PODCAST · religion
MustardSeed Talks 2019
by David Gore
Each week we are challenged and encouraged to think through our faith in Christ and what it means to follow him each day.
Episodes
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Episode 90: Not Condemned (David Gore • Mark 5:1-20)
Oppressive forces that enter our lives, in such a way that we cannot escape them - even when we are on our own - are a very serious matter. There may be a number of ways this could occur. But the more crucial matter is to find liberation. When the possessed man encounters Jesus, everything…
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Episode 89: Even the Wind and Waves (David Gore • Mark 4:35-41)
If you had authority to command the wind and waves, and make them obey, what would you do with that power? Apart from the more obvious utility for picnics and camping trips, what does one do with authority like that? This story (from Mark 4:35-41) appears to be highlighting Jesus’ authority over...
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Episode 88: Seed (David Gore • Mark 4:26-34)
Seeds are remarkable things. To all intents and purposes, seeds appear to be dead bits of grain. They lie dormant. They can be stored for long periods of time. They do not appear to change or develop. Then, in the right conditions, something miraculous happens. New life begins to grow. That which...
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Episode 87: Bind the Strong Man (David Gore • Mark 3:20-35)
In the playbook of life, when things are getting out of hand, the default go-to move to regain control or order is violence - or the threat thereof. We reach for it in families (anyone remember the wooden spoon on the backside?). Corporal punishment was used in school classrooms in my lifetime...
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Episode 86: Trinity (David Gore • Romans 8:12-17)
If you were making up a theology from scratch, you would never opt to include a notion as allusive and difficult to explicate as the Trinity. It is an idea that has forced itself upon faithful believers simply because no viable alternative conclusions satisfy the available data. This gives rise…
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Episode 85: Breath Within (David Gore • Ezekiel 37:1-14)
Hope is one of those things that keeps people going. It is like the wind beneath our wings in a way. Humans are highly social - but our interactions with one another can be helpful and they can be equally destructive. Hope is one of the dynamics that keeps us oriented in the helpful direction....
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Episode 84: Love One Another (David Gore • John 15:9-17)
Jesus directs his followers to love one another as he has loved them. This is not a matter of feeling warm toward others or having pleasant thoughts. It is about being ready to put one’s self out for the sake of others. At first blush this might seem less than favourable as a disposition. We…
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Episode 83: The Vine • John 15:1-8
In our day, believers tend to talk about their faith or their relationship with God using theological terms in philosophical tones. By contrast, Jesus made use of earthy metaphors. He spoke about real life dynamics that were well known by people in his culture. Jesus used these ideas to…
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Episode 82: Easter Saturday (David Gore • Matt 27:62-66)
Stations of the Cross on Good Friday offers us the opportunity to reflect on the final moments of Jesus’ journey to Golgotha and the cross. Resurrection Sunday is an important celebration of the Messiah’s victory over the grave and the defeat of the ever present fear of death. Holy Saturday, the...
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Episode 81: Facing Opposition (David Gore • Isaiah 50:4-9a)
The Servant Songs of Isaiah depict a servant so utterly committed to faithfulness to God that no matter what he faces he will not turn back from his faithfulness. As we arrive at chapter 50 of Isaiah, it is very clear that the Servant faces significant opposition. in fact, like most of the...
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Episode 80: The Law (David Gore • Exodus 20:1-17)
Moses’ reception of the Law was a key moment in the formation of the people of Israel. A disparate group of tribes and hangers-on emerged from Egypt into a land they did not know. The challenges that could pull them apart were many. The things that held them together were few. In this context…
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Episode 79: Once for all (David Gore • 1 Peter 3:18-22)
St Peter wants his readers to be aware that their sins have been forgiven. The believer has been brought close to God... made alive in spirit! Those who were once locked up within the prison of their self-interest have been set free by the grace-shaped love of God. Just as the ark saved Noah and...
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Episode 78: Elijah (David Gore • 2 Kings 2:1-12)
Elijah is certainly an enigmatic character in the history of Israel. Coming (as he does) after the period of institutionalisation of temple worship and the monarchy, he is a most unconventional presence in the stories he inhabits. The story of Elijah’s death and the passing of his prophetic…
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Episode 77: Not Weary (David Gore • Isaiah 40:21-31)
The ups and downs of life can be wearing at times. Not only the continual changes in circumstances that life often brings, but also the combined overall mood of the culture around us that can lift us or pull us down. Isaiah spoke to the people of Israel at a time when they had been wearied by…
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Episode 76: New teaching with authority (David Gore • Mark 1:21-28)
If we hear teaching with authority, there are a number of ways in which that authority might function. The sense of authority in the teaching might be by virtue of the identity or position of the teacher. It might be the critical mass of the group who’s attention the teacher commands. It may be…
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Episode 75: It’s Time (David Gore • Mark 1:14-20)
Despite the sense that history keeps repeating, the story of humanity is going somewhere. There has been a steady development of the ways in which societies have structured themselves and cared for the most vulnerable. There have been key moments in this process. Jesus’ entry into history is one…
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Episode 74: The One (David Gore • John 1:43-51)
The process of being found by, and consequently finding Jesus, is one that changes the way we perceive everything. We are brought up in an environment that tacitly indicates it is our responsibility to placate the divine powers. The reality is that the real threat is from within our own human...
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Episode 73: God in flesh (David Gore • John 1:10-18)
When we encounter paradox, it should alert us that our categories may be too small for the data we are observing. Paradox is that moment when the way we have understood a thing (up to now) contradicts the way we have understood another thing (up to now). This suggests there may be a way of...
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Episode 72: No longer slaves (David Gore • Galatians 4:4-7)
Not many of us would consider ourselves to be slaves. Yet, for how many of us is it the reality that we are driven? The dynamic of God’s kingdom is that we are no longer slaves. We are no longer driven. We have been adopted as children. Called. Invited! As children, we also inherit good things…
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Episode 71: Mystery Made Manifest (David Gore • Romans 16:25-27)
When St Paul writes of a mystery that has been made known through the scriptures that leads to an obedience of faith to the glory of Jesus Christ, he is not simply stringing together a bunch of ideas because they sound interesting. Paul is referring to the central awareness that the revelation of...
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Episode 70: Time to hope (David Gore • Isaiah 40:1-11)
Hope is not simply an important part of a fulfilling life. Hope is of the essence of the People of God. God’s people are a people looking toward the fulfilment of the promises of God. There are partial fulfillments along the way. Yet the very experience of the hoped for fulfilment gives rise to…
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Episode 69: When certainties fall (David Gore • Mark 13:24-37)
It is always better to have a reasonable sense of where you are. We find it helpful and reassuring to be able to plot where we have come from, where we are headed, and where we are at now. To assist us, we make use of reference points that are stable, that we can take comparative readings from.…
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Episode 68: Talents (David Gore • Matthew 25:14-30)
The nature of parables is that different people tend to hear different things in these brief stories Jesus told. Everything from an endorsement of capitalism to the judgement of God on laziness have been heard in the Parable of the Talents. The relational dynamics demonstrated by the 3 slaves…
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Episode 67: The Virgins (David Gore • Matthew 25:1-13)
The outrageous part of Jesus’ story about the ten young women in Matthew 25 is not that the women with oil refused to share their meagre supplies with the women who had not thought to bring enough for the long wait through the night. Neither is it that the women who had to go to the merchants to...
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Episode 66: Hypocrites (David Gore • Matthew 23:1-12)
It seems to come naturally to us to want to impress upon others just how well we are doing. Whether in our career or our religion, we would rather people thought we were on top of things rather than failing. When the impression becomes more important than the substance, we are in trouble. We have...
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Episode 65: The Divinity of Christ (David Gore • Matthew 22:34-46)
In the highly charged religio-political world of first century Palestine, any claim of divinity would have been greeted with skepticism and opposed with force (not unlike today in many ways). Jesus avoids evoking immediate violent opposition by gently introducing the notion that the Christ might…
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Episode 64: To whom we belong (David Gore • Matthew 22:15-22)
Jesus’ opponents seek to trap him by playing to one of his strengths. Jesus discerns what they are up to. Rather than skirt the issue or make an unclear response, Jesus shocks his audience with a full throated affirmation in precisely the opposite direction to what they were expecting. Jesus then...
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More than Fair (David Gore • Matthew 20:1-16)
Generosity is something of a disruptive dynamic. We have no way to quantify or codify it. We cannot command nor control how it comes to us. If it comes to us in a measure different to the measure given to someone else, we find it difficult to know what to make of this. Yet, the grace that gives...
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Accountability (David Gore • Matthew 18:15-20)
Personally, I prefer to avoid confrontation. However, pretending something is not there does not make it go away. It gives it space to grow. Jesus encourages his followers to be accountable to each other and to hold each other to account. This is not the laid back or fun part of community. It is...
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Finding Life (David Gore • Matthew 16:21-28)
The sense of call that drew Jesus to Jerusalem and into the hands of those he knew would take his life, was fundamental to his identity. The Messiah came to show the love of God to people. Jesus was not naïve about how that love would be received. An acceptance of where things are headed, can...
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Power of words (David Gore • Matthew 16:13-20)
Many of the utterances we hear these days are not worth the time it would take to listen to them. The trend appears to be the use of words without proper consideration of their meaning nor the truth value of the statement being made. There are a few utterances well worth listening to and…
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Walking on Water or Watching the Wind (David Gore • Matthew 14:22-33)
When was the last time you had a sense the call of Christ was bidding you to place your feet where you had no reasonable expectation that your weight would be supported? Have you had that experience? How did you respond? The life of faith, responding to the call of Christ, is always bidding us to...
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Scarcity to Abundance (David Gore • Matthew 14:13-21)
We like to have more than enough to go around - especially when it comes to the essentials. Scarcity is an experience that triggers our survival instincts and heightens our competitiveness for needed resources. Imagine there was a way to overcome the reflex that causes us to focus on our own...
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We overwhelmingly conquer (David Gore • Romans 8:26-39)
Every now and then elements within the church dabble in triumphalism. There is something perpetually attractive about the notion of the greatest power in the universe being on one’s own team. The reality is, of course, that God never joins anyone’s team. We are invited to participate in God’s...
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Unseen Hope (David Gore • Romans 8:12-25)
What is it that keeps you going? Day to day life changes and we all have our ups and downs. What is it that keeps you going when there is more down than up? Another way to ask this is, What do you hope in? What do you hope to see happen? What is it that you want to participate in? What are you...
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No Condemnation (David Gore • Romans 8:1-11)
The grace we enjoy as those set free from the fear of condemnation opens new opportunities to us to be transformed in the most profound ways. The fear of condemnation drives a kind of slavish obedience to the rules. Obedience undertaken in the hope that we might be judged somehow acceptable. Now...
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The struggle with the flesh (David Gore • Romans 7:15-25)
The internal tussle between what we know to be good and what we seem to find ourselves doing despite our knowing what is good, is as old as humanity itself. It is a universal experience to have unconscious drives within us that take us places our conscious weighing of things would never direct…
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The Reward You Cannot Lose (David Gore • Matthew 10:40-42)
The people a person welcomes and the people they turn away from can tell us a lot about that person. Who we like to associate with and who we avoid, can offer insight into what we hold as most important. Insight that looks past our capacity for self-justification. When Jesus speaks of receiving…
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Alive to God (David Gore • Romans 6:1-11)
St Paul made a lot of Christ’s death and resurrection. He saw it as the pivot point on which all of human history and meaning turned. For Paul, these events were not simply historic. They were events that the believer somehow participated in through identification with Christ. What does it mean...
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All Authority (David Gore • Matthew 28:16-20)
The kind of authority that has been given to Jesus is different to the style of authorities we have become accustomed to in the world. Jesus’ authority is uniquely powerful without being over powering. We become fully immersed in it without being overwhelmed by it. It disciples and builds us...
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Rivers of Living Water (David Gore • John 7:37-39)
Jesus promises those who believe in him that they will have ‘rivers of living water bubbling forth from them’. What on earth might this mean?! This was a looking forward to the coming and impact of the Holy Spirit. A spirit not of humanity but from beyond us. A unique and other spirit. This…
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The hope of the Ascension (David Gore • Acts 1:6-14)
Well established expectations take a long time to die. When we have held a particular hope in our hearts for a meaningful duration of time, letting go of that hope - even in the face of overwhelming evidence that holding on to such a particular hope will certainly end in disappointment - is not...
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Unexpected Mercy (David Gore • 1 Peter 2:2-10)
In this excerpt from Peter’s pastoral letter to the churches in Asia Minor there are some very particular concepts and images. It seems likely that letters like this one from Peter were deliberately coded messages. They used images and ideas that the church would know how to interpret. They wrote...
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The One to follow (David Gore • 1 Peter 2:19-25)
So many things about the Jesus story have the potential to mess with our sense of justice. Perhaps that is the point?! Could it be that our sense of justice has not been much like justice from the beginning?! The gospel story offers an alternative approach to seeing and weighing everything.
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Resurrection (David Gore • Col 3:1-4)
The church has always championed the resurrection as the key moment in the story of salvation - as it surely is. Too often this has found expression in a kind of misguided attempt to exert a form of authority over people who were not sure they wanted to come under that authority. But the...
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Self-Emptying (David Gore • Phil 2:5-11)
St Paul takes up an ancient hymn to highlight the self-giving nature of Christ. This is perhaps the most challenging aspect for disciples of the call to follow Christ.
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Water of Life (David Gore • John 4:5-42)
It is common to develop a sense of who we are, based on where we have come from. Our roots often set our course through life and remain an unconscious guide for us as we proceed. However, where we have come from cannot tell us all of who we are. Neither does it contain all the resources required...
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Intent, Desire and Integrity (David Gore • Matthew 5:21-37)
As if it were not enough that Jesus places exacting expectations on his followers with regard to their words and behaviours… in today’s reading (Matt 5:21-37) Jesus goes still deeper with concern for intent, desire and integrity in his followers. It might be easy to hear these words as a kind of...
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Temptation (David Gore • Matt 4:1-11)
Temptation is a feature of human existence. Life is an running stream of choices that are sometimes straightforward for us. But sometimes our choices are nuanced with a sense of clarity regarding the ’right’ thing to do that is undermined by an overwhelming desire to do something else. What is...
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Discipleship (David Gore • Matt 5:13-20)
Jesus made extensive use of metaphor when he taught and preached. He found word pictures the most useful way to convey his meaning. These are deliberately imprecise and open to variable interpretations. Almost as though the wresting conversation that would ensue down through history was a design...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Each week we are challenged and encouraged to think through our faith in Christ and what it means to follow him each day.
HOSTED BY
David Gore
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does MustardSeed Talks 2019 have?
MustardSeed Talks 2019 currently has 90 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is MustardSeed Talks 2019 about?
Each week we are challenged and encouraged to think through our faith in Christ and what it means to follow him each day.
How often does MustardSeed Talks 2019 release new episodes?
MustardSeed Talks 2019 has 90 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to MustardSeed Talks 2019?
You can listen to MustardSeed Talks 2019 on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts MustardSeed Talks 2019?
MustardSeed Talks 2019 is created and hosted by David Gore.
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