Jesus First Disciples (Mark 1:16-20)

↓Audio link to the sermon: (If you can’t listen on your iPhone, please update your iOS) Last month I watched a movie called The Peanut Butter Falcon. Set in poor, rural America, the film is about a troubled fisherman who befriends a young man with Down’s syndrome. I’m sure that not all fishermen are the same, but the ones in this movie were rough men, foul-mouthed, covered with tattoos, and ready to fire a rifle at you. If I met them in real-life, I would be scared of them. In the gospel of Mark, we are told that Jesus’ first disciples were fishermen. Today we’ll read a short passage about

Matthew 9:9-13, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick”

　↓Audio link to the sermon:(1st worship recording) (If you can’t listen on your iPhone, please update your iOS) As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what

“Where is the Lord?” (Jeremiah 2:6)

　↓Audio link to the sermon:(1st worship recording) (If you can’t listen on your iPhone, please update your iOS) This is my second sermon on the book of Jeremiah. Last month we saw how God called Jeremiah. God said to him, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” The phrase “I knew you” can be translated as “I chose you”. Jeremiah was chosen to be raised up in a close relationship with God. But God does not only know Jeremiah; He knows each one of us. And God wants to raise each of us up in a relationship with Him. God loves us and wants to nurture our

“The Son of God” (Mark 1:10-11)

↓Audio link to the sermon:(1st worship recording) (If you can’t listen on your iPhone, please update your iOS) A few years ago, an international student attended our Bible study. He enjoyed eating with our group and discussing the Bible, but he was firm in his beliefs as a Muslim. He said, “How can a great God have sexual relations with a human? It’s blasphemy.” He had heard that Christians believe in three gods: God the Father, Mother Mary, and Jesus the Son—which, as you know, is inaccurate. So I explained what we actually believe. Like him, you too may have wondered, “What does it mean to say Jesus is ‘the

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:7)

　↓Audio link to the sermon:(1st worship recording) (If you can’t listen on your iPhone, please update your iOS) “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.” (Jeremiah 1:7) From this week, we will begin a series on the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a prophet who lived during the time when Judah, the kingdom in southern Israel, was conquered. The book begins with this verse: “The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin.” Anathoth was a village about 4 kilometers north of Jerusalem. Jeremiah grew up in this poor village