Sermon Video Introduction: Today we celebrate Pentecost, the ancient harvest festival of the Jews, the great day on which the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church, and three thousand souls ...
Lord of Life, Dealer of Death, Giver of Gifts
The Best Thing You Could Do This Summer
We are about to embark on another summer of reading through the New Testament. If you are like many other Christians, you know that this is a good thing to do, but you may not be exactly sure why. This is quite all right as far as it goes. There are many things that are …
Bible Reading and a Little Kvelling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5KwbOqeHiE The apostle Paul knew what it was like to do a little kvelling in his people, as do I. “. . . we are your boast as you also are ours, ...
The Clouds of Heaven
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 ...