Looking at Christ

  A few tips on preaching the Gospel According to John: Preach in line with the purpose of the book You wouldn’t take a utilities bill to a song contest and sing it or take a maths textbook to bed with you for a bit of escapist light reading before you fall asleep – that’s not their purpose. The purpose of John is in John 20:30-31 – an electric moment where the narrator gets in front of the camera and looks straight into the lens at you sitting there and tells you exactly why he’s written these things: LOOK –> LIFE. Look at Christ crucified , come to Him, eat and drink Him –> have eternal life, know  the true God, starting now.  Go back to John 20:30-31 every time you preach on John.  Not so that every sermon sounds the same, but so that you are preaching in line with John’s purpose, according to God's purpose. If we use John’s book for some other purpose – studying different characters for motivational encouragements or looking at...

"I think God is humbling us. He's humbling the whole nation because he's taking away the idols everyone naturally depends on - health and financial security. And he's humbling us Christian leaders because all our clever ministry plans and events and strategies have had to be torn up or radically changed and we're forced to depend on him to work!" (London pastor) "Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." (Deuteronomy 8:2-3) God's humbling brings us to see and feel our creatureliness, our createdness, to teach us that man does not live on bread alone. We do not simply...

"How are you doing?" Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing . (Acts 15:36) What were they looking to see? What were they checking? As we enter Covid-19 lock down and have that same concern to find out how people are doing, what do we need to be most concerned about? Obviously we'll be concerned for how they're doing physically, financially and emotionally. That's completely right. That's love. But what specifically was the Apostle Paul concerned about? There's a window into his greatest concern in the first letter he sends to the Thessalonian church - a group of young Christians he'd been ripped away from and was desperately worried about.  For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter had tempted you and that our labours might have been in vain. (1 Thess 3:...

It’s at the heart of marriage. It’s the joy of singleness. It’s vital to gospel ministry. It’s key to cross-cultural encounter. Friendship Peel away the superficial modern meanings of friendship and dig down into the ancient sources and you find something very rich and strong. Reading Augustine’s Confessions I am struck by how hugely important (for good or ill) his friends were in his life. He lived with them and ate with them. He loved them deeply. Their life choices – work, travel, marriage, ethics, philosophy – were each other’s business. In many ways their friendships were similar to the covenanted friendship of David and Jonathan (1 Sam. 18:1-4 cf. Ruth 1:16) – intensely loyal, devoted, knit together. In one of his most extreme passages, Augustine speaks of his anguish after the death of his friend: “I, who had been like another self to him. It was well said that a friend is half one’s own soul. I felt that my soul and his had been but one soul in two bodies, and ...

One of the best evangelistic sermons ever preached: Ecce Homo . [Behold the man.] Of course Pilate is not being an intentional evangelist in John 19:5. He is a cynical, ruthless political operator who is perfectly happy to have an innocent man beaten and tortured. But then Caiaphas was a cynical, ruthless political operator when he preached brilliant gospel truth: It is better for you that one man should die for the people (John 11:50). And John tells us that in this statement Caiaphas was (inadvertently) prophesying (John 11:51). John loves double entendre and dripping irony. The truth comes forth most powerfully from the mouths of its enemies. So we shouldn’t be surprised when a few pages later we find a report of Pilate also preaching the gospel. So why is “Behold the man” such a great evangelistic sermon? It is pointing to Jesus. “We preach not ourselves but Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:5). The point of preaching is to ‘placard’ Christ before the hearers (Galati...

What is saving faith according to John's Gospel? Answer: Simply looking at Christ crucified. John says, "We have seen his glory" (John 1:14) - glory seen most clearly at the Cross where we have received grace on grace. John the Baptist says, " Behold , the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world " (John 1:29). Jesus says, "Come and see " (John 1:39). Philip says, "Come and see " (John 1:46). The Samaritan woman says, "Come and see " (John 4:29). The Greeks say, "We want to see Jesus" (IJohn 12:21). Isaiah " saw his glory" - high and lifted up (John 12:41, Isaiah 6). At the crucifixion itself the final Scripture to be fulfilled is Zechariah 12:10 - "They will look on the one they have pierced ." Perhaps the clearest a best passage on this in the whole Gospel is John 3:14-15: "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that ever...