Gospel

Jerry Bridges went to be with the Lord yesterday (March 16, 2016). Born to cotton farmers six weeks after the Stock Market Crash of 1929, he was saved in college and eventually went into vocational ministry with the Navigators. Most of us who know him, though, know him as an author and teacher who took gospel truth and made it accessible. If the name is new to you, Justin Taylor has written an excellent piece to honor him and survey his life.

Amazing Grace has to be one of the most familiar Christian hymns of all time. I haven't done any studies on it, but it seems to find it's way into all kinds of Christian and secular movies. If you start the song on a Sunday, everyone present will sing along, not just those who grew up in your church. It is a vivid reminder that something is "amazing" and worth singing about, namely, "grace." But what exactly is "grace"? Let's define it and then look to the New Testament to answer six important questions about it.

And by the way,…

Easter week is a great time to annually reflect on the last week of Jesus' earthly ministry, all culminating in the cross and his resurrection. Here are a few thoughts to help you do that, along with a free resource by John Piper at the end.

Palm Sunday is the name given to mark the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into the city of Jerusalem, that glorious and yet ironic moment when the praises of men celebrated the King coming in the name of the Lord and fulfilling the Zechariah prophecy about entering the city on a donkey (Zech. 9:9; Matt.…

My testimony isn't spectacular in that one life altering event happened that altered the course of my life. My testimony hinges on the fact that the God of the universe was faithful throughout my life to put me in just the right place at just the right time that I might be able to encounter him in just the right way.

Christmas is a great chance to revisit the gospel in our personal Bible study and also with our families. There are a lot of ways to do this, but one way is to look at prophecies in the Old Testament that are fulfilled by Jesus. This helps us to see how God's gospel ("good news") came to us in Jesus Christ.

To say that God is immutable is to say that he is unchanging. It is to say that he is constant and consistent. It is to say that he is not fickle. The God who reveals himself in his creation and in his Word is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. With this in mind, there are at least four ways in which we can speak of God as being immutable.

Do we worship what we know or what we do not know? This was the distinction made by Christ to the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob concerning the Jews and Samaritans of his day. Jesus pointed out that God, who is spirit, was seeking true worshipers who will worship in spirit and truth.

In the first chapter of the gospel of John, John introduces readers to the Word. He tells his 1st century audience (primarily Jews and Greeks) a number of surprising things about the Word. We’ll look at four of those traits followed by a few points of application/significance.

In the critical last hours of Jesus’ earthly ministry, he instituted what we call the Lord's Supper at his last meal with the disciples. As we saw in our Sunday sermon, the Lord's Supper is a simple act, but it has profound meaning. What is the Lord's Supper? We answered that question in four parts.

Someone asked me for a list of Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Jesus. I expected the search to be a fairly easy one in our digitized society, but it wasn't. Here is a good list of the Old Testament prophecy followed by a New Testament fulfillment. It comes from R.A. Torrey, who died in 1928. The sheer length of this list reminds us that Christ is thoroughly (though not completely) revealed in the Old Testament, and that he is precisely who Peter said that he was: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16).