with oil many sick people and healing them. That's how it begins.
Listen to how it ends. The disciples gathered back together with Jesus, and they reported to Jesus all they had done and taught. And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest awhile. For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. They went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves.
What Mark is painting the picture in these brief episodes that are the bookcases of this passage is that the disciples first trial run in their ministry that Jesus sends them out to is pretty successful. I mean, they seem to be very successful with very little struggle. I mean, Jesus sends them out. They're literally healing people, casting out demons and calling people to repent of their sin. And this excites everybody.
And now there's a massive following, so much so that they can't even eat. And Jesus says, hey, let's get away from here. Go to resort and get some rest. That's really good stuff. But Mark doesn't highlight that as much as he spends more time talking about the beheading of John, as if to say, look, church, the ones I'm writing to who currently are going to read this and think, wow, that sounds really good.
That's no struggle at all. But the early church did struggle. They struggled with tribulations on every side a lot of them were martyred for their faith. And so what is it that Mark wants us to know about following after Christ with the death of John the Baptist? And this is what I think he wants us to know.
There are five things that I want to point out with the story of this headless prophet that we can learn as we seek to follow after Jesus. And that is, first and foremost, that following Jesus requires us to be bold. We can't be timid followers of Christ. And that's what John the Baptist did, regardless of who he was exposed to. He called people to repent of their sin, because John the Baptist and these disciples and Jesus himself teaches that sin is what separates.
Sin, is what enslaves us. Sin is not okay. It is not loving to the people I've created. It's ruining lives, and it's breaking relationships, and it's forfeiting their souls. We have to call people to repent.
And John the Baptist did this even to Herod, even to his wife, who shouldn't be his wife. He says, herod, you shouldn't be married to this woman. You're committing adultery. She's not your wife. And he didn't listen to John the Baptist.
And instead, John the Baptist received all kinds of grudge and bitterness, especially from the wife. But that didn't stay his hand or stay his speech. He spoke the truth. And that teaches us that as we follow after Christ, we have to be people who stand on the truth. We have to be bold about it.
We have to be willing to go to somebody and say, brother, I love you, but repent of your sin. This isn't right. I don't desire for you to continue to be a slave to that thing that's ruining your soul. Repent of your sin. And that's what all followers of Jesus have to stand for, because that's what Jesus died for.
And we will never diminish the work of Christ on the cross by allowing and embracing people to love and pet their sin that afforded Jesus to spend his life for that, to remove it. We don't want people to feel like, I can keep sin and still have a savior. The savior is trying to rid themselves, to rid that person of their sin. And we have to be bold about it. When I was.
You may not believe this, but when I was little, I was a very, very shy and timidity kid. I didn't want to be in trouble. I was just kind of a fat, little pudgy dude that was very shy and timid. So my dad tried to get me in football to toughen me up a little bit. And the first week in football, I remember, just like, you know, when you have to hit other people just do.
Walking up slowly and getting hit, knocked down. Cause I didn't want to hurt anybody. I was so timid to. And then we played this thing our coach was teaching us on this game called bull in the ring. Ended up being one of my most favorite things in practice.
Bull in the ring. It's where the whole team gathers in the circle. There's a bull in the ring in the center of it. And your coach would call out your number, and in your number, you got to run to the bull in the middle and try to knock him out. If you knock him out, then you become the bull.
Well, because I was a fat, pudgy kidde, my coach picked on me because everybody else was smaller than me, and he was demonstrating how this operates. So he goes, all right, Bruce, come at me. And he didn't, like, hold back. He knocked me off my feet, and I flew what seemed like an eternity up in the air. I was up there so long that I saw my dad pull up into his truck park and get out before I even landed.
I was hit so hard. But being hit so hard drastically changed my perspective on being hit. I went from being a timid kid to literally the next day hitting guys as hard as I could to where I got nicknamed Bruiser. And I was like, yeah, right. And my dad had bought me all these pads.
Like, I mean, I had bicep pads, shoulder pads, obviously, and elbow pads, like, so. Cause I hated falling on the ground. I mean, that's how timid I was. And those things came on. Like, I finally, I had to be knocked down in order to be able to stop being timid and to be more bold to play this game.
So, too, in our following of Jesus is we can't just be passive and timid in every situation. Some situations call for it, but we have to be willing to be bold. We have to be willing to speak the truth, because that's what the gospel is. The gospel is to communicate good news, the truth, to people, and we're called to that. And sometimes this boldness may require you to forfeit your reputation because it is going to be challenging.
Sometimes you're going to call people to repent that are going to repent like the disciples did, right? It seems like they had it easy. They were super successful. But then John the Baptist, he calls Herod to repent, and he loses his head. And what Mark is teaching us is that you have to be willing, regardless of the highs and lows, to follow after Jesus, even if it causes you to be unpopular with, especially those high up.
Maybe it's your boss. Maybe it's those who have a huge amount of influence over their community. You have to be willing to follow Jesus and fix your eyes on him and not relinquish or be timid at all, even if it means that you're not highly valued in a community, even if it means your reputation is that of a Jesus freak. You have to be willing to not only be bold, but also be willing to be unpopular. Because you think about it, the king of the world, the king of the cosmos, the son of the living God, was unpopular to many.
So much so, they wanted to kill him because he was doing good and bringing good into the world. That's messed up. If that's happening to Jesus and we're to live a life that looks like Jesus, guess what will happen from this world to us? We will become unpopular to them and we got to be okay. I have to be okay with preaching God's word, with the things that I've mentioned that I've told you about in my past, that there are some people that can see me preaching God's word and saying, but didn't he once do this?
He's a sinner. And I have to say, regardless of what the opinions of man are, I have to be faithful to follow after Jesus and what he's called me to do, and that is to get this word into the hearts, ears and minds of, of his people. So that's what I have to do, and I have to forfeit my popularity at times. And that's a struggle for me. I want everybody to like me.
Who wants to be a person that's hated? I don't. I really do struggle with this. But we have to be willing to let go and be unpopular to follow after Jesus. But not only that, we also learned from this passage that following Jesus requires us to consider what you are willing to give up to have Christ.
Christ teaches us in his gospels that what good is it to gain the whole world and yet forfeit your soul? That if you really want to have life, you actually got to lose it. That's what Jesus teaches over and over and over again, and it perplexes people. One of the greatest things I learned in college about marriage is, well, this is probably going to be a little too much, and I might get judged on this, but that's okay. So I used to write in my journal, in high school, by candlelight, okay.
This girl gave me a candle for my birthday, and I thought it was sweet. Kind of had a crush on her. So I lit this candle and I wrote my diary and saying, like, I can't wait to be married. And I had a list of qualifications that I was looking for in the woman I wanted to marry. And what I heard when I got to college is, that's fine and dandy.
We should have lists of the things that we're looking for in a godly woman, but we also should have a list of things we're not looking for. So what are some things that you're willing to do to be married, and what are some things you're not willing to do to be married? And that's the consideration one should be processing when they're approaching marriage. But much like following after Jesus, we have to consider, what are we willing to give up in order to have and prize and cherish Christ in our lives? Is there something like Herod, whose lust led him to deny the message that John the Baptist is bringing to him?
It was his lust that says, I'm confused. I hear what that guy's saying. I know he's holy and righteous, but I'm just going to lock him up because I really lust after this woman and I can't give it up. And he forfeited his soul. Or Herodias, right.
She was so wanting to live her life her way that it embittered her to hear somebody call her out for the life that she wanted. She was so bloodthirsty that she forfeited her soul in order to get that guy to be silenced so that she could continue to live the way she wanted to live. What about us? What sin that nobody else knows about? Are we wanting to hold onto because it makes us feel a certain way at a certain time, rather than to cling to Christ?
We have to offload every sin, sins that we're not even aware of, that Christ reveals through his holy spirit. We have to be willing to say, yes, I don't want anything to do with that. I don't want anything to do with this world. I don't want to gain any aspect of this world because I can't take it with me. I'm willing to forfeit it all for the sake of gaining Christ.
That's what we are taught. That's what Mark is getting to. He's showing us just how one sin, one lust of this guy. It seems the way Mark is writing about Herod, it seems like he's on this fence, but he's leaning towards this one sin that he has, which is lust for his brother's wife and this relationship he wants to keep. Some commentators say that's just to prove the fact that just one sin might try to keep us away from the greatest love of all, Jesus Christ, who can remove all sin from our lives and set us back right and pursue a life of goodness and righteousness and holiness and joyous.
And Paul says this about the cost of following Jesus. We often are just people that perceive everything in front of our face, what we could touch, see, and oh, this makes me feel good, or this gives me like accolades in the community. I want to work for this, work for that, do all these things, and yet we're willing to set aside following after Jesus for the sake of all of these other things. And this is what Paul would encourage us to think about. In romans 818, he says this for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us.
Let me read that again, he says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. What that means is that you might think the glory that we have presently, that you can tangibly touch and feel and experience right now, is good, but it pales in comparison to what awaits us just right there in Christ Jesus and in faith. We can take hold of it and receive it and live for it. And we follow Jesus. That's why we can follow Jesus, forsaking the world following after him, not worrying about our popularity, not worried about being timid, but doing boldly what he's called us to do.
Because it doesn't matter if it earns us anything here, because Christ is waiting for us and delivering so much more than what this world has to offer. He reinforces this in two Corinthians 417, when he says, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. If that doesn't stir you up to want to follow after Christ so that you can experience something greater than you've ever experienced in your whole entire pleasant life, then I don't know how else the scriptures can speak to you to stir you up, to run hard after Jesus Christ. Not only do we learn that we need to consider what these things are and what we are willing to do to follow Christ, we also following Christ means believing that death isn't the end Mark's audience has the reality of being taken to their death to be lit up on torches at garden parties. For the roman emperor at sobering at any moment, just by confessing Jesus they can lose their lives.
And following after Christ demonstrates faith and belief that death is not the end. There's this great scene, I think, that really drives this point home in Lord of the Rings. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's in the last movie, the return of the king. And these mean, ugly monsters are coming up against this great glorious city of Manda. And this little hobbits and the wizard Gandalf have this conversation because the enemy is prevailing.
All hope does seem to be lost. They are literally knocking at the door and Pippin thinks that his life's about to be taken. And listen to this beautiful conversation that they have in this moment. Pippin says, I didn't think it would end this way. End?
Gandalf says, no, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it. Pippin says, what, gandalf?
See what, Gandalf says. White shores and beyond. A far green country under a swift sunrise. Pippin says, well, that isn't so bad. Gandalf says, no, no.
What is it? Following Jesus means our eyes are fixed on him. And where he is is in a glorious place that he's wanting us to follow him. And Jesus isn't inviting us into something that we do for the very first time. He's already done it.
He's already made victorious over death. And he's inviting us to pass through it. To join him on those other shores in that greener country in that glorious new heaven and new earth. We're the only people in all the world that has that good news and believes it. We're the only ones that will get to experience it in Jesus Christ.
All those who believe in Jesus Christ have that hope set before them. And we are the only ones that can say death, where is your state? Where is your victory? Paul would say, but when this perishable will put on the imperishable and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written. Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin. I and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.
A final lesson that we learn from the story of John the Baptist and I believe Mark is trying to tell us, in this place where there's going to be highs and lows and following after Jesus, sometimes you're going to be successful. Sometimes it's going to feel good. There's going to be times of joy and rest. Other times there are going to be trials and tribulations and suffering. The following Christ means being willing to pay all of that for the love that he has shed for you.
Mark reminds us that there will be moments of joy and rest and moments of suffering and loss. Mark is preparing us, preparing those who follow Jesus to answer this call, to take up your cross, to follow Jesus, to crucify yourself with Jesus so that you can live with Jesus, to forfeit the world, to gain Christ.
Will you be faithful in what Jesus has called you to as you follow him? When the monsoons in your life begin to happen and it becomes really challenging to continue to follow after Christ, will you stay the course or will you just hang it up and say, I'm defeated? There's no victory here. Is there sin that is holding you from running full bore to Christ and following after him in all things? Repent of it today, offload it onto the back of Jesus and be set free from it.
Do you lack boldness in your ministry, in your life, to your area of influence? Do you lack that boldness? Pray to the Holy Spirit to embolden you to be red hot for Christ, to not to think about what other people think about you, but to do what he's called you to do. I pray that as we've looked at Mark's lesson about John the Baptist and the disciples going out, I pray it's really stirred your hearts to love God more for all that he's done and all that he's calling you to, and that you've learned another aspect of how you can love others better. That is the application for every passage and word in scripture.
It exists so that you will love God more, and it teaches you how you can love others better. How has this word today made you able to do that? Let's pray.
Jesus, we thank you for the calling on our lives that you've given to us. We thank you first and foremost for the salvation you offer to us in your death, in your sacrifice. And now we pray that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit so that we can continue to follow after you being bold and participating in this family business that you've called us to of sharing the gospel, the good news with every person we come in contact with. I pray that you would give us your Holy Spirit so that we can understand your word, that we could be emboldened to do what you've called us to do. And I pray that you give us and grant us the perseverance to endure even when things get hard, that we can rejoice when things are successful.
That we also can rejoice when things become hard and struggle because we know that it is working out our salvation in our lives. I pray for Fairview Methodists. I pray for these people here. Your bride to be washed by your word so that she could be presented to you in glory and radiant white, be with us now as we end our time of worship together and go into the world as you sent the disciples out and help us to be bold, to call people to repent and believe, and to share with them the good news. In Jesus name we pray.