The Pastor’s Study – Winter 2025

Welcome to the first 2025 issue of The Pastor’s Study. This magazine is designed to help pastors in the study of the Word and in subjects that are helpful for a broad, instructive and effective teaching ministry. We begin with the editorial on four steps in effective preaching (page 3).

The theme of this issue is the affliction of Job with a particular focus on the work of Satan in testing Job’s faith, Job 1:6–2:13. The commentary on this text is found on pages 6–8, and a Preacher’s Workshop in the centre pages (pages 10–11). Other related articles include a look at how Satan was cast out of heaven (page 9), and a helpful “preparing to preach” by Alexander Stephenson (pages 4–5).

We have included for the first time, a sermon by Rev. C.H. Spurgeon; “What Job learned in the ashes” (pages 12–13). Dr. Charles Barrett provided us with a helpful look at praying in the darkness, linking Job’s affliction with the self-inflicted suffering of Jonah (pages 16–17).

In our Pastoral and Practical Theology section, we are thankful to have Dr. Beeke again, on “The Pastor and the World” (pages 14–15), and Dr. Haykin brings us another part of his article on friendship, looking particularly at the relationship between Paul and Timothy (pages 18–19).