Sermon for October 26th, 2025
2 Timothy 3:10-17 (GNV)
10 But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of living, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, patience, 11 persecutions, and afflictions which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra, which persecutions I suffered: but from them all the Lord delivered me. 12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution. 13 But the evil men and deceivers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
14 But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned, and which are committed unto thee, knowing of whom thou hast learned them: 15 And that thou hast known the holy Scriptures of a child, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through the faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 For the whole Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable to teach, to convince, to correct, and to instruct in righteousness, 17 That the man of God may be absolute, being made perfect unto all good works.
John Calvin: Doctrine & Discipline
John Calvin is known for many things—he was the intellectual force behind the 16th century Reformation, the inventor of a little thing we call the “Protestant work ethic” and he was the author of the first comprehensive work of systematic theology in the modern era. But John Calvin isn’t exactly known for his sense of humor, and that’s a shame—because if you read his sermons, his commentaries, his theology, there’s plenty of humor there. Here’s just one example:
Calvin was lecturing one day on the book of Genesis, the creation story, and how God created the entire universe out of nothing. A rather impious student interjected, and in a mocking tone, said, “I’m really curious…what exactly do you think God did in all that time before he created the world?” Calvin looked back down at his notes, and without skipping a beat, said, “He created hell for overly-curious students.”
If you’ve been part of this congregation for any length of time, you probably already know that John Calvin is hands-down, my favorite theologian, my inspiration, and my historic role-model for what it means to be a pastor. I have quoted him in many sermons, referred to his life and his legacy, I have translated his prayers and songs, and (hopefully) channeled some of his key ideas. But I’ve never actually preached a sermon with Calvin as the central subject, until today. And there’s probably good reason for that—Calvin believed that Jesus Christ (the other J.C.) and the scriptures should be the central focus of every good sermon. He had no desire to be honored, lifted up, or even remembered. On his deathbed, he famously made the elders of Geneva promise that they would not mark his grave with even so much as a stone. To this day, his burial place remains unknown.
But his words—his words long outlived the man, and most of them are still in print today. Calvin wrote extensive commentaries on almost every book of the Bible, he wrote thousands of letters, instructions for worship, prayers, and over 3,000 sermons, including 149 sermons on the Book of Job alone. For comparison’s sake, I have preached a total of 557 sermons, and (believe it or not) only 56 on the Book of Job. But by far, Calvin’s most famous and influential work was this one—the Institutes of the Christian Religion—which was assigned reading in my first year of seminary at Princeton. Calvin wrote the first edition of this book when he was 26 years old, and a recent convert to the Protestant faith. It was a lot shorter then, and he kept on revising and expanding it until shortly before his death.
It may surprise you to hear that when I first read Calvin’s Institutes in seminary, I absolutely hated it. I thought he was a rigid, dogmatic lunatic, and my first seminary paper on Calvin was (in my rather juvenile opinion) a brutal and thorough refutation of his entire theology. God has a sense of humor.
Sometime in my second year of seminary, I was attending a lecture on Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. I was a big fan of Darwin, and his theory of evolutionary biology. At some point in the lecture, the professor made the offhand comment that Charles Darwin and John Calvin were basically saying the exact same thing in their respective eras—Darwin was using the language of biology while Calvin had been using the language of theology—but their approach, their methodology, and their conclusions were essentially the same. I thought about it for a moment, picked my jaw up from off the floor, went home and started reading Calvin again in an entirely different light. I have never stopped.
