As we saw last week, the story of Hosea tells us about God’s faithfulness to his people even in the face of their lack of faithfulness to him. Though Israel had played the harlot, the unfaithful bride and wife who turned away from her LORD to follow other gods, God …
As most of you know, Ron and I came to marriage late-ish in our lives—last month we celebrated our five-year anniversary. Now I won’t speak for Ron but for me part of the reason I hadn’t married before he and I got together was for the simple reason that I …
As we saw last week, the nation of Israel under the reign of Jeroboam II, wasn’t living according to the ways that their Sovereign LORD had revealed to them. Therefore God sent them Amos, a man who had formerly been a shepherd, to proclaim his Word to his people. In …
Sometime this past Spring when we were discussing the Gospel Saturation Primer, a booklet intended to encourage local churches to reach out to unbelievers within their communities, somehow we landed on the topic of God’s wrath. At the time I mentioned that a sure way for people not to come …
In considering some of the events in the life of the prophet Elijah these past couple of weeks we’ve noted a number of similarities between his life and the life of another servant of the LORD, Moses. This morning we’re going to look at some of these similarities and then …
Last week we saw a despondent Elijah who was feeling so low that he prayed the LORD would take his life.[1] After faithfully serving the LORD and proclaiming his Word to his people, his people had responded: by rejecting God’s covenant, tearing down his altars, and putting his prophets to …
[Whisper]: “If you want to capture someone’s attention, whisper.” Did you hear that? Did that work? Did I grab your attention? Years ago Nuance perfume had an ad campaign with this catchphrase. Apparently, they were onto something for since then I’ve read that a teacher who whispers in a …
I’ve often been struck by how often Scripture mentions Jesus praying. That Jesus prayed seems surprising at one level because Scripture teaches that he wasn’t simply human but was also God. If then he is God, and therefore is one with God, why would he need to pray in the …
This past week I’ve been thinking about how very different the Old Testament account of the Tower of Babel is from that of the event we remember today, Pentecost Sunday, the fiftieth day after Easter on which Jesus Christ kept his promise to send his disciples his Holy Spirit—which promise …
In C.S. Lewis’ enchanting Chronicles of Narnia children’s stories, in the final book of the series, The Last Battle, he provides a breathtakingly joyous vision of what life will be like once we leave the shadow lands of earth and enter the astonishing, spectacular, awesome, amazing more real-and-solid-than-we-could-ever-imagine heavenly world …
