When one starts to think of excuses for not giving, he automatically moves out of the sphere of grace giving. Grace never looks for a reason, it only looks for an opportunity.

Sin is not natural. It is contrary to nature. The more you sin, the more you mess up your body. Sin is insanity. Sin is living contrary to your design. The law has been added as part of mans genetic code in creation. Becoming Holy is a part of who each of us really is.

If Christ had been detained among the dead, then He might not have unnaturally have risen. Can it be that he has Failed? Where is the evidence that the expiation of His atonement is Divinely satisfying? By His death we know he suffered for sin, by His resurrection we are assured that the sins for which He suffered were not His own. If you know Him, you know this to be fact.

This phrase suggests a conviction which has been reached after many a doubt and many a struggle, after much questioning and long groping in the darkness. When Paul says this, he is proclaiming a conviction which has satisfied his deepest need that neither death nor life can separate us from God. Life can be a worse enemy than death–more perilous, more mysterious, more awful. What dread chances it holds. When death comes, the risks have all been made.

In other words, “These people mean well. They truly love a concept of God and try to please Him. But they are ignorant of what He has provided for them in Jesus Christ!” Focus your zeal a get to know the real Jesus.

Psalm 136 summons us to give continual thanks to God for His mercy. Too often, when we pray, we forget to thank God for His mercy. We fall into the sin of expecting mercy and believing that we deserve it. This is why the reading of this Psalm is so wholesome. Psalm 136 forms an excellent backdrop against which to see the unfolding of biblical history.

Man talks about the origin of the universe as though he were some expert, but man doesnt even know where he was when it was created. Where were you? Did you notice God’s sarcasm: “Surely you know”?

Many of the struggles we are soon to face “come to pass.” Temptation is the act of tempting or the state of being tempted. In the OT the specific verb indicating the act of tempting is the Piel form nissa. In Gen. 22:1 nissa characterizes God’s command to Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt offering in the land of Moriah. The term nissa is rarely, if ever, applied in the OT to Satan’s act of enticing men to sin. An understanding is established between the writer and the reader; we know more than Abraham could have known.

This does not mean that everyone will be surprised. The chosen will know the signs and be prepared.

He has convinced himself of God’s favor, so therefore believes God is pleased and will guarantee him a spot in heaven. It is a false gospel with a false notion that God is waiting in hopeful anticipation of yet another coming to ‘accept him’.

In all this, God is taken off the throne and relegated powerless. With the simple act of raising a hand and walking down an aisle, men and women are assured that they are now “saved” and told to never doubt their
‘salvation.’ God’s word tells us, examine yourselves!

The light of life means two things. The Greek can mean either the light which issues from the source of life or the light which gives life. In this passage it means both.