Random Quotes & Articles to Provide Food for Thought
John 1:29-36
I want to draw our attention tonight to the second half of verse 29: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” This is a very familiar verse to most of us I’m sure, but I wonder if our familiarity with it has deadened our sense of the greatness of these words. What kind of an effect must they have had on those who first heard them? Here was John the Baptist declaring that this carpenter from Nazareth was someone of worldwide and infinite significance. John the Baptist was declaring that all the prophecies and revelations of the Old Testament that looked forward to a Saviour and a deliverer had finally been fulfilled in this Jesus of Nazareth—the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.
What did John the Baptist mean by calling Him the LAMB of God? Was he talking about His gentle, meek disposition? Was he referring to the fact that He was innocent and pure? Not primarily. Yes, Jesus IS meek and gentle, but John’s reason for calling Him the Lamb of God goes much deeper than a mere description of His disposition.
What would be the first thing to jump into the mind of Jew if someone began talking about the Lamb of God? Wouldn’t it be the lamb of the daily offering in the temple? In Numbers 28 the children of Israel were commanded to offer two sacrificial lambs every day—one in the morning and one in the evening. Day after day, day after day, for weeks and months and years and even centuries the daily sacrifice had been slain and offered as a sacrifice.
Or if was not the daily sacrificial lamb that those standing by thought of, then possibly they thought of the Passover lamb—that lamb which was slain and whose blood was sprinkled over the lintel and doorposts as a pledge of deliverance from the destroying angel. Every year at the Passover feast there would be a re-enactment of this ritual of the slain lamb to remind of their deliverance from the destroying angel.
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Luke 18:1-8
Hopefully you’ll remember that last week I spoke about prayer, about praying until we get an answer. My illustration was from the parable of the friend at midnight: how we need to be like shameless beggars if we really want to receive from God.
Tonight I want to speak about prayer again. This time I want to show that for prayer to be effective it must be UNCEASING. Once again I’ve chosen one of our Lord’s parables as an illustration—this time the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. In this case, Jesus tells us EXACTLY why he is giving this parable: “that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.” And as someone has aptly said, “One thing is certain: IF WE DON’T PRAY, WE WILL FAINT!”
The picture that Jesus paints in this parable would have been quite a familiar one to the Lord’s hearers. The widow in those days was perhaps the most defenceless person in society. Remember that Jesus in Matt. 23:14 accused the Scribes and Pharisees of “devouring widows houses.” And James tells us that “pure religion and undefiled before God and the father is this, To visit the fatherless and WIDOWS in their affliction. . . .”
Notice our Lord’s characterization of the Judge: He feared not God, neither regarded man. If we have no fear or love for God, then we have little reverence or respect for our fellowmen. The story shows that the man had no real interest in dispensing justice. The man was absolutely lacking in nobility, finesse, and a true sense of justice. He had absolutely no regard for the misfortunes of this widow and the false accusations that were being made against her. There was nothing good in the man that the widow could appeal to. Her only hope lay in UNCEASING APPEALS. She pestered him and bothered him and came back and came back and came back until she received justice. Every other expedient was gone, except this one of continual appeals.
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Luke 11:1-13
My subject tonight is Prayer, and I want us to begin tonight by asking ourselves a few questions–like: “Do I pray out of a sense of duty–that as a believer it’s something I ought to do; or as a kind of Christian lucky charm, hoping that if I keep up my daily prayers everything will somehow turn out right? Or do I pray with the intention of getting answers; of actually receiving something from God? And do I stay with the thing and stay with God until I receive something from heaven?”
I’m afraid that personally I have to admit that a lot of the time my praying falls into the first category. Not that I’m denigrating praying out of a sense of duty–that’s much better than not praying at all. And I suppose the “bless so-and-so” and “help so-and-so” kind of prayers are heard in heaven. But at the same time I think we’ve got to take prayer into the realm of expecting something to happen as a result. In Psalm 62:5 we read “My soul, wait thou ONLY upon God, for my EXPECTATION is from him.” The Psalmist was clearly expecting something from God as a result of his praying.
It’s this thought of praying UNTIL we get an answer that I want to pursue with you for a little while tonight. Let’s look for a moment at the example of the friend at midnight that we just read in Luke 11. The picture, I suppose, seems a bit strange to us: a weary traveler arrives on your doorstep very late at night and you haven’t got a crumb in the whole house so you go to your friend’s house and batter down the door until he gives you some bread. That seems a strange way of carrying on to us. I wonder what kind of reception we’d get from some of our friends if we went battering on their doors at midnight wanting bread? It seems reasonable that if your house was burning down or something really drastic was happening, then it wouldn’t be out of place to go down the street and shout and bang on someone’s door for help. But the idea of doing that for just three loaves of bread seems incredible.
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Scripture: 2 Cor. 5:14-21
The verses I just read to you are from one of my favorite passages of Scripture. Paul is talking about that great subject that was never far from his thoughts: the reconciliation of God and man through the death of Christ.
A key verse in this passage is the one that’s probably best known from this chapter—verse 17: “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature (or a NEW CREATION): old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” What does Paul mean? He means that the man who has been reconciled to God through Christ has new life, new senses, new faculties, new affections, new appetites, new ideas, and new conceptions. He is like a new man in a new world.
Tonight, I just want to look very briefly at one of the ways in which we are changed when we become a new creature in Christ: The person who is a new creature in Christ has an overwhelming sense of indebtedness to the Saviour. I would go as far as to say that it’s the hallmark of every truly born again soul, that he has this sense of the tremendous debt of love that he owes to Christ; and I would also go as far as to say that anyone who has never experienced this tremendous sense of indebtedness has never truly seen the extent of his sin and has never been born again and never been constituted a new creature.
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Read Isaiah 53
On December 7, 1941 a Japanese squadron of 360 planes launched an all-out attack on Pearl Harbor, an act of aggression that launched the Pacific War. The commander of that Japanese Squadron was a man by the name of Mitsuo Fuchida. He was considered to be Japan’s most skilled combat pilot. As the commander of the squadron, he was the one who gave the command to attack Pearl Harbor. Fuchida continued in the war for the next four years, and miraculously escaped death four times.
Fuchida was not a religious man, but after the war his thoughts turned to God. One day at a railway station in Tokyo he was handed a Christian pamphlet. The pamphlet was entitled “I Was a War Prisoner of Japan.” It was the testimony of Jacob DeShazer, an American, telling how during his imprisonment in Japan he started to read the New Testament and was converted and his whole life transformed. Immediately Fuchida’s interest was sparked, and he, too, started to read the New Testament.
Soon he came to the story of the crucifixion. He read of how Jesus forgave His enemies from the cross when He prayed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Fuchida says that his heart broke when he read this account. He couldn’t understand how someone could pray for their enemies and ask for their forgiveness. At that moment, Fuchida opened his heart to Christ and eventually became a Christian evangelist. What a powerful testimony of the wonderful grace of God! Captain Fuchida later came to America and traveled around apologizing for the war and preaching forgiveness through Jesus Christ. Read the rest of this entry »
I want to talk for a few minutes tonight on the glorious truth that there is a Man in Heaven who is both our Saviour and our Sympathizer.
The New Testament as a whole teaches us very plainly that God’s Son became a man and gave His life as a ransom for the whole human race; the book of Hebrews, which I want to look at tonight, contains that same teaching; but it also adds something that the other New Testament books don’t talk about: the book of Hebrews calls Him a High Priest, and it goes into great detail about Christ’s High Priestly work in our behalf.
With that in mind I want to read two short passages from the book of Hebrews.
Heb. 2:14-18 and Heb. 4:14-16.
The writer is showing in chapter 2 that in order to save mankind, Jesus had to enter the human race. Redemption for the sin of man could only come through a man. But that man would have to be sinless. There was no way that one sinful man could redeem another sinful man. And so Christ entered the human race by being born of a virgin, and because He was sinless, God accepted his death as satisfaction for the sins of the human race. Read the rest of this entry »
Read Ephesians 1:1-3
Our reading is from the book of Ephesians, which deals with the subject of LIFE IN THE HEAVENLIES. It’s the New Testament counterpart to the book of Joshua in the Old Testament. The book of Joshua, you will remember, describes the entrance of the Children of Israel into the promised land, the land of plenty, the land flowing with milk and honey. It describes a life of triumph and victory through the power of God. It describes a life of conquest and overcoming. And so likewise Ephesians describes a life lived in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That doesn’t mean of course that the book is impractical and removed from everyday circumstances. Paul was writing from a dungeon, in all probability chained between two soldiers 24 hours a day. The epistle was written to Ephesian believers, most of whom were probably slaves of some sort or another. So although it talks about life in the heavenlies, it is also very down to earth. Someone has said that the book of Ephesians begins in the heavenlies and ends in the kitchen. In other words, it begins by pointing out the rich inheritance that we have in Christ as believers, and describes us as seated with Christ in heavenly places; and then it applies that to everyday life–for example the life of a household slave working in the kitchen. Read the rest of this entry »
1 John 2:15* Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16* For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
17* And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
INTRODUCTION—WHAT IS “THE WORLD”?
What does the Bible mean when it uses the term, “world”?
For example, when John the apostle says in the passage we just read, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world…” what does he mean?
Or in 5:4, “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.” What does He mean?
Or what does Jesus mean in John 15:19 when he says, “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”
Or what does Paul mean in Romans 12:2 when he says, “Be not conformed to this world”?
Let me give you a definition of the world as the Bible, and particularly the NT, views it:
The world is an organized, harmonious system of rebellion against God, with Satan at its head.
Why did I use the words organized and harmonious? Read the rest of this entry »
Matthew 1:18-25
I want to speak to you for a few moments from the latter part of verse 23: “And they shall call His name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”
Emmanuel is one of the names given to Jesus. Nowadays when we give names to our children, the names don’t necessarily mean anything. Often we call our children by the names of a near relative or someone we specially admire. Sometimes we call them by a name that just sounds good—we like the sound of it. This was not the case in Bible times. Names had meanings and contained teaching, and this was never more true than in the case of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has many names, and those names are all full of meaning and instruction. The name Jesus, for instance, means “God saves,” or simply “Saviour” as we saw in verse 21 of this passage: “for He shall save His people from their sins.” Isaiah tells us that “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” And here in our text He is called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”
It’s interesting that there’s no record of anyone actually calling Jesus Emmanuel in the New Testament writings. In fact, this verse is the only place that the name is used. But the meaning, or teaching, or doctrine that is behind the name—Emmanuel, God with us—is everywhere in the New Testament. For example, 1 Tim. 3:16 says that “God was manifest in the flesh”—in other words came to dwell with us. John 1:14 says, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.” And so, although they don’t use the actual name “Emmanuel,” the New Testament writers continually refer to the fact that when Jesus came, it was God coming amongst us—God with us. Read the rest of this entry »
I want to speak to you tonight from a verse in the Old Testament book of Isaiah. It reads like this: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.”
This is God speaking—Jehovah, the One True God, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, the Living God. And He is saying, “Look unto me, and be ye saved.” Or another way we could put it is, “Look and live!”
What does God mean when He tells us to Look and be saved, or Look and Live?
I think it would help us to understand what God means if we look at an illustration from further back in the Old Testament, so I’m going to read you a short portion from the book of Numbers, chapter 21. This story occurred during the time that God’s chosen people, the nation of Israel, were wandering through the wilderness. They had left Egypt, you remember, and were on their way to Canaan—the promised land. I’ll begin reading at Numbers 21:4 through verse 9. Read the rest of this entry »