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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One of the titles of Jesus that we are looking at today is the title of Lord.  I think that the true sense of that word is somewhat lost on our culture today.  It would be better understood in a feudal system, where someone who was considered the lord owned all the land, provided protection and was served by the people of the land.  Over time, the title extended to various types of nobility, such as a Lord of Parliament, or someone called Lord who held an office of authority in government. Another historical use of the word was, of

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As we look at the passage before us today, we see three sets of people who ask questions of Jesus, but not so that they might gain understanding or knowledge, but so that they can trap Him in something that He said in order to use it against Him.  Their ultimate goal is to put Him to death, so they are looking for some sort of justification, hoping for something that they can label as blasphemous in order to have a reason to put him to death.   What’s interesting is that Jesus has managed in three short years of

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In Hebrews 1:3 the scripture tells us that Jesus is “the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of [God’s] nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” And to that end, in the last couple of chapters we have seen Mark present different dimensions of Jesus’ divine nature, each displaying a different aspect of God’s character.  In chapter 10 we see Jesus presented as the Good God, as the Savior, as our Sacrifice, as the Suffering Servant, as the Son of Man, and as the Son of David.  In chapter 11, we see Jesus described

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Some of the events that are recorded before us today are probably very familiar to many of you.  If you’ve been at church on the major holidays during your life then you’ve probably heard a few messages on Palm Sunday, and may have been given little palm branches to take home.  Well, today is not Palm Sunday, but we are going to be looking at events that start on what is called Palm Sunday and continue to Tuesday in what is known as the Passion week.   However, I would like to forego a lot of the traditional emphasis that

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Last week we looked at the most important question in the world, which is what must I do to inherit eternal life? The rich young ruler was considered a good person. But he found that he wasn’t good enough to enter the kingdom of heaven. The question before us today in the passage we’re looking at, is how do you become great in the kingdom of God? A desire for greatness is a worthy goal, if it is achieved within the realm of the kingdom of heaven. But I would be willing to guess that many people who may desire

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