Group Bible Study

Why was it so necessary for Christ to die such a brutal and violent death? Surely God could have planned an easier death for His Son? The answer, I believe, is this: only a violent death could have exposed sin in the way it so sorely needed revealing. One preacher said, “Could Jesus have exposed sin in all of its foul horror if He had died in His bed, or by accident, or by disease?” It is one of the tragedies of human life that we fail to recognize the sinfulness of sin. God’s plan was for Christ to die as a substitute for all who would put their faith in Christ’s death as their own death, thereby showing the sinfulness of sin and the just punishment placed upon it. Out of God’s love for man, He came in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus, to take man’s place and bestow mercy and grace upon us. Another example of this kind of substitutionary legality is found in history: During a war between Britain and France, men were conscripted into the French Army by a kind of lottery sys...

1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.  2 He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men.  3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice against my adversary.'  4 " For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men,  5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won't eventually wear me out with her coming!' "  6 And the Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says.  7 And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off?  8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:1-8). Jesus told us of a judge who has no relations...

1 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through.  2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy.  3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd.  4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.  5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today."  6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.  7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, "He has gone to be the guest of a 'sinner.' "  8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."  9 Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.  10 For the Son of Man came to seek ...

But Jesus ignored their comments and said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid. Just trust me” (Mark 5:36). There are times in one's life when we must ignore our feelings and trust our Father. When we are going through a difficult situation, God's promises stabilizes us during a storm. I remember a time when I was working as a commercial fisherman with my father on his fishing boat. We were on a long journey south to our home port of Harwich, Essex, England. It was past midnight, and it was my dad's turn to sleep. Before he lay down on the day bed, there in the wheelhouse alongside me, he gave me explicit guidance for when we passed the seaside town of Lowestoft, Suffolk. He instructed me to avoid the two sandbanks, the Scroby Sands, that ran parallel to the shore and three miles out. I was to go close to the beach, away from the sandbanks, and escape the tide that would be turning against us by the time we got there. Two miles ahead of us, I could see two other faster fish...

Several years ago, we were driving through France when a red light came on in the dashboard of the van we were driving. We had to stop and visit a garage to make sure the engine was okay to travel further. As the red light is to the inner workings of my car, guilt is to the soul of a man. Guilty feelings are like a red warning light that tells us to stop and correct the problem before going on. Where is the conscience? Can't we turn off the red light in our souls? Brain scientists have found no area of our physical makeup where the moral conscience lies, that part of our nature that tells us we have done something wrong. That is because it is part of our soul—our invisible nature that lives on beyond physical death. Dear reader, this is critical stuff—you must take care of guilt before this life finishes because this is what God says: 6 “Do not deny justice to your poor people in their lawsuits.  7 Have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put an innocent or honest p...

If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling! (Job 23:3). Some time ago, I led a tour of 26 people to Israel for ten days and taking my son, Simeon, then aged 21 with me. We were preparing to go along the tunnels along the western side of the Temple Mount itself when without my knowledge, my son had quickly departed to put a written prayer into the cracks of the Western Wall of the Temple Mount, a place sacred to Jewish people. They believe the divine presence of God resides at the Wall. Simeon forgot to tell people that he was quickly going down to the Wall. Consequently, only 25 of us went into the tunnels to explore the buildings that go back to the time of King Herod and Jesus.  It was single file as we walked the narrow tunnel along the Wall. When we got to the North West corner of the Temple Mount, the Wall opens up into a more substantial area where we looked at an ancient cistern. It was then that the person at the end of the line came in ...

24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. 25 "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it (Matthew 16:24-25). In the late 1800’s Ernest Shackleton, the famous British explorer, when he was about to set out on an expedition to the South Pole, put an ad in the London Times, “Men wanted for a hazardous journey to the South Pole. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.” How many people do you think responded to the ad? (Scrolling further down to the end of the next paragraph will give you the answer). Pastors of the Western church of Jesus Christ tend to want to make it easier for people. We're afraid that the message of the pure gospel and Christ's call to commitment will put some people off. We put coffee cup holde...

2 The next Sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished. They asked, "Where did he get all his wisdom and the power to perform such miracles?  3 He's just the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. And his sisters live right here among us." They were deeply offended and refused to believe in him (Mark 6:2-3 NLT). Have you ever felt that someone has put a limit on you as to what they think you can do? Perhaps you have heard things like, “he’ll never amount to much” or words such as “she has always been like that and always will be.” Or maybe you have spoken such words over someone? We must be careful with our words. Words have great power to create and build up, but they also can destroy. I always remember how hurt I was at the tender age of 11 to be called the ugliest kid in a school of over a thousand kids. The picture of it happening to me is still branded in my mind. It took me a long ...

20 Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation,  21 nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20-21).  It could be that the Pharisees were asking Christ in a derogatory way as to when the Kingdom of God would come, i.e., with a sneer on their lips. They were aware that Jesus had taught from the beginning that the Kingdom of God was near (Matthew 4:17). In their minds, if it was coming, where was it? Of course, they didn't believe that He was the Messiah. He did not fit their picture of the Messiah. Jesus replied by telling them, "The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation." The Greek word translated "careful observation" is  parateresis , which means to watch with hostility or to keep an eye on something closely. The Pharisees were looking...

18 A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"  19 "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone.  20 You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother." 21 "All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.  22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."  23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth (Luke 18:18-23).  Few of the religious rulers had any time for Christ, yet this man was compelled to get an interview with Jesus. He was so passionate about finding eternal life that Mark tells us that he ran up to Jesus and fell on his knees before Him (Mark 10:17). His luxurious robes are all muddied in the di...

For our meditation today, I wanted to bring you a story from the book Heaven , by Randy Alcorn: As a professional singer, it was not unusual to be asked to sing for a wedding, but it was a bit unusual to sing for the wedding of a millionaire. I knew the wedding would be picture-perfect and was pleased to be able to participate, but when the invitation to the reception arrived, I knew it would be something exceptional. The reception was held on the top two floors of Seattle's Columbia Tower, the Northwest's tallest skyscraper, and it was even more wonderful than I imagined. Waiters were wearing snappy black tuxedos who offered delicious appetizers and exotic beverages for the most discriminating tastes. The atmosphere was one of grace and sophistication. After about an hour of merriment, the bride and groom approached a beautiful glass and brass staircase that led to the top floor. A satin ribbon, which was draped across the bottom of the stairs, was cut and the annou...

Pride is an ugly sin to God. “The devil is content that people should excel in good works, provided he can make them proud of them” (William Law). “Pride is the idolatrous worship of ourselves, and that is the national religion of hell” (Alan Redpath). To be full of self is to be empty of God. Grace and humility bow the knee to a Holy God who alone can sustain and keep us free from the corrupting influence of self. The highway of holiness is a valley trail in the direction of humility. The trail will lead you on a path of death to self. If we can daily see life as tests we are going through, tests that allow us to humble ourselves, we are on the right highway. "The higher a man is in grace, the lower he will be in his own esteem" (C.H. Spurgeon). Learn to welcome the opportunity to die daily to self. What is humility? Humility is the perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done to me. It is to be at re...

There is a recent study that proves genetically that Jews and Arabs  are brothers one of another , and descendants of Abraham. Abrahams son, Isaac, had two sons, Esau and Jacob, and after the two sons parted, Esau intermarried with Ishmael’s descendants (Genesis 28:8-9) and became the Arabic people. God said they would be a great nation of countries (Genesis 17:20-21). There is a great love by the Most High Creator God for the Jewish and Arabic peoples. God tells of a time that is still future when there will be a highway from Syria across Israel to Egypt. It will be a time when Arabs and Jews will worship the Lord together. Even though we cannot see it right now, the Most High God, YHVH, will cause it to happen. Egyptians, Syrians, and Israeli's will have real peace and experience the blessing of the Messiah. Here is what the Lord says: 23 In that day there will be  a highway from Egypt to Assyria . The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egypt...