1 Timothy 3:1-7

For Reading and Meditation:     1 Timothy 3:1-16

Max Muller, a writer on religious issues, once made this arresting statement: "You do not know the worth of your Christian faith until you have compared it to others." The first article of belief we look at is the fact that God has appeared in this world in the Person of His eternal Son. Our faith is not the word of...

In all of God's dealings with mankind, there is a curious merging of the divine and the human.

Take the Bible, for example. There is the divine Author, and there are human authors, who wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

As far as salvation is concerned, it is of the Lord from start to finish. There is nothing a man can do to earn or deserve it. And yet he must receive it by faith. God clearly elects individuals to salvation, but they must enter in at the strait gate....

In listing the qualifications of an elder, the Apostle Paul cautions against the assumption of this work by one who is young in the faith. Overseership requires the wisdom and sound judgment that come only by spiritual maturity and godly experience. Yet how often this principle is violated! A successful young businessman, politician or professional man comes into the fellowship of the local church. We feel that if we don't get him involved immediately, he might leave and go elsewhere, so we...

Covetousness is the excessive desire for wealth or possessions. It is a mania that grips people, causing them to grasp for more and more. It is a fever that drives them to crave things they don't actually need.

We see covetousness in the business man who is never satisfied. He says he will stop when he has accumulated a certain amount, but when that time comes, he is greedy for more.

We see it in the housewife whose life is one unending shopping spree. She squirrels away tons of...

For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge" (Rom. 10:2).

It takes more to break inertia than to ease momentum. Misdirected zeal is more easily corrected than inert sloth.

"It is possible, and very humiliating,...