Keeping His Commandments

This week I preached from 1 John 2:3-6, 3:21-24, 5:2-3, and the title of my sermon was “Blessed Assurance.”  The reason for the title is that if you take John at face value without having any background understanding, we would all be in question of our salvation.  In 2:3 John writes, “We know that we [...]

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Calvin on “the righteousness of the faithful”

“For whenever Scripture speaks of the righteousness of the faithful, it does not exclude the remission of sins, but on the contrary begins with it” (Commentary of 1 John).

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Testing the Spirits and the consequences

We are called to test that which we are hearing to see whether or not what is being presented is in accordance with the Word of God, that which has been revealed. But what is the consequence of not testing? The Bible says that the result is one of either life or death.
To [...]

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Testing the Spirits

This past Sunday, we remained in 1 John 2:18-27 & 4:1-6 with the primary emphasis on chapter 4. Again, these 2 passages are parallel passages to each other, essentially saying the same thing but from a slightly different perspective. And as the title of this blog says, the primary focus was on testing [...]

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Life, Eternal life, and Abundant life & Keeping the Law

In my last post on this topic I made reference to enjoying the good things that God has made and given to us as He has commanded us to enjoy them. In this post I want to emphasize the fact that we are to enjoy these things as the Lord has prescribed that they [...]

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The AntiChrist (1 John 2:18)

This Sunday I had the opportunity to preach on who and what John is referring to when talking about the antichrist or the spirit of the antichrist.  Being that it was my 7th sermon at the church, I was reluctant to preach this sermon.  I would have rather waited until I had a couple years [...]

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Life, Eternal life, and Abundant life

Oftentimes preaching is thought of just as a means of grace for the congregation. But it is well noted that the preacher must preach to oneself the sermon prior to preaching to the congregation; the preacher’s life should be a visible extension of that which is preached on a Sunday morning. This is [...]

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Sermon: Living in and Conquering the World

It has been my practice here to give some summary of my sermons for those who are interested. Two Sunday’s ago I preached on 1 John 2:15-17. The first job of working with a passage like that is to define terms. Depending on how one defines the word “world” in that passage [...]

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The New/ Old Commandment

1 John talks much about loving one another. In a previous post titled “True Christian Love” I explored this. But I would like to note here that this “True Christian Love” has been the love God has expected from His people from the very beginning. In Matthew 7:12, Jesus is recorded [...]

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John Calvin on self-denial, this world and Satan

Considering that it has been the case that the churches coming from the Reformed lineage seem, from time to time, to have no place for talk about spiritual warfare, it might seem even more an oddity that our most influential theologian had a very significant place for it in his understanding of the Scriptures and [...]

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