Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels and does not include many items found in the other three. In Matthew’s account of this parable in chapter 13 of his Gospel it is included with several parables that Mark does not mention alongside his account. The obvious explanation is that the Holy Spirit guided Mark to mention what was necessary for his Gospel. It has been suggested that Jesus could have used a nearby sower as the reason for using one in his parable. Of course, there is no way that suggestion can be proved, although it does highlight an important aspect of conveying important messages, and that is the use of illustrations. Of course, as we will see, illustrations alone are not sufficient, and even the ones chosen by Jesus had to be explained by him. The occasion of the parable Jesus had become a popular teacher, evidenced by the large crowd who gathered to hear him. The contents of the parable must be connected to the needs of the crowd. Jesus is not like politicians w...

One of the common realities of life is that everyone has an opinion about most things. Sometimes opinions are valid because they are based on suitable evidence; at other times they may only be expressions of ignorance. Often when something new happens there is a rush of opinions, which is a strange response because we all need to assess things before we speak about them. It was the same with Jesus when he began his public ministry and in this passage from Mark we have at least three opinions expressed about him. Perhaps we are surprised at what was said about him by some of those groups. After thinking about them, we will think about what Jesus thought important at that time. The enemy speaks (vv. 7-12) The first opinion is stated in verse 11 by those whom Mark calls unclean spirits. They are demons that indwelt people. The existence of such creatures is a reminder that there is more to life than the visible world. In addition, there is an invisible world inhabited by creatures we...

In verse 1 of this chapter Paul answers a question that expressed criticism of his message about how sins were forgiven freely by God because Jesus on the cross at Calvary paid the penalty due on his people for their sins. His message had been criticised because it stressed that human efforts to keep God’s law as a means of salvation were pointless because they were unable to keep it. Now, in verse 15, he answers another question arising out of his explanation of how Christians are given power by God to live for him through their union with Jesus. Through that union, they experience the power of the Holy Spirit as the one who gives life to his people so that they can obey God. It is important to remind ourselves that Paul is not against the law of God in itself, as we can see from his comments in verse 12 of the next chapter: ‘So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.’ Instead he is against a wrong use of the law. Moreover, and more importantly in the...

We are aware that Peter says in 2 Peter 3 that some of Paul’s writings are hard to understand, and maybe he had this passage from Romans in mind. Yet Peter does not suggest that we should ignore the hard passages in Paul. Indeed he says that they can be misinterpreted wrongly, which means that we should know what they mean. So we will follow Peter’s advice and try and interpret Paul correctly. In this passage, Paul moves from a focus on the doctrine of justification to concentrate on the doctrine of sanctification. As he does so he seems first to be answering an objection that was made to his gospel message. The objection was connected to what he said about the freeness of full forgiveness and the failure of the law to contribute to a person’s salvation. Some people deduced from his message that he was saying that the more sinful a person was the better for him or her and that it did not matter how a person lived. After all, if grace was bestowed on sinful people, it means that it w...

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...