“The devil is a greater scholar than you, and a nimbler disputant; he can ‘transform himself into an angel of light’ to deceive. He will get within you and trip up your heels before you are aware; he will play the juggler with you undiscerned, and cheat you of your faith and innocency, and you …
Bartimaeus, Son of Faith
We come now to the last healing miracle recorded by Mark. We are on the threshold of the Lord’s suffering at Jerusalem. He has set His face to go there, knowing what will occur when He arrives. And He has come now to Jericho, which is about eighteen miles away from His abandonment by the …
Pious for Pay
“There are more secret snares than these, from which we can less easily escape; and of these the worst is the temptation to ministerialism — the tendency to read our Bibles as ministers, to pray as ministers, to get into doing the whole of our religion as not ourselves personally, but only relatively, concerned in …
Christ Hidden in Your Calling
INTRODUCTION: First we must begin with a statement of our problem. Many glorious truths were recovered in the Reformation, and one of them was the doctrine of vocation. Unfortunately, this is part of our Protestant heritage that we have shamefully neglected, and have almost lost. One of the principal indications that we have lost this …
Ransom for Many
As Christians, we must see more than the fact of the cross. We must also come to know and understand the demeanor exhibited by Christ as He went to the cross. This alone enables us to make sense of the glory which follows the cross in the resurrection. “And they were in the way going …
The Beard of Reputation
“But I question, gravely question whether a man who has grossly sinned should be very readily restored to the pulpit . . . Let those who have been shorn by the sons of Ammon tarry at Jericho till their beards be grown; this has often been used as a taunt to beardless boys to whom …
The Other Side of the Needle
This is one of the most famous incidents in the Bible, if only because of the memorable nature of Christ’s comment about the camel and needle. But there are depths in this passage which we must carefully consider. “And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, …
A Terrible Broadsword
“A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 8).
What God Has Joined
We now come to the beginning of the Lord’s ministry in Judea (v. 1). As in Galilee, it is characterized by teaching the people. The first subject to be addressed in this section is the much-troubled question of divorce and remarriage. We see here, as elsewhere, the close connection between the two great commandments. “And …
Keeping the Edge
“Every workman knows the necessity of keeping his tools in a good state of repair . . . we shall usually do our Lord’s work best when our gifts and graces are in good order, and we shall do worst when they are most out of trim . . . We are, in a certain …