Be willing in your sacrifice. Be careful in your spending. Deliver fully in your service. And teach others. Artaxerxes’ letter is a masterpiece. He begins by calling himself “king of kings” (Ezra 7:12), which we feel most appropriately belongs to our Lord Jesus (Rev 19:16). However, this term was used by the Lord’s servants concerning these rulers […]
CHRIST the YOKE-SHARER: “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Mt 11:29-30). “The reason why His yoke is easy…is that every necessary major step forward in the […]
“Save, Lord! May the King answer us when we call” (Ps 20:9). NOW magazine recounted the story of a believer who shared the gospel with a flight attendant at London’s Heathrow airport. As they parted company, the young woman said, “Here, take this,” and placed the book she had been reading in the flight attendant’s […]
How serious are we in our praying for the lost in our city, in our workplace, in our family? John G. Paton, intrepid missionary to the New Hebrides (Vanautu) wrote in his autobiography about the strategic impact of his father’s prayer life: “I have heard that, in long after-years, the worst woman in the village […]
As they left, so they returned, in three waves: under Jeshua (538 BC), Ezra (458 BC), and Nehemiah (444 BC). Ezra did not come home alone. “Some of the children of Israel, the priests, the Levites, the singers, the gatekeepers, and the Nethinim came up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes” (Ezra 7:7). Why […]
CHRIST the RESURRECTED ONE: “In our thinking we must not leave Christ on the cross; for God did not leave Him there. He ‘raised Him from the dead,’ and set Him on the throne, and made Him Lord of all. With what a rebound did the “energy of the might of God’s strength” (Eph 1:19) […]
“A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go, work today in my vineyard.’ He answered and said, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he regretted it and went. Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not […]
“Your own mouth condemns you, and not I” (Job 15:6). The concept of evil is nonsensical if there is no God. If everything just evolved from nothing, it’s as foolish to say a rotten man is evil as it is to say a rotten apple is evil. If I am only biology, then I am […]
The temple was a masterpiece. But who knew the Owner’s Manual, explaining its use? Enter Ezra! Memorializing their freedom from Egypt, but now also in the joy of deliverance from Mesopotamia, they “kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month” (Ezra 6:19). It was also linked with “the Feast of Unleavened Bread” (v 22) which was […]
Read More… from March 26, 2025 — No To The Leaven; Yes To The Lamb