The lyrics of the Christmas carol “In the Bleak Midwinter” lull us into the chill of a winter gone by: In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago. Our experience can… Read More »
Thanksgiving comes every year, and giving thanks to God is a standard privilege of the Christian life. It is our obedience: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). It is also a way to glorify God—notice the parallelism in Psalm 86:12: “I… Read More »
This post is a bit more personal than most of what I offer. My church kindly recognized that I had hit the ten-year mark for the privilege of being our pastor, and what follows below is a short “thank you” that I inserted in our church bulletin. My thanks extends to the greater body of… Read More »
This short article is my summary of “A Biblical Argument Against Premarital Sex” by Mark Snoeberger in Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 20 (2015), pages 45–63. The passages below are helpful as we seek to live holy lives in a fallen world. Young people, singles, and parents instructing their children will benefit by reading what follows.… Read More »
God created man as male and female (Gen 1:27) with the capacity for sexuality, properly taking place only between a husband and a wife (Gen 2:24; Heb 13:4) for the purposes of procreation (Gen 1:28; 9:1) and relational enjoyment (Gen 2:18, 24). In a fallen world, sex in marriage helps to restrain temptation to sexual… Read More »
Romans 1:1–7 1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4 and was declared to be the Son of… Read More »
Some people refuse to work and are intentionally lazy and idle. They know better but disobey the instruction of God and refuse to follow the example of hard-working Christians. They busy themselves in the lives of others, and burden others with their needs. What does Paul say to these people? In 1 Thessalonians 4:9–12, Paul… Read More »
Three verses in the New Testament refer to a busybody—2 Thessalonians 3:11, 1 Timothy 5:13, and 1 Peter 4:15. The following briefly explores the meaning of busybody in each verse. 2 Thessalonians 3:11 For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. “Busybodies” in this verse… Read More »
Paul addresses the matter of working to make a living in both 1 and 2 Thessalonians. In the first letter, he urged his readers to work to meet their own needs as part of their testimony for Christ (1 Thess 4:10–12). In the second letter, Paul commanded his readers to distance themselves from the persistently… Read More »
Paul prays that Jesus and the Father would “comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word” (2 Thess 2:16–17) and “direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ” (2 Thess 3:5). From these prayers, we see that God desires our hearts to increase in comfort,… Read More »