Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

This sermon was preached on 11/4/2013 A few years have passed since we last heard from Elijah when he confronted Ahab over the scheme that deprived Naboth of his inheritance and his life. During those years Ahab was killed and his son Amaziah had come to the throne. His reign was to be a very short one, but it was a reign marked by great wickedness, as we can see from 1 Kings 22:52-53. Amaziah was the son of Ahab and Jezebel. As we can see from the incidents in this chapter he had absorbed the pagan practices of his parents, especially his mother. Their form of worship included a range of gods and the one selected by Amaziah was a Philistine deity (Ekron was a Philistine city). It is striking that the king assumes that a more powerful god lives outside his own country, for in a sense he must have been the god of an enemy. What can we make of his decision to approach the pagan temple at Ekron for help? Several suggestions come to mind and I will merely list them. (1) W...

 This sermon was preached on 7/4/2013 These verses introduce the major theme of Hebrews which is that Jesus is a merciful and faithful High Priest, which the author will explain in detail from 4:14–10:18. Previously he has referred to an aspect of Jesus’ priestly work in 1:3 (‘when he had by himself purged our sins’). He has already shown how Jesus is superior to the Old Testament prophets (1:1-3), and he is coming to the close of his section in which he has detailed the superiority of Jesus to angels (perhaps he is saying that an angel cannot understand what we need and therefore cannot be a priest). In the next chapters, he will show that Jesus is superior as a leader to those giants of Jewish history, Moses and Joshua. After that, he will explain how Jesus is superior to the priests of Israel. But in these verses, the author continues his explanation of the relationship between Jesus and his brothers, and he focuses primarily on what took place on the cross where, in p...

This sermon was preached on 7/4/2013 The words of Solomon in verses 1-8 are well-known to many people because they were turned into a folk song called Turn, Turn, Turn, which became popular in the 1960s and has been sung by many people since then. The folk song changes the last line because the singer wants to stress that peace from his perspective has not yet happened. Even those who have not heard the song will have heard some of the lines from Ecclesiastes used as proverbs in everyday speech. As we read the verses, no doubt we realised that at a basic level the author is saying that life is full of variety. But that is not all that he is saying. Solomon wrote this book for a sceptical audience. His reign had been a very prosperous one, but all his wisdom could not change the circumstances he writes about here. So he wrote this book to give people a definite understanding of life. That understanding is summarised in the epilogue at the end of the book: ‘ The end of the matt...

This sermon was preached on 4/4/2013 This story is about the importance of little things in life. The little thing is a vineyard that belonged to Naboth and which Ahab wanted to buy. We can imagine both men looking at the vineyard and admiring its usefulness. Yet one man looked at it with the eyes of faith and it cost him his life. The other man looked at with the eyes of expanding his property and it cost him his soul. A man whom money could not buy Naboth was a follower of the Lord in a very unexpected place. We saw earlier that the Lord had placed Obadiah in the palace where he functioned as a godly adviser to wicked Ahab. Now we also see that the Lord had located another godly man as Ahab’s neighbour. It would have been better for Ahab if he had observed Naboth’s lifestyle rather than his vineyard. Ahab made what seems a reasonable offer to Naboth, but despite the favourable terms Naboth refused to move. Why did he refuse the offer? The answer is found in Leviticus ...

This sermon was preached on 10/3/2013 As the author of Hebrews continues his explanation of how Jesus is superior to the angels, he now comes to deal with the great difference between the relationship that angels have to Jesus (they are his servants) and the relationship that believers have to Jesus (they are his brothers). In chapter 1, he had shown how Jesus is superior to angels in various aspects of his own experience: his resurrection, his rule, his re-creation of the universe. In chapter 2, he shows how Jesus is superior to angels in ways by which he is linked to his people: he is the guarantee that they will receive their inheritance (the world to come), he is bringing many sons to glory through his sufferings, and he is the Brother of all who trust in him for salvation. The author describes this relationship of brotherhood in the remainder of this chapter, and he does so in three ways. First, he focuses on how Jesus sanctifies his brothers; second, he explains what Je...

This sermon was preached on 10/3/2013 According to the heading David wrote this psalm when he was in the Judean desert, and it is obvious from the contents that he made use of his physical surroundings to describe what he was feeling in his heart. He does not say why he is in the desert, although verses 9-11 reveal he is concerned about his enemies – so he may have been pursuing them or fleeing from them (as when he fled from Absalom). It was written after he had become king, so it does not refer to earlier in his life when he was in the desert and pursued by Saul. In the psalm, David mentions the desert (v. 1), the tabernacle (v.2) and his bed (v. 6) as places where he thought about God. The dry desert illustrates what he feels in his heart when he cannot sense the presence of God. David clearly found this to be a trying experience. His experience was not caused by lack of assurance – he stresses his awareness of his relationship with God in verse 1. What he was aware of was...