John 13:1-17 Thirteen men have come together for a Passover meal. One will leave early on a mission of betrayal. The remaining twelve will later make their way to the garden of Gethsemane. From there they will be scattered. One will be taken by force on a nightmare journey. In less than twenty-four hours, the Savior will be dead – crucified. Well aware that this is His certain destiny, He wants to show His disciples that He loves them to the end. John’s Gospel gives us the “i

Matthew 2:7-23 Matthew began his Gospel by inviting us to see the birth of Jesus through Joseph’s eyes. But then his camera angle moved to an undisclosed location in the ancient Near East, and he invited us to look through the eyes of some ancient scholars. What did they see? “They saw the child with Mary his mother”  (2:11). If you see the scene properly, the child comes first in your vision. He is small and, humanly speaking, helpless; but he takes center stage. Matthew pro

When I was a young Christian, I was introduced to J. I. Packer’s book  Knowing God  (which came out in 1973). God used it in my life deeply, and it remains one of my top books of all time. I was reminded this week of these challenging words from  Knowing God  about what it means to truly have a God-honoring “Christmas Spirit”. Here are J. I. Packer’s words about a God-honoring “Christmas Spirit”:        We talk glibly of the “Christmas spirit,” rarely meaning more by this tha

Matthew 1:1-25 In his Advent devotional, The Dawn of Redeeming Grace , Sinclair Ferguson notes that traditional Christmas Eve services often begin with the words spoken by the shepherds after they were told that Christ had been born: “Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us” (Luke 2:15, KJV). He further notes that the service leader often follows the quotation with an invitation to the congregation to

The season of Advent begins next Sunday November 30. The theme of our Advent series this year is: Behold Your King! This week, however, we are focusing on “A King like No Other” from Philippians 2:5-11, which will prepare us to walk through the life of Christ from His birth to His coming again. While reading an online *Bible commentary on another passage highlighting the Kingship of Christ (Colossians 1:15-20), I was struck by its opening. It begins: “The first half of Paul’s

Proverbs 9:10 We continue our reading in the book of Proverbs as we look at Proverbs chapter nine this week. Once again, we come across one of the most dominant themes in Proverbs: the fear of the LORD. This phrase is one of those greatly misunderstood phrases within the Bible, because often when we think of fear, we think of the kind of terror that makes you run away or fight, “that heart-pounding, what in the world is happening, how can I get myself out of this thing?” What