What are the advantages of preaching consecutively, chapter after chapter, all the way through a book of the Bible? There are five reasons…
The essence of Christmas is the mysterious, glorious and profound claim that God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. To this astounding truth one might be compelled to ask: did it have to be this way? Was there any other way for God to redeem us? The second chapter of Hebrews gives us three reasons why God had to become a man:
Next Saturday (April 19, not tomorrow) is Record Store Day. This annual celebration of independent record stores has been taking place since 2007, and gives special attention to the vinyl record, which happens to be the main reason independent records stores are still in business. As music consumption moves away from CDs and increasingly toward MP3 downloads or direct streaming, there has been a movement back toward buying records the old fashioned way. Vinyl sales have been on the increase for the last few years, and show no signs of slowing down.
This weekend is New Life’s annual missions conference. You might be aware that while the church seems to be on the decline in the United States, and certainly in Europe, it is actually growing rapidly in East Asia, particularly in China, which has been the scene of relentless persecution of the church in the past, particularly during the “Cultural Revolution” from 1966-1976.
Right now I’m looking out the window of a ninth-floor apartment where Mary and I are staying in East Asia. On the horizon I see mountains, and filling the space between our apartment and the mountains, as far as I can see to my left and to my right, are towering buildings. Some are grey and some are brown, but they are everywhere. Car horns are blaring almost constantly. On the streets are buses, cars, bicyclists, rickshas and taxis. It’s a bustling urban environment that makes a city like Indianapolis look like a mere village, and yet this particular city is one of the smaller ones in this part of the world.
