Section navigation

Topic Archives: Faith

The following is an excerpt from J. Gresham Machen’s classic work, What Is Faith?, which has recently been reprinted by the Banner with a new, modern typeset and an updated cover. It is impossible to trust God in the Christian sense without holding that he is a free and living person, Creator and Ruler of […]

Category Book Excerpts
Date January 4, 2024
Read

The following sermon, ‘The Sin of Unbelief’, was delivered on Sabbath morning, January 14, 1855, by the Rev. C.H. Spurgeon, at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark. ‘And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold, […]

Category Sermons
Date October 17, 2022
Read

‘In grammatical terms, then, the words repent and believe both function as a synecdoche — the figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole. Thus, repentance implies faith and faith implies repentance. One cannot exist without the other.’ When the gospel is proclaimed, it seems at first sight that two different, […]

Category Articles
Date February 14, 2018
Read

There are many misconceptions about faith these days. Some think of it as a commodity, saying ‘I wish I had your faith.’ Others think of it simply as the means of salvation, to deliver us from hell. Much of the evangelistic preaching in recent years has been directed in that way. ‘Believe and on the […]

Category Articles
Date September 27, 2017
Read

Geoff Thomas completed his ministry of over fifty years recently in Alfred Place Baptist Church (Independent) in Aberystwyth, and this was one of his final sermons. 2 Timothy 4:6-8 ‘For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I […]

Author
Category Articles
Date July 29, 2016
Read

This title may seem a bit odd, and there would be some good reasons for that, I suppose. Firstly, most people – in the West at least – are likely more concerned about what sort of coffee they might buy than what religion they may choose. And of course most folks simply pick up their […]

Category Articles
Date June 8, 2016
Read

‘Which is true, whosoever will or sovereign election?’ Like many questions this one demands a false answer. The Bible does not teach one or the other, it teaches both. Considered together the concepts may seem profound and difficult, but they are neither irreconcilable nor opposed to each other. Both are found in Holy Scripture and […]

Category Articles
Date December 23, 2015
Read

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold new things have come (2 Corinthians 5:17). Elvis Presley was already a huge rock and roll star when he sauntered into the Sun Records studio in Memphis in December, 1956. Jerry Lee Lewis was gaining fast on Elvis’ […]

Author
Category Articles
Date June 15, 2015
Read

From beginning to end the Christian life is a life of faith. ‘We live’, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, ‘by faith and not by sight’ (2 Cor. 5:7). But what did Paul mean? What does it mean to live by faith and not by sight? To live by faith is to live your […]

Author
Category Articles
Date December 15, 2014
Read

I wonder if it has ever struck you in reading the New Testament how often faith and love are mentioned in the same breath. Again and again you find that where the one is the other is as well. Let me give you some examples. In one place, Paul declares that ‘we ought always to […]

Category Articles
Date November 20, 2013
Read

This is an extract from a Roundtable Discussion involving some of the faculty of Calvin Seminary: Darwin Glassford – professor of Church Education, Howard Vanderwell – Adjunct Professor of Worship, and John Witvliet – Professor of Worship. CHAIRMAN:  Parents may be wondering, ‘Will our children have faith?’ What encouragement would you give to parents in […]

Author
Category Articles
Date July 5, 2013
Read

The Christian life is lived at the intersection of the ages, this present age and the age of the world to come that has already, in Christ, punctuated this present age. In Christ, believers are a ‘new creation’ (2 Cor. 5:17). Paul does not mean here that believers are inwardly renewed men and women, but […]

Author
Category Articles
Date June 8, 2012
Read

. . . if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9) Mainline Methodist minister Martin Thielen recently made this the title of a book he wrote in hopes of winning to the Christian faith sceptics, atheists, […]

Author
Category Articles
Date December 23, 2011
Read

An extract from Words Old and New: Gems from the Christian Authorship of all Ages (pp. 82-83).1 1. The law sheweth us our sin; the gospel sheweth us a remedy for it. The law sheweth us our condemnation; the gospel sheweth us our redemption. The law is the word of wrath; the gospel is the […]

Author ,
Category Articles
Date February 11, 2011
Read

The translator’s ‘Introduction’ to Faith Unfeigned – Four Sermons concerning Matters Most Useful for the Present Time with A Brief Exposition of Psalm 871 by John Calvin. The last half-century has seen a steady growth of interest in Calvin’s work as preacher. The Reformer’s sermons place us at the centre of his pastoral and theological […]

Author
Category Articles
Date November 26, 2010
Read

In 1821 a young clergyman’s son matriculated at Worcester College, Oxford. Amongst the cleverest of his generation, he knew nothing of the wisdom which can only be imparted by the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul. Just previously, another young man, of similar academic capabilities, had graduated with an unexpectedly low third-class degree. […]

Author
Category Articles
Date September 14, 2010
Read

Luke 11:24-26 When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits […]

Author
Category Articles
Date July 30, 2010
Read

. . . but let him ask in faith without any doubting. (James 1:6) James, the brother of Jesus, the one who calls himself the slave of the Lord Jesus Christ, commands us to consider all things joy. You can never do this without perfect endurance, and without perfect endurance you will not make it […]

Author
Category Articles
Date June 29, 2010
Read

I am amazed at some of the things that have been said and written in recent years about the gospel. I fear that in many circles a different message is replacing the good news of salvation. I’m not talking about the attacks on the gospel from liberal religion or the theology of the cults, but […]

Category Articles
Date June 11, 2010
Read

Oh that they had such a heart in them that would fear me (Deuteronomy 5:29). On October 23, 1740, after preaching the previous weekend in Northampton with Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, the great eighteenth century evangelist, made his way south along the Connecticut River to Hartford, then Wethersfield, and finally to Middletown. Nathan Cole, a […]

Author
Category Articles
Date April 13, 2010
Read

Abraham was brought up in the city of Ur, not far from the River Euphrates, in what is now southern Iraq. It was presumably very much a heathen environment. Yet even there the Lord appeared to him and called him ‘to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance’ (Heb. […]

Category Articles
Date December 24, 2008
Read

For the past year or so I have been making my way slowly through the reading of a series of sermons preached on Hebrews 11 by the Puritan, Thomas Manton. The book containing these sermons is titled By Faith and it is published by The Banner of Truth Trust1. Most recently I have been reading […]

Category Articles
Date December 16, 2008
Read

John 3:1-8 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no-one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.” […]

Author
Category Articles
Date July 22, 2008
Read

It was a remarkable testimony that God gave of Enoch: ‘He pleased God’ (Heb. 11:5). Enoch was a sinner and, if God was to mark iniquity against him, he could not stand. At best, his works were imperfect; they could never satisfy the demands of God’s holy law; so he could not earn a right […]

Category Articles
Date July 18, 2008
Read

Jerusalem was buzzing with activity during one of the high Jewish feast days. And now at the pool of Bethesda the controversial young rabbbi from Galilee had astounded everyone by healing a man paralyzed for thirty-eight years! But instead of rejoicing, the Jewish leaders first confronted the healed man for carrying his bed on the […]

Author
Category Articles
Date May 22, 2007
Read