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If we wish to appropriate the wisdom of Charles Simeon as theorist on expository preaching, we must first make clear to ourselves what we mean when we speak of expository preaching. This is necessary because the word expository has often been used in a restricted sense to denote simply a sermon preached from a long text. Thus, Andrew Blackwood wrote: “An expository sermon here means one that grows out of a Bible passage longer than two or three verses . . . an expository sermon means a textual treatment of a fairly long passage.”² He went on to suggest that young pastors should preach such sermons “perhaps once a month”³ and to give hints on the problems of technique they involve.

Without suggesting that Blackwood’s usage is inadmissible for any purpose, I must discuss it as too narrow for our present purpose—if only because it would exclude all but a handful of Charles Simeon’s sermons (his texts, you see, are far too short!). We shall find it better to define “expository” preaching in terms, not of the length of the text, but of the preacher’s approach to it, and to say something like this: expository preaching is the preaching of the man who knows Holy Scripture to be the living Word of the living God, and who desires only that it should be free to speak its own message to sinful men and women; who therefore preaches from a text, and in preaching labors, as the Puritans would say, to “open” it, or, in Simeon’s phrase, to “bring out of the text what is there”; whose whole aim in preaching is to show his hearers what the text is saying to them about God and about themselves, and to lead them into what Barth called “the strange new world within the Bible” in order that they may be met by him who is the Lord of that world.

The practice of expository preaching thus presupposes the biblical and evangelical account of the relation of the written words of Scripture to the speaking God with whom we have to do. Defining the concept in this way, we may say that every sermon that Simeon preached was an expository sermon; and, surely, we may add that every sermon that we ourselves preach should be an expository sermon. What other sort of sermons, we may ask, is there room for in Christ’s church?

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“Prayer is like breathing. It is the air in which we survive spiritually.” – Elisabeth Elliot

Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice. Psalm 55:17#elisabethelliot #prayer #christianbooks #faithful #spiritual pic.twitter.com/PYl0bzoDrN

— Elisabeth Elliot (@EElliotFdn) September 24, 2025

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“Now let me say a word to all of us about the importance of Christians being Christians. I want to speak to you from my heart and tell you that you matter not just to God, not just to me not just this Parish, but to this country and the most important thing for the country right now is for Christians to be Christians and to be salt and light.

There’s no question that the last week has been unspeakably difficult for our country. We had a man who was speaking publicly at a university in Utah senselessly murdered in cold blood. It caused terror and shock to the students, to the university, to the state of Utah, to the country and indeed to the world.

Whatever else you can say about this terrible event it represents the symptom of a country that is not well. We need Christians to pray for this country but we need more than that. We need Christians to be Christians in the public sphere in this country and behave in the public Square in a manner that conforms with the person and the teachings of Christ.

This means two things specifically for us. First of all, it means speaking against political violence from any point of view as ever being justified in the public square. Christians need to be people who defend free speech, but also who defend the importance of good disagreement in public and who do everything in their power to pray and speak against any political violence.

There is also something philosophical at stake and it matters. One of the very alarming things that’s happened in the last few decades is that a perspective has emerged, which has moved from arguing that words are bad to arguing that words in and of themselves are violence.

We need to be careful here. There is no justification for using free speech to deliberately incite violence from others or ourselves, but this is different.

What is now being argued is that words of a certain type from a certain vantage point are inherently violent and therefore people who use those kind of words and those kind of arguments are able to be responded to with violence in certain circumstances.

Do not fool yourself that this idea that political violence is justified is somehow hiding anymore in the dark subways or smaller parts of our country. What is so deeply disturbing about what this week represents is how many people in public from various viewpoints are more and more justifying political violence as a means of somehow being a solution to our problems Political violence has never been good. It will never be justified. It can never be condoned. It must always be condemned.

This is true for everyone, but especially for us as Christians. Let us renew our commitment to pray for this country and let us renew our commitment to seek the common good, to defend the importance of the public square and to defend the need to behave properly in the public square. And let us all work for the common good of our country.

Several people have argued that this week could be a turning point—let us pray that it is, in all sorts of ways, a turning point for the better, but let us, especially as Christians, respond by making sure that it deepens our resolve to be people of salt and light who speak the truth in love and who declare to all that speaking the truth in love matters. And let us pray that the God who brought his light into the darkness of this world, somehow brings his light out of this very dark week in Utah and in America.”

The striking and appropriate terms in which the prophet Isaiah depicts the character and offices of the Messiah, have procured for him, by way of eminence, the title of the Evangelical Prophet. He exhibits a glowing but faithful picture of the character of Christ, and all the humiliating and all the triumphant events of his life. In the chapter which contains my text, the prophet has dipped his pencil in the softest colours, and draws a portrait of the Saviour, which, while it conveys to us the most exalted ideas of his character, is calculated to awaken our tenderest and liveliest sympathy.

Blessed feast of John Henry Hobart. May there be a revival of the Old High Church school in our lifetime! He is a true gem of the Anglican tradition. pic.twitter.com/sEknWdQnns

— David Szomor (@curiouscurate) September 12, 2024

Almighty God, whose servant Dominic grew in knowledge of thy truth and formed an order of preachers to proclaim the good news of Christ: Give to all thy people a hunger for your Word and an urgent longing to share the Gospel, that the whole world may come to know thee as thou art revealed in thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Today's the feast of St Dominic, 13th Century Spanish founder of the Dominican Order. He's in Suffolk on the Thornham Parva Retable, c1330. It was originally at the Blackfriars church in Thetford, Norfolk, part of a Dominican priory. 1/3

Thornham Parva: https://t.co/ipeMy06ucP pic.twitter.com/se18fm7EpZ

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) August 8, 2025

“All right, now let’s look at this particular struggle. It’s an incredible story, this. It goes in four parts, and what’s so powerful about it is it goes in a circle.

So it’s a bit, in a sense, misleading if you read the psalm too quickly, because the beginning verse, look at your text, verse one. Truly God is good to Israel. That’s actually the end of the story.

And it doesn’t feel all that powerful because he’s beginning at the end. So what you need to realize is, if you go to the end of the psalm, verse 28, but for me, it is good to be near God. See, this is a song about the goodness of God.

He’s telling you at the beginning, that’s where he ends up. But what you need to realize is, the journey through which he gets there is absolutely crucial. And it’s a very, very hard one, and it’s a very, very important one for us to understand.

So I’m going to go through it under four headings just to give you a way to follow. So I want to talk about the ledge that he ends up on. 

I want to talk about the lift that God gives him while he’s on the ledge so he doesn’t end up staying on the ledge.

I want to talk about the lesson that he learns. And then I want to talk about the liberation that God gives him as a result of this experience. So if you’re with me, ledge, lift, lesson, liberation.

All right, you all with me? Here we go. Verse two, it all starts.

This is very serious stuff, brothers and sisters. This is not some minor struggle. This is a member of the people of God.

He’s been at it for a while, and he’s going through a tough time. How do I know that? Well, look at your text.”

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“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26 ESV) pic.twitter.com/Y6zKL1d5Y2

— Joel (@GuitarmanJoel) July 23, 2025

After that he started preaching through the New Testament one book at a time, beginning with the Gospel of John and then moving to Peter’s first and second epistles. MacArthur spent 30 hours a week preparing sermons and delegated almost all other pastoral responsibilities to the church’s elders and lay leaders. 

The church grew rapidly. Grace built a new building that could seat 1,000 in 1971 and expanded again in 1977, tripling in size. It became the largest Protestant church in Los Angeles by the end of the decade.

The demand for recordings of MacArthur’s sermons also exploded. Church members sent out 5,000 tapes every week, then 15,000, then 30,000. By the end of the ’70s, more than 100,000 Christians around the country were receiving MacArthur’s recorded sermons every week. The church also launched a separate ministry, Grace to You, to broadcast MacArthur’s messages on Christian radio.

“John’s ministry proves how timeless preaching can be when it is merely sound, clear biblical exposition,” Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You, said in 2011. “If the aim of preaching is the awakening of spiritually dead souls and the cleansing and transformation of lives spoiled by sin, then all that really counts is that the preacher be faithful in proclaiming the Word of God with clarity, accuracy, and candor.”

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Expository preacher John MacArthur died Monday at the age of 86.

He said the most important mark of his ministry was that he explained the Bible with the Bible.https://t.co/qUiMDTIxLW

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) July 15, 2025

Today is St Swithun’s Day, when the weather-gods obey the saint of Winchester – ‘St Swithun’s day if thou dost rain / For forty days it will remain’, and all that. So let’s look at a few extracts from an Old English homily for St Swithun’s Day, written by Ælfric in the last decade of the tenth century.

Ælfric had a personal connection to Swithun’s story, and in this homily he adds in one or two comments to remind us of it. Swithun was an obscure ninth-century Bishop of Winchester whose fame is almost entirely the work of Æthelwold, his successor at Winchester more than a century later. Winchester was the royal city of Wessex but it was surprisingly short on saints, so Æthelwold did his best to elevate some of his predecessors to that status, including Swithun and St Birinus (a better-attested saint, though his popularity never caught on as Swithun’s did). On 15 July 971, Æthelwold had Swithun’s remains translated to a new shrine inside the Old Minster, Winchester. Ælfric, who was educated at Winchester under Æthelwold and had a great respect for his bishop, would have witnessed much of this, and by the time he wrote about it, around 25 years later, he had come to see Æthelwold’s time – his own youth – as a kind of golden age for the English church, when the king and holy bishops worked together and religion and peace flourished in the land. By the 990s, with the Vikings suddenly once more a pressing threat, this seemed to him like a bright but vanished world.

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It’s the feast of St Swithun, 9th-century Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester. Since the Middle Ages, his day has been linked to weather-lore: it’s said that in mid-July weather patterns shift, and if it rains on St Swithun’s Day it will rain for 40 days.https://t.co/FfgcvohJU2 pic.twitter.com/aF8SYiDAsw

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) July 15, 2025

What I want you to notice first of all, is that it’s not just the earth, it’s also the heavens. That is to say the heavens and the earth. We’re back to Genesis 1.

Look at verse 1, it says, your name in all the earth. And then it says at the end of verse 1, your glory above the heavens. He’s looking at the heavens, he’s looking at the earth, he’s considering all of the cosmos.

In the beginning, there was nothing and then there was something because the spirit came over that which is formless and void and God created, and it says the heavens and the earth. And he’s looking at it all. And the thing that’s so great about a psalm like this for us, and I’ve said this to you before, and I’ll make sure to say it again this morning is, what’s so wonderful about this is, this is one of the rare psalms where we actually have an advantage over the psalmist himself, and this means more to us than it did to him because of modern astronomy and cosmology.”

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“What is man that You are mindful of him?” pic.twitter.com/TEfRpxFhuA

— Rudy Cerda (@RudyCerda) July 14, 2022

I was in Egypt at this time last year for an international gathering of Anglican ministers. Our group was given an audience with the head of the Coptic church, Pope Tawadros II. He leads one of the oldest branches of Christianity, understood to go back Saint Mark himself.

During our time with him he spoke about the culture of Egypt, which he described as being built over thousands of years upon something like seven or eight layers. There was pre-Egypt (before 3000BC); Ancient Egypt with its several kingdoms (ca 3000-332 BC); the Persian Period (525-332 BC); the Greek Period (332-30BC); the Roman and Christian period (30BC-641 AD); Islamic Egypt (641-1517 AD); Ottoman Egypt (1517-1798 AD); the French and British Period (1798-1952); and now, Modern Egypt (1952-present).

I cannot think of another place with such an ancient, varied, and unbroken witness to human civilization. You can see it in the buildings. In Cairo, in just hours you can find yourself before pyramids over four thousand years old, churches nearly two thousand years old, mosques over a thousand years old, all while driving past hotels and fast-food restaurants just a few years old.

Being in a place like Egypt is a reminder that human beings do more than just exist. We build.

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What a blessing to be at @TheFallsChurch Anglican with Sam Ferguson and his flock. pic.twitter.com/nryb3jv7eC

— Ligon Duncan (@LigonDuncan) June 26, 2022

“What does a wise life look like? What does a wise life look like? I want to be sure that we’re all on the same page as I begin.

That word wise is carefully chosen. In the Old Testament, the word for wisdom is coming from a very agrarian and earthy context. In Hebrew, you always start with the physical and the earthy and work your way forward to the more metaphorical or spiritual or less earthy.

So this word wisdom is used in the Old Testament for stonemasons and wood carvers. If you wanted to translate it in English, literally you would say skill. So the whole idea initially of this word is, you would look at something that a stonemason had made or someone who works with wood.”

“For those of you who know Granger McCoy in South Carolina, he comes to mind and you look at what they’ve done with the wood and you say, wow, that took a lot of effort, that took a lot of skill. How did you make that fantastic piece of art out of that piece of wood? It takes skill, that’s wisdom, in terms of its imprint on physical stuff.

And then it becomes metaphorical. And what it means is what you do not with wood or with metal or with stones, but what you do with life. You’ve been given the gift of life.

You actually didn’t have to be here. Do you know this about yourself? We didn’t need you.

God didn’t need you. He didn’t need the world. He didn’t have to make us.

He didn’t have to make this day. It’s all grace. It’s all gift.

But you’ve been given the gift of life. God gave it to each one of us. And the question is this, if you look at someone’s, not their stones or their painting or their woodwork, but if you look at their life, their whole life, all that they are, all that they do, can you then say, “wow-that is beautiful!?”

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Psalm 1:3 "And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper." pic.twitter.com/8rnCE69uRQ

— Christian Law (@clalaw) June 4, 2025

“Verse 6, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? It’s a really amazing question. Calvin says, there are as many mistakes in that question as there are words.

It’s terrible. They just don’t get it. They don’t understand.

They don’t understand. They don’t understand. Why are they in the story?

Because they’re us. Because apart from the Spirit of God, we just don’t get it. Whatever else is going on, this is a people that don’t have understanding unless God gives it to them.

Do you see yourself in them? Only just getting started. That’s not the only thing that they lack.

They lack understanding. They also lack power. We know that because Jesus told them to wait.”

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This radiant miniature from the famous “Grandes Heures de Rohan” (1430/35) offers a highly original vision of Pentecost – one that breaks with standard iconography. The Virgin Mary is absent, and the apostles gather outdoors, gazing upward in expectation, hands raised in prayer.… pic.twitter.com/YaviyTBw3m

— Vir Desideriorum (@VirDesideriorum) June 8, 2025

“What do we hope for as Christians? What is the content of the Christian hope? Paul says in Romans 15, this wonderful verse, verse 13, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.

So, Christians are supposed to be people who abound in hope. And my question is, what is the content of that hope? We are talking, brothers and sisters, about heaven.

And since we’re going to be spending eternity there, it might be interesting if we give it a few moments of our time….”

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Design for Christ Enthroned in the Heavenly Jerusalem, in the American Church in Rome. Attributed to Thomas Matthews Rooke (British, 1842–1942). Medium: pencil, watercolor and bodycolor heightened with gold on paper. Credit: Artnet. pic.twitter.com/nUafq2XaHu

— Archaeology & Art (@archaeologyart) January 17, 2025

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The Resurrection of Christ (1499–1502), by Raphael. The work is one of the earliest known paintings by the artist, the São Paulo Museum of Art. pic.twitter.com/zelBqnjr9A

— 🌿_ (@rebeca6169) April 3, 2021

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Palm Sunday stained glass window in Chester Cathedral. pic.twitter.com/4p4MkZ2jiU

— A Beautiful Culture (@ABeautifulCult1) March 24, 2024

Certainly you two, of all people, have every reason to look back with special thankfulness on your lives up to now. The beautiful things and joys of life have been showered on you, you have succeeded in everything, and you have been surrounded by love and friendship. Your ways have, for the most part, been smoothed before you took them, and you have always been able to count on the support of your families and friends. Everyone has wished you well, and now it has been given to you to find each other and to reach the goal of your desires. You yourselves know that no one can create and assume such a life from his own strength, but that what is given to one is withheld from another; and that is what we call God’s guidance. So today, however much you rejoice that you have reached your goal, you will be just as thankful that God’s will and God’s way have brought you here; and however confidently you accept responsibility for your action today, you may and will put it today with equal confidence into God’s hands.

As God today adds His ‘Yes’ to your ‘Yes’, as He confirms your will with His will, and as He allows you, and approves of, your triumph and rejoicing and pride, He makes you at the same time instruments of His will and purpose both for yourselves and for others. In His unfathomable condescension God does add His ‘Yes’ to yours; but by doing so, He creates out of your love something quite new – the holy estate of matrimony.

God is guiding your marriage. Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which He wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to His glory, and calls into His kingdom. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more that something personal – it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. As you first gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

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9 April 1945: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor, spy, and anti-Nazi, is hanged, accused of being part of the Operation Valkyrie conspiracy to kill Hitler. He is executed with #Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and others a month before the end of #WWII. #OTD #ad https://t.co/VTQ683Bc46 pic.twitter.com/R39hPNoMe8

— Today In History (@URDailyHistory) April 9, 2025

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The Ten Commandments, 1516 #cranach #lucascranach pic.twitter.com/WCVDG4prk0

— Lucas Cranach the Elder (@ArtistCranach) March 1, 2021

O God of eternal glory, whom no one living can see and yet whom to see is to live; grant that with thy servant John Donne, we may see thy glory in the face of thy Son, Jesus Christ, and then, with all our skill and wit, offer thee our crown of prayer and praise, until by his grace we stand in that last and everlasting day, when death itself will die, and all will live in thee, who with the Holy Ghost and the same Lord Jesus Christ art one God in everlasting light and glory. Amen.

The metaphysical poet John Donne died on March 31, 1631, in London, likely from stomach cancer. His death was preceded by a period of declining health, during which he prepared for his passing both spiritually and artistically. https://t.co/lqOJd2lV9S pic.twitter.com/t4Q0bFvq0s

— Trivia Encyclopedia (@edpearce080759) March 31, 2025

Waiving this question, therefore, I proceed to others, which appear to me, I own, at the present moment especially, of the very gravest practical import.

What are the symptoms, by which one may judge most fairly, whether or no a nation, as such, is becoming alienated from God and Christ?

And what are the particular duties of sincere Christians, whose lot is cast by Divine Providence in a time of such dire calamity?

The conduct of the Jews, in asking for a king, may furnish an ample illustration of the first point : the behaviour of Samuel, then and afterwards, supplies as perfect a pattern of the second, as can well be expected from human nature.

I. The case is at least possible, of a nation, having for centuries acknowledged, as an essential part of its theory of government, that, as a Christian nation, she is also a part of Christ’s Church, and bound, in all her legislation and policy, by the fundamental rules of that Church””the case is, I say, conceivable, of a government and people, so constituted, deliberately throwing off the restraint, which in many respects such a principle would impose on them, nay, disavowing the principle itself ; and that, on the plea, that other states, as flourishing or more so in regard of wealth and dominion, do well enough without it. Is not this desiring, like the Jews, to have an earthly king over them, when the Lord their God is their King? Is it not saying in other words, ‘We will be as the heathen, the families of the countries,’ the aliens to the Church of our Redeemer?

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John Keble gave his famous Assize Sermon on 'National Apostasy' #OnThisDay in 1833, providing the first impulse to the Tractarian (or Oxford) movement

Image: Window in St Katharine's, Southbourne, Dorset pic.twitter.com/EX36KIOuAJ

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) July 14, 2024

“All right, so let me say a word about the setting because it’s absolutely crucial for our purposes. At the beginning of chapter 20, it reads this way, And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord, you God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You cannot understand any of the ten commandments unless you understand this as the preface and the premise of the entire passage. Whose we are and therefore who God is, and who we are, and who we were, and what God did. God first, God at the start, God as the fundamental reality, the only non-contingent being from whom all contingent reality and being and matter comes to exist. The only reason we’re here is because God allows us to be here. The only reason that there’s something rather than nothing is because God allowed it to be.”

“The only reason there is a nation of Israel is because God came down and heard their cry, and constituted them, and brought them out. So they are God’s people. They are redeemed out of a house of slavery, and they’re going into the Promised Land, and all these things, whatever else they are, are in the context of this covenant relationship, and that saving act, and the reality that He is our God, and we are His people. Now, as if that all isn’t enough, and that’s a ton, one more thing. And that is the specific setting of this passage in the book of Exodus itself. And I just want to remind you, because when we read in chapter 20, and God spake these words, my question is simply this. In what context, in the flow of the book, are these words actually said? It’s a crucial question.”

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The Ten Commandments, 1516 #cranach #lucascranach pic.twitter.com/WCVDG4prk0

— Lucas Cranach the Elder (@ArtistCranach) March 1, 2021

John and Charles Wesley are among the most notable evangelists who ever lived. As young men, they formed a party which came to be derisively called Methodists, because they methodically set about fulfilling the commands of scripture. In due course they learned that works cannot save, and discovered salvation by faith in Christ. Afterward, they carried that message to all England in sermon and in song. John Wesley is credited with staving off a bloody revolution in England such as occurred in France.

Although the brothers did not set out to establish a church, the Wesleyans and the Methodists are their offspring.

Both preached, both wrote hymns. But John is more noted for his sermons and Charles for his hymns. Here we present two hymns by Charles and a sermon by John.

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Today the Church of England celebrates John and Charles Wesley, Evangelists, Hymn Writers, 1791 and 1788

Image: The Wesleys Conversion window (1924) in Wesley's Chapel, London, via https://t.co/h7sBybQMrR (see ALT) pic.twitter.com/rZa0pUTduM

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) May 24, 2024

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Archbishop Ben Kwashi, Bishop of Jos, General secretary of Gafcon:

Our priorities-

The primacy of scripture
The power of salvation to transform lives
The priority of evangelism and mission pic.twitter.com/0CU803Fxvi

— Gafcon (@GafconGBE) April 17, 2023

“Where does Jesus want to take us in the adventure of discipleship? Where does Jesus want to take us in the adventure of discipleship?

Every word in that question is carefully chosen. I want to focus in on that little word, adventure. Most of us don’t think of discipleship and following Jesus as an adventure, but the Bible does.

There is a great moment in Jeremiah early on in the story. Jeremiah has been called, and the Lord has known him since he was in his mother’s womb. But things have gotten started, and there have been ups and downs, and Jeremiah feels like there’s been more downs than ups. And he’s getting tired. So he prays to the Lord, and he basically says, This is getting too hard. What do you think you’re doing? Can you make it a little easier? And the Lord responds in this way, chapter 12, verse 5. If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan, (where there may be things like lions roaming around)?

“Eugene Peterson wrote a whole book on that verse and that theme. Its title is Run with the Horses, the quest for life at its best. That is the way that discipleship has been understood in the tradition that’s handed down to us. An incredible adventure, a breathtaking life of excitement and thrills, an unpredictability, a life which is full of deep purpose and faith.

Oh, it sounds like our Lord even. The glory of God, Irenaeus once said, is a human being fully alive. Well, if you want to know what God wants for humanity, look at Jesus, he’s fully alive, all the time. He’s giving life, he’s living life, he’s being life, he’s life incarnate. That’s what God wants for us.

Jesus says it this way in John 10, verse 10. I came that they might have life and have it abundantly. You all with me so far? Okay, so here’s the question. How do we do that? How do we get that kind of life? How do you live a life that is an adventure of discipleship? All right, well, I appreciate you asking a question. Turn to Luke chapter 5 and this magnificent story of the miraculous catch of fish…

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🚶 where will your adventures take you today?

📍 Richmond Park

📸 James Kliffen pic.twitter.com/KbSmZp3QxB

— The Royal Parks (@theroyalparks) February 11, 2025

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#Candlemas is also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ.

The Sienese painter Duccio placed the Presentation at the centre of the predella of the huge altarpiece commissioned for Siena Cathedral in 1311. pic.twitter.com/FcKwEpIJ5k

— The Visual Commentary on Scripture (@TheVCS) February 2, 2025

Let us take them each in their turn. We want to begin with verses 14 and 15. So first of all, the surprise of Jesus’ ministry. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee. Luke is at great pains to get us to understand that the same Spirit that led him to be tempted by Satan in the wilderness for 40 days is the same Spirit that is leading him to do this. It’s the same Spirit that came down when the father’s voice said at his baptism, this is my son with whom I’m well pleased. He’s led by the Spirit. This is a depiction of the Spirit led life. And what needs to strike you about this scene is word is getting out about this guy. We can just capitalize on last week’s sermon about that wedding in Cana. Remember that most of the people at the wedding didn’t even really know what was going on at the time. But believe me, that was the best wine anybody ever had. And after that, everybody in Cana of Gallile was talking about him. And they didn’t just talk about him there. 

They talked about him when they went along the road, and when they visited relatives, and word is getting around. So if we look at Mark chapter 1, Jesus is preaching, Jesus is teaching, Jesus is healing people of demons, Jesus is healing people of physical diseases, and the word is out about this guy, and there’s a real buzz. At the end of Mark chapter 1, talk about capturing the idea, Jesus has done a whole day’s ministry, he’s completely exhausted, the disciples can’t find him, so they go find him. He’s out by himself at a lonely place where he’s praying, and when they get to him, they say this, how’s this for an advertisement? Everyone is looking for you. 

It’s stunning, the level of surprise that we’re meant to have as we get our early depiction of our Lord’s ministry. And please note, look at your text carefully, the repetition of that little word, all. Twice. All the surrounding country, and he taught in their synagogues being glorified by all. And even though it isn’t in our reading today, it’s only the next verse down. I’m going to cheat a little bit because it’s also part of Luke’s narrative.

At the end of all this in verse 22, just in case we missed the first two alls, there is yet another all–‘And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.’

“This is an amazing ministry. It’s full of popular interest, intrigue, curiosity, and excitement. This is the way that ministry is supposed to be. To glorify means to honor, to praise. It’s a word that means heaviness, and it means that they can’t fully express the heaviness and the weight of Christ’s character because they’re so amazed and stunned by the level of what he’s doing and how he’s doing it. They have no categories for this guy. It’s fresh, it’s stunning, it’s marvelous, it’s surprising. Everybody with me? So surprising Jesus, who’s done all these surprising things, comes to his own synagogue. Hmm, I wonder what’s going to happen.” 

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Gerbrand van den Eeckhout
Christ Teaching in the Synagogue at Nazareth pic.twitter.com/EhZW8EqAwD

— PubHist (@Pub_Hist) April 30, 2022

In the spring of 388, a rebellion erupted in Antioch over the announcement of increased taxes. Statues of the emperor and his recently deceased wife were desecrated. Officials of the empire then began punishing city leaders, killing some, for the uprising. While Archbishop Flavian rushed to the capital in Constantinople 800 miles away to beg for clemency, John preached to a city in turmoil:

“Improve yourselves now truly, not as when during one of the numerous earthquakes or in famine or drought or in similar visitations you leave off your sinning for three or four days and then begin the old life again. . . . Stop evil slandering, harbor no enmities, and give up the wicked custom of frivolous cursing and swearing. If you do this, you will surely be delivered from the present distress and attain eternal happiness.”

After eight weeks, on the day before Easter, Flavian returned with the good news of the emperor’s pardon.

John preached through many of Paul’s letters (“I like all the saints,” he said, “but St. Paul the most of all—that vessel of election, the trumpet of heaven”), the Gospels of Matthew and of John, and the Book of Genesis. Changed lives were his goal, and he denounced sins from abortion to prostitution and from gluttony to swearing.

He encouraged his congregation not only to attend the divine service regularly but also to feed themselves on God’s written Word. In a sermon on the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, he said, “Reading the Scripture is a great means of security against sinning. The ignorance of Scripture is a great cliff and a deep abyss; to know nothing of the divine laws is a great betrayal of salvation.”

His applications could be forceful. About people’s love of horse racing, he complained, “My sermons are applauded merely from custom, then everyone runs off to [horse racing] again and gives much more applause to the jockeys, showing indeed unrestrained passion for them! There they put their heads together with great attention, and say with mutual rivalry, ‘This horse did not run well, this one stumbled,’ and one holds to this jockey and another to that. No one thinks any more of my sermons, nor of the holy and awesome mysteries that are accomplished here.”

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The Saint of the Day is St. John Chrysostom! Check out this content in the Sanctifica app: https://t.co/WlwHjRLRIq pic.twitter.com/GWpVSnk09E

— The Church Militant (@JohnAndrewDors3) January 27, 2025

“First of all, it’s a party. We could just spend the rest of the morning on this. God likes parties. You do know that. Heaven is going to be one big party. Jesus liked parties. Jesus was a party animal. He went to lots of them. He told stories about parties. He was a very fun guy to be with. Who do you think made monkeys? God or Satan? I sometimes say to people and they look at me like I’m funny. But you can’t really look at a monkey for very long without starting to laugh. It’s part of God’s creation. God has a magnificent sense of humor. So did Jesus. He was a fun guy. It’s why he attracted so many crowds so often in so many circumstances. And it’s a very ordinary wedding in a very ordinary town, in the town of Cana, some nine miles north of Nazareth where he grew up. And it’s an environment where his family seems to be familiar.”

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For the day that’s in it. Veronese’ wedding at Cana, how many times have we stared at this painting only because it is in the same room as a young Miss Gioconda. 🤷🏼 pic.twitter.com/GU461bPNqW

— Alan O’Neill (@ApmNeill) January 19, 2025

When the brightness of a new star had led three wise men to worship Jesus, they did not see him ruling over demons, not raising the dead, not restoring sight to the blind or mobility to the lame or speech to the dumb, nor in any action of divine power. They saw him, rather, as a Child – silent, at rest, placed in the care of his Mother – in a situation where there appeared no indication of power.

From this lowliness, however, a great miracle was presented. Consequently, the mere sight of that Sacred Infancy to which God the Son of God had adapted himself was bringing to their eyes a preaching that would be imparted to their ears. What the sound of his voice was not yet presenting, the activity of sight was teaching them. For the entire victory of the Savior, the one that overcame the devil and the world, began in humility and ended in humility. Its appointed time began under persecution and ended under persecution. Neither the endurance of suffering was lacking to the child, nor the gentleness of a child to the one who would suffer. For, the Only-Begotten Son of God undertook by a single inclination of his majesty both the will to be born as a human being and the ability to be killed by human beings.

Almighty God, therefore, made our extremely bad situation good” through his unique lowliness and “destroyed death” along with the author “of death.” He did not refuse anything that his persecutors brought down on him. In obedience to the Father, he bore the cruelties of violent men with the meekest docility. How humble we ought to be, then, how patient, we who, when we meet with any distress, never undergo anything we do not deserve! “Who will boast that they have a pure heart or that they are clean from sin?” (Prov. 20,9). Blessed John says, “If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1Jn. 1, 8)

Who will be found so free from guilt that they have not in themselves anything for justice to condemn or mercy to forgive? Consequently, dearly beloved, the whole learning of Christian wisdom consists not in abundance of words, not in cleverness at disputing, not in desire for praise and glory, but in a true and willing humility.

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"The Adoration of the Magi", a tapestry by Edward Burne-Jones, circa 1904. At the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France pic.twitter.com/yiJGyWYB6Z

— Pictures of Churches (@ChurchPictures8) January 6, 2019

That Jesus should come and be baptized by John is surely cause for amazement. To think of the infinite river that gladdens the city of God being bathed.in a poor little stream of the eternal; the unfathomable fountainhead that gives life to all men being immersed in the shallow waters of this transient world! He who fills all creation, leaving no place devoid of his presence, he who is incomprehensible to the angels. and hidden from the sight of man, came to be baptized because it was his will. And behold, the heavens opened and a voice said: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

The beloved Father begets love, and spiritual light generates light inaccessible. In his divine nature he is my only Son, though he was known as the son of Joseph. This is my beloved Son. Though hungry himself, he feeds thousands; though weary, he refreshes those who labor. He has no place to lay his head yet holds all creation in his hand. By his passion [inflicted on him by others], he frees us from the passions [unleashed by our disobedience]; by receiving a blow on the cheek he gives the world its liberty; by being pierced in the side he heals the wound of Adam.

I ask you now to pay close attention, for I want to return to that fountain of life and contemplate its healing waters at their source.

The Father of immortality sent his immortal Son and Word into the world; he came to us men to cleanse us with water and the Spirit. To give us a new birth that would make our bodies and souls immortal, he breathed into us the spirit of life and armed us with incorruptibility. Now if we become immortal, we shall also be divine; and if we become divine after rebirth in baptism through water and the Holy Spirit, we shall also be coheirs with Christ after the resurrection of the dead.

Therefore, in a herald’s voice I cry: Let peoples of every nation come and receive the immortality that flows from baptism. This is the water that is linked to the Spirit, the water that irrigates Paradise, makes the earth fertile, gives growth to plants, and brings forth living creatures. In short, this is the water by which a man receives new birth and life, the water in which even Christ was baptized, the water into which the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove.

Whoever goes down into these waters of rebirth with faith renounces the devil and pledges himself to Christ. He repudiates the enemy and confesses that Christ is God, throws off his servitude, and is raised to filial status. He comes up from baptism resplendent as the sun, radiant in his purity, but above all, he comes as a son of God and a coheir with Christ. To him and to his most holy and life-giving Spirit be glory and power now and forever. Amen.

—Hippolytus  of Rome (c.170-235) from a sermon c. 215 which may be found there.

15th-century Italian painter Piero della Francesca died #OnThisDay in 1492. You can see his painting, 'The Baptism of Christ' in Room 54. pic.twitter.com/4JgiFxZBVi

— National Gallery (@NationalGallery) October 12, 2016