Sermons and Biblical Studies

Because He is loving and kind and friendly, the Holy Spirit may be grieved.… He can be grieved because He is loving, and there must be love present before there can be grief. Suppose you had a 17-year-old son who began to go bad. He rejected your counsel and wanted to take things into his … Continue reading “HOLY
SPIRIT: DO NOT GRIEVE”

The true church understands that it must live a disciplined life. Although our High Priest loves us in spite of our weaknesses and failures, He encourages us to be a holy people because He is a holy God. Holiness may be an unpopular subject in some churches, but holiness in the Christian life is a … Continue reading “HOLINESS:
UNPOPULAR SUBJECT”

Yes, there is a dark night of the soul. There are few Christians willing to go into this dark night and that is why there are so few who enter into the light. It is impossible for them ever to know the morning because they will not endure the night.… I think the more we … Continue reading “HOLINESS:
CONDITIONS FOR; GOD: HIS WORK; TRIALS: ATTITUDE TOWARD”

You cannot study the Bible diligently and earnestly without being struck by an obvious fact—the whole matter of personal holiness is highly important to God! Neither do you have to give long study to the attitudes of modern Christian believers to discern that by and large we consider the expression of true Christian holiness to … Continue reading “HOLINESS:
COMMANDED”

… yet I can understand how a religion that lay mostly in external observances could be forbidden. If true religion consisted in outward practices, then it could be destroyed by laws forbidding those practices. But if the true worshiper is one who worships God in spirit and in truth, how can laws or jails or … Continue reading “HINDRANCES;
FREEDOM”

You will continue to have your longing after God, but you will no longer stumble over the imperfections of men and women around you. It was Thomas a Kempis who wrote in The Imitation of Christ: “If thou would’st have peace of heart, do not inquire too earnestly into other men’s matters.” If you spend … Continue reading “HERO
WORSHIP; IMPERFECTIONS OF MEN”

I am sure that if we all saw God bigger, we would see people smaller. This is the day of the magnification of slick personalities, and as we magnify men, we minimize God.… We have whole meetings go by in which we never see God at all—we only see His servants. And the curlier the … Continue reading “HERO
WORSHIP; CELEBRITIES”

The idea of hell found in the Scriptures is so fearful that the first impulse of a loving heart is to wish it were not so. But human pity is both a beautiful and a dangerous emotion. Unless it is subjected to the sharp critique of moral judgment it may, and often does, put our … Continue reading “HELL;
JUDGMENT OF GOD: DESERVED”

Right now we live in a confused and mixed up world. Some people get the headlines who, if the truth were known, should be getting a striped suit in a prison somewhere. There are other worthy persons who are completely ignored in this world and, if the truth were known, they would be on the … Continue reading “HEAVEN:
REWARDS; CELEBRITIES”

I have been at funerals where the presiding minister preached the deceased right into heaven. Yet the earthly life of the departed plainly said that he or she would be bored to tears in a heavenly environment of continuous praise and adoration of God. This is personal opinion, but I do not think death is … Continue reading “HEAVEN:
POPULAR BELIEFS ABOUT; DEATH: PREPARATION FOR; UNSAVED; FUNERALS”