For some time the subject of worship has been recurring in my life and study. It has been increasingly grabbing my attention and has come up in multiple conversations with different people. It seems like this is a good time to explore this topic and see what the word of God has to say about it. Today I want to try and lay out from scripture what it…

We are called as Christians to fight for each other. This is where we turn our attention. We are not called to do work on being transformed in isolation but rather in community. We seek to build each other up and turn the focus of one another toward Christ (Who alone brings lasting transformation).

We learned from Paul how we must have a different walk from the world. Meaning our lives need to look different from the world. But this difference in our lives needs to be rooted in the life of God and not in simply following a set of rules for living. Paul’s main contention is if we have come to know Jesus we have received the light which comes a…

Chapter 4 began with a call to walk in a manner which is worthy of the calling we have received. Part of this calling is to bear with one another and to seek unity and peace. After giving this call to unity in Christ and rooting it in the unity found in God Himself Paul moves on to talk about how this unity plays out in the church. The church is on…

Chapter 4 began with a call to walk in a manner which is worthy of the calling we have received. Part of this calling is to bear with one another and to seek unity and peace. After giving this call to unity in Christ and rooting it in the unity found in God Himself Paul moves on to talk about how this unity plays out in the church. The church is on…

Today we celebrate explicitly the great work of Jesus in overcoming sin, and death by sin, in completing the work of paying for our sin, and rising from the dead. He lived a perfect life and He who new no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. We call this transfer of our sin to Jesus propitiation. We became …

We just finished summarizing how the prayer is a petition for Paul’s readers to be strengthened by the riches of God’s glory through the Holy Spirit. That Jesus may dwell in our hearts through faith. That we would be strengthened to comprehend the immeasurable nature of His love for us. That we would know this love not just in our heads but we woul…

We worked through the prayer Paul prays for his readers. He wants them to know the immeasurable riches of God. God gives us these riches for His glory, He does this because He has given us His Son and He sees us in Jesus. All of this is bound up in God’s love for us. This love of God is immeasurable. God has given us all of this so that we can mani…

We worked through the beginning section of chapter 3. It is a section where Paul takes a short excursion into his role as the apostle sent to the gentiles. He does this immediately after highlighting the new great mystery of how the Jews and gentiles are now one new body of Christ because of Jesus work on the cross. Paul is a minister of the gospel…

We wrapped up the majestic ten verse declaration of why we need salvation, how that salvation is brought to us through grace and how that grace alone is what saves us and protects us from having anything we could potentially boast about. The ten verses start by showing us we are completely corrupt and children of wrath. Because of God being rich in…

We worked through the end of chapter 2 and looked at how the world has really been changed by the person and work of Jesus. After Jesus became our substitutional sacrifice He caused a radical change in the world. The people of God were no longer simply identified as the Jews. Now the people of God were identified by faith in Jesus. The idea of nati…

We worked through verses 4-7 as we dealt with the magnificent work of God done on our behalf to save us from the state of corruption we were in. We began by looking at the rich mercy and love of God for us. A love which was poured out on us even when we were dead in our trespasses and sins. He made us alive together with Christ. He saved us by His …

We worked through the beginning of chapter 2. These first 10 verses are really a continuous flow of thought culminating in verse 10. We are taking the verses in 3 sections. The first section dealt with the radical corruption which plagues mankind because of the fall. This corruption is rooted in the fall of Adam. In Adam we became dead in our tresp…

We worked our way through the end of chapter 1. The 8 verses which wrap up the end of the chapter really highlight the unlimited almighty power of God which is in Christ and because the Holy Spirit indwells us it is also in us. Its existence in us is for the glory of Jesus. He blesses us and He sustains us in the midst of difficulties. It is there …

We finished working our way through the longest sentence in the Bible. It runs from Ephesians 1:3-14. It centers on the magnificent power or God as it is displayed in the work of Jesus. It is a very heart stirring God exulting section. Paul was very familiar with the church in Ephesus and had been very involved there, not only for 3 years in establ…

We continued to explore the greatness of God’s work as Paul exults in it. We are in the middle of this massively long sentence which is lavishly filled with the vastness of the glory of God. The part we explored last time started with redemption and ended with how in the fullness of time all things will be united in Jesus. In the middle Paul talks …

We began our verse by verse study of Ephesians. We began by looking at how the church in Ephesus is addressed by the Lord in the letters to the seven churches in Revelation. What we see in Revelation gives us a little window into the church in Ephesus. Honestly, the church in Ephesus sounds like a pretty solid church theologically. As a matter of f…

We worked through an overview of the book of Ephesians. We laid out the people and context of the area it was written to. We explored the ideas of the book in a broad overview. And we looked at the unique aspects of the letter. How Paul wrote in a general sense and this makes the letter very relevant for Christians of all times and ages. It was pro…

We are going to consider Mary and how her role as the one chosen to bear Jesus points us to His greatness. In the Biblical picture we are betrothed to Jesus. That means the commitment to marriage has been made and we are for all intents and purposes married but not yet united. This is part of the reason scripture speaks with anticipation of the gre…

In particular the highlighted person was Bathsheba. But in this instance she is not mentioned by name. She is referred to as the wife of Uriah. She is the mother of Solomon by David. What this does for us as readers is it highlights David as a sinful man. David is and was almost always thought of as the greatest king of Israel. As we looked at last…

The story of Ruth continues to show the idea that the women talked about in this passage were pagans and mainly gentiles. Yet God chooses these women to be the women in the line of Christ. Ruth was a Moabite woman who ends up coming to Israel because she had married an Israelite man. Boaz shows favor to Ruth because of what he's heard Ruth has done…

The story of Rahab continues to show the idea that the women talked about in this passage were mainly pagans and gentiles. Yet God chooses these women to be the women in the line of Christ. Which is particularly striking since Matthew was written to Jews. This is very important because grace to gentiles is poured forth in even the line of Christ. R…

The story of Tamar continues to show the idea that the women talked about in this passage were pagans and mainly gentiles. Yet God chooses these women to be the women in the line of Christ. Tamar loses her first two husbands because of their wickedness before the Lord. Tamar appears to be 'tainted goods' and Judah doesn't want to give his youngest …

Today we looked at how Babylon came and conquered Jerusalem. How Zedekiah was made ruler and how he rebelled against the King of Babylon. Destruction followed this rebellion as Nebuchadnezzar came and destroyed Jerusalem and carried into exile a great many of the people. The remaining people left in Judah, flee to Egypt after Gedaliah the governor …

We worked through the section of Kings which describes how Judah came to be under the authority and rulership of Pharaoh Neco the king of Egypt. The people of Judah had made Jehoahaz king when his father died even though he was not the oldest son of Josiah. We don’t know why this was and there is no good explanation given. He only reigned 3 months …