Senior Pastor, Southland Church
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Persecution
People that spend time with Jesus are bound to be persecuted. Do people around you recognise that you have been with Jesus? I want to suggest this morning that there is nothing more injurious to the Gospel message than “Christians” who have not been with Jesus.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Power
A church without power is a church without God. The Old Testament account of Gideon is a great picture of God and His Church. Judges 6, 7 & 8 unfold the exploits of Gideon and his unlikely army and how they broke the yoke of their Midianite rulers.
Rob Norman: Christians and Politics
Whenever there is an intersection between faith and politics, people tend to get a bit anxious, and arguments abound around the historical problems of Christendom and the principles of Separation of Church and State. It might shock you, but the Christian call to politics is fundamental to the great Commission.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Prayer
When we understand prayer, we also begin to understand that prayer is at least as much about hearing from God as it is about God hearing from us.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Testimony
Testimony is a legal term; it is “a solemn statement made by a witness under oath; an assertion offering first-hand authentication of a fact; a testimony serves as evidence”. Disciples are Jesus have a testimony or testimonies that bear witness to His work in our lives.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Preaching
Mark 16:20 Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.
Clearly from this verse the preaching was done by the disciples; disciples are not special people; they are simply followers and apprentices of Jesus.
Rob Norman: The Acts Church | Seven Marks of an Apostolic Church
The church of the book of Acts was dynamic and experimental; it was powerful and daring; it had problems, but it was also effective at reaching the lost. New Testament churches minister with the same authority the Apostles used, in this sense they are apostolic.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | The Great Commission
The Great Commission is the mission statement of Christ’s Church. This commission is is dripping with a mandate to preach and demonstrate the gospel of the kingdom of God. Mark’s Gospel reveals the threefold nature of the Great Commission, namely:
1. Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation
2. Baptize all who believe
3. Signs following
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | The Human Condition
Jesus understood fear and anxiety with all the emotions and physiological processes that take place in the human body when we are gripped by fear. In the lead-up to being taken away to be crucified he experienced the frailty of humanity in a very tangible way.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Understanding Worship
Mark 14 is a weighty chapter. The beginning of the chapter builds the foundations of Christian worship when a woman lavishly anoints Jesus with a years’ wages worth of expensive perfume. Jesus was the centre of her worship experience and He is also the centre of our worship.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | The Last Days
The destruction of the temple in AD70 was, to those in Jerusalem, an apocalyptic event that effectively marked the end of the Old Testament sacrificial system. All this took place within 40 years of the death and resurrection of Christ. As with most apocalyptic prophecies, there is often a relatively short term fulfilment as well as a long term recurring fulfilment until ‘The End’.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Apocalyptic Patterns
Biblical apocalyptic literature has been the subject of intense interest for centuries. We all want to know ‘what will be’ and ‘what the signs are’, of the end of the world.
Mark 13 and its parallel gospel texts Matthew 24 and Luke 21 are apocalyptic texts and are best understood when we take the time to understand how this unique kind of prophetic writing works.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Confrontations & Conflict
But the message of the kingdom of God is a confrontational message that will often bring us into conflict with the worldviews, practices and values of others. So if our message is confrontational we had better learn how to do conflict.
Rob Norman: Prophetic Pitfalls
Rob looks at some of the pitfalls of the prophetic ministry and offers some helpful insight.
Many well known, contemporary ‘prophets’ have made predictions that sound like Old Testament Prophecy. This kind of prophetic model is either specifically premised with “thus says The Lord” or it is spoken with such authority and certainty that it has the same implied meaning as “Thus says the Lord” and because it comes from leaders who are respected and, in some cases, revered it carries disproportionate weight or authority.
Unfortunately, when ‘prophets’ speak with such certainty and authority, the damage done when they inevitably get it wrong is almost unmitigated.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | A Fruitful Tree
The first century rabbinical paradigm is one of experience, illustration and story-telling. In this paradigm, truths were learned by watching and listening to a Rabbi, who through life experiences, stories, and explanations, would unpack greater truths of life and ministry. The illustration of the fig tree and subsequent cleansing of the temple is typical of how a Rabbi would convey truth to a first century Hebrew mind.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | The Performance Trap
We live in a culture that rewards according to performance. This is not wrong in-and-of itself. The performance trap is set when our identity is found in our ability to perform to a high level of excellence. This is what Jesus encountered when he met a rich young man in Mark 10:17.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | This Way Up!
The Kingdom of God has an upside-down authority structure. What does this mean?
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | A Kingdom Paradigm in 2021
Often, the answer to the question ‘why don’t we see more healings and deliverances today?’ is connected to the fact that we don’t have a spiritual paradigm in the 21st century and therefore we don’t utilize spiritual treatments.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Who (and What) is Christ?
The disciples certainly knew Jesus as a Rabbi who had authority from God. As they followed Him the evidence became overwhelming that He was more than a Rabbi.
Healing the sick, casting out demons, miracles of nature (walking on water) and miracles of multiplication, are all signs the kingdom of God has come. Jesus performed these miracles, thus establish His credentials as King over all of His creation.
Not only must we resolve the question ‘who is Jesus?’, we must also understand ‘what is Jesus?’.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Miracles Are Not An Optional Extra
Do we go for the deluxe model, or will we make do with the base model that has no frills? What we may have thought was the ‘base-model’ of Christianity was, in fact, a cheap copy-watch, a counterfeit. If our view of Scripture removes the miraculous or relegates it to ‘fiction’ or ‘fable’, we may not know the God of Scripture.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Authorized & Sent
The strategy employed by Jesus to reach the world with the Gospel seems to be –
I minister
I minister while you observe
You minister
You minister while someone else observes …, etc.
This method of discipleship doesn’t require clever programs, tent crusades or revival conferences. It is organic, simple, and unaffected by top-down organizational issues.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Tokens Of The Kingdom
Mark 4:35 – Mark 5:43 details a three-point plan blueprint for an effective kingdom offensive – eviction of demons, healing of the sick and raising the dead.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | Frontline Spiritual Warfare
The post-enlightenment, western mind, has learned to filter out the spiritual realm from our awareness because we no longer have a supernatural worldview. We become conditioned to seeing things in a particular way. We actually do see a whole lot more demonic activity than our minds are willing to accept!
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | The Cost Of Discipleship
Being a true follower of Jesus sets us apart from the World. Not only are we set apart, but we are also alienated. Jesus knew this fact experientially.
Rob Norman: The Gospel Of Mark | An ‘earthy’ Gospel
One of the signatures of Mark’s Gospel is its rawness or earthiness. The are some very earthy aspects of this Gospel account that can easily be missed if we don’t take time to understand what is written.