Three friends were talking in a restaurant one day when the conversation turned to dying. They asked each other what they would like said about them at their funerals. The…
There’s a saint and a sinner on Mount Calvary. What separates them is Jesus. In Luke 23:35-43, we find Jesus hanging between two criminals—one a scoffer and one a brand-new…
Jesus’s first statement from the cross is, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34, KJV). One can hardly think of a more unlikely thing for…
Luke 15 contains three of the most famous parables Jesus ever taught: the parable of the lost sheep; the parable of the lost coin; and the parable of the lost…
The command to “fear God” is found throughout the Scripture, but what exactly does that expression mean? Are people supposed to live in sheer terror of the Almighty? Are we…
Job is a man in agony, and he’s been pelting God with questions because of it. He wants to know—as would anyone—how the Lord could allow him to suffer for…
All the characters in this short letter get “squeezed” by the gospel. Onesimus gets squeezed by having to take responsibility for his crimes against Philemon and make an effort to…
In Part 2 of our series, we put ourselves in the sandals of Philemon, the slave owner. As Paul’s letter unfolds, Philemon begins to get the point: “Your slave, Onesimus,…
It is universally true, thankfully, that decent folks don’t like it when people take advantage of other people. Wherever we go in the world—from the most primitive cultures to the…
Life is filled with riddles and illusions. We’re often surrounded by mysteries and conundrums. We can’t always figure out what’s going on around us or why things happen the way…
The word “saint” (Eph 3:18) is a descriptive noun for the people of God in both the Old and New Testaments. The root of the word is “holy,” which means…
Pastor Tim’s birth certificate has always been as mysterious as President Obama’s. There are, to be sure, a lot fewer people in the world who are interested in his birth…
Jesus’s perfect obedience to his Father and sacrificial death on the cross for the world satisfied God’s just demand for sin to be punished. Consequently, those who trust in Christ…
One of the most tragic changes Christianity has experienced in the last 50 years is the minimizing of the centrality of the local church in the life of believers. The…
If you knew that you were going to die tomorrow at 3 p.m., what would you do tonight at 9 p.m.? Who would you be with? How would you spend…
Jesus achieved something in his death that God the Father recognized, namely, humanity’s sin crisis was rectified once and for all. Indeed, the NT presents Jesus as God’s chosen substitute…
These two devotionals were part of the 2021 Maundy Thursday Service at Christ Community Church. The former “Jesus, the Servant” (John 13:1-17) focuses on the radical humility of “the God…
In watching Jesus carry the wood of the cross to the place of execution, Christians naturally think of the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. God said to…
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