Three false claims of false Christians, 1 John 1:6-2:1

In the first century, Christianity was facing a problem which we still have with us today. The problem was a false gospel, a false Christianity, propagated by false teachers. That has always been a threat against the church, and it remains so today.  The enemy works to destroy the church from within and without, and attacks from within are sometimes more difficult for us to discern and to deal with. So John’s epistle is addressing this by looking at the doctrinal distinctive’s of the gospel, and in this passage, presenting a contrast between the message of God, and the message

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God is Light, John 1:5,6

In the first few verses of 1 John, John is declaring to us the Word of God, which is the message of God, which is the truth of God.  And he says the truth of God produces in us the life of God so that we might have fellowship with God.  He said in vs 1, the Word of God is eternal, that which was from the beginning. He said in the gospel of John chapter 1 that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He goes on to say

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Fellowship with God, 1 John 1:1-4

At the time this epistle is written, John was the last surviving apostle, and probably one of the last people living who had seen and heard Jesus during His ministry on earth.  When John was one of Jesus’s disciples, he was known as the disciple whom Jesus loved.  He had a special relationship with Jesus.  It’s believed that he was  the youngest of the 12 disciples of Christ, perhaps not even 20 years old when he first started to follow Christ.  He had an older brother named James, and together they were referred to as “the sons of thunder.”  His

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The Parable of the Wedding Feast, Matthew 22:1-14

Today we are concluding our series on the parables of Christ by looking at the parable of the wedding feast. And I want to first consider the historical context in which this parable is given. This would have been Wednesday of the last week before Christ’s death. On Friday, He will be crucified. On Sunday, He will rise from the dead. For three years He has been preaching and teaching the Gospel of the kingdom. He has been presenting Himself as the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. He has been offering an invitation into His

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Parable of the wheat and the tares, Matthew 13:24-33

We are continuing in our series on the parables of Jesus, and today we have come to a trilogy of parables which I believe are teaching a similar principle, albeit from differing perspectives.  These parables are part of a greater sermon that Jesus taught which is called the Olivet Discourse.   Last week we looked at another parable from this sermon, which comes directly before these three. It is the parable of the sower. If you will recall, in that parable Jesus spoke of four types of soil, representing four conditions of the heart, all of which received the seed

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The Parable of the Sower, Matthew 13:1-23

Today, of course, is the holiday we call Easter. The origins of this holiday are not completely clear. Some people think that the Emperor Constantine changed a pagan holiday on this date to become a day which the resurrection of Christ would be celebrated. That cannot be verified. But we do know that by the time of Martin Luther and the Reformation, the association by Christians with Easter as a celebration of the resurrection was pretty much established. So much so that the translators of the King James Version substituted the word Easter for the original word Passover in Acts

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The Parable of the Talents, Matthew 25:14-30

Jesus declared about Himself in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.” What He is saying is that through Him is the way of life, real life, abundant life, spiritual life. He said in John 10:10 “I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.” He isn’t talking about having a good life, or living the good life, receiving material blessings from God. When He speaks about abundant life He is talking about spiritual life. And to have spiritual life Jesus said you

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The Parable of the Ten Virgins, Matthew 25:1-13

This parable is taken from a sermon that Jesus preached which is called the Olivet Discourse. It is found in Matthew 24 and 25 and its a sermon in which Jesus speaks about His second coming. And this particular parable is a warning parable. There are several such warning parables in this sermon. The disciples had asked Him the question, which initiated the sermon, “When shall these things be?” In other words, they wanted to know the time of the second coming, the time of the establishing of the Kingdom, the time of setting up the Messiah’s rule on the

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The Parable of the Lost Son, Luke 15:11-32

Today we are looking at possibly the best known and the best loved parable that we have been given in the scriptures.  It is popularly known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Prodigal is a word that means wastefully extravagant, to spend or use resources recklessly.  It’s interesting that the word prodigal is not used in the Biblical account of Jesus’s words.  He never used that word. Just to be contrary, I guess, I came up with what I think is a better title.  I am calling it The Parable of the Lost Son. I’ve heard many other possible

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The Parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37

Today we are looking at another parable of Jesus which is called the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  That’s a title that was given by the translators and editors of the original manuscripts.  It’s not phrase that would have been understood by Jesus’s audience.  That phrase would have been considered by Jesus’s listeners as an oxymoron.  In the opinion of most Jews of that day, the only good Samaritan would have been a dead Samaritan.  Samaritans were considered people of the lowest, most despicable character.  They were half breeds who were the descendants of those Jews left in the land

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