Sermon Video Introduction: One of the great difficulties that modern Christians have is that we do not let the two testaments inform one another. Because of this neglect on our part, we miss ...
Calvin and Lyzie
Marriage, as designed by God, is a glorious instrument of dominion. If we want to understand what is going on here today, we must understand this. Weddings are the front door to marriage, and marriage and dominion are woven tightly together. When God created our first parents, He gave them dominion over the entire world. …
Koinonia and the Way of Christ
Sermon Video Introduction: The lock down orders that have been imposed all over the country have revealed to us a number of things—whether outside the church, in the relationship of the church ...
When “Won by Sweetness” Means Not Being Won at All
Calvin (aside): We seen plenty of those who are most venomous when corrections and warnings are used.
Dissenters: Et quoy! Is that the way to teach? Ho! we want to be won by sweetness.
Calvin: You do? Then go and teach God his lesson.
Calvin (aside): Look at our fastidious gentlemen who cannot bear one single reproof when it is put to them! And why?
Dissenters: Ho! we want to be taught another way.
Calvin: Then go to the devil’s school. He will flatter you alright—to your destruction.
Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 145
The Opposite of Hoity Toity
Calvin “is certainly thinking of familiere in terms of language; for a little later he censures ambitious preachers who ‘babble in refined language.’ To make the Scriptural message familiere Calvin used a familiar, homely style of speaking.”
Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, pp. 139-140
Not a Babbling Brook
“The sermons are like rivers, moving strongly in one direction, alive with eddies and cross-currents, now thundering in cataracts, now a calm mirror of the banks and sky; but never still, never stagnant.”
Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 132
The Sinfulness of Worry
Sermon Video Introduction: In times like ours, there is a lot to worry about, is there not? If we are not worried about the coronavirus killing us dead, we are worried about panicked overreactions ...
Which Comes as a Surprise to Some
“It is that faith is never without combats; that we cannot serve God without being men of war.”
Calvin, as quoted in Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 118
Drive It Home Like a Spear
“Calvin frequently said that it was useless for the preacher merely to declare the truths of the Bible and leave the congregation to accept them or not without more ado.”
Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 114
A Visual Echo
“Earlier we spoke of the expository preacher as a chameleon, taking his color from that of the passage on which he was alighted.”
Parker, Calvin’s Preaching, p. 103