Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

There are different ways of viewing this story. At the moment we view it as readers who have read it before and we all may see different things in the account as it speaks to us individually. A literal participant would have his view of what happened as well. According to John’s account, there are four different kinds of participants who viewed what had taken place. There is Jesus, there is the crowd, there are the disciples including Philip and Andrew, and there is the unnamed boy. We can make some comments about each of them. Jesus Jesus is travelling round Galilee teaching the people about the kingdom of God. He has not yet began teaching them on this occasion. Rather, he is with his disciples initially up on the mountainside. We are not told what he and they were speaking about apart from some remarks he made concerning the gathering crowd who were ascending the hillside. The first thing we are told about Jesus as he was with his disciples is that he saw those who were not his disc...

Do you think there are any puzzling details in this verse? I will mention one now, although there is another one that I will mention later.   I suppose we would expect this verse to read somewhat differently and maybe you have quoted it differently when speaking to other people. We might want to say, ‘God showed his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’   But that is not what Paul says. Instead of saying that God showed his love in the past (which he did do, of course), Paul says that God is showing his love for us today, in the present. But what does he do in showing it? He brings our attention to the cross of Jesus and what happened there. In other words, he is commending what happened at Calvary. After saying this for two thousand years, God still wants to say it today. From this point view, this is the main message he has for us in our circumstances.   Sometimes, children will ask their parents, ‘How much do you love me?’ The par...

In this psalm David contrasts the wicked and the righteous. He focuses on what they think about and how their thoughts have consequences in their lives. The wicked are described in verses 1-4 and the righteous in the remainder of the psalm. The experience of the righteous is described in three ways. The thoughts of the wicked (vv. 1-4) Verse I is a conclusion and there is disagreement about its translation. Some think David is  referring to his thoughts about the wicked and others think he is describing the actual  thoughts of the wicked. What is clear is that the wicked are marked by transgressions.  The meaning of transgression is to go beyond the limits stated by God’s law. How does the  wicked person reveal that he prefers to transgress. Firstly, he does not fear God. The psalmist describes this lack of fear as being missing from  the sinner’s outlook. Fear of God includes both reverence for the Lord and dread of  his punishments. Therefore a person who...

Sometimes a speaker delays his important point to the end of his address, or section of his address, and then describes it in different ways, especially if there is quite a contrast between his other points and his final one. We can see that there is contrast between the previous beatitudes and the last one. The previous ones have no indication of problems for his followers if they pursue what is described, but the last one is all about a problem, and a huge one at that, the problem of persecution. What makes it more problematic is that Jesus indicates that persecution is inevitable. The last beatitude is mentioned twice, although there are differences between the descriptions. In verse 10, the description is a general one for all time, whereas in verse 11 the description is of the immediate disciples of Jesus and what was going to happen to them once they had commenced fulfilling their role as witnesses to Jesus. All of them would undergo persecution, with some of their experiences d...