Last week I posted an article based on the first sermon in my Christmas series this year. I had plans to write up each message in full, but life intrudes. Today I’d like to summarize the series to give a coda to the opening overture of last week. The first message dealt with failure and…
The Evangelist Luke tells us that after the visit of the shepherds to the infant Jesus and their report of the angelic messengers, Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. We may take the comment as a historian’s citation of his source. It is possible that the Evangelist met Mary and…
Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with…
Yes, we are still publishing audio from our summer Annual Meeting at Faith Baptist Bible College in Ankeny, Iowa. This is the penultimate post, one more to come in due course. Our theme for the conference was “Reclaiming the Great Commission.” Besides the preaching sessions, our speakers and other leaders conducted several outstanding Workshop sessions,…
My favorite Christmas hymn is “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” written by Charles Wesley. I love its rich truths about Christ and the gospel. The text is based on many different passages in Scripture. In the first stanza, Wesley poetically summarizes the angels’ message to the shepherds that Christ, the newborn King, had been born…
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew 1:1 The Old Testament begins with a genealogy list in Genesis 5:1 revealing how it all started with Adam. This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness…
Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he reads, even when it’s a passage he has seen many times before. As I was rereading (for the fifth or sixth time this Christmas season) Luke’s nativity narrative, I was surprised by a repeated emphasis on the utter certainty of God’s words. Over the years, I’ve given…
For almost thirty years, I’ve devoted the month of December to a special series of Christmas messages of (usually) four messages. Occasionally I’ve gotten an early start, beginning in November and almost always ending the Sunday just before New Years Day. Once we were cheated out of two December Sundays by unusual snowfalls. (In Victoria,…
It’s not about 483 years as much as it is about 69 sabbatical year cycles. Why were the Magi watching for the birth of Christ, when His own countrymen were not? The story of the wise men from the east is recorded in Matthew 2:1-12. The answer to that question requires some speculation, but not…
Our July/August 2023 edition of FrontLine focused on “The Gender Controversy.” We interviewed one of our authors, Ben Hicks, about his article, “A Little Compromise Is a Big Deal” and offer the interview to you today in our podcast. You will find the conversation very thought provoking, it will point you to Scripture as the…