Jeremiah 4 Devotional by Pastor Lawrence Bowlin After the Lord continually calls his faithless people to return to him in chapter three, he shows them how they are to return in chapter four.  He says in verse one, “If you return, O Israel…to me you should return.”  At first, this may seem to be an obvious statement, but it is this very concept that the Israelites had failed to grasp.  They weren’t being called to…

Jeremiah 3 Devotional by Pastor David Groendyk Verses 1–5 of our chapter today cap off a larger section in which God calls his people an unfaithful bride that has run off with other men. It’s the same picture which Hosea employs in his book. The idolatry that God’s people commit is compared to spiritual adultery. Adultery is an abominable and particularly personal sin committed against a spouse. Likewise, idolatry is an abominable and particularly personal…

Jeremiah 2 Devotional by Pastor Mark Hudson For a speaker to communicate effectively, the speaker needs to use language and example that help the listener understand.  That is the speaker’s responsibility.  Speakers who speak to those who do not share the speaker’s language or culture face an even harder challenge. Notice the language Jeremiah employs, “. . . the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride. . .” v. 2 and then in…

Jeremiah 1 Devotional by Pastor Lawrence Bowlin The book of Jeremiah is categorized as one of the Major Prophetical books due to its great length spanning fifty-two chapters.  Jeremiah, the man, is also said, traditionally, to have written the book of Lamentations as well as the book of Kings with the help of his faithful scribe Baruch.  The book of Jeremiah is foundational to much of the New Testament being quoted directly over forty times…

Ephesians 6 by Pastor David Groendyk As Paul has been teaching on how the Christian ought to live, he is clearly very concerned with the way people interact with one another. In chapters 5 and 6, he tells us how to have godly relationships with certain people—husbands and wives, parents and children, servants and masters. For most of us, our relationships with our spouse, parents, children, bosses, employees, and co-workers probably cover about 95% of…

Ephesians 5 Devotional by Pastor Mark Hudson In verses 8-14, you do not have to be a Biblical scholar to see the words light and darkness over and over again. Light                                                 Darkness Light in the Lord 8                             at one time you were darkness  8 Children of light 8 Fruit of light: all good, right true 9 Take no part in unfruitful works…

Ephesians 4 Devotional by Pastor Lawrence If you remember, in the first chapter of Ephesians Paul doesn’t really tell us to do anything other than to listen and to believe.  He wants us to know that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ in the heavenly realms, that we have been chosen by God, predestined to be adopted as his sons, that we have been redeemed by the blood of Christ and…

Ephesians 3 by Pastor David Groendyk Because Christ Jesus has brought about forgiveness and reconciliation between man and God and between Jew and Gentile (2:13–16), and because Paul wants the Ephesian church to more and more grow in unity and maturity (2:21–22), Paul prays that the church would be filled with the love of Christ and the fullness of God (3:14–19). As we can infer from chapter 2, this is a church where hostility, enmity,…

Ephesians 2 Devotional by Pastor Mark Hudson The New Testament teaches a decidedly Godward worldview that unifies all people through the person of Christ.  This worldview will never be realized on earth but it will be realized in eternity.  For over 400 years, our country’s self-inflicted scourge of slavery has brought heartache to so many.  Slavery and its aftermath has been a violent, anti-God, anti-black movement that dehumanized black people for financial gain.  What a…

Ephesians 1 Devotional by Pastor Lawrence The first chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians can easily be broken up into three sections: Paul’s introduction and greetings, his praise to God for blessing his people in Christ Jesus, and his thanksgiving and prayers for God’s people in Ephesus.  In the second section, in vv.3-14 Paul has written just one sentence, a very long sentence in the Greek language, praising God for all that He has…

Joel 3 by Pastor David Groendyk If you’re a baseball fan, you might know the name Karim Garcia. He spent 10 years playing professional ball in America. He wasn’t a particularly good player. He didn’t hit a lot of home runs. He wasn’t fast. In fact, most of his career was spent on the bench. He was a serviceable back-up, at best. But Karim Garcia is famous for one incident. In a playoff game in…

Joel 2 Devotional by Pastor Mark Hudson As we read in Joel 1, locusts have invaded the land. Since we do not see locust swarms here, I embedded a link to the current locust swarms in Africa to allow you see how terribly destructive locusts are.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2OUxzErFu8. In Joel 2,  the prophet sounds the alarm v. 1 because Joel knows something coming is even worse than starvation – the result of a locust swarm.  We…

Joel 1 Devotional by Pastor Lawrence Bowlin The book of Joel begins with deep lamentation by the people of God due to a plague of locusts that has invaded the land and devoured everything in sight.  The prophet exhorts the people to tell their children and grandchildren and then to have them tell the next generation about these extraordinary events because they had never happened before within their lifetime.  Like the Spanish Flu or the…

Galatians 6 by Pastor David Groendyk Use your new-found freedom to serve other people. That’s Paul’s closing plea. Since Christ has done the work of saving us, and since we are no longer condemned by the law, spend your time and energy seeking the good of others. Obey God’s law so that other people would benefit. One way we do that is by humbly keeping watch over other people (vv. 1–5). We heard a sermon…

Galatians 5 Devotional by Pastor Mark Hudson Provocative language.  Some people make their living off saying things that shock. Howard Stern, Muhammed Ali, Rosie O’Donnell, Roseanne Barr, are a few that come to mind.  Sometimes, people use language to help us see life more clearly by their choice of words.  John Piper’s use of Christian hedonism comes to mind.  But the use of provocative language is nothing new.  In 1531, in discussing an illustrative conversation…

Galatians 4 Devotional by Pastor Lawrence Bowlin If I could sum up the entire epistle to the Galatians using only one word, I would use the word “freedom.”  Here, Paul is not referring to a freedom from sin, but, rather, a freedom from the condemnation of the law because of sin.  As Paul says in Romans 8:1, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  This is a profound freedom of…

Galatians 3 by Pastor David Groendyk When I was in college, the phrase “You foolish Galatian” was one our favorite insults to call one another. As far as insults go, it’s pretty tame. Plus it comes right from Scripture, so it’s biblically-sanctioned (right??). Paul, however, is not playfully joking with the Galatians. He’s warning them of something serious. The letter to the Galatians is, in part, a defense and argument for the gospel Paul preached.…

Galatians 2 Devotional by Pastor Mark Hudson For chapter two of Galatians, I would like to focus on verses 11-15, where Paul publicly rebukes Peter for Peter’s decision to no longer eat with the Gentiles when the Jewish brethren from Jerusalem visited Antioch. 11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.  Antioch is north of Jerusalem, so the church was mainly Gentile, the sending church in…

Galatians 1 Devotional by Pastor Lawrence           The churches in the Galatian province of the Roman Empire were some of the earliest that Paul had planted on his first missionary tour between 46 and 48 AD.  While planting elsewhere, in his absence, some Jewish teachers had entered the church and begun teaching salvation by works rather than salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  They also had questioned Paul’s authority as an apostle as…

Hosea 14 by David Groendyk This chapter looks an awful lot like part of our normal Sunday liturgy, and it is a fitting way to close this book that’s chalk full of our sinfulness and God’s love. There is a call to confess sin and repent, and it is followed by God’s assurance of mercy and grace, as well as instruction for God’s people. This is actually quite the positive note to end on in…

Hosea 13 Devotional by Pastor Mark Hudson In some ways jealousy is bad.  In Galatians 5:20, jealousy is a work of the flesh.  Yet God is a jealous God according to Ex 20:5 and Ex 34:14.  So we see in this chapter God is a jealous God.   In Hosea 13, God is jealous for Israel or Ephraim as they are called in v. 1.  Notice in verse one that sin always bring death.  Sin does…