The fifth commandment is talking particularly to adult children. It says, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” What’s intriguing about the Ten Commandments is they are a summary of everything human beings ought to be. Yet in all of the Ten Commandments...
What is true rest? In Psalm 3, we see a man who goes to sleep the night before a battle knowing full well that he’s greatly outnumbered. And he sleeps. He rests. Scientists will tell you the thing that restores the body is not the length of your sle...
If you have any other gods before God—and we all do—to that degree that you have other gods before him, you’re in bondage, co-conspirator with your own jailers. God in his grace seeks to liberate us—with the most liberating of all of the Ten Commandm...
The book of Deuteronomy is a series of sermons Moses preached just before he died. In it, he lays out, in the most comprehensive and practical way, how you should live if you experience the grace and salvation of God. If you experience God, how shoul...
Jesus says, “Don’t be anxious,” three times in this passage. Quick question that comes up: how does anybody have the audacity to command us to not be anxious? Nobody gets up in the morning and says, “I’m going to really be anxious today. I can’t wait...
To many people, the whole point of prayer is this: how do you get God to give you what you need? Now, that’s not the point of prayer, and if you think it is, you will get very little. That’s the irony. Prayer is very effective for those people who do...
A life of absolute peace, a life of tremendous clarity, a life of total power and freedom, a life of high beauty—that’s the vision of the Lord’s Prayer. A whole new life that revolves around God. We’re going to look now at the part of the prayer that...
What’s ironic is the Lord’s Prayer has probably the most familiar words in the English language, and yet it is the secret to what you seek. We’re so tired of technology, of quantifying everything, of being a number. At the core of our being, we need...
It’s artificial to avoid the subject of money when so many of your problems, your worries, and your difficulties revolve around money. And it’s also artificial to avoid the subject because so much of the Bible is about money. The Bible says there can...
In the middle of John 1, the religious leaders send people to interrogate John the Baptist. It doesn’t look like it’s got much to do with Christmas, and yet it does. Some major inner change has happened to John the Baptist. And if John the Baptist ha...
When the original hearers of John’s gospel—the Jews and the Greeks—heard the term, “the Word became flesh,” it was revolutionary. Many scholars have said it marked a complete revolution in the history of human thought. But I’d like us to think about...
John 1 is about Jesus first coming into the world. It’s John’s way of helping us understand the meaning of Christmas. And at the very beginning, John sort of hits us between the eyes and says the reason why Jesus Christ came into the world is so tha...
Light in the darkness is one of the ways that throughout history, Christmas has been celebrated. Lighting candles, and lights on trees, and lights at night. What is that all about? In John 1, John talks about Jesus coming into the world. It’s his way...
Paul gives us an assurance at the end of Romans 8. It is magnificent and yet very simple. In these verses, he’s saying, “Here’s the thing that will absolutely change your life through Christ.” Paul tells us this assurance, and he says this is the th...
Rightly so, at Christmas, people who are suffering want to know, “Why should I be merry? What basis do I really have for joy?” The answer is that if Christmas really happened, if God really did open a cleft in the pitiless walls of this world, if he...
