Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

Towards the end of the twentieth century, there were various competitions regarding who could be called the person of the century, with names such as Winston Churchill being mentioned. The period under review was only one hundred years. I wonder how many names would have been included if the period was extended to the 2,000 years of the Christian era. Who is competent to give an answer to such a question? The only one who can do so is God. While he has not revealed the names of those who could be regarded as the most important persons of the last 2000 years, he has told us the names of persons that he regards as important from the first 2000 year period of history. Of all the many millions who lived throughout that time, he only mentions three – Abel, Enoch and Noah. They are the Men of the Millenniums, we could say. Four thousand years later, they still speak to us. The writer of Hebrews, in verses 2-7, mentions four details about faith that are connected to the...

There have been many surprising conversions to Jesus Christ. Some are mentioned in the New Testament – we can think of the tax collector Matthew or the thief on the cross or Saul of Tarsus as examples – and others are mentioned in Christian biographies and elsewhere. Among them is the conversion of the runaway slave Onesimus. Onesimus had chosen to leave the household of Philemon and somehow made his way to Rome, which was several hundred miles away, probably to hide among its vast population. Perhaps eventually he had been arrested there for a petty offence and found himself imprisoned. We are not told how he came to be there, yet there he had been converted through the influence of Paul, who was now sending him back to his master, whom we assume would not have expected a letter containing such wonderful news. How had this come about? Onesimus and Philemon’s prayers? To begin with, I would suggest that Onesimus had been prayed for many times by Philemon before he...

This sermon was preached on 11/8/2013 R. E. Prothero, in his interesting book called The Psalms in Human Life , informs us that in the days of the early church, when the Lord’s people faced intense persecution, they turned to the Psalms and used them regularly, with Psalm 141 being designated the psalm for evening worship. It is good for us as we sit here to imagine those little groups of our spiritual ancestors singing the same words as we have just sung nineteen centuries later. No doubt, this psalm was selected for this purpose because their leaders regarded it as containing suitable themes for evening reflection in difficult times. And since we live in difficult times, it may be helpful for us to spend a few minutes each evening in the next week or so reviewing the words here of David as he drew near to God. Urgency (v. 1) The first aspect that the psalm reveals is the urgency that can mark prayer at times. It is clear that the psalmist wants immediate help, t...