Sin
The Victory is Yours
In the twenty-sixth chapter of the book of Acts we find Saul/Paul standing before Agrippa, recounting his journey to Damascus to rage fury against the believers there. It is on this infamous journey that Jesus fell upon Saul as a bright light, knocking Saul to the ground and blinding him for three days. Toward the…
Read MoreOverrating the Tree
The bait and switch is a sales and marketing technique that is both widely employed and highly effective. You want X? Here, I’ll give you X for just $9.95 per month for the first twelve months – the bait. We take the bait and at month thirteen we find that the “small print” kicks in…
Read MoreWhat Jesus Really Meant Was . . .
Last week I found myself engaged in a rather contentious debate with a Twitter user who seemed incapable of understanding that Jesus taught us that sin is a matter of the heart, comes from the heart, and is overcome by gaining a new heart. What He Really Meant Was . . . Sometimes Jesus said…
Read MoreFoolish Vows & Seductive Dances
Last week, we saw Peter sleeping in prison while chained between two guards, and with two more standing watch at the prison gate. In relating the events of that story, I made mention of the Herod family but didn’t go into much depth. This week, I want to give you a history lesson on this…
Read MoreSin is a Smooth Operator
Hyper-Grace Teacher? I speak and write a great deal about the freedom we have in Christ. Indeed, one of the most beautiful redundancies in the entire Bible is found in Galatians 5:1, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” In Romans 5, the apostle Paul is expounding on the grace of God,…
Read MoreSix Reasons Sin Really is a Big Deal
This past weekend, I was honored to be able to speak at Victory Christian Fellowship in Lynden, Washington. The topic was assigned, as I was filling in for a pastor who was called out of town for an emergency. He asked me to continue his exegetical teaching through Romans, and the section for that week…
Read MoreGod Will Give You Exactly What You Want
What if I told you that God will give us exactly what we want – I mean what we really, really want? Would you believe me? I suspect not. But we will look at a passage from the Bible today that tells us exactly that. God will give us what we want. In saying this,…
Read MoreWashed Whiter Than
Isaiah opens his prophecy describing Israel as a terribly rebellious nation. We get no further than the opening statement before we have God’s lament, “Sons I have reared and brought up, but they have revolted against Me.” So extensive is their alienation from their creator that God says, “An ox knows its owner, and a…
Read MoreDashed Expectations
In the early 1970s, Dow Chemical Company came out with a new product named Dow Bathroom Cleaner (later sold to S.C. Johnson and re-branded “Scrubbing Bubbles”). With this amazing new product came a popular television advertising campaign featuring a gang of anthropomorphized bubbles with chainsaw-sounding engines and whirling scrub-brushes for feet. As a young lad,…
Read More