Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

It is good when siblings serve the Lord together. Have you ever wondered about Tryphaena and Tryphosa whom Paul sends greetings to in Romans 16:12 and describes them as working hard for the Lord there? I wonder what they did for Jesus. The meanings of their names are similar, each meaning delicate. Some speculate that they were twin sisters and not physically strong from birth, hence their names. The Bible does not tell us how they were converted, but it does tell us that they worked hard for Jesus. Martha and Mary served Jesus as well. It looks from Luke’s account as if it was Martha’s house and that Mary was living there. We know from John’s Gospel that two men also lived in the house. One was their brother Lazarus, and the other was a man called Simon the leper who obviously had been cured of his disease, perhaps by Jesus. Simon could have been the father or an uncle of the other three or he could have been the husband of Martha or just some other relative. The Bible scholar A. T. R...

Repentance has something unique about it. It is a spiritual grace that comes from Jesus in heaven to his people on earth, but which he does not give to his people in heaven. Yet for those travelling there from earth, the journey began with repentance, and repentance will mark every stage of their spiritual journey. This ongoing repentance is not only about their sins, but also over the things that they did well to an extent. Repentance therefore is a friend for life, a gift suitable for use as often as possible.   Start The prophet Zechariah announced that the day would come in Jerusalem when repentance would take place: ‘I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn’ (Zech. 12:10).   Some expositors reckon that it is a prophecy of t...

Noah is one of the most important people in the Bible. He was God’s man at a time of crisis, a crisis of such proportions that we can truly describe him as a history- changer. When he was young, he may have wondered what he would do with his life. If someone had told him the details that we know about him, he might not have believed what he heard. Yet he believed them when God told him about his role in a gradual manner. Noah is an encouragement to young people to live out promises that were connected to them from their first days. He fulfilled the expectations that his believing father had about him, and that is a valuable experience to have. Noah is also an encouragement for older people, a reminder that God can use them in his service, no matter their age. After all, Noah was five hundred years old when he became a family head, he was six hundred years old when the threatened flood came, and he was six hundred and one when he stood on the cleansed earth after the flood was over. Al...

​‘Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.’ Isaiah asks two questions in verse 1, and they are questions that are often on the lips of preachers and others who tell the gospel in preaching and other forms of witness. Initially, the ‘us’ in verse 1 refers to Isaiah and other prophets living at that time about whom we know nothing. But others in the Bible use this first question as well. The apostle John quotes the first question and says about it that it was fulfilled in the rejection of Jesus by those who heard him (John 12:38), which suggests that included in the ‘us’ of verse 1 is Jesus himself ...