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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The pocket notebook is an indispensable tool for the working preacher, because more often than not our great homiletical insights come to us, unexpectedly and extra nos, like grace.
According to the Law, everyone will be judged by their own deeds, on his own work. So, before the judgment of God we only have our own works to boast in and not our neighbor’s. But the Gospel shows us a wonderful exception.
Nuance and subtlety have been replaced with scorched-earth contempt. It is us versus them. Compromise is not an option. Jesus, however, would have none of it.
In our text for today, here is the great prophet, Elijah, the same guy who God used in miraculous ways, hiding in a cave, scared to death.
The question is, how are you going to live out your life as someone who has taken up the Robe of Freedom?
Ethics begins not with our doing, but with the Triune God’s giving.
God has a plan for this world that he put into place from eternity, a plan that is carried out in Jesus Christ and promises unimaginably great blessings for believers.
The LORD God is seeking after those who have not sought Him! He calls out to those who have not been called by His name.
Jesus comes to people and changes everything. “Before” is long gone. “After” is a whole new world.
Paul wants us to know the radical identity shift that takes place when you put on Christ. You are free.
We do not typically give much thought to the title at all, missing a chance to create greater anticipation for the preaching of the Word before it has even begun.
After the big, splashy, exciting day of Pentecost in Acts 2, church life faded into the ordinary life of ragtag sinners encountering the God of the cross coming to them in seemingly unawesome ways. What can we learn from this?