by Sarah Ivill Each day you and I awake to a world that is experiencing the effects of sin. Broken relationships abound. Financial hardships occur. Places are wiped out by fires, hurricanes, and tsunamis. People die from sickness and starvation.…
God’s law reveals God’s character. By it, we know Him and know what it means to be like Him. Therefore, the law itself is beautiful and desirable, reflecting God Himself. The law is also mankind’s tutor. It instructs us of…
The three uses of the law—restraining sin, convicting sinners, and guiding believers in holy living—reflect its multifaceted role in God’s moral order. While the third use promotes societal order and the second provides a blueprint for Christian living, it is…
One of the first sermon series I ever preached was on the life of Samson. I was new, at the time, to expository preaching, and I wanted to start with something manageable and familiar. Little did I know, a careful…
Josiah is introduced in 2 Kings 22 as the new king of Judah who is merely eight years old. As a young boy growing up in church, this story intrigued me. Later in elementary school in writing for an assignment…
God had cursed David for his sin with Bathsheba. The curse is spelled out in 2 Samuel 12:10-15. In the next chapter we see the ugly blossom of the curse in David’s life. Not surprisingly, sin produces sin in its…
In the first two parts in this series (here and here), we discussed the truth that eloquence can only glorify God when it takes the role of servant rather than the master. We also so that eloquence starts from the…
Where do we turn when we are brokenhearted? Some of us turn to entertainment to distract us. Others of us throw all our time and attention to a hobby we’re good at. We may call a couple of good friends…
We often see ourselves as the heroes of the stories we read. We identify with noble characters like Atticus Finch, Elizabeth Bennett, and Frodo Baggins—rarely do we align ourselves with flawed figures like Bob Ewell, Mary Bennett, or Gollum. This…
The metaphor of God’s kingdom as a vineyard is one that has Old Testament vintage, which is appropriate when talking about a vineyard. Long before Christ’s first advent, the prophet Isaiah described the Kingdom of Judah as a vineyard well-supplied…
