Lake Wildwood Baptist Church

Touching Jesus

Disclosure:  There is an audio issue in the back half of the recording.

The last section of Mark 6 maps our the last two months of Jesus' 2nd year of public ministry.  He can no longer keep his fame at bay.  Word is out and Jesus is swamped & surrounded...with the sick, lame, blind, & possessed.  They come hopeless and leave hope filled.  Saving Faith makes all the difference.

Obedience Boot Camp

The disciples were exhausted, Jesus was beyond tired & the crowds were clueless.  Sounds like ministry to me.  Jesus sends his men away to sail back to the home base, dismisses the crowd that wants to forcibly make him King & hikes up a mountain to pray. All of this to show his guys the difficulty of obeying with out his help.  We've much to learn as did the disciples.

Making Time Count for God

How are you investing your time?  Guest Pastor Jeff Gongwer walks us through an exposition of Ephesians 5:15-18 to reveal 4 ways to use our time for God.  Don't miss this straight forward look at our time & how to best invest it.

How the Shepherd King Shepherds You

Context is so important.  Jesus is truly God & truly human.  He is grieving the execution of his cousin John while also celebrating with the, now, apostles as they return from their first successful Ministry adventure.  They are surrounded by people so Jesus decides on an impromptu retreat to recharge with his men.  They sail to the desolate side of the lake but they are followed by the crowds, feelings of compassion & yet another big lesson for his men.  Take a listen and see what the masses need, the mission demands, and the Messiah provides.

Team Jesus on Mission

The disciples have graduated to apostles - sent ones!  They've been training for 2 years and now they are commissioned & sent to preach the same sermon that they heard their King preach over & over - Repent, Believe & Follow the King.  Jesus grants them Kingdom Authority & Power and they ride it all the way.  As they are off spreading their kingdom gospel wings, Jesus gets the news that his cousin & forerunner John has been executed by Herod.  As his apostles come home, he takes them away for a time of rest.  There is so much in there for us today.  Listen and see why.

The Familiarity Vaccine

 In Mark 6, we find Jesus and his disciples heading to Jesus' home town for a missionary trip.   What could go wrong?   His teaching was powerful, the news of his verifying miracles made it to Nazareth before Jesus got there and yet they got Jesus wrong because they thought they knew him.  As the old saying goes, "Familiarity breeds Contempt."  This was actually a case of his hometown crowd not knowing him well enough.  They refused to accept his actual identity no mater the works to back them up. And we're no different.  We've got just enough Jesus to be inoculated to the gospel.

Hurry Up & Wait

"Waiting is the rust of the soul." - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

"Waiting is the art of hoping." - Luc de Clapiers

Jairus, in this passage, is in a desperate hurry - He's trying to get Jesus to his dying 12 year old daughter.  The crowd was making the going slow & then precious minutes were lost in a strange healing of a woman with a 12 year old disease.  Today we learn some of God's purposes in waiting.  There are many and Jairus would learn many of them on this journey of Faith over Fear.

Deviled Ham

Demonic Presence, Demonized Person, Demented Pigs & Dominion Power Demonstrated.  That about explains the wild scene that unfolds "Immediately" upon the beaching of the boat in the land of the Gadarines.

Pastor Ray Pritchard summarized the text well when he said,  "Three worlds meet in this strange story: the underworld of evil spirits, the visible world of human experience, and the upper world of divine control."  

Listen & hear this history as you almost never do...in context.  What does the seed parables & a local hurricane of Mark 4 have to do with a wild gentile filled with demons in Mark 5?  Only everything.

The God of the Storm

The disciples had seen it all by now...or so they thought.  Jesus was about to reveal his identity by exercising His authority over wind and waves.  These good Jewish men knew the reality of Psalm 107:23-32 - the Sailor's Psalm.  Only God creates and calms storms. This has much to say to us today as we too must learn via experience just who Jesus really is.

Micro to Mighty

Waiting is hard.  Growth happens over years not minutes.  "The days are long but the years are short" is one of my wife's favorite sayings. The same is true in the Kingdom of God.  Growth is mysterious but it does happen.  Listen and be encouraged.