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Below are some excerpts of expository preaching from Orthodox Presbyterian Ministers.

Mark 6:45-53

What an amazing scene unfolds before your eyes! The disciples are again fearfully at risk…on the Sea of Galilee…being tossed about as they rowed across sea. Jesus, who was praying on the land, up on the mountain some miles away…He sees the disciples straining at the oars. Here on the Sea of Galilee, in the middle of the night, Jesus came walking to the disciples on the water. The text says in verse 48, “…He came to them, walking on the sea, and would have passed them by.” What strange sounding language that is to our ears – “…and would have passed them by.” But this language is purposeful. It is intentional. For when it says that Jesus “would have passed them by,” Mark is intentionally pointing you back to the Old Testament. Mark is pointing you back to Exodus 33 and Exodus 34, where God discloses Himself, reveals Himself…where God reveals His glory to Moses. Mark identifies Jesus as the glory of God. The Lord of Glory who passed by Moses is now the Lord of Glory who passes by the disciples. By such Old Testament self-disclosure the Lord declares Himself to be God. And notice how Mark in verse 50 punctuates this declaration of Jesus as God. As the Master of the sea Jesus says to His disciples, “Take courage! I AM. Do not be afraid.” Jesus thus reveals Himself to be the eternally existent I AM of the Old Testament, and He reveals Himself to be the One who subdues the mortal fears that stem from the curse of nature upon all mankind through Adam’s guilty act.

By Rev. Gary W. Davenport

Ephesians 5:25-33

The marriage union between Christ and church is the theological center of Paul’s appeal to wives and to husbands in this text. Paul’s motivation, his purpose in this text is to open up before you a canopy of Trinitarian love, a canopy of a Father’s love that sends a Son as Savior to cleave to a bride that is nourished and cherished through the Spirit. In Verse 31, Paul wants you to interpret Genesis 2:24 Christologically. In other words, marriage was never intended to be seen as an end in itself, but rather Paul is telling you that in Genesis God is providing a picture of leaving and cleaving that would find its ultimate, eternal significance in the Father who one day send a Son to seek a bride. And that Son sought a bride and cleaved to her. This is the Christological significance Paul gives here in Ephesians to Genesis Chapter 2. Here is Christ cleaving to His bride, the church. And that relationship is now by faith. But when the Lord returns at His appearing, earthly marriage, as we know it will be no more. And the church’s marriage to Christ will no longer be by faith but in that day by sight, for we shall see Him face to face.

By Rev. Gary W. Davenport

On the Gospel of John

The Fourth [Gospel’s] primary purpose is theological. According to [John 20:30-31] the author was guided in his selection of material by the desire to convince his readers that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, they might have life through his name. The salvation is here, as elsewhere, lifted to the high plane of receiving through faith the revelation of Jesus as divine into one’s self. It is a revelation which not merely informs but which, through supernaturally informing, saves.

By Geerhardus Vos

On Heaven

The heavenly world does not appear desirable as simply a second improved edition of this life; that would be nothing else than earthly-mindedness projected into the future. The very opposite takes place: heaven spiritualizes in advance our present walk with God.

By Geerhardus Vos

On Fellowship with God

God everywhere reserves to himself and exercises the right of independently fixing the terms of the relation between himself and man. That is an essential principle from a religious point of view. But the opposite principle, that Jehovah condescends to enter into covenant with man, is no less important; it enshrines all the wealth glory of the biblical religion as a religion of conscious fellowship and mutual devotion between God and his people.

By Geerhardus Vos

On Faith

Religious belief exists not in its last analysis on what we can prove to be so, but on the fact of God having declared it to be so. Behind the belief, the assent, therefore, there lies an antecedent trust distinguishable from the subsequent trust. And this reliance upon the word of God is an eminently religious act. Hence it is inaccurate to say that belief is merely the prerequisite of faith and not an element of faith itself.

By Geerhardus Vos

On Evangelism

We shall never succeed in impressing men, untouched by grace, with the riches and glory of religion, until we learn from Jesus to hold up to them the mirror of their sin and destitution.

By Geerhardus Vos

On Election

The ultimate root of every believer’s relation to God lies in the most intimate and individual act of election, an act wherein the love of God consciously chooses and sets up over against itself a human spirit to be bound to God in the bonds of everlasting friendship. Election and the covenants answer to each other as the root and the fruitage of the highest type of religion.

By Geerhardus Vos

On Communion with God

Man is said to have been made in the image of God, and obviously the underlying idea is that in his very constitution he is adapted and designed for communion with God.

By Geerhardus Vos

On the Church

The church of Christ in all its complex service to the world can never forget that its primary concern is to call men into and prepare them for eternal life. The church actually has within herself the powers of the world to come. She is more than the immanent kingdom as it existed before Jesus’ exaltation. She forms an intermediate link between the present life and the life of eternity.

By Geerhardus Vos

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