Theology That Bites Back
Introduction: God governs His world with inscrutable and holy wisdom. We know that He is holy, but part of the reason why this governance is so inscrutable is because He uses so much unholiness to accomplish His holy ends. And this was the central dilemma that Habakkuk faced. The lesson he learns is that waiting for deliverance is one of God’s ...
The Lord Jesus gave His followers a commission to disciple all the nations of the earth. These are the marching orders. This is why we are here, and not whisked straight off to Heaven. This is a tall order because the world does not want to be converted. The world loves its sin, and wants …
God desires our praise. He invites it, He summons it; He commands it. Not only do we have explicit commands throughout Scripture, we also have the examples set by God’s people over and over again, down through the centuries. In one sense, nothing seems more natural than that we should praise God, and that He …
A Brief Explanation: The form of this sermon is unusual, and so I need to give a brief word of explanation before presenting the message. We have four gospels that contain many examples of our Lord’s teaching, whether in parables or in explanations to His disciples, but we really only have one example of a recorded sermon. That sermon, of ...
Introduction: So this is the fifth in a series of topical messages from 1 John. The words we have been considering were lust, lies, life, light, and this week, love. Remember that the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh and the pride of life are entirely inconsistent with the love of the Father. They are what caused our first parents to revolt against ...
God in His infinite wisdom has determined to make men and women very, very different. But we must be careful because there are different kinds of differences. What do I mean? A coral reef and a cirrus cloud are quite different—as in entirely different. A violin and a bow are also completely different, but a …
In a quote famously attributed to St. Francis, he once told his followers: “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words only when necessary.” Now to the extent that this is simply an exhortation to live out the Christian life, even when you are not talking, then we can all agree with it, or at least agree with the spirit of it. We are not supposed ...
INTRODUCTION: As we seek to live our lives as faithful Christians, informed by the Word of God, we soon discover that it is not a simple process. It is not as though the Spirit gave us a rule book, in outline form, fully indexed. Rather, He gave us laws, histories, principles, stories, poems, and parables, …
Introduction: As members of a fallen race, we want, we desire. What we want is the world, seized by us outside the framework of God’s character. This is what worldliness is. Because we want to be unrighteous in this way, but we also want the reputation of righteousness, the only solution is to deceive ourselves, to lie to ourselves. But ...
Introduction: We have considered the enticements of worldliness—the snare that tripped up our first parents. Those enticements are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. When we are drawn to such things, and they make us unrighteous, and we also want to cling to our deep need to still be in the right, this results ...
