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Jn 5:1-18 – ‘Not only…but also’ – sermon notes

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John’s Gospel has been likened to ‘a pool in which a child may paddle and an elephant can swim.’  It can be appreciated at different levels, from the relatively simple to utterly profound.  This is certainly the case with this passage.  At one level, we have a fairly straightforward account of the healing of a man who had been disabled for 38 years.  At another level, we have an issue about Jesus performing this miracle on the Sabbath, thus antagonising the Jewish authorities. …

Theological Hair-Splitting

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B.B. Warfield put it well, I think:-

‘Gibbon…made himself merry, or made himself miserable, as the case may have been, over the spectacle of Christianity split to its foundations in violent dispute over a mere diphthong – whether Christ should be said to be homo-ousios or only homoi-ousios with God: whether that is, he should be conceived as all that God is, or only in some greater or less degree, more or less like God.  The whole substance of Christianity was involved, however, in this controversy; the issue was nothing less than whether the world should be Christian or heathen. …

Christ’s primeval glory

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Here’s a second instalment from John Flavel’s The Fountain of Life (subtitled, ‘Presenting Christ in his Essential and Mediatorial Glory’).  Chapter 2 is based on Proverbs 8:30: ‘Then I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence.’  What follows is a summary.

This verse speaks of the eternal delights that Jesus Christ, the wisdom of the Father, had with his Father before his assumption of our nature. …

The world of work

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Work occupies a significant place in many people’s lives.  In some parts of the world there is little prospect of paid employment, because of civil war, famine or other forms of poverty.  There are varieties of work: the shoeshine boy in Nairobi, the call-centre worker in Bangalore, the oil worker in Siberia, the child labourer in Beijing, the entrepreneur in Kiev, the barrister in London and the teacher in Memphis are all working.  Some are oppressed and some are the source of oppression. …

The Day of Pentecost

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There are at least four ways in which we may think of the day of Pentecost.

First, it was the final act of the saving ministry of Jesus before the parousia.  He who was born into our humanity, lived our life, died for our sins, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, now sent his Spirit to his people to constitute them his body and to work out in them what he had won for them. …

Mt 25:31-46 – The sheep and the goats – sermon notes

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This is a very well-known passage – most of us are familiar with the so-called parable of the sheep and the goats. It occupies a strategic position in Matthew’s gospel – it comes at the end of lengthy block of teaching that Jesus gave to his disciples privately, just a couple of days before his crucifixion, and it is in fact the very last piece of formal teaching recorded in this Gospel. It’s a very powerful passage – our Lord speaks in no uncertain terms of final judgement and eternal life and eternal punishment.…

The wrath of God

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The idea of divine wrath has pretty much become taboo in modern preaching and evangelism. It is not considered polite to mention it in public. But here I would like to give it an airing, and consider it in relation to the teaching of the Bible, in relation to God’s character as revealed in Scripture, and in relation to his mercy.

Here goes.

1.  Biblical teaching

The Bible throughout teaches that there can be no truce between God and sin.…

Mk 9:2-13 – The Transfiguration – sermon notes

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The Transfiguration is one of the strangest, and one of the most dramatic, events in the whole of the Bible. A mountain-top experience that tops the lot. My own feelings in approaching this passage are not so very different from Peter’s, who, as we read in v6, ‘did not know what to say’.

But even though we can scarcely scratch the surface in trying understand this extraordinary gathering, we would not want to ignore it. Just take a look at the guest list.…

Matthew 18:10 – ‘Their angels’

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Matthew 18:10 “See that you do not disdain one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.”

John G. Paton, a missionary in the New Hebrides Islands, experienced the protective care of angels. Hostile natives surrounded his mission headquarters one night, intent on burning the Patons’ out and killing them. John Paton and his wife prayed all night that God would deliver them.…

Gospel paradoxes

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At first sight, the New Testament’s descriptions of the Christian life often seem to defy logic.  On further reflection, however, we see the Lord’s wise design in all of them.  Note the following examples:-

we see unseen things (2 Cor. 4:18);
we conquer by yielding (Rom. 6:16-18);
we find rest under a yoke (Mt. 11:28-30);
we reign by serving (Mark 10:42-44);
we are made great by becoming little (Luke 9:48);
we are exalted by being humble (Mt.…