Luke 18:9-14: The Pharisee and the Tax Collector
INTRODUCTION Jeremiah 17:9 says of our hearts, ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’ Our hearts are self-deceiving, in other words we lie to ourselves. We deceive ourselves about many things but two stand out in our text today. We lie to ourselves about our own goodness; and we lie to ourselves about others sinfulness. We come another famous parable of Christ in Luke 18:9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. Jesus has been speaking about how we ought to persevere in prayer, this parable too is about prayer....
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Luke 18:1-8: The Parable of the Persistent Widow
INTRODUCTION Prayer is something that every Christian does, but nobody does well. Prayer is the native tongue of faith, but we trend towards doubt. Prayer is the hearts’ expression of love to God, but we are often cold towards God. Prayer is the outlet of holy desire, but we are full of sinful desires. We struggle to pray and we struggle to pray well. This could be because of sin in our lives that we withdraw from God’s searching gaze. This could be because of the business of life where the urgent drives out the important. It could be...
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Ephesians 6:18-20: The Armour of God: Part six
INTRODUCTION We come to the last message on spiritual warfare. We have spoken about the strength that God gives us by His Spirit; and we have looked at the pieces of the armour as the equipment every Christian is equipped with for the fight. But our last message was on one of the most important aspects of our warfare and that is prayer. Prayer is indeed the greatest need of every believer and the greatest need of the church. Prayer is the God given means by which we appropriate all of God’s strength for the fight. Paul spends more...
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Ephesians 6:4: The Priestly Duties of Parenting
Recently Kevin DeYoung in a blog article called ‘The World is Catechizing Us Whether we Realize It or Not,’ commenting on his recent experience of watching the Olympics he writes, ‘You couldn’t watch two weeks of the Olympics—or at times, even two minutes—without being catechized in the inviolable truths of the sexual revolution. Earlier in the summer, I watched parts of the Euro, and you would have thought the whole event was a commercial for rainbow flags.’ His point is right, we are being catechized whether we like it or know it or not. He issues this pertinent warning:...
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Ephesians 5:26-27: Glorify Your Wives
When Lynn and I got married we asked for a full sermon to be preached. Our pastor at the time, Leigh Robinson preached a four point sermon on the purpose of marriage. Marriage is for partnership, marriage is for procreation, marriage is for pleasure, and marriage is for perfection. One of the main goals of marriage is holiness. This is a distinct perspective that Christianity brings to the issue of marriage. For many marriage is about not burning, or not being lonely, or having kids, these are true but a major part of marriage is God’s purpose to make...
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Ephesians 5:18: Be Filled with the Spirit: Part Two
When I say ‘be filled with the Spirit,’ what comes to mind? You might think of power to do miracles, you might think of having a mystical experience, you might think of the Toronto Blessing. The problem with these conceptions and those like them is that they are extraordinary events that are reserved for the few where the command to be filled with the Spirit is something that is for all Christians to grasp. We continue then this week looking at what Paul means to be filled with the Spirit.
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Luke 11:5-13: Encouragements to Pray
Jesus as the master-teacher on prayer knows that we have more than one problem with prayer, not knowing what to pray for; but we also have a problem in how we pray, our uncertainty in prayer. We all struggle with a lack of faith and that lack of faith will reflect in our praying. Our faith is small because our knowledge of God is small, we do not view Him as generous and willing. Our faith is small because our view of the gospel is small, therefore our sins loom large and we think God is unwilling to hear...
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Luke 10:1-16: Preparation for ministry: The trust we exercise
Phillip Ryken tells the story of ‘The China Gospel Fellowship—also known as Tanghe—is a large network of Chinese house churches. Early in 1994 the fellowship began collecting donations for a special missionary trip. Since most of the group’s members live in poverty, their giving was sacrificial. People sold their chickens or gave up money they had been saving for marriage. No matter what the cost, they wanted God to be glorified in China. When sufficient funds had been raised, the fellowship held a worship service at which they commissioned seventy young evangelists to go out two-by-two and preach the...
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Luke 9:37-45: A Lack of Faith and Understanding
There is a saying in Christianity: the devil does not attack you on the mountaintops, he is waiting for you at the foot of the mountain. This is literally what happens in this section where Jesus has been on the mountaintop with His inner ring of disciples, and now that it is time to descend, what is waiting at the bottom? A severe case of demonic possession. But not only that the disciples have had an amazing time. They have been sent on their first outreach which resulted in miracles and exorcisms at their hands; they have been stretching...
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Ephesians 3:14-19: Praying for power
Praying when we are in need is easy, we always pray from the heart, but praying for others often deteriorates into shallow requests without heart. We often pray generic prayers for health, provision, and spiritual well-being. Paul in the portion before us prays under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, prayers of pastoral care, and prayers that flow out of the realities of the gospel. Paul as a minister of the gospel is not only called to preach the message of Christ to the Gentiles, but to pray for the church as well. Eph. 3:14-21 consists of 2 main...
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Ephesians 3:11-13: The Plan of God
One of the most misunderstood, yet one of the most comforting doctrines that we believe in is the doctrine of God’s decree. Just as a builder does not begin to build without the blueprints, God as the Creator and Sustainer of the universe worked out His salvation in history according to an eternal plan/decree. If you will forgive the Freemason associations He is indeed the Great Architect. This plan is freely constructed by God, in other words He did not have to be taught anything or have His arm twisted to make it in a certain way. Everything that...
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Ephesians 1:15-23: Prayer for the Saints: Part One
What do you pray for other Christians? You might have found yourself in your quiet time and you pick up the church phonebook to pray through a page as part of your daily devotions. This is the third time you have gone through the book and the prayers are beginning to feel heartless and robotic. You aren’t really sure what to ask for. Should you ask for happiness, prosperity, good health, emotional wellbeing, peace? These are broad categories of well-wishing which are not informed by the gospel, what you want are prayer requests that are not what any uninformed...
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Habakkuk 3: A Song of Faith
Imagine yourself as the prophet, you know that one of the worst tragedies in human history is coming, a holocaust against your nation in which many will die and suffer terrible atrocities. What do you do? Most of us would pack our bags and run away. Instead Habakkuk writes a song to equip Israel for the coming trial. As a shepherd and teacher of the people, Habakkuk shows the righteous what their own response to God should be in the coming times. The relevance of a song is immense. Many truths that have impacted our lives have been those...
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Habakkuk 1:12-2:1: The Problem of Reconciling God’s purposes
Have you ever asked a question, got an answer, but the answer provoked a number of further questions? That’s the trouble with our questions isn’t it? We think we have a good grasp of an issue, and all we need is one more piece to make the picture complete, but when we hear the answer, we realise our original idea was wrong and so we have a number of further questions to try and fill out the picture in our minds. This is Habakkuk. He had what appeared to be a simple question, ‘How long until you do something...
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Habakkuk 1:5-11: My Ways Are Not Your Ways
Have you ever had an answer to prayer that was completely unexpected? There you were asking the Lord for one thing, and then He went and answered your prayer but not in the way you had hoped. There is a famous example of this in John Newton, it is recorded in one of the hymns we sing. It was originally called ‘Prayer answered by crosses’ here is the opening stanza, ‘I asked the Lord that I might grow In faith and love and ev’ry grace, Might more of His salvation know, And seek more earnestly His face.’ How would...
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Habakkuk 1:1-4: The Doubting Prophet
People go through their lives not thinking about God, but as soon as something goes wrong then suddenly the questions fly and someone has to be blamed and God whose existence was being ignored is suddenly questioned. This instinct to doubt God when things go wrong is what the book of Habakkuk is all about. The main difference being that Habakkuk is not an unbeliever but a believer questioning God, and his questions and accusations are more informed, more like our own. This is a book that deals with some of our biggest and most important questions, where is...
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