Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

One of the difficulties of the Book of Acts is that Luke does not say what year an event took place in or how long there might be between two dates. He does not tell us in what year the Day of Pentecost took place, nor does he tell us how many years had passed between it and the conversion of Paul. Nor does he say how long Paul was away from Jerusalem in Damascus and thereabouts (over three years).  What he does tell us about Paul is that he was sent back to Tarsus by the disciples in Jerusalem and then later on Barnabas went to Tarsus and found him and brought him to serve in the church in  Antioch. Were those years in Tarsus important or was he in a kind of wilderness? Does Luke indicate anything about them and does Paul himself say anything about them in his letters? We can start by noticing what Luke says in Acts 9:26-30: ‘And when [Paul] had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples. And they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disci...

Peter said on one occasion that Paul’s writings contained some things hard to understand. Here he has written his own equivalent of some things hard to understand, especially his comments about Christ preaching to the spirits in prison and what he says about the meaning of baptism. Some scholars even regard Peter’s comments here as much more difficult that anything Paul wrote. Yet we are not to assume that Peter decided to say something difficult, to mention details that he knew his readers would not understand. After all, he is writing to encourage them in their persecutions. What Jesus did for us Peter mentions three aspects of the work of Christ, and we are familiar with each. We should note that he is describing Jesus as the Messiah, the one promised in the Old Testament. He suffered once, which is a reference to the cross where he was punished by God because of our sins. This took place even although he was totally righteous whereas we are unrighteousness and sinful. The intention...

As is usually the case, we can think of God’s kindness in two ways: his kindness as the Creator and his kindness as the Saviour. Or we can approach it in another way and think about his kindness in the past, in the present and in the future, and doing this would provide us with many examples of his kindness. A third possible way is to think about his kindness personally and communally. I will use the first option, but aspects of the other two will also appear. God’s kindness as Creator The garden of Eden was an expression of God’s kindness because there he provided for Adam and Eve all that they needed for life as his creatures. Sadly, they rebelled against him and were cast out of the garden. But they were not destroyed, although they were punished by becoming liable to death. And God continued to show kindness to his creatures. Nevertheless, his creatures continued to rebel against him, and things got so bad that God decided that society had to be brought to an end, which happened at...

We live in the instant generation. Push a button and we can have immediate entertainment. Send an email and have replies in a few minutes. Type to a robot via a messaging service and you can have a bank loan, whether you need it or should have it. Whatever the benefits in these things, they don’t really have a parallel in the Christian life. How many prayers are answered immediately apart from the request for pardon? One of the most helpful comments I heard in theological college was this: we overestimate what God will do in six months and we underestimate what he will do in ten years. That statement is true.   When Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress was given a tour of the Interpreter’s House, he was taken to a small room where sat two little children, one called Passion and the other called Patience. Passion was very discontent whereas Patience was very quiet. The Interpreter tells Christian that Passion depicts the men of this world who want its treasures now. Patience, in contrast...

The phrase ‘Damascus Road Conversion’ has become common in our language to describe a sudden turnaround in a person’s outlook. It is used in circumstances very different from the original, and usually gives the impression that the change was so sudden and without previous consideration of the matter. We cannot be sure that was the case with Saul of Tarsus. A simple question about him could be, ‘Was he affected by the witness of Stephen, as he watched Stephen die?’ That question has been discussed numerous times. Or did Stephen’s testimony so infuriate Saul that he determined to crush the new movement connected to Jesus of Nazareth.   Luke had told his readers that his book is about what Jesus was continuing to do and teach from heaven. His readers would have been very encouraged by what Jesus did from heaven on the Day of Pentecost when thousands were converted. They would have even been encouraged even by the initial degree of opposition because it had not stopped the continuation...

In these verses, Peter deals with the third area of living honourably in the world so that those they live among will be put to silence even although those people have spoken ignorantly among the Christians. What do we see in his words, which are first addressed to wives and then to husbands? Wives First, the apostle mentions a problem that also arose in connection to their response to governments and of slaves to masters, which was a wrong application of Christian freedom. The wrong idea was that, because Jesus had set them free, they did not need to recognise structures in society. But if they did not recognise them, they would not be living honourably and their witness would be invalid.   Second, in this domestic area, conduct is more important than words. Peter highlights one possible circumstance where a wife is a Christian and her husband is not. That would have been a common situation – one biblical example is Eunice, the mother of Timothy. Humanly speaking, what is likely t...