Highland Church Podcast

Sunday Sermon- June 20, 2021. Mark 9:14-29 Todays passage is not a story of unflinching faith, but of struggling faith. Which is to say, real faith. This story in Mark—if it says one thing—it says believing is hard. In this passage comes the phrase, I believe, help my unbelief. I don’t think any sentence in all of scripture fully captures the dilemma of the human situation like this one. The dilemma of life lived in the valley.

Sunday Sermon- June 13, 2021. Mark 9:1-10 Mountaintops are synonymous with the highs of spiritual life. If you could, you’d stay there forever. It’s the mountain-top you don’t want to come down from. And Jesus takes these guys in Mark 9 up onto the mountaintop, and God shows them how glorious Jesus is on the mountaintop, and then speaks to them, all so that they will listen to Jesus and do what He says. What good thing is Jesus telling you to do? Are you listening?

Sunday Morning Sermon- June 6, 2021 In Mark 8:22-9:1, Jesus is letting us know something so important here. Discipleship is the process through which Jesus helps us to see more clearly. First him, and through him, everything else. We’ll see sacrifice more clearly. Suffering more clearly. Life more clearly. Shame more clearly. The point—we’ll see it all like he wants us too, once we see him for who he is.

May 30, 2021 Sunday Sermon We are loved by a God who sees us. This truth can begin the journey of healing from our woundedness, when we experience the one who sees us. From this experience, we are encouraged to reengage a healing community.

In this Wednesday Night Class recording, David Jackson leads us in a study of Psalms.

Sunday Morning Sermon- May 23, 2021 Today's lesson is from Mark 8, when Jesus feeds the 4,000. This story is very similar to the feeding of the 5,000 in Mark 6. Apparently these miraculous meals were really important to Jesus. And he expected his disciples to understand and savor what these miracles meant, specifically what they meant about him. Here is what I am convinced of: Anytime Jesus Christ takes the little we offer and multiplies it beyond our expectations, he is trying to tell us that he wants to do more. And that he can. Because he is the kind of king who not only has the desire but the power to do exponentially more in and through us.

Sunday Morning Message- May 16, 2021 We believe when we give to support missionaries and ministries in Memphis and around the world, we will give life to someone who needs it. The full life found in Christ. So, we’re now calling our Outreach Contribution our Life Giving Sunday. Our goal—needed to support the life-giving ministries of HopeWorks, Agape, missionaries in 4 countries, and more—is $160,000. Today we will hear from Thud Hill and Linda Bateman, representatives from Timothy Hill Children's Ranch.

May 9, 2021- Sunday Morning Sermon Our lesson, for Mothers Day, comes from Mark 7:24-30. Jesus is having a little conversation with this mom about a really big topic at a really big moment in history. So something happens in this little conversation with this mom, that signals to Jesus the time is now to move between God’s promise to one people and God’s plan for all people. There’s something about a mom, the thing that God has put inside her from himself, that makes her the right one to walk hand in hand with Jesus into a new world where God’s steadfast love expands to all.

Sunday Sermon- May 2, 2021 (Mark 6:45-52) We can learn a lot from this passage in Mark where the disciples are struggling at sea. No one likes a hardship. No one wants to be out on the chaotic waters, getting pushed backwards. Everyone of us would choose in the moment, for God to pluck us out of there. Or at least part the water, and let us walk through on dry ground. But no matter how hard it is, He is the Lord of the Sea onto which he has sent me. He walks on the water I am fighting, he can calm it, or he can show me his glory. Whichever he chooses, he is the Lord of the Sea onto which he has sent me.

Sunday Sermon April 25, 2021. Eric is joined by Highland Youth Ministers to share an encouraging word to our graduating seniors and our church as a whole. The world tells Christians, especially young Christians, that if you want to avoid being hungry, you better pack your own lunch, or you’ll have to leave and go find some somewhere else. That there will come a point at which Jesus will no longer satisfy the hunger inside. The pressure you’ll feel, or already feel, is not new. But it will press itself upon you, whispering into if you just try a little harder, work a little longer, make a little more money, you can be filled. But you cannot. Jesus will provide and fill you with purpose and meaning.

April 18, 2021 Sunday Sermon (Mark 6:6-13) We all are ambassadors for Christ. But we haven’t mastered this thing yet… right? Right! But I mean, doesn’t God want us to keep learning, keep growing? Yes? Before he sends me out? No. The myth—that we so often buy as Christians—is that once we master this faith thing, then we’ll be ready to go out on behalf of it. But the example—from the most faithful people the world has ever known—is that this is not something you master. And that if you’re waiting to master it, you’ll never share it. You’ll never go out. As a Christian—a follower of Jesus—I am always an apprentice of Christ and I am always an ambassador for Christ.

Sunday Sermon April 11, 2021 Mark 6:1-6 There’s no place like home. Except—for Jesus—it doesn’t go that way. He is not received when he comes home, he is rejected. He didn’t expect it. He thought he was coming home… to his home. To his people. There’s a saying that familiarity breeds contempt. And that seems to be what’s going on here in Nazareth. But you don’t have to hate Jesus to ignore him. To just take your eyes off of him. To drift. In this lesson we discuss what this story can teach us.

Sermon from Easter Sunday, April 4, 2021 There are a lot of impossibilities in our world but there is one that stands out and always has—people don’t live after they die. Resurrection makes for a nice legend, a good movie, but resurrection is not really possible. It was impossible that death could be beat. Death had the power. But God steals it away in Jesus Christ. Or rather proves death never had what we’ve always thought it did. It’s impossible for death to hold him anymore. That’s why he was raised. Cause death didn’t have the power to stop it.

We need an anchor, a hope on which to tether our whole lives, our souls, that is actually firm and secure. And that’s where we have the word I want to share with you today. It’s a word that’s only used in the New Testament in the context of the cross of Jesus. Nowhere else. Its one word in Greek, but in English it takes three to translate. The word is translated: “once for all”. Something happened at the cross that was “once for all.”

March 21, 2021 Sunday Morning Sermon Our passage today comes from Mark 5:21-43. There are many stories in the Bible about men. But this passage is very specific to women. And to the women, the message is simple. You are the precious daughter of Christ. He sees you. He sees what is unique to you. And, Ladies, he is able to heal it.

March 14, 2021 Sunday Morning Sermon Todays passage is from Mark 5:1-20. These stories describe with perhaps more realism than any others, what a life apart from Christ is really like—and why we so desperately need Jesus—even as modern people. Musicbed SyncID: MB01VO6RT5H0CIQ

Sunday Sermon March 7, 2021 Fear is the giving of our attention to what we feel is most real. If this is true, then our attention ought to be directed to the one who is most real. Jesus.

Sunday Sermon February 28, 2021 2020 was a challenging year, with all kinds of changing variables. There is an impulse to suspect those challenges mean something has changed about God. But this parable is first of all a reminder that whatever happens in life the sower is going to do what the sower has always done, scatter seed. The sower is not deficient in this story. He’s a constant. You know what else is not deficient, the seed. You see, in this story the sower and the seed—they’re good. But the soil, that’s what changes. So the question this parable raises for us is, Is my soil producing the harvest I know the seed is capable of?

Sunday Sermon- February 21, 2021 With a snow filled week in Memphis, and power outages and water shortages in Texas, Eric is taking a break from our study in Mark to look at a passage from Romans. Is it possible to grow in faith and hope during hard times when it is so difficult to see God working? Today we look at a passage that helps us get through these hard times.

February 14, 2021- Sunday Sermon Today’s passage has got to be one of the hardest passages in scripture about what it means to be a family—both a nuclear family, and more importantly what it means to be a spiritual family. In fact, by disrupting what we often assume about the smaller family, Jesus actually defines what the purpose of a spiritual family is. And at the same time—he defines the place of the nuclear family in that larger spiritual family. Eric wanted to talk about this as we start coming back together. We know that distance places a strain on the fabric that holds us together. But as we emerge from this pandemic, remember—If my family or your family has a shot, it only has a shot if it is part of the larger family of Christ. Jesus will not be my family’s center unless my family is surrounded by His family. Musicbed SyncID: MB01GNSOKOYQBGN