Sunday Talks

What should local churches look like and sound like? Here are 2 defining marks and 1 defining attitude...

Those who came to faith on the day of Pentecost did not go home and become private subscribers to the Christian faith. Nor did they begin individually searching for a local church that was right for them. The church is no me thing!

Come and see the church from a different perspective – from the perspective of the Lord Jesus Christ who said “…I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it .” Stopping for a little while to take in this view will be very helpful. For the Lord Jesus, the church was no small thing...

What would Mark have us see at the climax of his account about Jesus Christ? What would he want readers of his book like us, carefully reading these pages, to notice?

Chapter 14 begins a new section that will eventually narrate the death of Jesus. In this section, we’ll see how Mark interweaves the plot against Jesus' life with an invitation to understand the value of his death.

Did you realise that being a Christian demands a constant state of alertness? Speaking to his closest followers, Jesus makes an urgent appeal to them, one that by the end of this chapter has been widened out to all Christian believers: stay awake!

Having introduced God’s Messiah in his gospel, Mark is probing his readers to put all our hope in Jesus, no matter what the loudest voices around us are saying.

Some people are annoyed at a religion that calls for exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ – especially when that sets limits on way they want to run their own lives. In this section of Mark, we’ll see that though he is challenged and even finally rejected, Jesus has the authority from God to command full allegiance.

Jesus speaks about eternal life and the Kingdom of God… he is on a rescue mission. But how do we get that eternal life?

In the section of Mark we are looking at here – it is like Mark is posing a challenge: How can Jesus talk about surrendering his life while his followers talk about fulfilling theirs?