Date: 05/22/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Abraham And The Promise Of Salvation
Scripture: Genesis 12:1-9
Description: Sin is inseparable from these ancient promises. They speak of the content of salvation, the vehicle of salvation, and the scope of salvation.
Date: 05/15/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Babel
Scripture: Genesis 11:1-9
Description: The strange little story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of Israel’s neighbors as the result of a clash between the unfettered pride of humankind and the unmatched sovereignty of God. Rich in irony, it juxtaposes the united human drive for security and significance with God’s effortless sway over the best of human ingenuity. But more than that, like all of Genesis 1-11, the story of Babel has timeless relevance as an explanation of our sinful condition and a precursor to God’s specific goals in salvation.
Date: 05/08/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: God Remembers
Scripture: Genesis 6:9-9:17
Description: The story of Noah and the flood is far from a nursery rhyme. It’s a story of cataclysmic judgment mixed with mysterious divine grace. Like everything else in the opening chapters of Genesis, this story is meant to introduce key themes that continue to play out in the storyline of the Bible, and it raises crucial questions. How should this story of terrible and intentional judgment affect our view of God? Why did God choose to preserve Noah and his family? Why should we expect he’ll preserve us?
Date: 04/17/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Paradise Lost
Scripture: Genesis 3:1-24
Description: Genesis, as a story of beginnings, explains the roots of a reality we can’t reasonably deny: this world is not what it ought to be. Genesis 3 explains something of the nature of sin, that it replaces God’s authority with ours; the results of sin, that it destroys relationships, separates us from God, and ultimately brings death; and the solution for sin, that one we now know to be Jesus would come to perfectly solve the problem of sin.
Date: 04/10/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Made In God's Image
Scripture: Genesis 1:26-31
Description: The conclusion to Genesis 1 claims that humans are unique among God’s creatures because they’re made in the image of God. That was a counter-cultural claim when first written and, in some ways, remains so today. But unique how? This text suggests the image of God gives us unique dignity, unique responsibility, and unique accountability.
Date: 04/03/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: In The Beginning
Scripture: Genesis 1:1-27
Description: The story of Genesis—a book of beginnings—opens with a poem that answers questions as old as time: Where did we come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? And who is in charge?
Date: 03/20/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Jesus Is Alive
Scripture: Mark 15:40-16:8
Description: Mark concludes his story with an earth-shattering claim that launches the life of the church: Jesus was really dead, but now he’s alive. He leaves us to ask two questions. Is it true? And if it is true, if Jesus really is alive, what are the implications?
Date: 03/13/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Why Did Jesus Die?
Scripture: Mark 14:53-65
Description: Why must Jesus die? Mark’s telling of Jesus’s trial and crucifixion removes a couple possible explanations. Jesus didn’t die because he was guilty: the trial of Jesus shows no one found any legitimate, legal reason to kill him. And Jesus didn’t die because he was powerless: Mark’s readers know Jesus is innocent and has power to overcome his captors, but he doesn’t defend himself. So why then? Jesus died to establish a kingdom you could live in. Mark’s chief irony and his central message is that Jesus comes to power and invites us into his kingdom through his death.
Date: 03/06/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Jesus, Our Substitute
Scripture: Mark 14:1-52
Description: Describing the events leading to Jesus’s arrest and crucifixion, Mark tells us a great deal about what Jesus came here to do: He came to be abandoned so we won’t have to be. Jesus was abandoned by everyone—Judas, Peter, his disciples, even his Father—and, remarkably, he chose to have it that way. Why did he choose this path of excruciating isolation? Because through his death, the ultimate abandonment, he established a covenant relationship that will never break.
Date: 02/27/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Jesus On The Future
Scripture: Mark 13:1-37
Description: In the longest section of teaching recorded in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus turns to questions asked by the religious and the philosophical since the beginning of time. What does the future hold, and how should we live now in light of that future? The details of Jesus’s predictions (about the destruction of the Temple in the near future and about his final return in power and glory) have always baffled interpreters. But the bottom line couldn’t be more clear: because Jesus is coming back in victory and judgment, and because we don’t know when, our responsibility is to trust Jesus and stay ready.
Date: 02/20/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Religious Hypocrisy And The Love Of God
Scripture: Mark 11:27-12:44
Description: After a parable of judgment that sets the stage for his confrontation with Israel’s religious leaders, Jesus fields challenges from each primary group of leaders: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the scribes. In each case, Jesus’s answers turn the tables on his challengers to expose their hypocrisy. In the end, Jesus proposes the only solution to religious hypocrisy: a love of God for God’s sake and with everything you have.
Date: 02/13/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: The King Has Come
Scripture: Mark 11:1-25
Description: Chapter 11 marks Jesus’s arrival at Jersalem, an event laced through with prophecy fulfillment. Here, by an “enacted parable” and by a dramatic confrontation in the Temple, Jesus shows more of what he’s come to do. As King, he’s come to purge and to restore.
Date: 02/06/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Kingdom Citizenship
Scripture: Mark 10:13-52
Description: To this point Mark’s narrative has promised that Jesus would, paradoxically, establish the kingdom of God through his death. So what does this mean for who belongs to the kingdom and how? Mark answers this question by contrasting stories on faith with stories on self-reliance. In short, the kingdom belongs to the desperate, not the self-reliant, because it belongs to those who rest only on Jesus.
Date: 01/30/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Marriage By Design, Marriage In Reality
Scripture: Mark 10:1-12
Description: Still on the road towards Jerusalem, Jesus shifts the focus of his teaching on discipleship to the subject of marriage and divorce. As so often before, he explodes standard religious convention. Jesus answers a question from the Pharisees about divorce with an explanation of God’s original design for marriage. Marriage viewed from the perspective of creation, in the eyes of God, is an unbreakable bond. But how do we square Jesus’s marriage ideal with our experience in a world deeply marred by sin?
Date: 01/23/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Living The Cross-Centered Life
Scripture: Mark 9:30-50
Description: As Jesus makes his way towards Jerusalem and the death that’s waiting there for him, he narrows his focus to teaching his disciples what it means to follow a Messiah who suffers. The cross sets the pattern for Christian discipleship, and this text offers concrete examples. A life modeled on the cross is a life that puts the interests of others above its own, and it’s a life that fights a radical battle with sin.
Date: 01/16/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Belief, Unbelief, And The Saving Power of Jesus
Scripture: Mark 9:14-29
Description: In this story of demon possession and exorcism, Mark returns to one of his favorite questions: what must we do to claim the saving power of Jesus? It’s a story that illustrates what we know from our own experience: unbelief comes from many sources and in many forms. But in the desperate plea of a helpless father Mark illustrates another, even more powerful truth. It’s a decision to rest on Jesus, not mathematical certainty, which constitutes the faith that leads to deliverance.
Date: 01/09/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Glory, Shame, And The Christian Paradox
Scripture: Mark 9:1-13
Description: Just after Jesus has told his disciples that he must suffer and die, and that following him means they will suffer too, Jesus reinforces their confidence in him with a glimpse of his glory, a mysterious event called the transfiguration. In this story and in Jesus’s discussion with his disciples about this event, Mark helps us understand a central Christian paradox: as Son of God Jesus is undeniably glorious, but his glory as Messiah comes through a death of unimaginable shame.
Date: 01/02/11
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Jesus Is The Christ
Scripture: Mark 1-8
Description: The stories of Jesus’s life and teaching in Mark’s Gospel are designed to answer three main questions: who is Jesus, what did Jesus come here to do, and what does that require of us? Already, in chapters 1-8, we’ve seen the shape of Mark’s answer to those crucial questions emerge. First, Jesus is the divine Son of God, as shown in his unmatched words and actions of authority and power. Second, he came to fix what was broken, to establish the kingdom of God by his life, death, and resurrection. And, finally, Jesus demands absolute submission from us: a repentance from all competing allegiances, a rest in the sufficiency of his power and love, and a willigness to follow him with a life of self-denial.
Date: 12/12/10
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: The Christ, The Cross, And Christian Discipleship
Scripture: Mark 8:31-38
Description: This exchange between Jesus and his disciples represents a turning point in Mark’s Gospel. Just after Peter’s climactic confession of Jesus as the Christ, Jesus explains what kind of Christ he would be and what that implied for all who would follow him. Jesus explains to his followers—and to us—that there is no Christ without the cross and resurrection, and there is no Christian discipleship without suffering.
Date: 12/05/10
Speaker: Matt McCullough
Title: Seeing And Believing
Scripture: Mark 8:1-30
Description: In this cluster of stories Mark helps explain why people respond to Jesus in very different ways, some in faith and others with persistent unbelief. Contrasting the disciples’ struggle to believe even after all they’d seen with Peter’s dramatic confession of Jesus as the Christ, Mark shows us that spiritual sight is never the same thing as physical sight. Faith—seeing with new eyes—is a gift of God.
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Worship Service - 10:30am
Sunday Evening Service - 5:00pm (Monthly on 1st Sunday)
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Office Hours
Monday - Thursday
9:00am - 3:00pm
Phone - 615-730-7267
Email - mail@edgefieldnashville.org
Edgefield Church Nashville | 700 Russell Street, Nashville, TN 37206 | EIN 62-0550982