Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
No one can accuse Paul of not being thorough. And because he has been so thorough, we have already reasonably covered the subject of justification. The word in its various forms has come up ten times thus far in the Book of Romans. In one way or another, we have...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
Paul does not completely finish the subject of saving grace at the conclusion of chapter 4. But he does begin to take the subject to a new level. It’s a strange phenomenon, but there are a lot of people who begin their spiritual journey theologically correct,...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
The Matterhorn was one the last mountains in the Alps to be climbed. It is like an arrowhead coming up out of the ground and piercing the sky. It may not be in the Rockies, or the Himalayas, but it is still a huge mountain at about 14,700 feet high. The article that...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
I’d like to take our message from this morning one step farther. But there is a problem in that this is considered by many people to be a very big step farther. It’s a step that a lot of preachers would never make, because they don’t trust their...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
According to my records, this is the 208th message that I have prepared and preached on the subject of sin. Spread over 35 years that may not sound like a lot of sermons – just 6 per year. But then again, when we are talking about only 3 congregations that is...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
We had a man and his family who visited with us for a while, before he decided that we were unworthy. One of the first things that upset him was that I made reference to the magazine “Christianity Today.” I don’t suppose that I need to confess that...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
In South Africa men go deep into the earth – miles under the ground – to bring up diamonds. In other places diamonds are scooped up by shovels and sometimes even picked up like dimes on a street. As they are first seen, these diamonds are not...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
There are churches up and down this valley that have been filled with people today. Many of them are much younger churches than this one, but some of them just seem to be young. They behave like the young – they are immature and foolish. The atmosphere in many...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
As the extremities of the earth were explored in the 17th and 18th centuries, the people who were involved in those discoveries often gave them names based on the events of that day or how they felt about the place. Sometimes the same name has been given to several...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
It seems like 50 years ago that Judy and I were sitting in the living room of Missionary Ken Johnson for first time. We had been living in Lethbridge, Alberta, for the better part of a year, and he and his family were in living in South Calgary about a hundred miles...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
There is a place not far from here, at which, technically speaking, if three drops of water fell only 1 inch apart, they would begin to trickle off in three different directions. One would eventually flow into the St. Joe River and then into the Spokane. Another...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This is one of the most famous phrases in the history of the United States. These three things are listed among the “inalienable rights” of every American. I am told that it was Thomas Jefferson...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
In the introduction to a message a few weeks ago, I mentioned my first meeting with missionary Ken Johnson. I said that one of the first questions he asked me was what I understood Paul to be saying in Romans 5:12. What I didn’t tell you was that I fully...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
Let’s start with a silly question: How many points of agreement do two things have to share before they are similar to one another? For example how similar are the giraffe and the ponderosa pine? In nearly every way they are very, very dissimilar. However, they...
Jan 16, 2015 | Romans
Today has been proclaimed to be “Mother’s Day.” It joins a couple dozen other days of the year as being special – in some artificial sort of way. There are a great many people, mostly stingy men, who would like to do away with any and all...
