Articles

John Calvin is thought of, principally, as a theologian. Of course, he was that. But, as Andrew W. Blackwood once told me, in his day he was first of all considered a preacher. Too few of his sermons have been preserved.1 English translations are mainly in 16th century English!2 Nevertheless, the more I read them, […]

Moses struck the rock twice and water poured forth. (Numbers 20:7) Obedience and faith bring power while disobedience and lack of faith yield impotence. When Israel continues to grumble and complain against God while in the wilderness, demanding water, accusing Moses of bringing them into the wilderness only to kill them, both Moses and Aaron […]

Abraham was brought up in the city of Ur, not far from the River Euphrates, in what is now southern Iraq. It was presumably very much a heathen environment. Yet even there the Lord appeared to him and called him ‘to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance’ (Heb. […]

John Calvin was not a man who would readily draw attention to himself. When he gave some details of his early life in the preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, his purpose was to draw attention to God’s activity. His father had intended him for the priesthood but, says Calvin, God, by the secret […]

Be filled with the Holy Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18) In July, 1997 my wife and I had the privilege of taking tea with Lord and Lady Catherwood in Cambridge, England. Lady Catherwood is the daughter of my favourite preacher, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who so ably preached the doctrines of grace, beginning in Aberavon, Wales in 1927 and […]

For the past year or so I have been making my way slowly through the reading of a series of sermons preached on Hebrews 11 by the Puritan, Thomas Manton. The book containing these sermons is titled By Faith and it is published by The Banner of Truth Trust1. Most recently I have been reading […]

Until the age of twenty-six I knew nothing of vital religion, although I lived an outwardly religious, moral and respectable life . . . Brought up under sacramental teaching, I was totally in the dark concerning the grace of God, although . . . I realize that he was leading me all the time. To […]

It is sometimes profitable to trace the use of one word in the Bible – there is much to learn from this method of study, it often brings new thoughts to light. Let us consider the word ‘Exceeding’. When one begins to trace the word in Scripture we soon realise that there is nothing sparing […]

A member of our congregation put to me a question in the light of some teaching on Luke 8:21, where Jesus dealt with a messenger who had come from his own relatives. These relatives wanted to speak to Jesus. ‘But he answered them, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of […]

I just don’t get it! Perhaps someone can explain it to me: how can we act so contrary to what we believe? How can there be such a yawning gap between what we know is true and what we do in the name of the truth we know? You don’t get it either, do you? […]

Be imitators of God . . . walk in love. (Ephesians 5:1) Forty-five per cent of people living in America claim to have had a born again experience, but the born again people have virtually the same levels of divorce, adultery, fornication and use of pornography as the rest of the population. Evangelicals are those […]

Christianity is the religion of the Gospel. The Gospel was defined by William Tyndale, the Bible translator, as ‘good merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him to dance and sing and leap for joy’. ‘Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, evermore his praises sing’, we might add. But as time […]

Even in the midst of temporal troubles, there is always something to be thankful for. Thanks-giving isn’t easy. Two things make it difficult. (1) Our sinful natures act like a ship’s anchor let down at sea. When we try to stir ourselves to give thanks, we find our souls are ‘dragging anchor.’ In the Bible, […]

I have been a missionary doctor in Mozambique for many years, and an unusual way to spread the knowledge of the Christian faith has developed here, that of a Scripture memory catechism class. There are 21 men from various churches and backgrounds who meet together on Saturdays to check out on Scripture memory they have […]

Masab, son of Palestinian West Bank Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef, glances at the friend who has accompanied him to the restaurant where we met. They whisper a few words and say grace, thanking God and Jesus for putting food on their plates. It takes a few seconds to digest this sight: the son of […]