24-0526: God’s wage is one of favor above what is fair; He gives grace generously to all who believe in Jesus. How we view God is often determined by how the world operates, when we should view the world by how we understand God. In this parable Jesus teaches a lesson that can be...
23-1015: Grace motivates Christians to live faithful as stewards so that the discipline of giving produces greater grace for stronger faith in life. Every Christian should desire to know how the Bible instructs us to steward our treasure in life. But this is an area where many Christians falter. As a matter of fact,...
23-0924: God confronts our rebellious heart with His relentless grace to invite us to trust His steadfast love and rest in His sovereign plan. In this last chapter we learn the motive that made Jonah run, he didn’t want God to save the Ninevites. Jonah grows exceedingly angry with God. God confronts him in...
23-0917: God, who is sovereign to save, calls His people to be a faithful witness so the nations can hear and believe. Jonah goes to Nineveh to preach the message God gave him, but he is not thrilled about it. The text seems to show that he gave no extra effort, only the bare...
“The tension of Jonah’s life, however, is that he loves Yahweh but has taken serious action against God’s intention to offer forgiveness to the violent (as he and Yahweh discuss in ch. 4). The tension between his “temple piety” and his attitudes toward the unjust world are true to life. The tensions represents the...
23-0903: God calls people for His glory and pursues us in our rebellion to save us by His relentless grace. Jonah is an interesting story with a maximum amount of drama compressed into only a few shorts chapters. Like watching a father and his son, Jonah shows us how big, how REALLY big, God’s...
And we do this, WE do this, not just you or me, but together WE do this to grow up and become like Jesus. You can grow individually, but you cannot grow up alone. No person grows to maturity to become like Jesus without others. There is no individual process to maturity that excludes...
23-0521: The grace of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ produces a people united in His fellowship and mission in the world. Luke’s record of Jesus’ followers after Pentecost provide insight for every Christian today. We glean the values of the early community that shaped the church, and understand how those values formed...
We need to understand God’s wrath and how He executes judgment. God’s wrath revealed is best understood as His mercy removed, where God gives people completely over to their own unrighteousness and wickedness. A right understanding of God’s wrath and judgment magnifies the great importance of God’s mercy to us. We must be sure...
Christians live by promises, not explanations, because we walk by faith, not by sight. God’s grace will always prove sufficient to strengthen and sustain you as you walk by faith in His promise, but you must trust to obey Him. ...