Romans (Program #5) – The Vanity of Religion and the Totality of Hopelessness

Paul is saying here, “My gospel is for God’s economy, but to do that, you don’t need religion. It’s not a matter of outward practices, it’s not a matter of just not doing or doing certain things – it’s a matter of getting into God’s salvation.”

We are going to look today at God’s condemnation as is presented in Romans chapter 1. Why is it important for mankind to have a realization of God’s condemnation? more…

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Acts (Program #65) – The Propagation in Asia Minor and Europe through the Ministry of Paul’s Company (31)

Stories of corruption in politics, religion, and even among God’s people are frequent in the news today. We hear such tales on tv and radio, and in the newspapers daily. It’s easy to be disgusted, even ashamed, at what we hear, and we wonder how our society could have fallen to such a low condition. But, corruption has long plagued man’s society. The account of the corruption of politics, religion, and even to some degree the Church of God is a major focus of the Bible in especially the book of Acts. How did God’s Called Ones deal with such a discouraging situation? We will see on today’s life study of the Bible.

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John (Program #45) – Life’s Prayer (4)

Because of the deceit of religion and the darkness of politics, He was delivered to death. He was proved to be without fault, but religion and politics were exposed to be dark, deceitful, and corrupt.

We’ve come today to the section of John 18 through 20 dealing with the Lord’s death on the cross and His resurrection. Generally, we consider the Lord’s death in relationship to the work of redemption. But we will see once again today that this Gospel, though certainly not minimizing the redemptive aspect, has another emphasis; the release and multiplication of life which resulted from Christ’s death.

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John (Program #24) – The Need of the Thirsty – Life’s Quenching (2)

Today the Lord does not expect a welcome in religion, but He surely appreciates His lovers, His seekers, those who enjoy Him, not in the temple but in their little house. That’s where He is.

The Gospel of John frequently uses the feasts as a background for the presentation of Christ, the Son of God as life to us. In chapter 6, the background was the feast of Passover, the first of the annual feasts. In chapter 7, the background is the feast of tabernacles: the last of the annual feasts, a time of celebration, and joy, and in a sense success in the harvest. The Lord uses this feast as a background to address the need of the thirsty, and to present life as the unique capacity to quench the thirst of human beings.

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John (Program #21) – The Need of the Hungry – Life’s Feeding (1)

When Christ came to this earth, he didn’t come to be a giant in religion. He was born in a small manger. He came from a lowly family. He was a small carpenter. This meant that he was approachable and available to every man to be man’s life supply.

We come to a new section in the gospel of John today.  Chapter 6 brings us to the well-known story of the Lord feeding of the thousands with the five loaves and two small fish.  There are so many pictures portrait in this chapter.

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John (Program #20) – The Need of the Impotent – Life’s Enlivening

God never intended to have a religion. Actually, religion is to worship God, to serve God, and to live for God without Christ. This shows us that even today as Christians, we can have Christ just in terminology, but we may not have Christ as our living reality.

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John (Program #18) – The Need of the Immoral – Life’s Satisfying (2)

There is quite a sharp contrast between the Lord’s way and the way I would call religion severity. His way was gentle, wise, divine, and I would say humane. What a wise Savior we have!

In our last program, we fellowshipped about the first part of John 4 and the woman at the well not being satisfied. The Lord told her that if she continued to drink of that water, she would never be satisfied. This is evidence by the fact that she went from husband to husband. And even the one that she was with at the time, she was not married to. This is a thirsty, thirsty woman. And what the Lord offered her was not religion, but Himself as another kind of water, living water. Isn’t this what the Lord is saying to all of us in that we never seemed to be satisfied?

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Luke (Program #36) – The Ministry of the Man-Savior in His Human Virtues with His Divine Attributes from Galilee to Jerusalem (16)

It’s interesting that the greatest difficulties that the Lord Jesus had in His earthly ministry was not dealing with sin.  It was dealing with religion.  We would think that religion should help people come to God.  But all too often what we find is the same thing that the Lord Jesus found; not only the religion not help us to find God it frustrates and even stumbles us from coming to God.  It is in this context in Luke 17 that the Lord said “woe to him who stumbles.  It’s more profitable if a millstone is put around his neck and he is hurled into the sea than to stumble the little ones.”

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Mark (Program #17) – The Move of the Slave-Savior’s Gospel Service (5)

During His earthly ministry the Lord Jesus was continuing harassed by professional opposers. These religious zealots who did not know God in reality but had only the outward trappings of religion and tradition had no way to counter the great and mighty deeds that the Lord accomplished or the rich and nourishing words that He spoke to so many seeking ones. So they were left to try and find any weakness or failure in Him that they may latched onto to discredit Him in His ministry.

Mark chapter 7 gave us such an account and a very interesting one. The opposers were convinced that they had finally discovered something that they might use against Him. Well, what was this grievest deed you might ask?   The Lord Jesus allowed His disciples to break the tradition of the elders and eat their food with unwashed hands.

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Hebrews (Program #47) – The Unique Way of Faith and Faith’s Definition

The bible says faith is the substance for the substantiating of the unseen things.  Faith is what makes God real to us, the way our eyes make light real to us.

Today we will spend most of our time looking at the unique way of faith and the Bible’s definition of faith.  And as a preface, we need to see that Hebrews opens the matter of faith to us only after the presentation of some serious warnings to Christians, to believers.  What is the general point of these warnings?

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