“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 132 “The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour. He coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth and spareth not” (Prov. 21:25-26). One of the things that Proverbs is known for—a major …
Portico of Wrath
Throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus has been in conflict with the authorities at Jerusalem, who will eventually kill Him. “And he began to speak unto them by parables . . .” (Mark 12: 1-44). Remember that in the early portion of Mark, Jesus had five controversies with the Jews. Here, at the other end …
Holy Cheerfulness
“Sanctity in ministers is a loud call to sinners to repent, and when allied with holy cheerfulness it becomes wondrously attractive” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, pp. 18-19).
Grace or Law?
“A vision of the good has far greater power to move men and women to do the right thing than all the horrible images we may conjure up to terrify them into doing it” (Vigen Guroian, Rallying the Really Human Things, p. 10).
What God Does Not Anoint
“There may be some commotion as a result, but cowardice in the pulpit has never been anointed by God” (Mother Kirk, p. 237).
Christ Hidden in Your Calling
Yesterday I preached on the importance of seeing Christ in your vocational call. We need to learn how to see Christ giving to us through the vocational work of others, and we need to learn how to see Christ giving to others by means of our work. You can listen to it here.
King David Returns
Jesus comes now to the outskirts of the City of David, and does so in all authority. He is the Son of David, arrived to claim His inheritance. Bartimaeus has set the stage for this by calling upon Jesus as the Son of David, and Mark emphasizes the point by how he cites the praises …
The Bane of Clever Preachers
“The devil is a greater scholar than you, and a nimbler disputant; he can ‘transform himself into an angel of light’ to deceive. He will get within you and trip up your heels before you are aware; he will play the juggler with you undiscerned, and cheat you of your faith and innocency, and you …
Not Called Limousine Liberals for Nothing
“The first duty of the modern intellectual, wrote George Orwell, is to state the obvious, to puncture ‘the smelly little orthodoxies . . . now contending for our souls..’ Orwell meant by these the totalitarian doctrines that mesmerized the intellectuals of his time and that prevented them from accepting the most obvious and evident truths …
The Devil’s Stragglers
“For example, the biblical pattern of evangelism was not at all like our modern method of picking off the devil’s stragglers, but rather a pattern of bringing the good news to household after household” (Mother Kirk, p. 236).