Love Truth Blog

On the first Christmas, the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased” (Luke 2:14). I wonder what could have gone on in the minds of those shepherds tending their flocks that night after encountering the angel of the Lord. Fear, wonder, awe, and excitement are a few words that come to mind. Most of all, I think there would have been the joy of receiving Good News to hear the words “today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). The shepherds heard that the long awaited Messiah of their people had been born, and they were witnesses to his birth. Now the Messiah did offer more than what could have ever been expected. Certainly, many people of that day would have yearned to be a nation free of tyranny. The shepherds would have understand the children of Israel were living subjugated by pagan foreigners. Since the time Jerusalem fell in 587 BC, the Jewish people had, for the mos...

We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. What is faith? Simply put, faith is knowledge, agreement, and trust. Faith involves the knowledge of certain facts about the Gospel in order to be saved. Paul writes, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17). So it is necessary for a person to have a basic understanding of the Gospel. The Gospel is simply this: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3-4). The knowledge of the Gospel must also be coupled with an agreement that it is true. One cannot become a Christian if they believe the teaching about Christ death, burial, and resurrection is pure myth, or a copycat of other pagan mythologies. It is more than just a feeling, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ is something that occurred in history and out of this event stems all of Christian doctrine. However, saving fa...

The ocean for me always brings up images of sandy beaches with clear blue water and the cool salty breezes. But I am also aware of the ocean’s dark side, and words spoken like “hurricane” and “tsunami” conjuror up images of utter destruction and devastation. The ocean then is also associated with darkness, chaos and death. For fishermen like Peter, James, and John the sea was something to be respected, and it offered no forgiveness for sailors caught in stormy waters and sucked down below. Just those on a ship would need to keep their wits about in navigating treacherous waters, so the Christian must make Christ their focus. Matthew 14 reminds us of this truth in the telling of Jesus walking on water. After hearing about the death of John the Baptist, Jesus sought to find a secluded place to be alone, but once people got wind of where He was staying, the crowds began to form. Jesus then spent the day healing the sick, and when evening came, He miraculously fed over five thousand peop...

Now it came about at midnight that the LORD struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of cattle. Pharaoh arose in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no home where there was not someone dead. Then he called for Moses and Aaron at night and said, “Rise up, get out from among my people, both you and the sons of Israel; and go, worship the LORD, as you have said. Take both your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and go, and bless me also” (Exod 12:29-32, NASB). Someone once asked me: Are we to consider Yahweh’s killing of the first born in Egypt a just act? When one thinks about that first Passover midnight, there was no other like it, as God’s avenging angel struck down Egypt’s firstborn, save Israelites who placed the blood of a sacrificial lamb painted on their doorposts wit...

John the Baptist preached about the kingdom of God calling people to repentance and baptism. He did not consider himself the Messiah; instead, he was the one to herald the coming of the Lord. He would fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah, “A voice is calling, ‘Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God’ ” (Isa. 40:3; cf. Matt. 3:3). John thought himself as the lesser and the one coming after him the greater. With all humility, he said, “I am not fit to remove His sandals” (Matt. 3:11). When people started to notice more people were turning to follow after Jesus Christ, the Baptizer said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:28). Concerning Messiah’s ministry John said, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier that I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals, He will baptize you with Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshin...

One day Jesus told a story about the kingdom of heaven. He tells of a farmer who sows some wheat, and finds out later that on one occasion, while everyone lay asleep, his enemy went into the fields and sown some darnels, which look similar to wheat in their early stages of growth, and can only be distinguished after they mature. The farmer’s plan was not to pull out the tares immediately, and risk destroying the wheat, but to wait until the harvest, which at that time they could easily separate the wheat from the tare, storing the former and burning the latter (Matt. 13:24-30). The story informs how life is like in God’s kingdom during this epic of time. Jesus explains, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels. So just as the tares are ...

One day Jesus told a story about the kingdom of heaven. He tells of a farmer who sows some wheat, and finds out later that on one occasion, while everyone lay asleep, his enemy went into the fields and sown some darnels, which look similar to wheat in their early stages of growth, and can only be distinguished after they mature. The farmer’s plan was not to pull out the tares immediately, and risk destroying the wheat, but to wait until the harvest, which at that time they could easily separate the wheat from the tare, storing the former and burning the latter (Matt. 13:24-30). The story informs how life is like in God’s kingdom during this epic of time. Jesus explains, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels. So just as the tares are ...