Isaiah’s Vision
Read: Isaiah 6:1-8 The prophecy of Isaiah belongs on anyone’s shortlist of the Bible’s greatest books. Unsurpassed for beauty, Isaiah’s writing also reveals more of God’s saving purpose than almost anywhere else in scripture—so much so, that it has sometimes been called “the fifth gospel.” We are exploring the treasures of Isaiah in this series […]
Apostolic Prayer
Read: Galatians 1:1-24 The last of the four characteristics of healthy and vital Christian churches is apostolic prayer. Let’s look today at a wonderful example of what that means. We come today to the fourth of our marks of the church as found in Acts 2:42, where we read that the early Christians devoted themselves to the […]
The Demonstration of God’s Love
Read: Romans 5:6-8 When it comes to love, actions speak louder than words. When it comes to God’s love, the cross speaks loudest of all. Here is one of the truly great statements about the meaning of Christ’s death. In Romans 5:6-8 the apostle Paul writes: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died […]
I Believe in Forgiveness
Read: Matthew 6:12-14 When we confess our faith in the forgiveness of sins, we’re really claiming two things: that we need to be forgiven and that we need to be forgiving. It’s hard to accept the idea of forgiveness. It goes against the grain of our nature, you might say. Maybe that’s why Christians have made […]
I Believe in the Holy Spirit
Read: John 14:15-18, John 14:26, 1 Corinthians 12 “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” So Christians confess, whenever they recite the words if the Apostles’ Creed. But what do we mean by this? And do we really understand what we are claiming to believe? “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” So Christians confess, whenever they recite the words […]
The Great Commandment: Loving God
Read: Matthew 22:34-40 What is the single most important thing you need to do in your life? Someone came to Jesus one day and asked that very question. Listen to his answer. On hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this […]
We Are Stewards of God’s Mysteries
Read: 1 Corinthians 4:1-5 “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Corinthians 4:1, ESV). Here is the way you should picture me and my colleagues, says Paul to the Corinthians. A Christian leader isn’t a big shot, a CEO, a spiritual celebrity, an ecclesiastical […]
We Are God’s Co-workers
Read: 1 Corinthians 3:5-9 Every Christian is called to service in Christ’s name David Bast has selected ten vivid metaphors from First and Second Corinthians that describe ministers of Christ, and he explores them in this series. His message today: “We are God’s Co-workers”: the ultimate synergy—working as partners with God in the work of […]
The Measure of God’s Love
Read: John 3:16, 18 How do you measure love? Love is not measured by how much you say or how strongly you feel but by how much you give. This is supremely true of God’s love for us. One night Jesus was talking with a man called Nicodemus, a leading religious teacher from Jerusalem. Nicodemus had […]