Jesus once told a story about a man who discovered a treasure in a field and sold all he had to buy the field. Ephesians 1 is a ‘treasure’ and we will do well to do whatever it takes to ‘buy’ the field, that is, to understand, apply, and enrich our relationship with God. Ephesians…
The Family Gospel (Reconciliation)
This is the final of a series of messages simply titled ‘The Gospel’. We have looked at the various pictures the Bible gives us, by which we can understand more fully the death of Jesus Christ for us. We need to do this because nothing matters more than the Gospel. Yet the Scriptures themselves do…
The Polluted Heart Gospel (Renewal)
Sin pollutes. It makes the heart dirty. It stains, not the kind of stain that ‘Shout’ or ‘Mr. Clean’ can remove. It is a bottle of black ink poured over white satin, the kind of stain about which we would say: ‘That will never come out.’ Genesis is where the story of sin begins. Adam…
The Life/Death Metaphor (Regeneration)
When we try to articulate the Gospel in a nutshell, and in such a way as to give real understanding, we find we can’t do it. Words are woefully inadequate to say: ‘This what the Gospel is…’ in a few sentences. The Bible does not even attempt it because it cannot. But a picture is…
Slavery/Freedom (Redemption)
In Mumbai, India, a young girl who had been trafficked from the north and had been missing for three years was finally tracked down by officials and by an international justice organization. They rescued her from a brothel, where she had been held captive, and she said she had not seen the sun for three…
The courtroom gospel (Justification)
Today we are beginning a short series of blogs concerning the Biblical pictures of the Gospel. We want to re-focus on the Gospel, to reacquaint ourselves with it, to be gripped by it, and to re-calibrate our lives to it again. Sometimes the ‘foyer’ of our faith needs renovating, but once in a while we…
Acts 6:8-7:60 Martyrdom of Stephen
A Christian speaker talked about his own journey as a former avowed atheist. At one time he considered the basic claims of Christianity untrue, but in looking at the evidence for the life and resurrection of Jesus, and for the authenticity of the Biblical writings, he became convinced that Christianity is ‘true’. OK. But what…
Psalm 46
Psalm 46 is a psalm that has to do not with personal crisis but when the world around seems to be in a state of utter collapse, when the oceans are surging, mountains falling into the sea, the earth caves, and when nations are at war. What does faith look like then? This has always…
Acts 5:1-11 Ananias and Sapphira
As a church, we exist not only to know Jesus but also to make him known. We have the threefold message: ‘Jesus is wonderful: you’ll love him. Jesus is Savior: you need him. Jesus is Lord: obey him.’ In making Jesus known, we want to remove all unnecessary barriers. We want people to leave a…
Psalm 19
To be human is to have the ability to choose our responses. In your grade school science classes you probably learned what distinguished living things, or organisms, from non-living things. Why is it that we say a dandelion is alive but a cloud is not, or that coral is alive but a rock is not….