Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

We have already thought about the first three pieces of armour that Paul mentions in this passage. It is assumed that Paul follows the order by which a soldier would put on the armour and this helps us understand the points he is making about being ready for spiritual warfare. The first three seem to be items that the soldier would be wearing all the time, and they depict spiritual benefits that are given to Christians.  First, we need to put on the belt of truth, which can represent the message of truth, the gospel. Second, we must put on the breastplate of righteousness, which can represent the righteousness of Christ which, like a breastplate, protects our vital organs from enemy attack (the devil cannot remove Christ’s righteousness from a believer). Third, we have the shoes connected to the gospel of peace. Just as shoes gave stability to a soldier, so the fact that we have peace with God through the gospel gives stability to Christians as they face the devil’s onslaught....

Luke informs us that this last saying of Jesus on the cross was also a loud cry. Other loud cries were his fourth saying (‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’) and his sixth saying (‘It is finished’). While we are not told why they were spoken loudly, it is reasonable to assume that reason was that many people would hear what was said. The place where Jesus was crucified was near the public road and it is likely that many people would be walking along it and heard what Jesus cried. We might be curious to know what they thought of the cry, but we are not told.  Luke does inform us of three responses: (a) the centurion praised God and affirmed the innocence of Jesus; (b) the crowds who were attaching went home, beating their breasts, an action connected to repentance; (c) the friends of Jesus watched from a distance. What can we make of those three responses? The response of the centurion is another affirmation of the innocence of Jesus. Luke indicates that the words of...

Sometimes, we come across a statement that seems contradictory and we wonder why the person phrased his words that way. Initially we may wonder how Jesus could say that those who mourn are blessed because we don’t as a rule connect sadness and happiness. Yet Jesus says that those who mourn will find comfort. The mourning is a characteristic of true disciples and the comfort is a benefit of the kingdom of heaven, one of its resources for its citizens.   The mourning here is specific and does not refer to mourning in general. Yet we can see that mourning is a strong term, because it is difficult to imagine shallow mourning. It is also possible to have what we can call selfish mourning, which is not what Jesus has in mind here. We can mourn the loss of something that was an idol in our lives – some people get distressed when their football team loses a game. Instead, the mourning Jesus has in mind is spiritual mourning. Since it is spiritual mourning, we can look at how it is...

The sixth cry of Jesus on the cross is a cry that points to a sense of achievement, that something has been accomplished by him. Obviously, it includes the aspect that something has come to an end, but it is possible for something to end in failure. There is no sense of failure here in this saying of Jesus. The word that Jesus used here would be used by an individual who had completed a task. A carpenter would use it when he finished making an item. Maybe Jesus had said the word often when speaking to a satisfied customer about something he had made. Of course, the activity on those occasions are not as important as the one he completed on the cross. Yet everything he did was perfect, whether in the carpenter’s shop or on the cross. So we should ask what was finished and completed when Jesus died? His earthly life was completed While we cannot be sure how old Jesus was when he died, he was somewhere in his early thirties. Luke says that Jesus was about thirty when he began his...

  Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven If someone were to ask, ‘What does a Christian look like?’, we could point to biblical passages that describe him or her. For example, we could mention the passage in Galatians that lists the fruit of the Spirit. Or we could use the Ten Commandments as indicating how a believer in Jesus will behave. Another passage that we could highlight is the Sermon the Mount. Within the Sermon itself, there are the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes describe what a follower of Jesus will be like.  There are eight beatitudes, and they are like segments in an orange. If one is missing, there is something wrong with the professing disciple. No doubt, there will be differences of degree in which each beatitude is found in the lives of believers. Still, one would expect them to part of a balanced Christian character.  Jesus states that the person who is living in accordance with the Beatitudes is blessed. The status of ...

We know that sometimes a lot can be said in a few words. There have been many examples of this in life and no doubt we have experienced the benefits of a short phrase on numerous occasions. On the cross, Jesus spoke seven short sayings, each of which is important because each is a window through which we can see his heart. Some of his sayings are longer than the others, but the shortest one is the fifth saying, ‘I thirst.’ The fifth saying of Jesus may not seem initially to be as important as some of his other sayings on the cross. It is not a petition like his prayer for the soldiers, it is not a promise such as the one he gave to the penitent criminal, it is not an arrangement of provision as he did for his mother, it is not a description of his spiritual agony that he experienced when he was forsaken by the Father, it is not like his later sayings when he said that he had completed his work and then dismissed his spirit into the care of his Father. Yet since we have been tol...