To Whom Shall We Go?

I’ve only read C.S. Lewis once or twice in my life. Once in high school, and I think once more in college or seminary. I also read the Chronicles of Narnia as a boy. That’s why I’m excited that I’ve got to read Mere Christianity for one of my last classes in seminary. Here’s a quote from Mr. Quotable Lewis: If somebody else made me, for his own purposes, then I shall have a lot of duties which I should not have if I simply belonged to myself. What do you think of that? What makes that true?

I recently started reading the book Uprooting Anger: Biblical Help for a Common Problem by Robert D. Jones. I have been helped by it already, and I recommend it.

A word from the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones to preachers who believe there is a Holy Spirit: [There] is a very real danger of our putting our faith in our sermon rather than in the Spirit. Our faith should not be in the sermon, it should be in the Holy Spirit Himself. From his book Preaching and Preachers

For the Christmas season, I had the privilege of preaching four sermons on why Jesus came. 1. Jesus Came to Shepherd His Sheep 2. Jesus Came to Testify to the Truth 3. Jesus Came to Fulfill God's Word 4. Jesus Came to Glorify the Father Click here to listen.

Have you ever read an entire book of the Bible in one sitting? Now obviously I'm thinking of something slightly longer than Haggai (48 verses) or 2 John (13 verses!). More like Mark (16 chapters) or 1 Corinthians (16 chapters). I admit that there are several reservations one might have to doing this: I don’t have the time, there’s no way that can really be done or even that it doesn’t seem very devotional or reverential. I would like to suggest brief responses to each reservation, and then exhort you to just do it! I don’t have time: this might be true. Many of us are terribly busy (maybe too busy?). But if it were only an hour of your life, wouldn’t this be a really profitable way to spend an hour? There’s no way it can really be done: this also might be true. The whole book of Psalms might require a full workday of sitting to complete! But the gospel of John can be done in about an hour, if you read at a fairly steady clip. It doesn’t seem very reverential or devotional: t...

I thought this statement from Dave Harvey was insightful and helpful: Maybe you didn’t know this, but the Bible gives you a special privilege in dealing with sin committed against you. It’s called forbearance. It means that you can bring love into play in such a way that you can cut someone free from their sin against you—without them even knowing or acknowledging what they’ve done! Forbearance is an expression of mercy that can cover both the big sins of marital strife and the small sins of marital tension. And let’s face it; small sins are the fuel for most marital blazes. But he offers a word of caution, too: Forbearance doesn’t mean we tuck sin away for another time…In forbearance, we know (or at least suspect) we have been sinned against, but we actually make a choice to overlook the offense and wipe the slate clean, extending a heart attitude of forgiveness and treating the (apparent) sin as if it never happened. Proverbs 19:11 tells us it is a “glory to overlook an offen...

In my study for my sermon on Psalm 24, I came across this very helpful principle for interpreting the Psalms (and really, all of the Old Testament). It comes from Derek Kidner’s commentary on the Psalms : When ‘he opened their minds to understand the scriptures’ (Luke 24:45), it was with special reference to their Messianic content. ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations.’ Although Luke 24 gives few details of this instruction, the rest of the New Testament shows how the apostles unanimously understood it. So Jesus showed that every part of the Old Testament has “Messianic content.” In other words, every bit of it points to Jesus. That is how we read/interpret/teach/study the Old Testament: by looking for its Messianic content.