The beginning of the ministry of Jesus Christ, Mark 1:9-13

Baptism is a term that has a variety of meanings or applications when found in scripture.  For instance, in vs 4 a version of the word baptism is attached to John’s name, John the Baptizer.  Then Mark says John came preaching a baptism of repentance.  And in vs 5, they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River.  So that’s three different connotations of the word in those two verses. Then John adds another application of the word in vs 8 “I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” So clearly, though the

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The crux of the gospel, Galatians 6:11-18 

Do you know any magic tricks?  I have never really been able to do any that actually fooled anyone.  I can sort of do one trick, which I performed for my wife with a plastic cup and a lemon.  I think I might have fooled her with that one.  But from what little I know about magic tricks, the trick is to distract the person with one hand, while doing something else with the other hand.  So you distract on the one hand and then deceive with the other.  Or at least that’s a simple explanation for a lot of

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The practicality of walking by the Spirit, Galatians 6:1-10

Paul has established in his letter to the Galatians, that we are not under the burden of the law, but are to walk in the Spirit. That the flesh and the Spirit are diametrically opposed to one another. And if we walk in the Spirit, then we will keep the spirit of the law, but not be under the bondage of the law. At the end of chapter 5 he also gave us characteristics of living in the flesh as opposed to walking in the Spirit. He says in vs 19, “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which

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Walk by the Spirit, Galatians 5:16-26

How are we to conduct ourselves as Christians? Paul has argued exhaustively that we are not under the law. We do not regulate our lives according to the Old Testament law that was given to Moses. We do not cut off our flesh in circumcision in order to live the Christian life. We do not observe the Sabbath or other Jewish feast days as a restriction in order to accomplish the Christian life. We do not restrict our diet in order to live the Christian life.On the other hand, Paul has made it clear we do not have license to

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The law of love, Galatians 5:13-15 

Galatians is Paul’s dissertation, from a judicial standpoint, on the doctrine of salvation. And he has spent the brunt of his argument delineating the merits of grace versus law. He has shown in detail the difference between salvation by grace alone, as opposed to salvation by faith plus works. In particular, he was answering the Judaiser’s teaching that you needed to be circumcised and follow the dietary and ceremonial laws of the Jews in order to really be saved. Paul called such legalism “slavery.” And he described salvation by grace through faith as “freedom.” But some of the difficulty comes

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Christmas 2022, Luke 2: 1-20

Today we celebrate the birthday of Jesus.  Though the exact day of His birth is not known, what is known without any real dispute, is that Jesus was born and lived in Israel around 2000 years ago. That’s an historical fact, attested to as much as any historical fact.  Wikipedia, which has a section on the historical Jesus, says that “Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically.” While they may hold to many differences in opinion about the life of Jesus, most historians agree that He was baptized by John the Baptist and that He was

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Freedom in Christ, Galatians 5:1-12

Paul has reached the last stage of his legal argument for the doctrine of justification by faith.  During his missionary journey’s to the region of Galatia he had preached the gospel, and the Galatians were converted and he had established churches there for them.  But then not too long afterwards certain men from Jerusalem had come to those churches and began to teach these new converts that they were not fully saved until they had become circumcised and adhered to certain ceremonial and legal requirements of Judaism. So Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians refuting that false teaching and

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Born free,  Galatians 4:21-31

Paul has reached in this passage the final part of his argument for the Galatians to turn away from the legalistic teaching of the Judaisers. Paul has appealed to them on so many levels, using various scriptures and illustrations to show that our salvation is by grace through faith, not faith plus the law. Paul had even appealed on the basis of his relationship with the Galatians as the founding father of their churches in order to encourage them to abandon the Judaizers teaching. But the final argument has the authority of scripture as Paul goes to the very law

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The Spirit of Adoption, Galatians 4:8-20

In the previous section which we looked at last week, Paul equated the law to a servant, and those who were under the law as held in captivity to it.  Being under the law then was portrayed as being a slave.  And in contrast being set free by the grace of Christ was correlated to being made a son of the Father by adoption.   And because you have been adopted as sons, he says in vs 6 “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are

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Adoption as sons, Galatians 4:1-7

It should be evident from the first verse of chapter 4, that we are jumping into the middle of an argument. It’s probably not wise on the part of the ancient scribes to divide the chapter this way, but such it is. However, we must consider the context of the preceding chapter in order to understand what follows in chapter 4. Paul ended chapter 3 by saying, “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” That mention of being an heir gives us context to understand why he is speaking of an heir

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