Today we are beginning a new study in the book of Hebrews.  Hebrews is one of my favorite books of the Bible.  I preached through it years ago, I’m not sure how long ago now.  In fact, I can’t find my old notes.  So I’m approaching it this time with a completely fresh perspective, hopefully one that has been enriched after preaching through the whole New Testament which we just finished with the book of Mark last week. Many, many years ago, I used to have a part time job on the beach right over there every morning for a

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  It has been our policy to preach through the Bible verse by verse, chapter by chapter, for many, many years now, even long before we officially became The Beach Fellowship. I started preaching through the New Testament way back in the day when we were Christian Surfers meeting at Salt Pond. And so today is a special day, because today is the day when I finish preaching through the entire New Testament. I haven’t figured out exactly how many years it has taken me, but it’s about 15 or 16 years. Along the way we also preached through Genesis,

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  Today we are looking at the last chapter of Mark, particularly the section of scripture in which he records the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  The chapter begins early Sunday morning.  We ended our message last Sunday speaking of the burial that happened after the crucifixion which was on Friday afternoon.  You will remember that Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus were in a hurry to bury Jesus’s body because the Sabbath was quickly approaching.  The Sabbath was counted by the Jews from sundown on Friday, to sundown on Saturday.  We count our days from midnight to midnight. 

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Death is something that is inevitable, it comes to us all.  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 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 of the glass

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I believe, without question, that the greatest pivotal event in history is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  The Old Testament saints looked forward to it, and the New Testament church looks back to it.  But not only is it central to Christians, the cross is the monumental centerpiece of the history of the whole world.  Even our calendar reflects the fact of Jesus’s life and death.  I know, AD does not mean “after death.” It means “anno domini”, which means “in the year of our Lord.”  However, even though historians now use BCE or CE, meaning “before common era,” and

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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 is presenting certain doctrines and principles that they want to emphasize.  So as we consider this text before us today, it’s important that we

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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 greatest, most courageous disciples.  Peter, by all accounts, was the foremost of the disciples.  He was first to declare Jesus as 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 to look up to.  He was a natural

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  I suppose that the section of scripture 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.  It is doubtful that I could add much that would be new to you.  And to be honest, that really is not what the purpose of my message should be; to teach some new thing, some new nugget of knowledge that you can add to your spiritual knowledge bank.  Sometimes I think that we confuse that approach with expositional preaching.  My view of expositional

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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.  For those of you wanting to hear the story of the resurrection, I’m sorry to disappoint you.  I’ve been going through the book as fast as I could, but we are here today I believe by the providence of God.  For the question really that needs to be asked regarding the life of Christ, is why did He need to suffer and to die? And then when we answer that, I think we will have a new

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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 identification of the church is that it observes the

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