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“Blood of the Covenant” (Exodus 24:3-11; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; Mark 14:12-26)“Blood” and “covenant” go together in the Bible pretty much all the time. Whenever God establishes a covenant with people, generally it is sealed with blood. And tonight is no exception. In fact, tonight is the culmination of this connection between blood and covenant. It’s Holy Thursday, the night in which our Lord Jesus Christ establishes a covenant with us and says, “This is my ‘Blood of the Covenant.’” I suppose we should start by explaining what this word “covenant” means, biblically speaking. In the Bible, a covenant is a...

“Your Committed and Determined King” (Mark 11:1-10; 14:12-26)Today is a Sunday that goes by two names, “Palm Sunday” and the “Sunday of the Passion.” As such, we get readings for both of these emphases. There is the Palm Sunday Processional Gospel at the start of the service, the account of Jesus riding into Jerusalem with palm branches spread before him. And there is the longer reading of the Passion of Our Lord, giving us an overview of the events later in Holy Week, through Jesus’ suffering and death. And as I looked over these two readings, something jumped out at...

“The Tree of Life in the Paradise of God” (Revelation 21:22 – 22:5, 22:14) And so we come full circle. One month ago, we began this series on “The Tree of Life” back there, at the tree of life in the garden. Now tonight we end up back where we started, once again at the tree of life. This is the story of the Bible, how we got away from the tree of life in the beginning, and how we end up at the tree of life in the end. The opening chapters of Genesis and the closing chapters of...

Morning and Evening Charles H. Spurgeon March 24, 2015 Morning Reading He was heard in that he feared. —Hebrews 5:7 Did this fear arise from the infernal suggestion that He was utterly forsaken. There may be sterner trials than this, but surely it is one of the worst to be utterly forsaken? "See," said Satan, "Thou hast a friend nowhere! Thy Father hath shut up the bowels of His compassion against Thee. Not an angel in His courts will stretch out his hand to help Thee. All heaven is alienated from Thee; Thou art left alone. See the companions with...

For this morning, I want you to open the Word of God to the third chapter of John, back to the third chapter of John and the opening ten verses. Now, you who have been with us the last couple of weeks know how important and critical this portion of Scripture is. You know something about it now that we’ve sort of penetrated it at least as far as verse 3. The good news, we’ll finish all the way down to verse 10 this morning. I can’t exactly tell you when but we will finish verse 10. Now I’m going...

“To Serve and to Give His Life as a Ransom” (Mark 10:32-45) These boys just don’t get it. The disciples, I mean. There’s a whole lot of misunderstanding going on in our text for today, the Holy Gospel from Mark 10, and it’s the disciples who don’t get it. They don’t understand what Jesus is telling them about why they’re going up to Jerusalem. They don’t understand about glory or greatness. They don’t understand suffering or servanthood. You know, maybe we don’t understand these things fully, either. But fortunately for the disciples--and for us--there is one person in this story...

“A Growing Tree” (Ezekiel 17:22-24; Matthew 13:31-32)The image of a tree, which may have started out rather small and insignificant, but which grows and expands until it becomes a very large tree, with branches and leaves where the birds of the air come to make their nests--this is an image that is used in a number of places in the Bible. And it is generally used to signify the rise and growth of a kingdom, a kingdom that grows and expands to include many nations in its empire. For example, in the Book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has...

“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ‘Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these things that You do unless God is with him.’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s...

“By Grace You Have Been Saved” (Ephesians 2:1-10) Our Epistle reading for today is one of the outstanding passages in all of Scripture for putting together in one package several important realities. And they are: man’s natural condition; God’s great love and kindness in saving us; how that salvation comes to us as a gift; and then the result of what God has done for us in how we lead our lives. And there’s a key phrase that is repeated in this passage and that sums all this up, and it will serve as our theme this morning: “By Grace...

“A Fruitful Tree” (Galatians 5:16-25; John 15:1-5; Psalm 1)We just heard a bunch of readings from a variety of places in the Bible--Psalm 1, Proverbs, Jeremiah, Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and words of Jesus from the gospels of St. Luke and St. John--and all of these readings, about trees bearing fruit. This is an image of course of people and the fruits or works that they produce in their lives. Now the first thing to recognize is that we all bear fruit. We all produce works in our lives. The question is, though: What kind of fruit are we...

This Sunday I preached at Watermark Church in Dallas under the title “A Tender Word for Pharisees.” There are not many tender words for Pharisees in the mouth of Jesus. Mainly his words to Pharisees are tough, even terrifying (see Matthew 23). The most moving words of tenderness for Pharisees are in Luke 15:25–31, the words of the father to the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son. Luke 15 begins with Jesus eating with “tax collectors and sinners.” The Pharisees grumbled, “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2). Jesus explains what he is doing...

“The Cross of Christ, the Tree of Life” (1 Corinthians 1:18-31)What a joy it is to be back here in the house of the Lord! Because of the snow and ice, we lost four out of the first five services we had scheduled this Lent: Ash Wednesday; the First Sunday in Lent; the Second Sunday in Lent; and then this past Wednesday, what was to be our second midweek service. But we were able to have the first midweek service, in our series called “The Tree of Life.” And since we didn’t get to do the second message in that...

“A Tale of Two Trees” (Genesis 2:8-9, 15-17; 3:1-24) This is “A Tale of Two Trees.” Oh, there were a whole bunch of other trees besides, lots of them, but this story will focus on just two. Our story begins back in the garden, the garden of Eden, that is. There the Lord God had formed the man from the dust of the earth, and he gave the man the authority and the responsibility to take care of it. The Lord was very generous toward the man, withholding nothing, providing him with everything he needed, in abundance. There were lots...

“The Transfiguration: The Bridge between Epiphany and Lent” (Mark 9:2-9) Today is the Festival of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, remembering that day when our Lord Jesus Christ was transfigured, that is, his appearance was changed, up on a mountain. This was a key event in our Lord’s life, and it marked a turning point, a pivot point, in his ministry. So, likewise, does this festival mark a turning point, a pivot point, in the church year calendar. Transfiguration comes at the end of the Epiphany season, just a few days before the beginning of Lent. The church year mirrors...

Pastor Jeff Durbin was a keynote speaker at the 2014 IGNITE Conference. He was asked to speak about proclaiming the Gospel. What happened in the sermon shocked everyone in the room and there wasn't a dry eye in the place. This sermon will challenge you to your core and we hope you would feel led to share it with everyone you know. This has never been done before. Watch it to see.

“Jesus Comes Today with Healing” (Mark 1:29-39) Well, look at all those people Jesus healed! On a Sabbath afternoon, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and Jesus healed her. And then that evening at sundown, after the Sabbath was ended, people brought a whole bunch of sick people to Jesus, and he healed them. So it didn’t matter if you had a Saturday Day Fever or a Saturday Night Fever, Jesus could heal you. “They brought to him all who were sick,” our text says, “And he healed many who were sick with various diseases.” Boy, it would...

“The Amazing, Astonishing Authority of Jesus” (Mark 1:21-28)Authority. What is your reaction when you hear that word, “authority”? I’m guessing that many of us would have a negative reaction to it. We Americans, in our culture, tend not to like authority. Especially since the 1960s, all forms of authority at every level of our society have been torn down. We don’t like anyone having authority or exercising it over us. And to a degree, that’s understandable. We don’t like anyone telling us what to do. “You’re not the boss of me!” we would say. But now today I would like...

THESE WORDS ought to awaken anyone who is not utterly beyond hope. Notice the first two words and the last word. "0 man" and "God." "0 man, who art thou that repliest against God?" Here God and man are put in sharpest contrast, God in His infinite greatness and wisdom and man in his infinitesimal smallness and ignorance. And in the Greek there is also a strong emphasis on the "thou." "0 MAN, who art thou that repliest against GOD?" It will be a happy day for some of us if God will brand that text upon our memories so...

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Today we will take the "gospel of God" and our praises of God and go to the streets. We will walk and sing and pray and shout our faith and our love to all who will listen. Which will raise for many the question: Am I ashamed to do this? So the Lord seems to have ordered the timing of our series of messages in Romans so that today's text...

“Repent, Believe, and Follow” (Mark 1:14-20)In the early chapters of the gospels, we track Jesus’ early ministry, as he goes about Galilee, preaching, teaching, and healing. As sort of a subset of his healing ministry, Jesus also casts out demons. And interspersed among these accounts, Jesus also gathers disciples to himself. And so it is that today and for the next two weeks we get such accounts of Jesus’ early ministry from the first chapter of Mark. Today we get a sample of Jesus’ preaching and his calling disciples. Next week we will see Jesus casting out an unclean spirit....