Category Archives: People

Resurrection: what difference does it make?

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Some people ask (says Tom Wright in his Surprised by Hope, 201-206), ‘even if Jesus was raised from the dead, what difference does it make?’  Indeed, even Easter hymns can give an inadequate answer by obscuring the fact that Jesus’ resurrection guarantees something more than life in some kind of future ‘heaven’.

But when the New Testament strikes the great Easter bell, the main resonances it sets up are not simply about ourselves and about whatever future world God is ultimately going to make, when heaven and earth are joined together and renewed at last from top to bottom. 

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John Stott on sermon preparation

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‘There is no one way to prepare sermons’, writes John Stott in I believe in preaching.  ‘Every preacher has to work out his own method, which suits his temperament and situation.’  Nevetheless, there are skills that can be learned and habits that can be acquired.  The following outline of the relevant chapter (6) in Stott’s book is taken largely from Xenos.

Choose Your Text

Of course, there must be a text, ‘for we are not speculators, but expositors’. …

On textual fidelity in preaching

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Expository preaching must remain faithful to the text of Scripture.  There are two ways, says John Stott, in which the expositor might depart from his text: forgetfulness and disloyalty.

G. Campbell Morgan, himself a fine expositor, noted of Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College Oxford that he

declared that it was his habit to write his sermons, and then choose a text as a peg on which to hang them.  I am quite free to say…that the study of his sermons will reveal the accuracy of his statement, and show the peril of the method.…

The new heaven and the new earth

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We do not subscribe to the myth of progress – the idea, popular in earlier evolutionary thinking, that the world will get better and better.  Nor do we believe, with Plato, that we are souls in transit, passing through this illusory world on our way to to something beyond space, time and matter.

The shape of things to come is determined, in biblical thinking, by the threefold story of creation, rebellion, and redemption.  We can tell the story of Jesus as the moment all creation has been waiting for:-

Humans were made to be God’s stewards over creation; so the one through whom all things were made, the eternal son, the eternal wisdom, becomes human, so that he might truly become God’s steward, ruler over all his world.
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Sermon applications should be attitudinal as well as behavioural

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Bryan Chapell puts it well:-

Application may be attitudinal as well as behavioral. In fact, the frequent mark of immaturity among preachers is too much (or too early) an emphasis on behavior. Mature preachers do not ignore behavior, but they carefully build an attitudinal foundation for whatever actions they say God requires. This is more than a rhetorical tactic. Its source is the biblical insight that out of the heart come the issues of life (Prov.…

Top Ten Puritan Classics

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I’d like to present a list of recommended Puritan works (well, perhaps a couple of them are best considered honorary Puritans).  They’re all available online.  In no particular order of merit:-

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What’s heaven?

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Maria Shriver is an award-winning American journalist and author and she is the wife of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  A practising Roman Catholic, in 2007 she published a book for children called What’s Heaven?

In this book, children are informed that

Heaven is somewhere you believe in…it’s a beautiful place where you can sit on soft clouds and talk to other people who are there.  At night you can sit next to the stars, which are the brightest of anywhere in the universe…If you’re good throughout your life, then you get to go to heaven…when your life is finished here on earth, God sends angels down to take you up to Heaven to be with him…[and Grandma is] alive in me…Most important, she taught me to believe in myself…She’s in a safe place, with the stars, with God and the angels…she is watching over us from up there…

“I want you to know” [says the heroine to her great-Grandma] “that even though you are no longer here, your spirit will always be alive in me.”

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Thomas Watson on adoption

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1 Jn 3:1  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

The wonder of God’s love in adopting us

The wonder of God’s love in adopting us will appear the more if we consider these six things:

That God should adopt us when he had a Son of his own

Men adopt because they want children, and desire to have some to bear their name; but that God should adopt us when he had a Son of his own, the Lord Jesus, is a wonder of love.…

Guides to Commentaries

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I wouldn’t presume to tell other lay preachers how to prepare their sermons, or how to use commentaries.  But here’s the first in what might turn out to be an occasional series of posts on my own approach.

The best one-sentence defense of biblical commentaries I have seen comes from the excellent C.H. Spurgeon:-

It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others. 

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Portrait of Calvin

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Somewhat to my regret, I’ve made rather more this year of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth than I have of the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’ s birth.

As a small contribution towards putting this right, I draw attention to a biography of Calvin by the noted scholar T.H.L. Parker.  First published in 1954, it is now reissued by Desiring God Ministries and is available online here.

John Piper writes:-

‘I am eager for people to know Calvin not because he was without flaws, or because he was the most influential theologian of the last 500 years (which he was), or because he shaped Western culture (which he did), but because he took the Bible so seriously, and because what he saw on every page was the majesty of God and the glory of Christ.’…