Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

Sometimes we like to have summaries of situations, perhaps even when a big situation can be stated in a few words. We are familiar with mission statements in which an organisation can summarise its existence in a sentence. Is it possible to make a statement that can describe the human race? Or is it possible to arrange time into periods in order that we can grasp what is going on? Paul provides answers to both questions in this passage. We can look first at what he says about the second one. Making sense of time One way in which we divide time is to use various empires (indeed the Bible itself uses this method in the prophecy contained in Daniel 9). The extent of time that Paul has in mind here is from the creation to Jesus and the basis of the division that Paul uses here is the law that was given through Moses and the apostle mentions two periods connected to it. First, there is the period before the law, which ran from Adam to Moses; second, there was the period of the law, whi...

In verse 12, Jesus points out that there were many teachings that the disciples needed to hear, but they could not appreciate them at that time. If this were all he had said, then they would be disappointed because it would mean that they would never learn what these teachings were. The reason for this inability was probably not their then low spiritual state; more likely it was due to the time in which they lived, the period before the Spirit came. While they had the Spirit in the sense of conversion, they did not have him as they would do after the Day of Pentecost when he came in a special manner on the church. But Jesus goes on to say that this was only a temporary situation that would be remedied when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. Therefore the Spirit would complete the teaching that Jesus began. The title of the Spirit (v. 13) Jesus, in his teaching in this section, refers for the third time to the Holy Spirit as ‘the Spirit of truth’ (14:17; 15:26). The repeated use of...

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem for the last time. Each year, he had travelled there to keep the annual feasts connected to the Passover. On this final journey, he had now reached Jericho, which was about twenty miles from Jerusalem. In Jericho, there was a man whom nobody liked called Zacchaeus. The reason why he was unpopular was that he was the head tax collector in charge of all the tax collectors in the area who collaborated with the Roman authorities who governed the country. Wanting to meet Jesus (vv. 1-4) Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus. It looks as if the reason for his desire was curiosity. Perhaps he had heard that a former colleague called Levi was now a disciple of Jesus. Or maybe he had heard that Jesus was very different from all other religious teachers. The fact is we are not told what his own reasons were for being curious, but we do know who was working behind the scenes to create this curiosity in Zacchaeus. God was doing this, and here is an example of how God ...