CHRIST the BRIGHT and MORNING STAR (Rev 22:16). Our Lord here presents Himself as the herald of His own dawning. All the world shall see the Lord arise as the Sun of Righteousness, but only those looking for Him will see His appearing as the Morning Star. John Fletcher of Madeley (1729–1785), close friend of […]
“I am a stranger in the earth; do not hide Your commandments from me” (Ps 119:19). Excuse the irony, but nothing could be stranger! A person always on earth but “born from above.” A heavenly citizen living as a stranger in this world. A possessor of life that is to be lived “more abundantly,” yet […]
William MacDonald writes: We teach our children to accumulate; Christ calls them to forsake all (Lk 14:33). We teach them that it is not respectable to be poor: Jesus said, “Blessed be ye poor” (Lk 6:20). We tell them to stay home and make good; the Lord tells them to “go…into all the world and […]
Both the patterns and the inter ruptions are important in seeing the way God works in our lives. It turns out that Psalms 9 and 10 are a couplet. Psalm 10 has no title, and the subject of God being both the dispenser of wrath against the wicked and the hiding place of those who […]
CHRIST our MESSAGE: “…that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Cor 4:10). Whatever outward forms it takes, Christian service fundamentally is transmitting Christ. Some years ago, in an old church in an English village, an elderly preacher was almost at the end of a very ordinary sermon, when he […]
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Lk 18:25). Microminiature sculptor Nikolai Syadristy has actually placed three gold camels inside the eye of a needle! Of course, the masterpiece misses the point. When Matthew and Mark tell […]
“Reach your finger here, and behold My hands” (Jn 20:27). H.A. Ironside recounts the story of a Roman Catholic woman who was lying very ill in hospital and in great distress because of the weight of her sins. A nun was called to the bedside, and promised to call the priest. In the meantime, a […]
“The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked” (Nah 1:3). Christians like to think about our “blessed Redeemer” (Heb, gâ’al, goel), but that title is also translated as “revenger” or “avenger.” In ancient Israel there was no penal system, and every clan was to have a kinsman […]
CHRIST our SANCTIFICATION: “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us…sanctification” (1 Cor 1:30). “Sanctification” comes from the same root meaning of holiness, hagiazo. It means to be set apart, then to be wholly for God, and finally the process by which those declared right (justified) shall be made […]