Today we will finish preaching through the book of Mark. Mark began this book by calling it a gospel, in ch.1 vs 1.  He now concludes it, in chapter 16, with the Lord Jesus sending His disciples out to preach this very gospel in vs 15.  And we stand before you today preaching this same gospel, as evidence of the power of the gospel, and the eternal purpose of the gospel.  The gospel simply means the good news of Jesus Christ.  The good news is that Jesus is God, revealed in the flesh, who came to bear our sins, to

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Death is something that is inevitable, it comes to everyone sooner or later.  And yet I suppose, for something that is so universally common, considering it on a personal level is studiously  avoided.  At the risk of sounding overly morbid, the reality is that all of us are dying.  When we are young, death seemed like such a distant, otherworldly concept, that it scarcely concerned us.  We live like we will live forever.  But as we get older, as we see more and more of death, and as we see considerably more of the sands of time in the bottom

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It needs to be restated, that Mark is not writing a biography, but a gospel.  In other words, he is not attempting to record every little detail that occurred in the life of Jesus.  None of the four gospel writers do that.  Some may omit some things the others include, while including some things others omit.  And the reason for that is that they are writing a gospel, or a sermon if you will, which presents certain doctrines and principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ that they want to emphasize.  So as we consider this text before us today,

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In the passage of scripture we read today, we have seen a tragic picture of the fall of one of Christ’s closest friends, and devoted disciples.  Peter, by all accounts, was the foremost of the disciples.  He was the first to declare that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.  He was the one to jump in the water to walk on the waves with Christ in a storm.  If he had been a fireman, or a policeman or soldier, he would have always been first through the door.  Peter was a man that everyone looked up to.  He

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I am sure that the passage of scripture that we are looking at today is familiar territory for most of you.  I assume everyone here has at least a basic knowledge of the trial of Jesus Christ. But I want to look at the historical context in a moment, and make sure we understand that correctly.  And then ultimately, I want to apply the spiritual principles that I think are incorporated in the text.  However, since we have already read the text, I think it will be helpful if we identify what the crux of this passage is teaching before launching into

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We are looking today, in our ongoing study of the book of Mark, at the night before the death of Jesus Christ.  It is the night of His betrayal.  Actually, there are multiple betrayals.  We are all familiar with the betrayal by Judas, but we will see that before the night is over, all of Jesus’ disciples will have deserted Christ.  Now remember that at the beginning of that evening, which was Thursday evening, Jesus and His disciples observed the Passover.  It was customary for the Galileans to observe the Passover supper on Thursday, and the Judeans would observe it

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Today we are looking at the section of scripture in which Jesus institutes the Lord’s Supper.  It is called by various names in Christianity today. In some churches, it is the eucharist, in some, it is communion. All refer to the same ceremony, yet all do not observe it in the same way.  It is the belief of this church, and most conservative, evangelical Christian churches, that this ceremony is one of two essential ordinances for the church, the other being baptism.  In fact, some theologians have said that the identifying factors of the church are that it observes the

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Back in chapter 12, you will remember that Jesus was asked, “what is the foremost commandment?”  And of course the answer that Jesus gave was “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.”   Now that should be very familiar to all of you.  However, have you really thought about this foremost commandment of God?  If you consider all of the traditions of all the false religions and false gods of the world, in which of them does their god declare that

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