Friday, July 17, 2020

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 27


How to Know God...and Why You Might Want To


Jesus reveals God to the whole human race.

"Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.'” (John 14:6-7)

Jesus is how you can know God.

He's also how you can be reconciled to God. Jesus told a man named Nicodemus, one of Jesus' fellow Jews, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son." (John 3:16-18)

Get to know Jesus and prayerfully consider following Him. The blessings of doing so are for today and for eternity.

As the apostle Paul, also a Jew and once an enemy of Christian faith who later came to believe in Jesus said: "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith [counted right with God through belief in Jesus], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God." (Romans 5:1-2)

Feel free to share with a friend.

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Tonight's Weeknight Bible Study of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 26, verses 36-75



[I apologize that the first half of the video is somewhat distorted. I was using to much bandwidth.]

Getting Things Straight

In my quiet time today, I was struck by this verse: "Lord...all that we have accomplished you have done for us." (Isaiah 26:12) Whatever good I do in this world, in fact, I don't do. Good is so foreign to my nature that if I do it, it's God doing it through me.

This reminds me of something that some of us on Twitter were discussing yesterday, Jesus' words in John 15:5: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."

As a disciple of Jesus, my call is to recognize that, in Luther's phrase, "we are all beggars": I'm a person saved by grace who only does good things insofar as Christ, through Spirit-given daily repentance and renewal, lives in me.

The phrase "proud Christian" is an oxymoron.

Lord, destroy my pride and help me to live in and for you alone. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen