Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

James continues his set of exhortations regarding how his readers should respond to the criticism of worldly behaviour that he has made concerning their lifestyle. It is possible to say that the dominant goal that he has in mind is humility because he mentions this response in verses 6 and 10. And when we think that the opposite of humility is pride we should not be surprised that he then mentions the devil in verse 7. In addition, it is obvious that in this set of verses James lays great stress on human responsibility. We might be inclined to assume that James should have said to his readers that they should pray for grace to do the things that he requires. No doubt, James would have wanted them to pray for such divine help, yet he chooses under divine guidance to write in such a way that stresses their responsibility for putting things in order. James also makes it clear to his readers that they are participants in a spiritual conflict. The choice before them is stark – they wil...

We can see from the context that Paul is explaining how Christians should redeem the time, by which he means that Christians should liberate the time they have from foolish decisions. Instead they have to understand what the will of the Lord is. The way to experience the will of the Lord is by being filled with the Spirit. Filled with the Spirit – What Does Paul Mean? Paul contrasts the filling of the Spirit with drunkenness, which may seem a strange comparison. Yet we also know that onlookers on the Day of Pentecost, when they saw the exuberance of the Christians, assumed that they were drunk. So it suggests that there is some similarity, although superficial. We get the basic answer to what it means by realising that to be filled with something means to be under the control of it. A drunk person is under the control of strong drink and a Christian should be under the control of the Holy Spirit. Various things happened when a person in the Bible was filled with the Spirit. Eliz...

A change takes place in the psalm in verse 4 in that the sheep now commences to speak to the Shepherd rather than speaking about the Shepherd as has been the case in verses 1-3. The psalm can be divided into two because of this change: verses 1-3 could be called ‘Speaking About the Shepherd’ and verses 4-6 could be called ‘Speaking to the Shepherd’. I suppose we could say that this is an important order. Once we know who the Shepherd is, we will know how to speak to him. What is the valley? Many people regard David as speaking about literal death and apply it to the last moments in a person’s life. While that may be an application of what David has in mind, his description cannot be limited to that time in a believer’s life. Instead I would say that the valley describes the Christian’s journey through this world. It has been suggested that David is referring to the journey that a sheep would make when the Shepherd took his flock from the winter pastures to the summer pastures. The...