Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

Paul has explored the status of Israel from several angles as he explains their participation in the kingdom of God. Like everything else, Israel can be viewed from the past, from the present, and from the future. In the past they were the people who received great blessings from God, in the present they are undergoing his judgement because of their rejection of Jesus, and in the future they will yet have a central role. It is largely with this future role that Paul is concerned in this passage. The Wealth Promised (vv. 11-15) At the moment, there are several political and financial crises facing the nations of the world, and it looks as if such problems are always around in one way or another. Nevertheless our rulers talk of the wealth that we should and could possess as a nation. The fact that we do not have it means that we have lost it or are waiting to see if it will yet come our way. Our situation, whichever it is, reminds us that our promised riches are all uncertain. In co...

One of the passing comments that can be made about this passage is that rumours were found in the early church, which means that there are some bad habits that appear in every age. The one that is mentioned here is the rumour that John would not die, but would live until Jesus would return. Now, at the time of writing his Gospel, John was an old man and soon to die. He believed it was important that the source of this rumour be correctly explained, which he does at the end of this chapter.  Another passing comment that can be made from this incident is that we are not to be over-interested in the Lord’s purpose for another of his servants. Peter responded to information about his own future by asking what would happen to John (v. 21). In reply, Jesus basically told Peter it was none of his business. What was Peter’s business was the necessity of him following Jesus as closely as he could.  We know that the risen Jesus had already appeared to Peter in a private way. That p...

We have seen already that John in this letter is concerned with barriers and hindrances to Christian fellowship. In the passage we will consider now he focuses on the barrier of false teachers and their ideas. The presence of false teachers is not limited to the time of John. In fact, there have been false teachers in every period of church history and there are plenty of them around today. One of the preoccupations of many Christians is the identity of an individual whom the Bible calls the Antichrist. When I became a Christian in the early 1970s, and in the decades since then, several people were and have been linked with this individual, including the leaders of America, Europe, Russia and China, as well as others. The one common feature of all these suggestions is that they were wrong and the various individuals so identified have passed off the scene. No doubt many other persons will have this tag attached to them in the years ahead. We may respond to this preoccupation by co...

In the previous chapter Paul has explained that Israel as a race had refused to accept that salvation for them could only be found in Jesus. An inevitable question that would be asked in response was whether this meant that God had rejected them as a race. Paul says he has not and gives three answers to the question. The first answer is that his own experience as a converted Jews reveals that God has not cast away his people (vv. 1-2). His second answer is a historical one when he refers to the life of Elijah and says that during that period God had seven thousand followers (vv. 3-4). His third answer concerns the future when Israel as a race will be gathered in to God’s people (vv. 11ff.). We will look at the first two answers in this sermon. The first comment that can be made is that we cannot judge a person’s future by his current conduct. After all, if we had seen Saul of Tarsus attempting to destroy the Christian church we would not have imagined that in the future he would dec...