Welcome to Timeless Truth with Pastor Jim Thomas. In season 2, Pastor Jim is leading us in a study of Mark. Today’s passage is Mark 9:43-50.
Jesus gets practical and to the point here about what His disciples do, where they go and what they view. Here are wise warnings about misconduct and responsibility; a serious call to a life of holiness
“Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.”
Hebrews 12:14
“The person who is truly free is a person who 1) trusts, loves, and obeys God through Christ and in the Spirit, 2) loves and serves others, and 3) lives before God with a clear conscience as he or she grows before God in holiness and love.”
Scot McKnight
“We must actively cultivate a Christian life. Holiness is not a condition into which we drift.”
John Stott, The Message of Ephesians
“A holy person’s motivating aim, passion, desire, longing, aspiration, goal, and drive is to please God, both by what one does and by what one avoids doing.””
J. I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness
“Holiness is always the saved sinner’s response of gratitude for grace received.”
J. I. Packer, Rediscovering Holiness
The Secret of “Salty” Spirituality v. 49-50
“Christian salt has no business to remain snugly in elegant little ecclesiastical salt cellars; our place is to be rubbed into the secular community, as salt is rubbed into meat, to stop it going bad. And when society does go bad, we Christians tend to throw up our hands in pious horror and reproach the non-Christian world; but should we not rather reproach ourselves? One can hardly blame unsalted meat for going bad. It cannot do anything else. The real question to ask is: where is the salt?”
John Stott
- Treasure those practices of discipleship that preserve humility and promote servanthood.
- Protect those characteristics of discipleship that prevent spiritual stumbling.
- Reflect those characteristics of discipleship that make others thirsty to know Jesus.
“I am sure that the reason I have a deep hunger to learn of the holiness of God is precisely because I am not holy. I am a profane man, a man who spends more time out of the temple than in it. But I have had just enough of a taste of the majesty of God to want more. I know what it means to be a forgiven man and what it means to be sent on a mission. My soul cries for more. My soul needs more.”
R. C. Sproul, The Holiness of God
