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Do Not Move On From The Devil!
In the past two weeks, our study of Mark’s gospel has been in the first part of chapter 5. This is the story of Jesus’ encounter with the demoniac of Gadara. This was a man inhabited by thousands of demons. The story is intriguing and piques our interest as we dive deeper into its components.…
Do You Know Enough To Deny A Demon?
In our study today, we return to Mark chapter 5 and Jesus’ encounter with the maniac of Gadara. This man’s problem was demon possession, a condition Jesus healed him of, set him free, and changed his life from the darkness of Satan to the light of the gospel. It is an incident recorded in the…
Leave The Devil Alone
Today, we begin our study of Mark 5 and another of Jesus’ miracles in which He showed God’s power over the supernatural powers of darkness. The apostle Paul spoke of this power in Ephesians 6 warning us that the Christian life is one in which we fight against a non-human enemy. We fight against principalities,…
Nehushtan
Today’s message takes us into the Old Testament to learn the background of one of the New Testament’s most famous chapters. This is the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3. At the time of this conversation, there were no New Testament books which meant the entirety of scriptures was the Old Testament much…
The Kingdom Intention For The Church
Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. (Acts 2:41-42) For the past month, our study in Mark has been Jesus’ parables in…
What Worldview?
In the past two weeks, much of my Bible reading has been from the Old Testament in Samuel, the Kings, and the Chronicles. In only a few chapters, the authors cover hundreds of years of Israel’s history from the inauguration of David as king to the captivities of the Assyrians and Babylonians. If we read…
Good Doctrine
This week as I prepared to write the bulletin article, there were dozens of thoughts in my head but nothing that clearly stood out as a topic for this article. We began the week preparing for Pam’s surgery which involved multiple doctors’ appointments with each one saturated with dozens of questions. How would the doctors…
Living For Jesus
Living for Jesus, a life that is true,Striving to please Him in all that I do.Yielding allegiance, glad-hearted and free,This is the pathway of blessing for me. Since I was old enough to talk, we regularly sang this hymn in our church. I grew up with it, but as I have grown older, I seldom…
Perception And Understanding
This morning, we are happy to return from our vacation to enjoy the fellowship of our own church. Visiting other churches while traveling is a good time to help us remember the many reasons we love our church so much. Other churches may offer more programs, they may have more professionals on staff, and they…
Skullduggery
Fourteen years ago, I decided to write a weekly article for our bulletin. You are aware that in 2019, several of our families secretly conspired to compile these articles and publish them in a beautiful volume of over 700 pages. The book was a surprise gift and I placed it prominently among far lesser works…
Life From The Dead
I remember writing an article a few years back about the advantages of a long tenure as pastor of the church. The average pastorate today is only about 2-3 years, and I am happy to have met and exceeded that statistic many years ago. In 21 years, I have ministered to hundreds of people. As…
Does It Fit?
In today’s message, I will give you an introduction to parables. This message precedes a series of five messages on the parables of Mark chapter 4. Some parables are simple enough on the surface, but only because we are already familiar with them from other studies. However, some are quite difficult, and their meaning is…
Supper Sermons
Today the church is privileged to sit at the Lord’s Table for our last observance of the year. Another year of remembrance is past and reminds us of our connection to the first church that observed what Christ would do, not what He already had done. The first Supper began as the Passover meal. The…
Hannah’s Thanksgiving Vow
And Hannah prayed, and said, My heart rejoiceth in the LORD, mine horn is exalted in the LORD: my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; because I rejoice in thy salvation.There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God. (1 Samuel 2:1-2) If…
Speak No Evil
A few days ago, I sat in my office at home working on an upcoming sermon. Variations of this duty fill most of my days. It takes time to prepare sermons and make all the peripherals of the sermon come together for the Sunday morning service. The material for the printed outlines, the PowerPoint presentation,…
Tolerance Invites Judgment
Today’s message from the Gospel of Mark delves into questions about the way Jesus treated His family. Our text in chapter 3 at first appears that Jesus showed disrespect to His mother and brothers. While Jesus was addressing the multitudes of people always following Him, His family came asking others to inform Him they were…
Peter And Paul On The Same Page
In last week’s article about the apostle Paul, I mentioned the dust-up between him and Peter over Peter’s hypocrisy among the Galatian churches. I am sure you did not think too much about this, but I am concerned I could have left the wrong impression about Peter’s faith. At no time were Peter and Paul…
All Glory To Christ
In the past few weeks of our study in Mark’s Gospel, I have taken our sermon time to describe Jesus’ selection of the twelve apostles. We are nearing the end of this interlude and will finish with the one disciple who was notorious and never converted to believe in Jesus. We finish next week with…
Great Servants
A few weeks ago, in my introduction to the apostles, I spoke of Peter’s impertinent question posed to Jesus. Our Lord finished a conversation with the rich young ruler telling him that his salvation was dependent upon keeping the commandments, selling all his earthly goods, giving the proceeds to the poor, and finally, coming…
Apostles With Authority
These past few weeks, and with still more to come, we have studied Jesus’ selection of the apostles. There is no fair argument from scripture that the words of the apostles are any less authoritative than the words of Jesus. Despite this, there is no shortage of arguments claiming that Jesus deserves more trust…
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