DISCIPLE

  January 1 “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.”  Exodus 12.2 New Year’s resolutions are good but fragile, that is, easily broken. New Year’s prayers are better; they ascend to the throne of God and set answering wheels in motion. As we come to the beginning of another year, we would do well to make the following prayer requests our own: Lord Jesus, I rededicate myself afresh to You today. I want you to take my life this coming year and use it for Your glory. “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.” I pray that You will keep me from sin, from anything that will bring dishonor to Your Name. Keep me teachable by the Holy Spirit. I want to move forward for You. Don’t let me settle in a rut. May my motto this year be, “He must increase; I must decrease.” The glory must all be Yours. Help me not to touch it. Teach me to make every decision a matter of prayer. I dread the thought of lean...

“And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.”   Zechariah 11.12-13 We stagger at the blindness of Israel. Her utter contempt for the Lord Jesus Christ astounds us. Zechariah has shown us many wonderful scenes of the Messiah in His kingly glory and dignity, but now he predicts the time of His rejection. Zezhariah’s message is graphic. He takes on the role of the Messiah and asks, “If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver” (v. 12). Thirty pieces of silver! They knew the contempt of such a price (Ex. 21.32).      Only willful blindness could result in the wicked crime of Judas unknowingly fulfilling this prophecy. Matthew ma...

  By that I mean, do you have an emotional attachment to Christmas trees, wreaths and such? Religious interest in trees is an ancient pagan tradition, but not a Christian one.      The Egyptians, Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Sumerians all had holy trees that they decorated and venerated.   Egyptian  Throneroom of palace of Asurnasirpal II    Sacred tree venerated in a Babylonian seal Adorning and worshiping a holy tree   Sacred babylonian tree     Sacred tree in the palace of Nimrod (British Museum) Celtic Sacred Tree of Life      Pagans attribute divinity, mystical powers, healing and health to trees. In Wicca, trees are symbols of nature's power, representing the "tree of life" that supposedly connects the earthy, spiritual and divine realms. Various trees hold specific magical properties. None of these things are taught in Scripture.    The Christmas tree is an adaptation of those ancient...

Vatican Nativity Scene "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me."  Exodus 20.3-4   The second commandment includes making or using any religious icons, images, sculptures made of clay, stone, wood, metal, or other materials. Simply put, God strictly forbids it. The same prohibition is repeated in Deuteronomy 4.15-18. Scripture calls these images idols, and those who use them are called idolaters.  Yes, even in the New Testament! How serious is this matter? According to 1 Corinthians 5.11 no idolater should be admitted to a church, and according to Ephesians 5.5 no idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and ...

  In Matthew 22:21, our Lord gave a very important instruction.   “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.” There is a clear division between Caesar –human government—and God. According to Romans 13, we indeed have a responsibility to the government. But it pales in comparison to our greater responsibility to God. When Christ spoke those words, they were a rebuke to Israel, which had abandoned its responsibility to God and as a result had become the tail, not the head, of the nations. The coin with Caesar’s inscription, in daily use in Israel, showed that they were under Rome, a Gentile government. Like the fourth beast of Daniel 7—the Roman Empire—Caesar ruled because God had established it that way. That coin with Caesar’s likeness, found in Jewish pockets, was itself a violation of the second commandment against the making of any image or likeness of anything (Ex. 20:4; Rom. 1.23).   In effect, the Lor...