This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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When Luther was in the pulpit, he was teaching, and when he was in the lecture hall at the podium, he was preaching. Linebaugh’s outstanding book will help contemporary pastors to do the same.
Make no mistake, sinners are in fact being pursued by a most hideous beast called sin, death, and the devil, unleashed and striking continuously.
History won’t judge us, Jesus will. We already have his judgment. He gave it to us from the cross, where he acquitted us with his death.
Treating preaching as a battle with the Devil keeps a preacher on the offense and prevents him from being caught off guard.
Luther recognized that in the penitential psalms, God gives us the words to cry out to Him in our distress, lament our sins, and confess trust in the promise of His righteousness in which alone is our sure and certain hope.
God is mercy. He was mercy then. He’s mercy now. God showed them His glory, if only a reflection, in the face of Moses.
When we read a good story, we sojourn with the characters and authors upon the trail of longing. Such is the pilgrim’s path.
Justification and regeneration are, therefore, necessarily connected and have profound implications upon the craft of preaching.
Moses was sent to keep the house in order, but this Child is sent to bring the house home, and you are part of that house, the household of God.
Getting ready for Christ’s coming is a practice in humility.
The Word of Yahweh is not a trifling thing that can be visited only when it’s convenient. It’s a book of life, for all of life, that imparts life to those who believe in it and the God of it.
The youths that mock Elisha are representative of Israel’s collective contempt and disregard for all things relating to their One True God.