Service is the fundamental structure of Christian existence, modeled by Christ himself — “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The motive of service determines its character: fear-motivated service…
Poverty is broader than the absence of money. A person may be materially comfortable and still be desperately poor — in relationships, in character, in fellowship with God. The poor Jesus declares “blessed” (Matt. 5:3) are not the materially destitute; they are the poor in spirit…
The preacher’s body, voice, and manner are either servants of the message or competitors with it. Every pulpit habit that draws attention to the preacher rather than to Christ has failed the sermon before the first word is spoken. The standard is simple: does this help…
Chapters four and five of I Timothy are a preacher’s handbook: how to identify and resist false doctrine, how to invest personal time and energy, how to set an example in the right areas, how to handle reproof without offense, and how to care for widows…
James’s one sentence — “Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away” (James 4:14) — contains within it both the greatest urgency and the most clarifying perspective…
God and man value things differently; man is forever putting first what God puts last, and last what God puts first — so the whole art of right living is to see and rank things as God does, and “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.”…
God has always required His people to give; since we own nothing but merely steward what is already His, the Christian gives himself first and then his means — liberally, freely, willingly, as he has prospered, regularly through the church and as need arises among men….
The church is a divine-human institution: its strength is wholly in its divine element — God’s plan, Christ’s blood, His headship, the Spirit’s indwelling — and its weakness is wholly in its human element, the frail members who carry the work; so the cure for the…
God has written one law across creation in the shape of a circle: what goes out comes back — in the physical world dust returns to dust, in the moral world a man reaps what he sows, and in the spiritual world he receives the measure…
The resurrection of the dead is a single, universal, bodily, and final act of Christ’s authority in which every person will rise at His voice—some to life, and the rest to judgment.