When Will Jesus Return?
The newspaper will not help us understand Revelation. Knowing the Old Testament and the rest of the New Testament will help us understand it.
When we begin to read Revelation in the way the original author intended it to be read, we can begin to understand its intended meaning. We no longer read with the book of Revelation in one hand and a newspaper in the other. The newspaper will not help us understand Revelation. Knowing the Old Testament... Continue Reading
God Grew Up in a Forgotten Town
The Old Testament never mentioned Nazareth.
How remarkable that our Lord, being fully God and perfect man, didn’t make for the big city first chance he got, or insist he dwell where all the action was. Rather, he gave nearly the entirety of his life and public ministry not grasping for Jerusalem, but humbling himself in Galilee — in a man-forsaken... Continue Reading
Linchpin of Life – Sanctify the Sabbath
Fundamental to the sanctified national life of divine, corporate, image-bearers is devoted Sabbath Day observance.
We are not interested in 601 pernickity, sawdust-spotting, hair-splitting, Scribal tradition additions! Nor are we enamored with a mere cessation of physical activity on the Redeemer’s Day of Rest, which Christ’s blood sanctifies to us! What we crave, surely, is exquisite, spiritual delight in the marrow and manna of Christ – which Jesus purchased at... Continue Reading
Know Who You Are Not
You are not who you were. You are not what you feel. You are not where you’re tempted to fall. Now, you are his.
When you were brought from darkness into God’s magnificent light, you were given marvelous power for a great task: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). You... Continue Reading
How to Correct Your Opponents Like Paul
Why go through all the trouble of patiently training our emotions, enduring reproach, dealing kindly and gently with all, while maintaining the courage to engage over truth?
“If you’re going to correct false teaching in your opponents with gentleness, you’re going to need to be able to withstand misplaced anger, contradiction, arrogance, and maybe even personal abuse. Much confusion with regard to doctrine comes from sin, but it also gains a foothold in the lives of those who have been sinned against... Continue Reading
Godly Guilt Awakens Happiness in God
Godly guilt clears a path for us to enjoy Him and His grace all the more
“God does not call us to paralyzing self-condemnation, nor has he offered us a cheap alternative to grace that excuses sin. We have joy because we have all we need in God through the gospel. We are discontent, not because we need to do more to earn his love, but because his love compels us... Continue Reading
Gender Dysphoria and the Gospel
Eventually, I could look in the mirror and smile at the person that I saw
I stopped asking the question, “Why did You make me this way?” One of the verses that God used was in Isaiah chapter 29: “Surely you have things turned around! Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; For shall the thing made say of him who made it, “He did not make me”? Or... Continue Reading
Gideons among Us
Gideon serves to illustrate the point of the book of Judges—God, by His mercy, uses very flawed men to rescue His very flawed people.
Gideon’s story is not an isolated, unique train wreck of leadership. Gideon is a study in the pathology of public sin and organizational apostasy. Gideons preach from pulpits, lead Bible studies, write books that make Christian best-seller lists, and sit in pews. But more than that, the temptation to Gideon-like sin could easily confront any... Continue Reading
Prayer and Study, Study and Prayer (Shedd)
"We must commune with the God of truth."
“There can, consequently, be no genuine religion without prayer. And the degree of religion, will depend upon the depth and heartiness of prayer. It does not depend so much upon the length, as the intensity of the mental activity. A few moments of real and absorbing address to God, will accomplish more for the Christian,... Continue Reading
Prostitutes, Mistresses, and the Messiah
Seven Great Women of Ill Repute
If your habit is to skip over the genealogies in the first chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, you may have missed a treasure buried in this list of forty fathers who comprise Jesus’s ancestry (if we count Joseph), stretching as far back as Abraham. The hidden treasure is the five women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Jesus’s... Continue Reading