Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

Jesus has had an interaction with the crowd about him being the Bread of life, of his capacity to provide what people need for spiritual satisfaction. When someone makes an incredible assertion about himself, it is helpful to consider what else he might choose to say. A will revealed When we speak of God’s will, we know that there are two options to consider. There is his secret will in which he has included everything that comes to pass. No-one outside of God know the contents of God’s secret will apart from the details he has chosen to reveal. For example, his secret will includes the date of our birth and the date of our death. We know the date of our birth, but that is all. We don’t know the date of our death, or what will happen between them. But God knows all details, and at some stage others will discover those details. This is not the will of God that is described in our verse. The will of the Father here is his revealed will. Yet his revealed will needs to be divided into diff...

  As we know, Paul in this section of his letter is encouraging husbands to care for their wives in a wholehearted and sacrificial manner. Their example is Jesus and what he does for his people. No doubt, many details of Jesus’ involvement could be given. Paul provides a past, present and future perspective of that commitment by Jesus. The past (v. 25) Paul describes what Jesus did for the church in the past. He mentions both the attitude and the action of the Saviour. Regarding his attitude, he loved the church; regarding his action, he gave himself up for her. What does it mean that Christ loved the church? He loved her eternally as the divine Son of God in heaven. This eternal aspect is described as his response to the gift his Father gave to him. In love, the Father gave him an elect people to save and, in love, Jesus accepted them and loved them even although they were sinful. Since the gift was eternal, it means that he always has loved them. Christ loved the church and gave ...

Psalm 40 has been interpreted in different ways because verses 6 and 7 are applied to the Lord Jesus in Hebrews 10:5-7. Some have argued that the whole psalm applies to Jesus, although the confession of sin in verse 12 makes that suggestion unlikely. Many interpret the opening section as applying to Jesus in his death, resurrection and ascension. Whether that is right, I cannot say, although doing so is evidence of a devout spirit. What can be said from the structure of the psalm is that after deliverance we should put Jesus central and that will help us when we face further difficulties. It is not clear when David wrote this psalm. He could have written it at any stage in his walk with God. What is clear is that he wrote it after a time of great personal trouble. But did he write it merely to indicate that he had known personal deliverances from God? We should remember that David was not writing a diary extract, but was guided by the Holy Spirit to write a song for a psalter ...

The prophecy is concerned with an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. We may want to ask, ‘Who is the outpourer?’ We are told in verse ten that it is the One whom they have pierced, which is reference to Jesus and his crucifixion. In fact, the verse says that it is Jesus who is speaking here – note the use of ‘when they look on me ’. So that description indicates that it will involve those who crucified him or at least caused it to happen. The apostle John twice makes use of this descriptive prediction. One is found in John 19:37: ‘And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”’ John mentions this in connection to the action of the soldier who pierced Jesus to ensure that he was truly dead. And we know that the group of soldiers on duty that day had already pierced his hands and feet. They came to confess shortly after that Jesus was the Son of God. So their looking had transforming results. John would have seen their look since he was present at the cross...

The brief book of Haggai covers a brief period in the experience of the returned exiles from Babylon. Those who had returned had become dilatory in their commitment to rebuilding the temple because of internal and external discouragements. Internally, they were small numerically and it was obvious that they did not have the resources to build a new temple similar to the one that had been built by Solomon. Externally, their opponents were more numerical than they were, and they were prepared to use political threats as well as other means to hinder any sign of progress, with the outcome that the people stopped working on the temple, and that led in turn to divine chastisement, which was not a pleasing situation for God or for them. So God sent Haggai to explain to the people why they should work for the Lord at that time in history. In the section of his message that we will consider, the prophet mentions several encouragements for a discouraged people. God has a plan The first reason t...

Sometimes, when reading the Bible, we come across an unexpected verse or passage. Who would imagine that in the genealogies of 1 Chronicles we would read about the prayer of Jabez and the answer he received from God? Or perhaps when we are reading Psalm 18 we notice that David gives the credit for his greatness in Israel to the gentleness of God. It may be the case as well that we did not realise that this astonishing pair of verses were in the Book of Zephaniah. One commentator describes them as the John 3:16 of the Old Testament. We get the point that he was making when we recall that John 3:16 is all about the love of God. Not much is known about Zephaniah. We can say that he was a prophet who announced that first Judah would go into captivity in Babylon because of their sins but, second, they would be restored eventually to their country. Given that God had punished them for departing from him and worshipping idols, it would be an issue of concern as to how God would deal with them...

Habakkuk lived in an exceedingly difficult time for Judah. The armies of Babylon were on the march and no other country or group of countries seemed able to prevent their progress. Yet what made things more difficult for Habakkuk was that the One he trusted in, God Almighty, who had the power to do something about the situation, allowed the Babylonians to continue in their campaigns. Not that Habakkuk disapproved of God using the pagan Babylonians as a means of punishing the other nations for their pagan behaviour – that divine action would not have been surprising for Habakkuk. But he was astonished that his God also intended to use the Babylonians to punish the Jews severely for their sinful behaviour. For us living today, the time of Habakkuk was long ago and no one worries about the Babylonian empire anymore. Yet God has seen fit to include the response of a disappointed and disturbed prophet in his Word in order to help others who may find themselves living in very difficult times...