Darren Bonville brings us a message on Luke 2:25-33. This portion of scripture contains the fourth and final Christmas song that Luke records in his Gospel account.
25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 And he came in the Spirit in…
Stories of spooky encounters with beings from another realm seem more in line with the traditions of Halloween than Christmas, but as the Christmas story unfolds in the opening paragraphs of Luke’s Gospel we find three instances of an otherworldly being suddenly and unexpectedly materializing out of the unseen realm much to the terror of his human audience. First, an angel appears to Zechariah as he is serving in the temple, then to Mary and lastly to a group of shepherds outside Bethlehe…
Christmas card images of that long ago time when Jesus came into the world are indelibly etched into my mind. I know they are probably not very accurate pictures of how it all went down on that first Christmas, but, in truth, I don’t really care. Accurate or not, I love and cherish those hallmark card images. In my mind’s eye I see wise men atop camels pointing at a distant star, Joseph leading a donkey, pregnant Mary on its back, awestruck shepherds, a choir of angels, and, of course, …
I always think it’s funny the way that musicals ask their viewers to suspend reality. In a musical people will break out suddenly into unrehearsed singing. Large crowds will dance in seemingly unchoreographed spontaneity. I have yet to see this happen at a board meeting or in Walmart. That just doesn’t happen in real life!
Or does it?
The first two chapters of the Gospel of Luke read like a musical. People are breaking out into spontaneous song all over the place. First Mary, then…
Last week, in our study of what is to be a peacemaker, one of the many verses that we spent time with was Romans 12:18, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” A few things jump out at us as we think about this verse. First, and this really is the main point, Christians should spend their time, energies and influence in pursuit of peace, but, secondly, we also see that Paul adds some qualifying language (“if possible” and “so far as it depends on you”) that clea…
In this message we spend time with the seventh beatitude found in Matthew 5:9, which says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
It is fitting that our study of this beatitude follows our exploration last Sunday of the one that comes immediately before, “blessed are the pure in heart.” As we saw last Sunday, that beatitude was concerned with the inner reality of a person. It follows logically that Jesus would then go on in the next beatitude to speak of…
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
There is a lot to think about and consider in connection with this statement that Jesus made, and I’m looking forward to exploring it this Sunday, but perhaps we should begin with the simple and obvious observation that what Jesus is concerned about is our hearts.
He does not say, for example, “blessed are the pure in conduct…”
Matthew 23:27-28 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like…
The phrase “just deserts” comes from a now obsolete meaning of the word “desert” which was something a person deserved or merited. You’ve probably heard the expression applied to people who get what was coming to them. We tend to take a certain amount of pleasure when our enemies, adversaries, and those people who manage to make our lives difficult or downright miserable get their “just deserts,” which is to say they get what we feel they deserve. “Poetic justice,” we might say whil…
In the fourth beatitude Jesus says, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Those words, “hunger” and “thirst,” are descriptive of a longing for something that is so powerful it feels desperate and necessary. It is a gnawing pang, an uncomfortable awareness of a thing’s absence, that not only doesn’t go away but it actually gets worse and more intense until it is satisfied.
In his book, “The Treasure Principle,” Pastor and author Randy Alcorn writes about a visit he made to Cairo, Egypt. His guide took him down an alleyway in an obscure, and poor quarter of the city until they passed through a gate into a square filled with trash and overgrown with weeds. It was a nearly forgotten graveyard for American Missionaries. Randy Alcorn had read about a young man, named William Borden, who was buried there, and he had come there to find his grave. Borden had been…
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