Mark 16:1-8 - The Resurrection of Christ

We come to the most essential claim of the Christian faith—the resurrection of Christ. Mark’s record of it is concise and to the point. This was my introduction to this sermon:

[None of the gospel writers actually describes the resurrection. They don’t take us to the scene and give us detail. They can’t, for no one was there to witness it—not the actual event. What the writers do is record for us what others witnessed after the fact—the empty tomb, angels, post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. They don’t offer proof, they offer a witness. But it is a very powerful witness.

One could make the case that if Jesus had not risen from the dead we would not have any gospels at all. At Jesus’s death his disciples have been scattered, his family is in a state of unbelief, one of his closest confidants has betrayed him, another has denied him. He has no one left except for a few women who have neither the means nor the social status to carry on his teachings.

Had Jesus not risen from the dead there would be no Christianity. This is true not only from a theological standpoint (the resurrection vindicated Jesus’s teaching) but also from a historical standpoint. If Jesus had remained in the tomb his ministry would have been over, his disciples forever disillusioned, and his legacy would have been one line penned by Josephus—barely a footnote in history.

“But in fact Jesus has been raised from the dead.” Those are the words of Paul writing some ten to fifteen years before Mark. That is the adamant belief of the apostles and the early church. And that they believed this is the only adequate explanation for the bursting forth of Christianity on the world in the first century. The best evidence for the truth of the resurrection is the existence of the New Testament and the existence of Christianity itself, for without a resurrection we would have neither.

But we are here this morning somehow, aren’t we? And we’re holding in our hands a record, a witness, of something astounding which must have taken place two thousand years ago or what we’re holding in our hands probably wouldn’t even exist. If Jesus was laid in that tomb never to rise again then he is just another in a long line of would-be Messiahs and prophets and teachers. But if he indeed rose again from the dead then the world is forever changed.”]

To listen to the sermon in its entirety just click the link below. The audio is found at SoundCloud along with the rest of the sermons from the gospel of Mark. God bless you.

Click here: Mark 16:1-8 - The Resurrection of Christ


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Mark 15:40-47 - The Burial of Jesus

The crucifixion account is finished but there is still one more part to this story before we reach the end of chapter 15, one more sermon to preach, and it is on the burial of Christ. This is how I introduced it.

“When we study the Scripture as a whole we begin to notice patterns. One of the patterns we run across from the Old Testament, for example, is that of sin, judgment, and deliverance. The people turn away from God, fall into calamity, call out to God in repentance, and God sends a deliverer. You’ve noticed that, I’m sure, if you’ve ever read the Old Testament.

Another pattern or theme we see is that of God choosing his people. Seth begins a godly line. Noah finds grace in the eyes of God. Abraham is called out of idolatry to go out into a land. Prophets are chosen and commissioned. Kings are chosen and appointed. Priests likewise. God chooses a people and makes promises to bless them in spite of their sin. This is the case in the Old as well as the New Testaments. This ties in to the next theme we notice, that of covenant.

Perhaps the two most prominent themes in the Bible are those of covenant and redemption. God makes covenant promises to Adam, then to Noah, then to Abraham. God makes covenant with his people through Moses at Mt. Sinai. In fact, the history of God’s people in the Old Testament is that of covenant breaking and covenant renewal (which takes us back to and ties into that earlier theme we noted about sin, judgment, repentance, and renewal.) It is the covenant that the people are being called back to—covenant faithfulness.

But redemption, now that’s the big one. If the Bible has one overriding theme it would have to be that of redemption—and that redemption is focused on God’s Son, God’s unique Son, His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ. That is why when we look back at the Old Testament through New Testament eyes we are looking for Jesus in types and shadows and prophecies, for that is what Jesus himself has taught us to do. He is the theme of the Old Testament because redemption is the theme of the Old Testament. In fact, we might say that redemption is the theme, while covenant is the framework. Our failure is what necessitates this (the cycle) and God’s choosing his people is part and parcel of covenant. All of the Bible is important. To disagree with that last bit is to disagree with Jesus about the theme and purpose and importance of the Old Testament. 

Last week we finished with the pronouncement made by the Roman centurion who had been in charge of the crucifixion: “Truly this man was the Son of God!” It was the climactic moment of Mark. It was a Gentile, a Roman, stating boldly and clearly the premise that Mark had boldly and clearly set forward in the first line of his book. Everything between that first line and this climax had been building toward it. And it happened at the foot of the cross.

Now as we approach the end of this gospel there is still a little bit more story to tell. Jesus has given up his life in fulfillment of the Scriptures—specifically the suffering servant passages of Isaiah and those Psalms written with a similar theme. What was to become of him? What was to become of his message? What was to become of his body? Did they leave him on the cross?

You might think that last was a silly question, but history says otherwise. It was Roman practice to leave people on crosses for days and days, sometimes until their bodies decomposed. Burial for someone crucified was rare in the Roman world, though perhaps less rare in Palestine. In fact, it was forbidden except by magisterial decree. Usually the most one could hope for was being dumped into a mass grave. But the story of Jesus’s burial is a bit different, a bit unusual—worth telling, evidently, or Mark wouldn’t have spent so much time on it.

In fact, the burial of Jesus becomes a part of first century gospel witness. When Paul gives his famous statement on what the gospel is in his letter to the church at Corinth, he includes Jesus’s burial in his proclamation of the good news.

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,—1 Corinthians 15:1-4

“That he was buried.” Mark spends seven verses on it, more or less, and deems it that important to his story. Jesus died, that was last week. Jesus was buried, well, that happens today. Was the burial of Jesus pointed to in any way in the Old Testament? Jesus seems to think so. He claims that Jonah in the fish was something that pointed forward to his burial.

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.—Matthew 12:40

Three days and three nights was an idiomatic expression, not a literal 72 hour measurement, but the point is still clear. Jesus really, really, really died. He was in the ground for three days. No mistake about it. Mark, too, wants us to know that.

Mark begins this story of the burial in an odd way. He begins it with women.…”

To listen to this sermon, just click the link below. God bless.


Click here: Mark 15:40-47 - The Burial of Jesus


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Mark 15:33-39 - The Son of God

What made Jesus’s crucifixion special? That’s a question I tackle in the introduction to this sermon, the third sermon covering Mark’s account of the crucifixion story. Here’s that introduction:

“Historical estimates of the number of people, both men and women, crucified by the Romans ranges from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands. In 71 BC, for example, some 6000 slaves were crucified on the same day along the Appian way outside Rome. In the province of Judea alone, during the first century, thousands of Jews were crucified—many of them during the siege of Jerusalem that Jesus warned his disciples about back in chapter 13. So the mere fact of being crucified, or even of a Jew being crucified by Romans, was not unique.

While much is made in modern times about the pain and physical agony endured by Jesus at his crucifixion, the truth is that millions have suffered similarly. The Romans were not the only ancient people to crucify. Crucifixion has also been practiced by Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Scythians, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Seleucids. There were also the Indians, Britons, Taurians, Thracians, Celts, Germans, Japanese, Wallachians, Ottoman Turks, Spaniards, Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes, Soviets, Tibetans, Chinese, North Koreans, and very recently, Islamic jihadists.

So what makes Jesus’s crucifixion special? What makes it different? Why is his remembered while so many others are forgotten? Part of the answer to that will come at the beginning of the next chapter. But much of it is answered by Mark right here in the verses laid before us this morning. This was not just any death. This was not just any crucifixion. And this was no ordinary man hanging on that Roman cross.

We pick up where we left off last week, in the middle of Mark’s crucifixion narrative. Up until now Jesus has been the passive recipient of mistreatment at the hands of many different actors. Now the narrative focuses in on Jesus. Verses 29-32 recorded the mockery of the scribes as Jesus hung on the cross. But in verse 33 there is the first of several things Mark records which makes the crucifixion unique.”

To listen to the sermon just click the link below. God bless.


Click here: Mark 15:33-39 - The Son of God


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Mark 15:22-32 - He Saved Others

This is part 2 of the crucifixion narrative. Here’s how I introduced this sermon:

“If we were to approach the gospel of Mark as a skeptic, we might smirk at how hard Mark tries to paint his crucifixion story in a way as to make us believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of what was written in the Psalms and Isaiah and Zechariah. We might say that he isn’t giving a true account, he is purposefully molding the details to be in conformity with what was written in those places in order to spin this tragic misstep of Jesus (getting himself crucified) into something that was planned all along. 

And in this age of spin, where news is opinion, and where information is so hidden within the mounds and mounds of misinformation that it becomes hard to separate truth from propaganda, we might be tempted to dismiss what Mark writes on this basis. After all, it does look as if Mark is on purpose telling his story in such a way as to lead us to conclude that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that he is the fulfillment of all that the prophets had spoken. Is Mark just spinning? Or is he accurately reporting? And the answer is ‘both.’ Mark obviously has an agenda. He announced it in the very first line of his gospel. But what if his agenda is true? What if what he is telling is both true to the historical accounts and at the same time the fulfillment of what was written in the prophets?

Something that lends credibility to Mark is the fact that the idea of a suffering Messiah was so foreign to the Jewish conception of the time. It was nowhere to be found, either in the popular thinking of the day or in the rabbinical tradition. So this twist, then, this idea of a suffering Messiah is something that blindsides them. It comes out of nowhere.

But not exactly nowhere, because it is to be found in the Psalms and Isaiah and Zechariah. It was there all along, it was just ignored or missed by the students of those Scriptures in that day. But Mark feels justified to point it out, and if it were there all along, as it was, and if it were being ignored, as it so clearly was, then who can blame Mark for recording those events of the crucifixion in such a way as to highlight their correlation with what had been written in the prophets? Wouldn’t you and I have done the same? While bias is always grounds for suspicion, bias by itself is never sufficient grounds for the rejection of a truth claim.

And here is the Christian truth claim. Here is the gospel as defined by Paul some ten to fifteen years before Mark wrote. 

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,—1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (emphasis mine)

This is the Christian gospel—that the death of Christ was the plan all along and that it happened exactly according to the eternal decree of God as revealed by the prophets. Jesus was not the victim of circumstances beyond his control. Jesus is the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world.”

To listen to this sermon just click the link below. It will take you to the page on SoundCloud where the audio recording is located. You can stream it there or download it for later. God bless.


Click here: Mark 15:22-32 - He Saved Others


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Mark 15:15-21 - “King of the Jews”

We come now to the first of three sermons from Mark’s crucifixion account. Here’s my introduction to it:

[“Death by crucifixion was one of the cruelest and most degrading forms of execution ever devised by human perversity, even in the eyes of the pagan world.” Thus wrote William Lane, professor of New Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in his commentary on the gospel of Mark. And because I couldn’t figure out how to say it better, or even as well, in my own words, I decided just to quote him. 

A personage no less notable than the Roman poet and politician Cicero wrote this about crucifixion: “Even the mere word, cross, must remain far, not only from the lips of the citizens of Rome, but also from their thoughts, their eyes, their ears.”

Crucifixion was not a polite subject, nor was it brought up in polite conversation. It was unequaled in both suffering and shame. In the Roman world crucifixion was an unspoken vulgarity reserved for the provinces, for slaves, and for the worst forms of criminals. And if it were this way among the Romans, one can only imagine the attitude toward it, or rather against it, among the Jewish population.

The people of Israel had never executed in this manner. Their method, prescribed in the law of Moses, was stoning. In some cases, after a criminal had been executed by stoning, the body would be lifted up and hung on a gibbet as a public display. The message was this—this is what happens to those who commit heinous offenses. Add to that the words of Deuteronomy 21:

“And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.—Deuteronomy 21:22-23

Understand that not everyone stoned was then taken and hung on a gibbet, but some were. And the people understood the implications of that. This person has violated the law of God and for that he is cursed of God. It was an inviolable truth of Jewish thinking that anyone hung on a cross was cursed of God. And now Jesus is about to go to one of those crosses to be cursed of God.]

You will find the audio for the sermon in its entirety in the link below. Just click and listen. God bless you.


Click here: Mark 15:15-21 - “King of the Jews”


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Mark 15:1-15 - Jesus Before Pilate

With the turning of the page to Mark chapter 15 we start into this, the 65th sermon I preached from the Gospel of Mark. Here’s a quotation from early in the sermon.

“The Roman workday began at daybreak. It lasted until noon. Romans of the upper class spent their afternoons in leisurely pursuits. So it is vital, if they want to get this done, that they have Jesus before Pilate first thing in the morning. After having worked all night, the Sanhedrin meets one final time to make sure their ducks are in a row before they send him over to Pilate to be condemned.

Pilate served as the governor of Judea for about ten years, between 27 and 36 AD. His official title was “Prefect” and he was of a class of Romans just below senator. His job was to maintain peace and order in this province. Pilate did not live in Jerusalem, nor did any other Roman prefect who governed Judea in the first century. Pilate’s house was in Caesaria Maritima on the Mediterranean coast. But during the feasts, when so many pilgrims were crowding into the city, the governor would come stay in Jerusalem to help ensure order was maintained. The usual place of his temporary abode would have been Herod’s palace. 

So Jesus is bound and marched under guard through the streets to Herod’s palace where he arrives just in time for the beginning of Pilate’s day. Mark gets straight to the point and begins immediately describing Jesus’s trial before Pilate.”

And so the sermon covers the first fifteen verses of this chapter and takes us all the way to the flogging of Jesus. I hope you will take the time to listen to it. The sermon contains both information that you’ve probably never heard and application and meaning which you may have never thought of. So I hope you’ll listen. Just click the link below. God bless.


Click here: Mark 15:1-15 - Jesus Before Pilate


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