Matthew 5:17-26

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.

1 Corinthians 10:31

One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas, the sacred and the secular. As the seas are conceived to exist apart from each other and to be morally and spiritually incompatible, and as we are compelled by the necessities of living to be...

For Reading and Meditation:     Matthew 5:21-26

"God';s wrath," said George MacDonald, "is always judicial. It is always the wrath of the Judge administering justice. Cruelty is always immoral but true justice - never." Those who experience the fullness of God's wrath get precisely what they deserve. That may sound hard, but it is...

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 10:1-3

This chapter offers us the anatomy of a fool. But when you see how a fool behaves, you might begin to think you are surrounded by fools. Remember, however, the old saying that when you point one finger at another person you are pointing three back at yourself. Didn't our Lord warn us in

For Reading and Meditation:     Luke 24:13-35

The Bible is unique in its varied penmanship. The Scriptures were written over a period of some fifteen hundred years by about forty different penmen, and yet although of such composite character, the book displays an amazing and essential unity. The most wonderful thing about the written Word is that woven through it...

For Reading and Meditation:     1 John 4:7-21

There have been two great attempts to find God throughout the ages," said Dr. E. Stanley Jones, "one, philosophy, the other, moralism." The attempts of philosophy to find God are represented by the three great philosophical nations - Greece, India, and China. These three nations have taken men and women about as far as...

IT is faith that purifies the heart; it brings home the atonement, and we enjoy pardon, peace, and reconciliation; it purges the conscience from dead works, and delivers us from all condemnation. It receives the truth of God, and Jesus through the truth; and we receive power to become the sons of God. We realize our relationship to God, read the gracious promises God has made, and anticipate the glorious kingdom He has prepared; hope rules in the heart, and every one that has this hope in...

One of the surface lessons we learn from this passage is that Christians should not be prone to engage in lawsuits. It is a natural reaction to rush to court to seek redress for grievances and damages. But the believer is guided by higher principles than natural reactions. The will of God often cuts across the grain of nature.

Our law courts today are glutted with accident claims, malpractice suits, divorce cases and inheritance claims. In many cases, people rush to the lawyer in the...

A. P. Gibbs used to say, "You are not what you think you are, but what you think - this is what you are." This means that the mind is the spring from which behavior flows. Control the source and you control the stream that flows from it.

Therefore control of the thought-life is basic. That is why Solomon said, "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23) Here the heart is used as a synonym for the...

God is far more interested in how we treat other people than in how many religious ceremonies we go through. He prefers mercy to sacrifice. He places practical morality above ritual. It might seem strange to read that God doesn't desire sacrifice, because it was He who instituted the sacrificial system in the first place. But there is no contradiction. While it is true that He ordered the people to bring sacrifices and offerings, He never intended these to take the place of justice and...

The Word of God is not only eternal; it is absolutely sure of fulfillment. In Matthew 5:18 Jesus said that not one jot or tittle will pass from the law until all be fulfilled. A jot is a letter of the Hebrew alphabet that resembles a comma or an apostrophe. A tittle is a stroke of a Hebrew letter; we might compare it to the bottom stroke of a capital E that distinguishes the E from the F. In other words, Jesus was saying that God's word will be...