In yesterday’s study we concluded by referring to the three reasons John gives in 1 John 4 for why we should love one another.The first reason is found in verse 7: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” God is love. Th
Whom do you think of when you read these verses? “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always
As I look at these items, I think they characterize the major types of Christian ministry today, even the types of ministry present in a single Christian congregation. When Paul talks about tongues and prophecy, is he not speaking of what we generally call a charismatic type of service? When he spea
Paul teaches the importance of love by contrasts. He says that if he could speak with the tongues of men, or even angels, but without love, it would be nothing. Or prophecy: “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge” but if I do not have love, it is nothing. Or f
It would not take a great spiritual genius or even a great literary genius to pick 1 Corinthians 13 as one of the greatest chapters in the Bible. It deals with love, and according to the very teaching of the chapter love is the greatest of all the things one could be considering (v. 13). Love is gre
Yesterday we concluded by saying that because God has made peace with us, we must be peacemakers toward others. Among other things, we must be peacemakers in the home. Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote:Every minister knows that adjustments must be made by two people who have stopped living in single libe
The fourth beatitude encourages a hunger and thirst after righteousness. It stands at the center of them all. Righteousness is what we most lack, and, therefore, our greatest problem is how we as sinful men and women become right before God. We can deal with other problems. We can find partial solut
The third beatitude concerns meekness. What do you think of when you think of meekness? Most of us think of Caspar Milquetoast or else the skinny 98-pound weakling in the Charles Atlas ad. That is not what meekness meant in the ancient world. Aristotle once outlined what the proper virtues of a civi
When we read the phrase, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” we think of somebody in material poverty and we assume that the Lord is saying that it is better to be poor than to be rich. But our Lord never said anywhere that it is better to be poor than to be rich. He did have many warnings about being
No portion of our Lord’s teaching is better known and probably no portion of the Word of God is more difficult to read than the Beatitudes given in Matthew 5. This is because it is impossible to read these verses without realizing acutely that while they may describe the Lord Jesus Christ, they most
In verses 13 and 14 Jesus talks about prayer, saying that prayer is effective. Notice the way He puts it: “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”I find that very comforting. Jesus did not say, “
In verse 9 Jesus talks about knowing God. He says, “You really can know God, and the way you know God is by knowing me.” It comes out of a question Philip asked. Philip had said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us” (v. 8). When Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except thr
Let me list the things Jesus tells us are a basis for why we should not be troubled. First, there is a place called heaven, and He has gone there to prepare it for us. D.L. Moody once talked about a man he knew who had some thoughts about heaven. He said that when he was young, he never thought abou
The fourteenth chapter of John’s gospel is great for several reasons. It is great because of its contents, and it is great because of the situation to which it speaks. The chapter begins, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” But the reason Jesus spoke those words is that the disciples were troubled
If He's Lord, He must be obeyed. And if He's Savior, He must be Lord. Jesus didn't allow anyone to think that somehow they could be saved and do their own thing. But if they were going to be saved, it was going to be by Jesus the Savior, who is at the same time the Lord. And it was impossible to hav
You know, it's an interesting feature of this word, "Messiah" (“Anointed One”), that in the Old Testament period, there were three classes of people who were anointed. The prophets were anointed, the priests were anointed, and the kings were anointed. It's also an interesting feature that neither on
Now Jesus Christ was announced by the angels to the shepherds as the One who solves that sin problem. He solved it by His own death. He came to die for our sin. Our sin means that we, in our basic nature, are at odds with the God of the universe. And because we’re in opposition to the God of the uni
Now there were several reasons why this message was a message of joy to the shepherds and why, in exactly the same way, it must be a message of joy to us. And the first is that it had to do with the Savior. The ancient world wasn’t unaware of the births of saviors or even of certain so-called miracu
It was C. S. Lewis who invented the phrase, "surprised by joy." It's the title of his autobiography. But I suppose that if there were ever people who were supremely surprised by joy, it was the shepherds when the angels appeared in the sky to announce that on that evening in Bethlehem, a Savior had
At this point I have spoken of three great miracles of Christmas: that God should become man, that He should do so by means of a virgin birth, and that Mary should have believed the angel’s announcement. But now I want to say that the last of these miracles needs to have its counterpart in us. We to
It is hard to think of Christmas without thinking of the two great miracles I have mentioned—the incarnation and the Virgin Birth—and yet the third of these three miracles is the greatest of all, namely, that Mary should believe the angel’s message. Luther puts it nicely: “The Virgin Birth is a mere
The second miracle of Christmas announced to Mary by the angel Gabriel is the Virgin Birth. Strangely, this miracle was not a problem for the ancients. At least no strong opposition to its being possible has been recorded. It is only in recent times, in the earlier decades of this century, that the
The announcement that Jesus should be born to Mary has several parts, all of them important: that Jesus would be “great”; that He would be “the Son of the Most High”; that He would be “holy,” that is, without sin; and that He would “reign over the house of Jacob” on the throne of David forever. But
There is something about Christmas that is wonderful—in spite of the frantic pace of the days leading up to Christmas, the anxious flurry of pre-Christmas buying and the undisguised commercialism and materialism that is so much a part of Christmas in the West. I suppose it is the sheer magnitude of
