How can faith – even a strong faith – in someone whom we have not seen produce happiness, specifically happiness and joy which is so powerful that the inspired writer calls it “inexpressible and filled with glory”?… Read More 1 Peter: How Never Having Seen Jesus Can Produce Joy That Is Inexpressible And Glorious
If the newly-baptized Christian’s brand-new “church family” is, weeks and months and years after their baptism, still nothing more than a bunch of strangers or barely acquaintances whom they see very briefly a couple of times a week at church, and if they’ve tried to study the Bible on their own but find it difficult without someone helping them (cf. Acts 8:30-31), then we should not be surprised to look around one Sunday and realize that we haven’t seen them in…well, months. And what were their names again? Is this what Jesus wants?… Read More The Parable of the Sower: The Ones on the Rock
“Wait, Peter!” these first readers of his epistle might have been thinking to themselves at this point. “Aren’t you aware of all the persecutions and hardships we are facing because of our Christianity?” The apostle acknowledged this. “…though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials…” (1:6b). He will elaborate further on what those trials were later in this book, as well as how Christians should respond to them. For now, notice that he still expects them to rejoice because of all the great blessings with positive eternal ramifications which the Father had and continued to shower upon them…in spite of the trials they were currently experiencing. The Lord expected the same from His apostles, and He expects the same from us today (John 15:11, 18-25; Phil. 4:4-7). Are our daily lives filled with joy in spite of whatever hardships life throws at us for these reasons…or are we too focused on the bad to see the eternal good?… Read More 1 Peter: Reasons to Rejoice…And Reasons for Trials
The “Feast of Booths,” booths being tabernacles or tents, was observed under the old covenant as a time of joy and gratitude as Israelites celebrated how their time in the wilderness had ended and God had allowed them to dwell in the Promised Land (Lev. 23:34-43). This is likely a figurative way of prophesying how those who had been lost and enemies of the church but now are followers of Jesus have similar reason to rejoice. God’s grace had brought them out of the wilderness of sin and now they are in the “Promised Land,” citizens of his Son’s kingdom with eternal life as their destiny.… Read More Zechariah: Holy to the Lord
“His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Ps. 1:2). The man who “greatly delights” in the “commandments” of the Lord is “blessed” (Ps. 112:1). He prays for the Lord to “lead me in the path of your commandments” because “I delight in it” (Ps. 119:35). He recognizes the sobering but wonderful truth that “if your law had not been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction” (Ps. 119:92). For that and many other reasons, he sincerely says, “I find my delight in your commandments, which I love” (Ps. 119:47). It is this love and delight for the will of God that motivates the godly individual to “meditate day and night” upon the “law” of God.… Read More Delight in the Law of the Lord
Pre-Denominational Christianity 
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