Paul for Everyone Romans part 2 - Commending Phoebe, Greeting Friends
Paul for Everyone Romans part 2 - Commending Phoebe, Greeting Friends
by SPCK - N T Wright
Commending Phoebe, Greeting Friends ROMANS 16.1-16 A farmer in the English Midlands was ploughing a field when the plough struck a solid object. Thinking it was a large rock, he stopped to move it. But it wasn’t a rock. It was an ancient chest, dating (so the museum told him when…
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - Children of the Light
Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians - Children of the Light
by SPCK - N T Wright
Children of the Light Thessalonians 5.1-11 The story is told of a minister who dreamed that he was preaching a sermon, and woke up to find it was true. One can hardly imagine that happening to St Paul – although there is the famous story of the lad who nodded off during one of Pa…
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - Closing Thanks and Greetings
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - Closing Thanks and Greetings
by SPCK - N T Wright
Closing Thanks and Greetings Philippians 4.14-23 Sometimes when you get to the end of a novel or short story, there is a moment when something is revealed that makes sense of a mood, a motive, a feeling that has been in the narrative all along. At last we understand why that man …
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Confusion in Lystra
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Confusion in Lystra
by SPCK - N T Wright
Confusion in LystraActs 14. 8-20 I have a sneaking sympathy for the medical profession. Two or three generations ago, everybody knew that there were all kinds of diseases that the doctors couldn’t cure. They would do their best with what was available. They would offer sympathy…
The Pastoral Letters - Continue in the Scriptures
The Pastoral Letters - Continue in the Scriptures
by SPCK - N T Wright
Continue in the Scriptures! 2Timothy 3.10-17 There was once an American professor who went for a year to Oxford as a visiting academic. When he and his wife arrived, they were looking round one of the older parts of the college of which he was to be a member. Amid what appeared t…
Matthew for Everyone Part 2 - Condemnation of Scribes and Pharisees
Matthew for Everyone Part 2 - Condemnation of Scribes and Pharisees
by SPCK - N T Wright
Condemnation of Scribes and Pharisees (1) Matthew 23.13-22 I once preached a sermon in a church in America. I spoke particularly of the way in which the ancient pagan gods and goddesses were starting to infiltrate our culture once more, and how as Christians we should learn to re…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Contend for the Faith
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Contend for the Faith
by SPCK - N T Wright
Contend for the Faith Judah 1-4 In my teens and my early twenties, one of my passions was rock-climbing. I wouldn’t say I was an utterly fearless climber; I had a proper respect for danger, and didn’t try to do things which were too far outside my competence. But I relished the c…
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Confirm Your Call
Early Christian Letters for Everyone - Confirm Your Call
by SPCK - N T Wright
Confirm Your Call! 2 Peter 1.1-11 My grandson, aged one and a half, was taken the other day into a big toyshop. It was a riot of exciting things, all in bright colours. From floor to ceiling, from one end of the shop to the other, and all over the tables and stands in the middle,…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - David Speaks of Jesus' Resurrection
Acts for Everyone part 1 - David Speaks of Jesus' Resurrection
by SPCK - N T Wright
David Speaks of Jesus’ Resurrection Acts 2. 22-36 I watched the Press Gallery during the speech. For most of the time, the journalists looked bored. One was sharpening his pencil; another was varnishing her nails. Then, quite suddenly, all that changed. Notebooks were seized, sho…
Paul for Everyone Romans part 1 - Creation Renewed and Patient Hope
Paul for Everyone Romans part 1 - Creation Renewed and Patient Hope
by SPCK - N T Wright
Creation Renewed and Patient Hope ROMANS 8.18-25 I walked through the wood several times before I realized what the signpost meant. The wood was thick, with paths leading this way and that. I knew some of them quite well, and had my favourites among them. There was the one that l…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Controversy and Vindication
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Controversy and Vindication
by SPCK - N T Wright
Controversy and Vindication Acts 1.1-18 By common consent (even among those who disagreed with him), John Henry Newman was one of the finest minds of the nineteenth century. Having spent his young adult years as an Anglican priest, he famously converted to Roman Catholicism, and …
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - Darkness and Light in Matters of Sex
Paul for Everyone The Prison Letters - Darkness and Light in Matters of Sex
by SPCK - N T Wright
Darkness and Light In Matters of Sex Ephesians 5.3-10 The poster in the college gateway had one large word in the middle of it: SEX. Underneath, in small print, it said, ‘Now you’re interested, how about joining the College Rowing Club?’ Whoever designed the poster wasn’t suggest…
New Testament Wisdom for Everyone - Creation Renewed
New Testament Wisdom for Everyone - Creation Renewed
by SPCK - N T Wright
5 THE RENEWAL OF THE WORLD CREATION RENEWED Romans 8: 18-25 I walked through the wood several times before I realized what the signpost meant. The wood was thick, with paths leading this way and that. I knew some of them quite well, and had my favourites among them. There was the…
2 Corinthians - Copying the Generosity of the Lord Jesus
2 Corinthians - Copying the Generosity of the Lord Jesus
by SPCK - N T Wright
Copying the Generosity of the Lord Jesus 2 CORINTHIANS 8.8-15 A few months ago there was a news item about a woman crossing the Atlantic Ocean single-handedly in a rowing boat. At least, she ended up doing it single-handedly; to begin with, her husband had been with her, but he h…
Hebrews for Everyone - Danger! God's Word at Work
Hebrews for Everyone - Danger! God's Word at Work
by SPCK - N T Wright
Danger! God’s Word at Work Hebrews 4.11-13 I washed the kitchen knife, put it down for a moment and then picked it up to dry it. As I did so, I felt what seemed like a slight tickle at the end of one finger. I looked down, and to my surprise and alarm saw blood spurting out of a …
Paul for Everyone Romans part 1 - Darkened Mind, Darkened Behaviour
Paul for Everyone Romans part 1 - Darkened Mind, Darkened Behaviour
by SPCK - N T Wright
Darkened Mind, Darkened Behaviour ROMANS 1.28-32 Some years ago I attended a prize-giving at a local school. The headmaster made an entertaining speech, in the course of which he read out, without telling us who had written it or when, a long description of how the younger genera…
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Bring on the Barristers
Acts for Everyone Part 2 - Bring on the Barristers
by SPCK - N T Wright
Bring on the Barristers Acts 24.1-9 Jokes about lawyers are unkind, ungrateful, uncharitable – and often uncannily accurate. I remember listening in horror as a clever and unscrupulous young lawyer, in a meeting of a college governing body, constructed a rhetorically powerful arg…
2 Corinthians - Boasting of Weaknesses