The teaching of Jesus is characterized by the parable. He teaches with concrete images, not abstractions, common situations, not convoluted hypotheticals. The first extended parable in this gospel is that of the sower, and, as we shall see, it is the key to the subsequent parables. Again, the setting of His teaching is by the …
What We Declare
“Thus the apostle Paul sets forth what we have called the proclamation, the announcement of what God has done for our reconciliation to Himself. He has refused to impute our sins to us. He has made Christ to be sin for us. This is the ‘gospel’ of which we are heralds. It is the proclamation …
Strange Contentment
INTRODUCTION: Rightly understood, contentment is impossible to understand. A preacher who sets himself to explain it is therefore heading into treacherous waters. He needs to take care to explain only those aspects of it that are laid out in the Word, and then leave the the Holy Spirit to His work in bringing about contentment …
Hope I Remember to Say That
I am glad that Green Baggins is feeling a little less green at the gills, and has returned to the fray. He responded to my post on the nature of apostasy by suggesting that I am committing the fallacy of composition. If sodium is a poison, and it is, and chloride is a poison, then …
Lord of Lords or Lord of Flies?
In this passage, some scribes from Jerusalem are guilty of an enormity, and Jesus pronounces that those who accept this line of argument are in danger of a fearful judgment — that of eternal damnation. “And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth …
Proclamation and Appeal
“Fundamentally, [the apostolic kerygma] consisted of only two parts, which we may perhaps call ‘proclamation’ and ‘appeal'” (John Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, p. 40).
What Would Hodge Do?
The Federal Vision controversy has had no shortage of examples of plain old doctrinal confusion, straight up the middle. A good example of that can be found here. But my point is not so much as to take issue with the characterization there of FV thought as Arminian. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this …
The Disciples
The Bible teaches us that the twelve apostles are in an important sense foundational to the Church. We are the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Himself as the cornerstone (Eph.2:20). We too often think of only the cornerstone, forgetting the rest of the foundation. “But Jesus …
Through His Ministers
Paul “then adds, ‘And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near’ (Eph. 2:15, 17). This preaching of peace by Jesus Christ (cf. Acts 10:36), according to the context, took place after His death. It can scarcely refer to His teaching during the forty days …
Withered Sabbatarian Hearts
The last two controversies of the five we have been considering are sabbath controversies. The nature of these controversies illustrates a perennial problem among those who take the words of God seriously. That problem is one of arbitrary selectivity. “And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; …