Acts 7:54-8:3 This morning we’ll again be participating in the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. When the early Christians had to choose a word to identify those who had suffered intensely and even given their lives for their faith, they chose to call them “martyrs”—a word which denotes not their victimhood but […]
Colossians 1:28-29 It’s natural if not unavoidable for kids to be interested in being more mature. At a certain age, kids don’t want to be thought of as ‘little’ anymore but as blossoming young women and men. The Apostle Paul would identify this as a very good and healthy impulse. He says in Colossians 1 […]
Matthew 5:17-20 The 10th commandment focusses on our desires…specifically the covetous desire for more than we have. By giving us a commandment that governs our desires, God reveals how deep the other 9 commandments really go…that they too were intended to govern not only our behaviour but our desires as well. This is precisely Jesus’ […]
Ephesians 5:15-25 God has given us as human beings an incredible capacity to communicate–not only sophisticated languages but also facial expressions, gestures, imagery, and music. With a tremendous capacity to communicate comes a tremendous responsibility, and that’s what the 9th commandment addresses. Most plainly it requires that we avoid deceit and speak the truth, but […]
Matthew 6:19-24 As he’s done with all the other commandments, so too with the command against stealing, Jesus addresses the heart issue; namely, greed. Jesus uses three metaphors to call us away from an inordinate love of material wealth—the metaphor of treasure (vv19-21), eye sight (vv.22-23), and serving a master (v24). With each metaphor we […]
Proverbs 5:1-21 The seventh commandment, as most of us know well, forbids far more than the physical act of adultery. It calls all of us–married or single–to a life of complete sexual purity. As Proverbs 5 articulates, sex within the proper confines of marriage is something to be enjoyed (see vv. 15-19), but the allure […]
John 8:12-30 Advent Series: One of the emphases of John’s gospel–in fact, the emphasis with which he begins his gospel–is that Jesus existed before the incarnation. Though that’s commonly understood among us as Christians, consider the strangeness and the offense this idea presented to John’s first readers: a man who spoke of existing before he was conceived. […]