Church Blog

There is an interesting paragraph in the fourth chapter of Peter’s first letter. While there may be a few things in it harder to understand, there are many lessons each of us can learn and apply to help us in our growth. We tend to harshly judge Peter because of his shameless denial of Jesus at His trial, but the great spirituality of the apostle as he writes this many years later is shown in both of his letters. The…

Who doesn’t love a mystery? The basis of so many books of fiction is to find out who and how the villain in the novel committed the crime. Why are popular TV shows like NCIS so popular for season after season? Perhaps it is because there are those hidden clues to solve every crime? How do you explain the fascination of escape rooms and seeking to find the hidden clues that allow you to find the answer as to how…

If you did not read the title of this article, do it now and then resume reading. So what did you think when you read it? Did you first think of X-ray, CT Scan, MRI or some other procedure that is part of the medical world? It might surprise you that the Bible itself uses the phrase “inward parts.” In the King James Version, this phrase is found fewer than ten times. We turn our attention to its use in…

There are several words used to describe our relationship to God and all that happened the day we were saved. Words like salvation, redemption, forgiveness, sanctification, and perhaps others which the Bible uses to indicate all that changed on that day. Each of these emphasize what transpired at the time when we were washed in His blood. Another word that is used is atonement, and it emphasizes that which those other words do not express. As you will see in…

There are several words used to describe our relationship to God and all that happened the day we were saved. Words like salvation, redemption, forgiveness, sanctification, and perhaps others which the Bible uses to indicate all that changed on that day. Each of these emphasize what transpired at the time when we were washed in His blood. Another word that is used is atonement, and it emphasizes that which those other words do not express. As you will see in…

There are words we use which in a sense describe the title of these thoughts. They are simple words we all understand, and the feeling we have as we use them often describes individuals who have deceived us and sometimes hurt us in the past. No one has any joy dealing with one who is phony, one who is a fake, one who is a fraud, one who scams. The Greeks had a word to describe this kind of individual,…

When you first read the words of Paul in Galatians 3:11 you may not immediately understand the impact of what He said. “But that no one is justified by the law is evident…” This truth forces you to deal with how men were saved during the times of the Old Testament if no one is justified by the law. How could anyone be saved from Adam to the coming of Jesus? When God revealed His covenant at Mount Sinai, He…

God could have provided salvation to mankind in any way that He chose. As all of us have separated ourselves from the Lord through sin, all of us are dying— dying to drink of the water of life. Thus, when the water of life is offered to our thirsty, drought-stricken souls, who are we to reject it? God could have provided salvation unconditionally and not required that man do anything to obtain it, but He didn’t. God chose to provide…

More than 60 times in the New Testament the definite article “the” is found before the word “truth,” to emphasize the single, absolute and distinctive nature of Divine truth. The plural form of “truths” is never found in Scripture, which again would seem to be God’s way of emphasizing the single, absolute and distinctive nature of Divine truth. Let’s examine what we can learn about “the truth” from the usage of that expression in the N.T. Through the work and…

Jesus described the church by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard…” (Matt. 20:1). We read these verses and easily understand what He was talking about. We know who that Man was who owned the vineyard, but have we spent enough time thinking about what the Owner said and how that applies to our lives? Jesus used parables (simple stories about things which happen on…

There are some really long words in our language. I remember years ago when I first heard what was at that time the longest one. It was antidisestablishmentarianism. I learned it when watching the national spelling bee. It took me a while to learn it, but I mastered how to say it. “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” is not recognized as a word, but a nonsense word from Mary Poppins. It is one that, while not easily pronounced, can be sung by those who…

The return from Babylonian captivity is truly one of the least known parts of the history of Israel but marks one of the most remarkable periods in the lives of God’s chosen people. When Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, left the city of Jerusalem, he left nothing but ruins behind. The walls were gone and no longer was there a temple, a priesthood, an altar, an ark of the covenant, two tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments inscribed on them—there…