A lesson in humility, Mark 9:30-37

I have said previously that Jesus has entered into a transitionary stage in His ministry, in which His focus is more on teaching His disciples rather than ministering to the multitudes. And that reveals a principle that should be paramount in the church, which is that once a person is saved it is essential for them to be discipled, for them to grow in maturity, to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. It is essential for the person who is saved to grow in sanctification. Hebrews 12:14 tells us that without sanctification no one will see the Lord.

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War of the worlds, Mark 9:14- 29

I have titled this message this morning “War of the Worlds.” That title may sound familiar to some of you who may be aware of the Orson Welles science fiction radio program of that name that ran during World War 2. It was based on a book by H.G. Wells which was written around 1897. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, it was a book about the invasion of earth by Martian alien creatures. It was one of the first of it’s kind of that sort of science fiction. One significant quote from that book says, “Yet

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A foretaste of God’s glory, Mark 9:1-8

Today’s passage, Mark 9:1-8, you will also find a parallel passage in Matthew 17, and also in Luke chapter 9. So if I appear to say something which is not in your text as you look down at it, then that is probably because the reference that I’m making is either to the Matthew passage or to the Luke passage. John, in the prologue to his gospel, makes at least a tangential reference to this event when, in the course of his statement concerning Jesus, he says of him in John 1:14, “we beheld His glory, glory as of the

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The Mission of the Messiah, Mark 8:27-38

Last week I said that we were entering a stage of Jesus’s ministry in which there was a transition. It was a transition from Him primarily preaching and ministering to the multitudes, to His ministry primarily being focused on the disciples. Jesus knew that it would be less than a year until He is taken away from them, and they must continue to carry out His ministry. And so He wants to prepare them for His departure. But there is another transition in His ministry, and that is that He is slowly but inexorably heading for the cross. In this

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Progressive sanctification,  Mark 8:1-26

I want to emphasize something about Mark’s gospel as we continue in our verse by verse study of it this morning. And that is that Mark is not writing a biography of Jesus, he is not writing a history of Jesus Christ nor His ministry. But Mark is writing the gospel. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ. The good news is God’s plan of salvation for His people, brought about and manifested through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Now I emphasize that point because understanding that helps us to discern

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The power to change the heart, Mark 7:24-37

Last Sunday we looked at the passage in Mark where Jesus rebuked the Pharisees because of their hypocrisy.  These religious leaders cleaned the outside of the cup, so to speak, but the inside was full of corruption.  They publicly made a great show of  following the traditions of men, which presumably had their basis in religious law, but inwardly they broke the commandments of God.  And so Jesus taught the disciples that it was necessary to have a clean heart, for out of the heart proceeds all evil. Now a clean heart or a new heart speaks of a spiritual

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Defilement of the heart, Mark 7:1-16

Today we are going to look at a rather lengthy section of scripture in our ongoing study of Mark. It’s a bit longer than I normally try to present, but I think it’s all connected, and to break it up into two sermons would cause difficulties in trying to understand it. So for the sake of context, I want to consider the whole passage. But don’t worry, I will try to move quickly through it, so that it doesn’t take twice as long as I normally would take. Chapter six ended with Jesus having walked on the water to the

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How to walk on water, Mark 6: 45-52

How to walk on water, Mark 6: 45-52 As it is our practice to preach through the Bible verse by verse, I rarely have much opportunity to preach messages that are of a more instructional or motivational nature. Many pastors tend to preach nothing but motivational type of messages, like “How to have your best life now.” Or “You are very powerful.” Or “How to find success in life.” Those are actual messages from pastors that purvey the prosperity gospel, which is very popular. And Lord knows, I would like to be popular. So as I prepared for todays sermon,

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Jesus feeds the 5000, Mark 6:30-44

Today we have come in our study of Mark to a story that I’m sure is familiar to anyone who has been to church for any length of time or to Sunday school. It’s one of the favorite stories of the Bible that is often taught to children. It’s the story of Jesus feeding the 5000. And there is plenty to consider and learn about Jesus even if the story is told in a straightforward, simple retelling. On just a rudimentary level, even a child can understand that the Lord is compassionate and is able to do miracles. But this

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The Death of John the Baptist, Mark 6: 14-29

Tertullian, who lived as a Christian preacher and theologian in the second century, is credited with the expression, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” He wrote this phrase in a treatise which he sent to the governors of the Roman Empire, in to hope to quell the persecution of the early Christians. What he was basically saying is that the blood of Christians is a seed which multiplies the converts to Christianity, so rather than their persecution stopping Christianity, it causes the church to flourish. That’s a counterintuitive thing to consider, that persecution makes the

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