Pastor Babij ended his Sunday sermon with the statement that the best defense against false teaching is corporate knowledge and love. That remark, in connection with our scripture reading from Ephesians 6:10-20 got me thinking this week about warfare and a particular parallel to the Christian life. It’s popular in many action movies today to…
In Pastor Babij’s Sunday sermon, he mentioned that we Christians preach the amazing mystery of Christ in believers (Col 1:27). This reality means that true Christians are transformed to become increasingly holy since Jesus indwells them by the Spirit. Pastor Babij also mentioned the corresponding scriptural truth: if Christ has not changed you, then he…
There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. Proverbs 14:12 One aspect of life that often trips up Christians is properly responding to feelings and emotions. In the Sunday sermon, Pastor Babij mentioned that feelings and emotions (I’m going to use those terms interchangeably) are…
Considering the need for Christians to evangelize strategically, as we discussed in the Sunday sermon, I thought it would be useful to follow up with a few simple questions and answers regarding some common evangelism methods. May the Lord fill us with joy and boldness as we seek to be faithful disciple-makers! Q: Is it…
When talking about the effectiveness of the simple, preached word of the gospel to save souls, many people quote Isaiah 55:10-11, which says, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, And do not return there without watering the earth And making it bear and sprout, And furnishing seed to the sower…
Since preaching this past Sunday’s sermon on evangelism, I’ve been thinking about a certain famous saying: “Preach the gospel; if necessary, use words.” The saying is attributed to Francis of Assisi, an influential Italian monk who lived from 1181-1226. On the surface, the saying suggests that one need not use actual words to evangelize others,…
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” The above quotation comes from Bilbo Baggins, a character in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. On the surface, Bilbo’s statement would seem…
This past Sunday, among other notable happenings, we finished our Sunday school series on early church history. While I very much enjoyed going through that study, there is one person in early church history that I never got to mention in our class, a person who inadvertently has become so popular that he is celebrated…
As we approach Christmas day, I thought it would be useful to consider again why we celebrate the birth of our savior on December 25th. Why this day and not some other day? And was Jesus really born on this day in December? A Christianized Pagan Festival? If you’ve ever looked into this topic at…
As part of explaining John 1:29-34 in the Sunday sermon, I mentioned “textual criticism.” What exactly is textual criticism, and should its use undermine or bolster our confidence in the Bible we have today? To answer most directly, textual criticism is the process of using the surviving copies of an original text no longer in…