Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

It is generally believed that one of the sources that Mark used for information in order to compile his Gospel was the apostle Peter. The main reason behind this suggestion is that they were colleagues in the ministry as can be seen by Peter’s comments about Mark in 1 Peter 5:13: ‘She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son.’ If that is the case, it is striking that Mark chooses to omit from his account of the miracle of Jesus walking on the water the fact that Peter also walked on the water. Perhaps Peter did not wish to draw attention to his own involvement. The response of Jesus to the miracle I think it is possible to see three elements in the response of Jesus to the miracle of the feeding of the 5000. The first is protection, the second is prospect, and the third is prayer. You may say that only the third is mentioned, but I hope we will see the other two are there as well. With regard to protection, we can see that the prio...

Unlike some other New Testament authors, such as Paul and Peter, the author of this letter does not reveal his name. Yet we can see from the opening verses that the writer was an apostle, one of the men whom Jesus had chosen and prepared to be his representatives after he had returned to heaven. It has been the belief of the church from its earliest days that the author is the apostle John who, by the time of the composing of this letter, was the only surviving member of the apostles. In this epistle, John will mention several doctrines that he deemed were essential and applicatory for the church during the times in which he wrote at the close of the first century. The church was beginning to face a variety of heresies about Jesus and about the Christian life. It is not necessary to know what those heresies were, and some of them are so connected to ideas of the time that it is very difficult for us in our time to understand them. In contrast, the explanations that John gives are so...

Paul in this set of verses continues to explain what it should mean for believers to have the Holy Spirit in their lives. Today there is a great interest in some aspects of the blessings of the Spirit, particularly the gifts of the Spirit. In previous periods in our background many Christians were concerned with the work of the Spirit in connection with the experience of divine assurance, and Paul does focus on features of this concern here. So we can say that this sermon will be about the assurance of personal salvation that believers can have. The reception of the Spirit  Paul here says that the Christians in Rome ‘received’ the Spirit. The word ‘received’ raises the question as to when the Spirit came to them in this way. There are three possible ways of considering this reception, and we can think about each of them briefly. We can ask when, how and why the reception occurred. The first is the suggestion that Paul has in mind whenever the Spirit commenced working in the ...

Having diverted slightly by giving details about the death of John the Baptist Mark resumes his account of Jesus and the apostles as he prepares them for their future ministry. The main characteristic that Mark stresses about Jesus in connection to this amazing miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is his compassion. We read about his compassion for his tired disciples and about his compassion on the hungry multitude. The apostles report The first detail that Mark highlights is that the apostles, when they returned from their spheres of labour, told Jesus all that they had done and taught. While it is possible that the other apostles were within earshot of the reports, it looks as if each apostle only reported to Jesus and not to the other apostles. Of course, they were all learners at this stage, so we cannot make too much of this detail because in the Book of Acts we read about the apostles telling the churches about what had happened to them. Yet here they were aware that...

The response of Pilate to the desire of the crowd to release Barabbas was to have Jesus flogged. Why he did this is not obvious since he had concluded that Jesus was innocent. Perhaps Pilate thought that Jesus was hiding something and that a physical beating would cause him to reveal it. Or maybe he imagined that a lesser form of punishment would satisfy the accusers of Jesus and they would not pursue their demands against him. It is obvious that the flogging was more than a painful experience. The response of the soldiers was to demean Jesus and treat him with contempt and further cruelty. This response was the first of two responses by the soldiers because after Pilate condemned Jesus to death the soldiers gathered the entire cohort to mock him (Matt. 27:27-30). And yet as we look at their behaviour, we can sense that John is asking us to see something deeply symbolic here. Thorns were the consequence of the curse imposed on creation by God when Adam sinned. Instead of wearing a c...