As we prepare our hearts, I want to turn to Exodus chapter 20, one of the greatest chapters in our Bibles. Here's the giving of the law to the nation of Israel, it's that law that Paul references in Romans 7. Remember how he describes it? It's a good law, a holy law, it's a law that the psalmist delights in. It's a law that the psalmist says, I love. And I'm going to read the fourth commandment, v...  Read More

2 Corinthians 1:3-7,“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If ...  Read More

1 Chronicles 29:11,“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, (and that's a very special word in the Bible, that in particular brings in the focus of God's sovereignty) Yours is the kingdom, O Lord and you are exalted as head above all.”This is a book of the Bible that...  Read More

John 17:9-19,“I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with t...  Read More

John 13:1,“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”John 14:1,“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.John 13 and 14 – 17 is the longest discourse of our Lord Jesus. Here is what J.C. Ryle has said about this portion of Sc...  Read More

John 10:7,So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.” John 10:11,“I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”John's gospel, as I'm sure most of you know, is very different from the other three gospels. They are called the synoptic gospels because they approach the life of Jesus in basically the same way in terms of his life and ...  Read More