matthew-6:20

We've now completed our study of Jesus' major statements regarding stewardship. If you're still reading, you've probably made some very significant stewardship decisions. Yet the flow of the world and most of the church may well be tempting you to wonder if you are out of your mind. Let me assure yo... Read More

It was pointed out to me that the title of last month's E-teaching, Jesus, the Greatest Prosperity Preacher, was a phrase also used by a popular prosperity preacher in one of his teaching articles. He used that phrase, however, not as I did, but rather as a serious claim that Jesus was in fact just ... Read More

Imagine a person taking a block of wood and carving it to look like a bearded man in a robe. At the bottom of his wooden figurine, he carves the name "Jesus." Finally, each day he bows before it in worship. Does that make him a Christian? No, that makes him an idolater. He is worshipping something t... Read More

The "double deception" that deludes so many professing Christians is this: First, they believe that they are saved when they actually are not; and second, they believe they can never lose what they actually don't possess. Their doom is doubly sealed, often with the help of their pastor's soothing se... Read More

In my article last month, The Limits of God’s Grace, I tried to show how God’s grace is frequently presented in such a manner that it nullifies the numerous scriptures that clearly speak of the absolute necessity of holiness if one is to ultimately gain entrance into heaven. Those scriptures are too... Read More

Introduction You are going to love this story. Jesus told it using just one sentence, but with a little imagination, it can easily be expanded without doing any harm to the lesson. A man is walking across a neighbor's field early one morning when something poking through the soil—perhaps exposed fro... Read More

"I'm glad God looks at the heart and not the bank account, otherwise, a lot of us Christians would be bound for hell." — A recent comment on a Christian discussion board That quotation represents a very commonly-held belief among professing Christians that greed is only an attitude of the heart that... Read More

Like most teachers, Jesus sometimes repeated to one group what He'd already taught another group. Some of what we read today Jesus taught during His sermon on the mountainside (see Matthew 6-7), so we'll only consider what is new to us. Teaching about prayer, Jesus used an illustration about a man w... Read More

Some years ago I was admonished by one of the wealthiest men in my city, a retired CEO of a huge multi-national company, with the following words, "It is the responsibility of guys like you to tell guys like me what God expects of us, lest we not be ready to stand before Him one day." It seemed, he ... Read More

“Sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen. 4:7, emphasis added). As was pointed out in the previous chapter, our sanctification is a joint effort on the part of God and ourselves. We grow to be progressively more like Jesus as we cooperate with the Father... Read More