The word of God is not one power among others; it is the power through which God has always worked — creating the cosmos, sustaining it, ending it, and in the interval producing the new creation of souls through the gospel. “The gospel is the power…
The statement “there was no room for them in the inn” is not incidental. It is the emblem of everything that follows. The world that had no room in the manger had no room in Nazareth, no room in the synagogues, no room at the table…
God blesses men through men. This has been his consistent pattern from Abraham to Christ: the person through whom God works is the person God has sanctified — set apart, consecrated, made fit for the work assigned. The degree of sanctification corresponds to the greatness of…
When a person begins to seek God, Satan begins to seek that person. The obstacles are predictable and consistent: laziness, pride, fear, prejudice, and the love of an evil life. Each has appeared in the lives of people who sought God and failed to find him…
Poverty is broader than the absence of money. A person may be materially comfortable and still be desperately poor — in relationships, in character, in fellowship with God. The poor Jesus declares “blessed” (Matt. 5:3) are not the materially destitute; they are the poor in spirit…
Jeremiah’s word stands over every human plan: “It is not in man who walks to direct his steps.” The honest acknowledgment of limitation is not weakness — it is the first movement of wisdom. Pride is constitutionally blind to limitation. It is the nature of pride…
Jesus was “a man of sorrows” — and he was also a man of deep, unshakable joy. The New Testament does not present these as contradictions. It presents them as dimensions of the same great soul. The church has a long tradition of depicting Jesus primarily…
The landmarks that mark the boundaries of God’s revealed will cannot be moved without consequence — ancient Israel learned this by law, and the church has learned it by history. Every generation inherits landmarks it did not set and cannot reset. The temptation is always to…
The Pharisees were the most religiously meticulous people in the ancient world. They fasted twice a week, gave tithes of mint and cummin, washed hands before meals, and prayed loud prayers at street corners. And Jesus called them hypocrites — whitewashed tombs, full of dead men’s…
The last words of Scripture before the benediction are not a command, a condemnation, or a prophecy — they are an invitation, and that invitation is deliberately open to anyone who will come. The book of Revelation closes with a scene of cosmic completion: the new…