Satan and temptation

The temptation of Jesus (Mt. 4:1-11) is often used as an illustration of how Satan attacks believers, or how believers should respond to Satan’s deceptive offerings, or how the Word of God is sufficient for every need, or how Christ is sympathetic to our temptations because He has endured every kind of temptation. All those […]

What shall we do?

I moved to Southern California early in the summer of 1984 — the year the Olympics were held in Los Angeles. Virtually as soon as we arrived, we noted that there was a barrage of information about what to do to prepare for the traffic nightmare that was anticipated to ensue as soon as the […]

He has authority

Writing in World a few years ago, Gene Veith observed that, “People today want to feel moral. But they do not want objective, transcendent absolutes — such as the Ten Commandments — whose authority comes from God.…They prefer to construct an ethical system that does not make them feel guilty.” In general, people want authority, […]

The beloved Son

It seems self-evident that a father would love his child. There are aberrations to that statement, but in general it’s true (as Christ Himself verified, Mt. 7:9-11). Even unredeemed men enjoy taking their sons to the park to throw the ball and are happily willing to sit down with their elementary-aged daughters for “tea.” And […]

Trust in the Lord

We know God is infinite in all His attributes. And that, by definition, means that there can be no limitations to His abilities and works. As Jesus has said, “All things are possible with God” (Mk. 10:27). We know that. And yet we struggle to believe it. We are very much like the father of […]

This was to fulfill what was spoken…

In Matthew 5, Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill” (v. 17). There might be a temptation to think that His fulfillment of the Law began with His public ministry. Not so. His fulfillment began with His birth, […]

They said what they’d seen

When you read the stories of Christ’s birth in Luke 2, it is possible to come up with sermons that are pleas to be more evangelistic: the shepherds investigated the revelation of the angels by going to find the new-born Christ and then declared what they discovered to others. This provides potential opportunity for another […]

It’s not just a name

When my wife was pregnant with our children, we spent many dinners and evenings reading names to each other from the baby name books. And until we settled on a final name, not wanting to call the baby, “baby,” we came up with interim names — monickers that tickled us as we read through the […]

This is the way the Lord deals with His own

It’s possible to read the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth in Luke 1 and think, “that’s a blessed family.” But that’s like reading the last chapter of a book first, finding the happy ending and assuming that the participants of the story knew the end of the story while all the hard stuff was happening, […]

What grace we have received

John 1:16 has long been one of my favorite verses — “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” The verse is written in the context of the coming of the eternally existing Word — the One who is co-existent with God and is God Himself. The Word, the second member […]

The path

Like planning a route with Google maps, many people today are designing and outlining the moral pathway they will take this year. Out with the old, in with the new. All the well-worn, dead-end paths of the past will be forsaken and a new route will be followed. Whether we will or will not succeed […]