Chris is risen! He is risen indeed! On Good Friday Jesus was crucified for our sins, dying in our place so that we can be forgiven. Laid in the tomb through Holy Saturday. But Easter day has arrived. The stone is rolled away! The tomb…
Category: Mark’s Gospel
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Easter Day celebrates a wonderful unexpected surprise. They had watched Jesus being crucified on the Friday. Late that afternoon they had watched Jesus’s body laid in the tomb. All Saturday they had observed the Sabbath and waited. Early…
Romans 5 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates…
“Days were filled with guns and war and everyone got trampled on the floor – I wish we’d all been ready. Children died, the days grew cold, A piece of bread could buy a bag of gold. I wish we’d all been ready.” (Larry Norman)…
How much does it cost to be a Christian? Playing a sport can be expensive: buying all the kit and then playing the match fees or hiring the court every time. Even supporting a team can cost a fortune in tickets and travel to away…
When did God last answer one of your prayers? When was the last occasion when something happened and you knew without a doubt that it was God at work in response to your prayers? Or let me ask a different question. Are there some things…
I want to share a secret with you this morning. In all our sermons from Mark’s Gospel it is a secret which has been revealed to just a few people. It is a secret which has been closely guarded. Until now. We could call it…
Indifference! In today’s world that is the most common response when we tell people the gospel of Jesus Christ. Indifference. Occasionally irritation or annoyance. But not usually opposition, just apathy. How different it was when Jesus arrived in Jerusalem. 8 Many people spread their cloaks…
What do you expect to get from following Jesus? What do you really want from your Christian life? There came a point in His ministry when many of Jesus’s followers realised they weren’t getting what they expected, and they realised that the Christian life was…
Complete the well known saying, “Whoever is not ….” Most people know the answer to that question. “Whoever is not for us is against us!” All kinds of famous people have used that saying in their speeches. From Lenin and Mussolini to George Orwell to…
Have you been to the mountaintop? Have you seen the glory of the Lord? We talk about mountaintop experiences. Those outstanding moments of revelation which take us onward and upward in our journey of faith. Moments like that experience Moses had on Mount Sinai when…
On this Remembrance Day we think of those who paid the ultimate price to win the freedom we enjoy today. They gave everything they could. But how much does it cost us to follow Jesus? What does Jesus demand of his disciples? FOLLOWING JESUS IS…
“Who’s Jesus?” That’s the title of this whole series of sermons from Mark’s Gospel. Just who is Jesus Christ? We are now just half way through this Gospel and that is the question Jesus asks his disciples. 27 Jesus and his disciples went on to…
WHY DID JESUS TAKE THE MAN OUT OF THE VILLAGE? Sometimes our surroundings can stop us from meeting with Jesus and receiving His blessing. We know from other parts of the Gospels that the town of Bethsaida was particularly unresponsive to Jesus’s ministry. Matthew 11:21…
I read a newspaper article this week which really annoyed me. It was by one of those well-publicised Anglican priests who really should have gone into politics because he spends most of his time talking about politics and very little of his time talking about…
Back in the 1970s I remember going with some friends to the Harvest Festival in the village of Stowmarket in Suffolk. Surrounded by open fields the combine harvesters and tractors were parked around and we sat on hay bales sharing a barbecue and then a…
It was the great American preacher Billy Sunday who said that “the problem with sin is that people don’t take it seriously. People treat sin like a cream cake when they should treat it like a rattlesnake.” That reminded me of those TV adverts for…
Richard Wurmbrand was a pastor in the persecuted Romanian Underground Church in 1940s-60s. He tells the story of an occasion when armed police broke into a church service. “If you are not a true believer you may leave,” the police said and pointed their guns.…
I read recently that there are three kinds of people. Those who make things happen. Those who watch things happen and those who are always asking “what happened?” The Bible tells us that there are really only two kinds of people in the world. Different…
Our story this morning is a story about people. Jairus was an official of the synagogue. He was a layman, not a priest. His role was to supervise the synagogue buildings and arrange the services and sometimes lead worship. He was their equivalent of our…