Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

Jesus describes himself as the one who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. The seven spirits of God are mentioned in the doxology in Revelation 1:4-5 as being, along with the Father and the Son, the source of divine grace and peace. Since only a divine person could be so described, and since the Father and the Son are mentioned, the seven spirits of God must be a way of describing the Holy Spirit. The number ‘seven’ is often used to describe perfection. Jesus received the Holy Spirit in a special manner when he ascended to heaven. He had described this reception as being connected to a promise made by the Father to give him the Spirit in this new way. Jesus also stated that the coming of the Spirit from him to his disciples would mean that they would experience incredible power as they declared the gospel and commenced the New Testament church. We see what this looked like in Acts 2. It is clear from the description of the church in Sardis here that they were not ...

Often we only think about the heavenly Father when it comes to our prayer lives. Yet we also know that the Bible has much more to say about him than details in that particular area of our lives. It would also help our prayer lives when we recall some of the other blessings that the Father has given to his people, and several of them are mentioned in this passage. Some are not, such as his ability to work everything for the good of his people, even the adverse things of life coming into the range that is worked for the benefit of his people. As is well known, this passage from Ephesians 1 is one long sentence in the original language. The length of the sentence indicates Paul’s excitement has he expressed his worship of the Lord. We can see that in the sentence he mentions each of the divine persons and the reason he does so is because each is involved in the provision of salvation. Nevertheless, we should note that the sentence is actually an expression of praise addressed to the ...

One issue that arose with the public ministry of the Saviour was what he taught about the law of God. It is obvious from the Gospel accounts that scribes and the Pharisees did not think that Jesus honoured the law. It is obvious too that Jesus did not think that they kept it. So there was a clear difference between them in that regard. Jesus and the law Jesus made it very clear from the onset of his public ministry that he had a very high regard for the law. We can see at least five features of his teaching. First, he taught that it was a permanent feature of the way God deals with his creatures wherever they are. Second, he regarded it as a whole and no one was allowed to take away commands that were difficult to obey. Third, he said that there were degrees of importance, with some of them called ‘least’; yet although there were degrees, obedience to the least was required. Fourth, the standard of obedience for his disciples was total commitment (he used the standard of the sc...

The individual from Thyatira that most Christians know about is Lydia, who came to faith in Christ when she heard Paul in Philippi (Acts 16:14). It is not known whether she was involved in helping commence the church in Thyatira, although we can assume that she would have identified with it when she was in the city. Apparently, Thyatira was the least important of the seven cities, which then makes the fact that it received the longest letter something to think about. Maybe Jesus was saying to the church that while the city was not of much consequence in the eyes of the emperor such could never be said of a church and its Lord. Churches in unimportant places are important to Jesus. The description of Jesus The description of Jesus that is given to Thyatira reminds them that he is a divine speaker, with penetrating knowledge and purity and strength. The implication is that his words will come with precision and with power. Jesus is contrasting his speech with the teaching g...

The first question to work out concerns who Jesus is speaking to here. We find an answer to that question by noting the use of the plural personal pronoun. He is speaking to the same people as he addressed in verses 11 and 12. In those verses, he speaks to his disciples as those who will be opposed and persecuted and maligned. We would deduce from that description that they would not have much influence. Therefore, we can say that those who are salt and light don’t need to have much influence in order to be salt and light. Another detail we can observe is that some of the disciples have only been his followers for a very short time. Those who have been his disciples the longest have only been so for just over a year. Yet Jesus says to them that they are the salt and the light. He does not say to them that they should become salt and light. Instead they already are. Moreover, his disciples probably had never left the land of Israel when this description was made of them. Yet J...

Pergamos at that time was the capital of the Roman province of Asia. It was a cultural centre, possessing a very large library of 200,000 volumes, and in order to help the development of this library the city rulers encouraged the use of a new form of writing material.  It was also known as a place of medical cures (the famous Galen lived there), although even they were connected to pagan forms of idolatry, with the god of healing depicted in the form of a serpent. Sadly, it had the dubious record of being the first city in the province to build a temple for emperor worship. Unlike the church in Smyrna, whose persecutions involved the Jewish synagogue, the church in Pergamos faced trouble from Gentile sources. As we think of such a place, it is a wonder that there was a Christian church in such a city. But that is a reminder that the gospel of Christ succeeds in most unlikely situations. It is possible that Jesus alludes to a local feature when he describes himself as the...