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Emmanuel Baptist Church
We can't stay on the mountaintop, but we can remember to carry the truths we learned there back into the plains and valleys below.
The end of the story isn’t really the end of the story. Everything from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22 is just a prologue, just setting the stage. When we burst out of our graves to a New Creation, that will be when the real story begins.
Not everyone should go to the unreached peoples of the world. But we won't be effective at staying unless we are willing to go.
Prayer, according to the Bible, is asking God to do what He has already promised to do. But if that's true, then why should we pray in the first place?
Spiritual warfare is not some extra thing that a few Christians might encounter every once and a while. The Christian life itself is spiritual war.
We should be thankful that God doesn’t say “yes” to every prayer for healing. He so often uses pain and suffering and sickness to work in our life, doing things He couldn’t do any other way.
1 Corinthians 7 tells us that the single life is a unique gift from God, and many Christians should thoughtfully embrace singleness as the best way for them to glorify God in this short life we’ve been given.
In Christ, we all get to be a part of the real thing that human marriage is only a picture of.
As we choose to reject earthly treasure and commit ourselves to generosity, we’re not actually sacrificing anything. All we’re doing is transferring our treasure to a safer location.
Being in Christ means that we’ve been given a whole new definition of “work.” Work is no longer a thing we have to do to pay the bills. Instead, we have this new category, “good works” which are to fill up our whole life.
In Christ, us Gentiles have been given full citizenship in the kingdom of God. We’ve been fully adopted into the family. We are full members of the people of God.
If anyone is in Christ, He is already a part of that New Creation. The old has already passed away. What God is one day going to do for all Creation, He has already done for us.
Jesus, being fully God and fully man, is the only person who can be the main character of the Bible. He does what men should have done but failed to do, and He does what only God can do. From first to last, He holds the centre stage.
When the Word became flesh, Jesus replaced the temple. He became the way in which God dwelt with His people. Not in a building, but in a person.
Each of us will have opportunities this week to submit to the loving rule of the Son of David. And as we do that, we look forward to the day when His enemies are put under His feet, and He reigns from sea to sea with no opposition.
There’s a notion that in the Old Covenant, they had sacrifices, while in the New Covenant, we don’t have sacrifices. That’s not really true. In the New Covenant, we had one sacrifice, and that sacrifice was enough for everybody, forever.
Satan reached out to strike at Jesus, but in so doing he was destroyed. He bruised the heel of Jesus, but in that very action, the bruised heel of Christ crushed his own head.
Everywhere Adam failed, Jesus succeeded, and became the father of the new, true humanity.
In Jesus, all the promises of God are Yes and Amen. He is the is long-awaited One, and in Him the kingdom of God had arrived.
The exile proves that there's nothing we can do to save ourselves. All that's left is to wait for God to keep His promises; wait for the Son of David to come for us. "Oh come, oh come, Emmanuel."
Through the covenant with David, the whole storyline of the Bible converges and come together into one person, the son of David. He is the main character of the whole story, the one we’ve been waiting for all along.
The covenant with Israel, for all of it’s goodness and glory, shows us that we need more than just promises and threats and temporary sacrifices. We need a real Saviour.
Abraham's story is not about Abraham. It's about God demonstrating His power by creating a great nation and bringing blessing the whole world, using only a nondescript 75-year-old and his childless wife.
Noah was an almost-second-Adam who fathered an almost-new-humanity on an almost-new-earth. But his failure to break the curse and crush the serpent helps us understand what kind of a Saviour we really need to look for.
Not long after being created, Adam and Eve chose to reject their Maker and plunge themselves—and all their children—into sin. God's response to them is both heartbreaking and hopeful.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth for His own glory. The pinnacle of His masterpiece was Adam and Eve, made for an absolutely unique purpose.
Before the beginning, there was God, enjoying the perfect relationship of the Trinity. Our destiny is to be included in this love, forever.