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Doubt isn’t unusual for the Christian. If we take a brief inventory of our spiritual pilgrimages, many of us will recall times when we’ve faced uncertainty, wrestling with whether our faith is genuine. Aware of this, John said that he wrote his first epistle “that you may know that you have eternal life” (5:13).

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In his work on the life of Jesus, Alfred Edersheim called first-century Jericho “the Eden of Palestine, the very fairyland of the old world.”¹ It was a beautiful and prosperous city on a major crossroads. And in this city, according to Luke 19, a prosperous man named Zacchaeus lived and worked as a chief tax collector.

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By Alistair Begg

Has the prospect of sharing your faith ever intimidated or scared you? I think if we’re honest with ourselves, all who have tried to be faithful in the realm of evangelism would answer with a resounding “Yes!”

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In Colossians 1:24–2:5, the apostle Paul invites the Colossian believers to examine the shape of his ministry, his goals, and the pleasures he takes from his labor. In the face of false teachers among them, he lays down a spiritual plumb line against which we may measure a ministry’s legitimacy as we ask, “Whom has God really sent to us?” In other words, who should become a pastor, what should their work look like, and what should they hope to accomplish through it?

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In the first verse of Colossians 2, Paul writes to the church at Colossae, “I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you.” “Struggle” is an apt description of pastoral ministry. It captures the rigorous nature of this calling, and it will resonate with all whom God has set to the task.

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James 4:11 addresses one of the “respectable sins”¹—that is, one of those behaviors that the Bible has so clearly condemned but that Christians by and large have learned to tolerate and sometimes even celebrate. We are prone to rage against what is wrong outside of our group while failing to pay attention to what is dreadfully wrong inside, turning a blind eye to our own sins because they are ours. Among these “respectable sins” is slander.

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When we consider examples of preaching in the Bible, many of us go immediately to the New Testament—and we’re not wrong to do so. It may surprise us, though, to discover that the Old Testament is replete with early examples of expository preaching. Consider this one from Nehemiah:

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1 CORINTHIANS 1:17–18 “Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

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