Mark 14:12-21 - Jesus Celebrates Passover

This is how I introduced this sermon:

“We began this chapter last week with the anointing of Jesus at Bethany. The faith, love, and devotion displayed by the unnamed woman there, Jesus called beautiful. She had done this, he had said, for his burial. And we were reminded again that Jesus is on a mission.

He first said they were going to Jerusalem. Then he had said that he was going to die there—that he would be rejected by Israel, handed over to the Gentiles, and executed. He repeated this twice more in chapters nine and ten.

Mark has informed us of this for the express purpose of making sure we understood that what happened to Jesus was according to plan. The son of man must go to Jerusalem, Jesus had said. He must be rejected. He must be handed over. He must die. 

Mark has told us this so that we would not make the mistake of thinking that perhaps Jesus had miscalculated, or that things had spiraled out of control. Jesus has entered the heart of enemy territory, is offering himself up, and now he will be crucified. Peter will say in just a few weeks that all of this happened according to the ‘definite plan and foreknowledge of God.’ It was foretold by the prophets who spoke as they were ‘moved along by the Holy Spirit.’ It must happen this way.

So after the story of his being anointed for burial at Bethany we were told how Judas went to the chief priests and offered them the information they needed in exchange for money. That’s where we ended last week.

What we’re about to see is that just as Jesus sent disciples ahead to make preparations for his entrance to Jerusalem back in chapter eleven, so he does again, this time for the celebration of the Passover meal. The stories and details are remarkably similar and serve to emphasize that Jesus is in complete control of events as we edge closer and closer to crucifixion. Everything is according to purpose—his as well as the Father’s.”

To listen to the sermon just click the link below.


Click here: Mark 14:12-21 - Jesus Celebrates Passover


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Mark 14:1-11 - Jesus Anointed At Bethany

Now it has come to it. We are at the cusp of the great event. We are peering at the climax of Mark’s gospel. More than that, we find ourselves on the verge of the climactic event of human history. Everything heretofore has been building toward this.

We finished chapter 13 last week and now we press forward to the end. Mark has been prepping us for this, and so has Jesus. In the very first verse of this gospel Mark told us the purpose of his writing, to announce to us the beginning of the good news of Jesus Messiah, the Son of God. Every step of the way he has shown us Jesus Messiah and he has also been preparing us for these climactic events. 

Way back in chapter 2 he began describing the building opposition to Jesus culminating early in chapter 3 with the plot between the Pharisees and Herodians to have him put to death. Then we witnessed miracle after miracle, event after event, that demonstrated to us in ever-increasing clarity that Jesus was, indeed, the promised Messiah, God in the flesh come to redeem us, come to fulfill all the promises made to Israel.

But he was not what the people expected. They expected, they desired, a warrior king to throw off the yoke and tyranny of Rome and usher in a new David-like kingdom of glory, like the one of old. But God had something much more grand in mind. God had in mind a world-wide kingdom which would transcend the temporary, provincial, political kingdom of David. What God was doing through Christ was far greater than all that they could ask or think or even dream. And yet it would be brought about in a way that they would never dream.

The Son of Man must suffer, Jesus had told them at Caesaria Philippi. He must suffer many things. He must be rejected. He must be executed. He must rise again the third day.”

That is the introduction to this first sermon from chapter fourteen of Mark, the first of fifteen sermons that will take us through the resurrection of Jesus and to the end of Mark’s Gospel. I’ve linked the sermon below so that you can listen to it and be blessed. I hope you will.


Click here: Mark 14:1-11 - Jesus Anointed At Bethany


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Mark 13:28-37 - Stay Awake!

This is the last sermon from Mark 13, the chapter which contains Jesus’s famous Olivet Discourse. What we look at in this sermon is the purpose of the discourse and what it says about the future of Israel and the Church. And we conclude with Jesus’s admonition to “Stay awake” and what that means in its New Testament context.

The whole of this chapter hinges around the cataclysmic judgment of Jerusalem and the temple and the end of Old Testament, Old Covenant Judaism. But it isn’t accurate to say that it ended. The better way to express it is that it was fulfilled and became what it was always destined to be. The promises made through the prophets to true Israel are being fulfilled and the unbelieving branches are being cut off.

When? And what will be the signs? That’s what the disciples want to know and that’s what Jesus has been telling them. In addition to that he has given them a confirmation of the coming of the kingdom and a glimpse of its fullness.

The whole discourse has been pastoral in tone. Jesus loves his disciples, and in his concern for them he has given them the information they need to survive and thrive through the coming days. And now he gives them one final lesson and warning.

To listen to this sermon just click the link below. A page will open up in your browser where you will be able to either stream the sermon immediately or download it for later listening. God bless you.

Click here: Mark 13:28-37 - Stay Awake!


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Mark 13:21-27 - The Coming of the Son of Man

We are in the middle of Jesus’s so-called Olivet Discourse and we are looking for signs of the times—the end times—but so far we aren’t finding any. Jesus began by naming a lot of things that were not signs. Then he gave them an actual sign, but it was a sign pointing to the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, not a sign of the end times like we think of them. Almost everything in this chapter, in fact, finds its fulfillment in 70 AD. Almost. But I explain that in the sermon.

One of the things Jesus does here is employ apocalyptic language. He borrows from the vocabulary of the Old Testament prophets and describes what is going to take place in those terms. This apocalyptic language is often misunderstood in our day.




Before we can properly interpret any writing we must try to place ourself in the writer’s shoes, understand who his audience is, and take into account any way of speaking he may have employed. The problem we run into with a passage like this in our modern American context is that we seek to interpret apocalyptic language as if it were modern and western. It wasn’t, and attempting to do this only leads to misunderstanding. This, too, is explained in the sermon.

I’m also going to explain how Old Testament Israel represents us, how the age we live in is the age of the Messiah, and how verse 26 probably does refer to the second coming of Christ (something which is typified in his coming in judgment against the temple in 70 AD). So click 5e link below and have a listen! It’s probably unlike any take on this passage you’ve ever heard before, but it’s really nothing new in the history of Christian teaching. God bless.


Click here: Mark 13:21-27 - The Coming of the Son of Man


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Mark 13:14-20 - Great Tribulation

End times speculation is a popular pastime in American evangelical circles, and a money-making proposition. The average southern evangelical can tell you next to nothing about the Trinity, has never heard of things like the aseity, or the sovereignty, or the simplicity of God, and has no idea what to make of words like propitiation or transcendence. He couldn’t explain original sin or the atonement, and likely couldn’t even name the books of the Bible. But he can tell you all about the seven year tribulation and the beast and the European Union. He can tell you for sure we need to support Israel no matter what, and that there’s going to be a war called Armageddon, and Russia is going to be involved, and thank God none of us will be here because the church is going to be raptured out. We are end-times crazy.

But what Jesus is saying in Mark 13 has very little to do with what we think of as the end times. He is talking about the destruction of the temple and the coming of his kingdom, two things which will take place within the lifespans of the people he is talking to.

In the previous sermon the disciples asked Jesus for signs. And in the first thirteen verses Jesus gives them none. But finally in verse 14 he does. What does it mean? What does it have to do with their questions or of the end of the age? Take a listen to the sermon below where I give answers to all these things and more.

Just click the link below. God bless.


Click here: Mark 13:14-20 - Great Tribulation


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Mark 13:1-13 - The End Is Not Yet

Chapter 13 has been a daunting mountain landscape looming on the horizon of my mind since I began preaching through this gospel over a year ago. I knew it was coming and that I wasn’t ready for it, so I began reading books in preparation months ahead of time. One of the books I read was Herman Ridderbos’s Coming of the Kingdom. I wanted to be sure I was interpreting Jesus’s words in this chapter in a way that was consistent with the rest of what he and Mark were saying in this gospel, as well as in the greater context of all the Bible.

By the time I got to this chapter, though, I was feeling more confident. And I believe I have conveyed the sense accurately. You may be the judge of that. In the end I took four sermons to cover the chapter. The first one I called “The End Is Not Yet.” I’ve linked it below.

My take on this chapter is probably different than what you’re used to if you’ve heard any preaching from Jesus’s Olivet Discourse before. Although it may be different from a more modern take, I assure you it is right in the center of Christian orthodoxy. There is no new teaching here as far as the history of the Church. In fact, I would argue that what you’ve heard is the new teaching. What I went digging to find is just older, perhaps forgotten in our day, but certainly more accurate to the text.

So I want to encourage you to click the link below and listen to Jesus’s words of prophecy concerning Jerusalem and the temple in an older, fresher way. God bless.


Click here: Mark 13:1-13 - The End Is Not Yet


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Mark 12:38-44 - Jesus Teaches In the Temple

This is how I introduced the 52nd sermon in this series on Mark, the last sermon in chapter 12:

“Remember last week how no one else dared to ask another question, so Jesus went ahead and asked one of his own? Remember what that question was? If Jesus is the Son of David, as the scribes say, then why is it that David, through the Holy Spirit, calls him Lord? If the Messiah is David’s Son then how can he also be David’s Lord at the same time?

And Mark did not record an answer for us, as if he wanted us thinking about the deeper implications of the question. As well we should. Modernism has fooled us into thinking that the Bible is a simplistic book. It is anything but. Men have dedicated their lives to understanding it, and more has been written about it than probably anything else in human history.

Because of the perspicuity of Scripture . . . You might be saying, what is that? What is the perspicuity of Scripture? In short, it means the clarity of Scripture. In the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith: "...those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them,”

You might say that this teaching, this idea of the clarity of Scripture has taken off, that it is has so been embraced in American evangelicalism that everyone who has attended Sunday School as a kid or has been in church any time at all thinks he has a pretty good grasp of just about all the Bible has to say. As a result, the reality of something else, the profundity of Scripture, has been lost. While we affirm the former we must not miss the latter. It is too easy to think that because we have learned a few things that we somehow know it all or know enough. We don’t.

The people in that crowd that day in the temple to whom Jesus was speaking knew a lot. They knew much more of the Old Testament Scriptures than we do. They had been steeped in it their entire lives. They had learned to read from it in early childhood. They had memorized large portions of it. They had recited it and prayed it and sang it and listened to it read aloud and explained over and over and over again. Yet they had failed to grasp some of the most important aspects of it. If Messiah was the son of David then how could he also be David’s Lord? The crowd didn’t know, and the scribes somehow had not considered it. Yet there it was. There was something deeper to consider and Jesus was challenging them to consider it.

You and I should consider this and be humbled. We have a long way to go ourselves. There is much that we need to consider. And when we approach the Bible we should approach it with a humble and teachable spirit. Lord, instruct me. Teach me. What is it I may have missed? No matter how much I study this book, no matter how much I dig, it always yields up more treasure. And the treasure is always worth the effort. Lord, help us today to grow deeper into your word.

That question, though, that Jesus asked, was not the only thing he had to say, nor was it the end of his public teaching. But this morning, when we get to the end of chapter twelve, we will have heard the last of Jesus’ public teaching as recorded by Mark. So let’s take a look at it.”

To listen to this sermon just click the link below. You know the drill—a new window will open up in your browser and you will have the option of streaming the audio or downloading it for future listening. God bless you. 

Click here: Mark 12:38-44 - Jesus Teaches In the Temple


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