“In order to maintain attention, avoid being too long. An old preacher used to say to a young man who preached an hour, — ‘My dear friend, I do not care what else you preach about, but I wish you would always preach about forty minutes.’ We ought seldom to go much beyond that — …
Restitution: The Forgotten Duty
This last Lord’s Day, I preached on the forgotten duty of restitution. You can take a listen here. “Forgiveness of sin is forgiveness of sin, not redefinition of sin (Rom. 13:8-10). ‘Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven’ contains a glorious truth. But, misapplied as it frequently is, it also represents a travesty of biblical living.”
Christ the Lord of Redemption
The gospel is not fragile. In it, the wisdom of God in Christ overthrows kingdoms, powers, principalities, egos, and various cherished doctrines. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. …
A Large Bible
“Yet further, do not repeat the same idea over and over again in other words. Let there be something fresh in each sentence. Be not forever hammering away at the same nail: yours is a large Bible; permit people to enjoy its length and breadth” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 134).
God’s Palimpsest
Let’s begin with the basic reason why it is so important to understand what the ground of our justification is — the early Reformers insisted on this (rightly) in the Pauline spirit of preventing any man from boasting about his salvation, which sinful men always want to do. The point was not that we had …
Christ the Lord of Creation
We are Christians, and this means that Christ must be central to our understanding of the created order. We cannot understand anything apart from Him, and this understanding must be bounded and guided by Scripture. Central to the Reformed faith is a right understanding of the created order, and our place in it. “Wherefore God …
The Preacher’s Responsibility to be Interesting
“If men’s minds are wandering far away they cannot receive the truth, and it is much the same if they are inactive. Sin cannot be taken out of men, as Eve was taken out of the side of Adam, while they are fast asleep” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 127).
Hearing the Click
In the midst of some very kind comments about my visit to Mississippi, Steven Wedgeworth said this: “This was clearly the case on imputation. He kept proposing that the imputation of Christ’s active obedience was equivalent with recapitulation. Jesus is the new Israel, so there ya go. While I can see some of this, I …
Holiness Becomes Common
This great vision is presented to us in apocalyptic form. This means it belongs to a certain literary genre, just like parts of Daniel, the Gospels, and the book of Revelation. The word apocalypsis (just like the Latin revelatio) refers to an unveiling, or lifting of the curtain. This enables us to see what is …
Warm to the Work
“Do not start at the highest pitch as a rule, for then you will not be able to rise when you warm with the work; but still be outspoken from the first” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 117).