A Light to the Nations
Read: Isaiah 49:1-6 Missions isn’t just one of many jobs the church does. It’s the reason the church is still in the world. I love church mission conferences and mission emphasis Sundays, and I speak at quite a few of them. But they do have a drawback, in my opinion. They can make it seem like […]
The Servant of the Lord
Read: Isaiah 42:1-9 Christ has come into the world, not just to bring light, hope, peace, love, comfort and joy. He certainly does all that, but to bring justice. The Bible is a story book. That is, it’s a book that tells a lot of stories, stories that have shaped our culture and formed our values. […]
Comfort My People
Read: Isaiah 40:1-8 For most of us, the word “comfort” suggests relaxation and ease, but when God speaks comfort, he not only changes how we feel; he changes how we are. Here’s the setting as we open the 40th chapter of the book of Isaiah. The Israelites—God’s chosen people—are living in exile in Babylon. They have […]
Blessed Are Those Who Wait
Read: Isaiah 30:18-21 Most of us aren’t very good at waiting for the things we desire, but Isaiah shows us how waiting isn’t just an important discipline for believers; it’s actually a blessing. There are many more beatitudes in the Bible than just the famous ones Jesus delivered in his Sermon on the Mount. For […]
The Song of the Vineyard
Read: Isaiah 5:1-7 An early passage from Isaiah offers a moving parable about God’s grace and human sin, a parable that Jesus himself found to be all too accurate a description of his own life and work. Biblical parables are not limited to the Gospels in the New Testament. The opening section of Isaiah 5, for example, […]
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 […]