“But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” (ESV – Read the chapter)
One of the things I have told my congregations many times over the years is that we have to get God’s character right. If we don’t get the character of God right, much of the rest of our lives will be incredibly more difficult than they would otherwise be. Read the rest…
“The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?'” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Put yourself in the shoes of the woman at the well for a moment. Jesus was offering her something which sounded way too good to be true. Even thinking literally, this was the case. She thought Jesus was talking about a literal kind of water that you could drink and never be thirsty again. Spiritually, it sounds even better. But, as good as it sounded–or rather, because it sounded so very good–she did not believe it was really something He could do. How often have we been in the same kind of place? Read the rest…
“And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Hell is hard. Perhaps no orthodox Christian doctrine is as difficult for folks to get their hearts and minds around as is the notion that those who finally reject God will, upon final judgment, spend an eternity separated from Him in Hell. And, I’ll say this as gently as I can: If the doctrine doesn’t give you at least a bit of unease, you may not be paying very much attention to it. Read the rest…
“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
These are some incredibly powerful truths here. Let’s treat them in order. Read the rest…
In this third part of our Reasons to Believe series, we spent yesterday morning wrestling with one of the more challenging doctrines of orthodox Christianity: The doctrine of Hell. In popular imagining for centuries, the idea of Hell has been one of fiery agony stretching on into eternity. In the modern mind, shaped as it is by tolerance and pluralism, this idea presents a huge impediment to the faith. We are left with two choices: Reshape the doctrine to fit modern mores, or try to understand it better to see if it doesn’t present us with a stumbling block at all, but rather a reason to believe. In what follows we aimed for the latter. Thanks for reading and listening.
A Hellish Problem
Well, this morning as we continue our series, Reasons to Believe, we are taking on a challenge. We’ve already confronted head-on the objections that truth can’t really be known and that the Bible is untrustworthy in terms of revealing anything about God to us. This morning we are going to take on a challenge that is much more emotional than either of these previous two. For many folks it is epitomized in the sermons of men of old, kind of like this one: Read the rest…
The Nexus 