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  • God's Glorious Love on Display, part 2

    God's Glorious Love on Display, part 2
    2026/10/11
    In John 13:31-38, we see God’s glorious love revealed in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ and reflected in the lives of His people. Jesus commands us to love one another JUST AS HE HAS LOVED US! This is a love that is self-giving, gracious, and extended to the undeserving. We are fully known by our God, and yet we are fully loved! But there is a problem. Like Peter, we often approach spiritual matters with confidence in our own strength, only to discover that our best intentions are insufficient. Thankfully, Jesus has not simply commanded us to love and left us to accomplish it on our own. He has given us His Holy Spirit, through whom God’s love is poured into our hearts. As we surrender ourselves to our good and gracious God, His love begins to overflow from us to others. In this way, the unseen God is seen in the world, and His glory is on display through His people. Our confidence, then, is not in our ability to love perfectly, but in the love of God PERFECTLY DEMONSTRATED in Jesus Christ, whose finished work is our only hope in life and death!
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  • God's Glorious Love on Display

    God's Glorious Love on Display
    2026/10/04
    This morning in John 13:31–38, we considered how Jesus speaks of His coming crucifixion as the beginning of His glorification. What the world would see as humiliation and defeat would actually reveal the character and glory of God with amazing clarity. At the cross, we see our need for forgiveness, God’s mercy toward sinners, His justice satisfied in Christ, His gracious gift of salvation, and above all His holy, self-giving love. Jesus then tells His disciples that this same love will distinguish His people: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Yet Peter’s confident promise of faithfulness immediately demonstrates that this kind of life cannot be produced through human determination or self-confidence. God gives His people the Holy Spirit, through whom His love is poured into our hearts and His fruit is produced in us. As believers receive the undeserved love of Christ and that love overflows through them, the character and glory of the unseen God are put on display in the world.
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  • The Law-Keeper

    The Law-Keeper
    2026/09/20
    The Israelites stand at the base of Mt. Sinai as God continues to arrest their attention with shocking sights and sounds. There is thunder and lighting. There is fire and smoke. There are many sounds of loud trumpet blasts. The mountain is quaking...and the people are quaking too. In that intimidating and impressive environment, God articulates His righteous ten commandments. These commandments outline what relating rightly to Him and others looks like. With great fear and trembling, the people receive the commandments and begin reckoning with God's standards and their accountability for them. This passage provides another brilliant foreshadowing of the Gospel as it begins to outline the Law through which God's people will be both governed--according to the enforcement of it--and exposed as in need of deliverance--since they will all be in violation of it, in one way or another. They need a substitute, one who can keep the Law, not just the letter of it, but the spirit of it. They also need one who can absorb their penalty for failing to keep it. They need an "Exodus," a "Way Out," and that way out is Jesus. As Galatians 4:4-5 says, "When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law." Jesus is the fulfiller of the Law and the one who sets us free from its demand and curse. He is the one we can trust as we endeavor to love God and others and yet fall short over and over again. He is the Commandment Keeper.
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  • Two Mountains; One God

    Two Mountains; One God
    2026/09/13
    The wilderness journey continues as God's people move on from Rephidim and settle at the base of Mt. Sinai. It is a large, impressive, and intimidating mountain. There is thunder, lighting, quaking, and the loud blasting of trumpets. In that awe-inspiring and fear-inducing environment, God will meet with Moses and begin setting forth the conditions of the Old Covenant. If His people will obey Him, they will be His special people, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, representing Him to the outside world. If they do not, they will surely die. In this passage, God not only continues guiding and providing for His people, He also continues revealing their need for a kind of deliverance that goes deeper than the natural realm. It is more significant than merely deliverance from Egypt. At the deepest level, they need deliverance from themselves, from their unbelief, and their own false confidence in their ability to save themselves. They need another mountain, different from Sinai, a mountain characterized not by distance and death, but by access and life. They need Mt. Zion where Jesus reigns supreme as the One who meets all the conditions, who provides full consecration, and who grants eternal life as a gift of grace. In the Exodus story, God is preparing them, and us, for this greater provision in Christ.
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  • Why Should I Fear?

    Why Should I Fear?
    2026/09/06
    In Luke 12:13–34, Jesus shows that covetousness and anxiety often grow from the same root: the desire to secure our own lives. We clutch possessions, plans, and temporary things because we fear we may not have enough, but Jesus redirects our attention to the faithful care of our Heavenly Father. He feeds the birds, clothes the grass, knows exactly what His children need, and delights to give them His Kingdom. Because our lives are held securely in His hands, we are free to seek His Kingdom, hold earthly possessions loosely, and give generously rather than allowing temporary concerns to consume our time, minds, and hearts. Ultimately, the greatest evidence of the Father’s care is the gift of His Son. If God did not spare His own Son but gave Him for us, we have every reason to entrust ourselves, our families, our futures, and all our lesser cares to His wise, loving, and capable hands.
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  • Limitless Problems & A Limitless God

    Limitless Problems & A Limitless God
    2026/08/30
    The Israelites have survived one life-threatening challenge after another. They are now entering a quieter season in which they will enjoy a semblance of relief from the surrounding threats. They have food; they have water; and they are not currently under attack. For a time, all too brief, they celebrate the goodness of God to them in providing for their needs and protecting them from their enemies. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, brings Moses' wife and children to rejoin them at the camp, and he and Moses enjoy a time of worship together as they reflect togheter on all God has done to redeem His people. Sadly, even as the external stresses are easing, the Israelites immediately begin experiencing internal, intracommunal stresses of personal conflicts with one another. As for Moses, he finds himself in another difficult predicament as he is tasked with presiding over these quarrels. From morning till evening, the people bring their greivances to Moses. It goes on and on. Seeing the taxation this was already inflicting upon Moses, Jethro pleads with him to divide up the work of judgment. Through all this, God is introducing a new challenge. Even when our circumstances are favorable, humans will find reasons to be discontent and to fight with one another. The hardships of life in a fallen world are seemingly limitless. Meanwhile, God remains devoted to His people and will once again provide for them in His way and time, by providing help for Moses, by giving the Law on Mt. Sinai, and by eventually rescuing His people from their inability to fulfill the Law...through Christ. It is another beautiful picture of our need for the Gospel.
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  • Jesus Won

    Jesus Won
    2026/08/23
    The journey continues for God's people as He meets their basic needs and guides them forward through the desert. While they have what they need, they are not thriving nor amassing power. They are not settling down, or building cities, or developing a powerful army. They are impoverished and vulnerable. And, once again, they face a hostile foe and another threat of death, as the Amalekites look on with a determination to whipe them out. Thankfully, God will come through for them yet again and will grant them victory through supernatural means. It is yet another pointer to the good news of the Gospel and the victory that Jesus secured for us on the cross. What the Amalakites were to the ancient Israelites in the natural world, sin is to God's people in the spiritual world, a threat of death. And as God came through for His people back then through His leaders, Moses and Joshua, God later came through for His people through His Son, the greater Moses and the greater Joshua. Jesus won the war we could never win. He paid for and conquered our sin. He redeemed us. We are free.
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  • Water From a Rock

    Water From a Rock
    2026/08/16
    The Israelites proceed forward through the rugged desert wilderness and experience life-threatening thirst once again. God has been faithfully providing for them along the way, but the Israelites have suffered; they have felt their weakening bodies and their grumbling souls. Every time they show themselves faithless, God shows Himself faithful. In this scene, it plays out the same way as God miraculously causes water to gush from a rock to satisfy the thirst of every single person and animal in the caravan. As explicitly mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, this story features another type of Christ who is the rock from which we drink and experience life for our souls.
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