DISCIPLE

  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...

Isaiah is referring rather to the fact that, when He came, Jesus possessed none of those outward characteristics for which Israel was looking. They expected the Messiah to come as a temporal conqueror and prince, appearing in great pomp and grandeur, to deliver them from the Roman yoke and restore their nation to its former splendour and glory. But what did they see?      They saw nothing in Jesus that corresponded to their expectations. They saw no royal robes, no diadems on His brow, no magnificent reninue in attendance, no men of earthly rank and status to support His cause. They saw only a Galilean tradesman, accompanied by a small band of untutored followers and supported by a group of pious women. In their eyes He therefore lacked both "form" (that which is fair and favoured) and "comleliness" (honor, majesty and excellency), for He offered them none of the eternal insignia of royalty which they associated with the coming Messiah.      Consider the r...

In Mark 7:37 the multitude praised the Lord Jesus with these words: "He hath done all things well," and they were right. But I wonder if we spend much time thinking about what those words mean. Our Lord never did anything half-heartedly or halfway. He is the master worker, the heavenly artisan. If His works were on display at a great Fair, they would be covered in blue ribbons!     What the multitude said admiringly that day, we can say adoringly and gratefully every day. We who are saved ought to praise and worship our blessed Lord for the perfections of all His work as the Son of Man. "All things well." Did we ever know the Lord to do things any other way? Of course not!    Did He ever leave anyone half-way healed? We remember the man in Mark 8:24 who received his sight gradually, but he was completely healed – the Lord knew what He was doing and He did it well. Did He ever give the blind vision in one eye, restore only part of the hearing to the deaf, o...

       Actually it won't! People today freely use the phrases: "on the right side of history," "on the wrong side of history," "the bar of history," and how "history will judge..." this or that person or country. Nelson Mandela is one of those who said, "History will judge us..." But, how can history think? It can't! They mean historians and what they will write. What does it even mean to be on the "right side" or "wrong side" of history? What is the standard used, and who decides or decrees which is which?     Truthfully, the whole concept is fundamentally flawed. History (especially that which is written by humans) does not, will not and cannot judge anyone! There is no "bar of history." It matters little what historians or societies say about people or movements. It has often been observed that history in large part is written by conquerors, and they put things as they wish.     There is also the...

     Recently UK politicians have been grappling with the decision as to whether there should be a second referendum, a ‘people’s vote’, regarding the recently negotiated Brexit deal between the UK and the other twenty-seven members of the EU. The UK Prime Minister and others argued strongly that the people had already spoken in 2016 and a majority had made it clearly known that they wanted to leave the EU. Such are the demands of democracy: the people must have their say!      In John 19.15 we read of a very serious choice that was made by the people who thronged the narrow streets around the Praetorium on the day the Lord Jesus was being tried by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. Convinced that the ‘prisoner’ before him was completely innocent of every charge made against Him, and therefore totally undeserving of punishment of any kind, let alone death, Pilate attempted to gain a favourable response from the baying mobs...

by William Yuille Generations of Christians from the first century onwards have lived in the expectation that the Lord was coming soon. But here we are in the year 2012* [*date of this article] and He hasn’t come yet.  Why not?  Peter speaks to this in 2 Peter 3.     God doesn’t estimate time the way we do. “Do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (v. 8). Some Christians, all the way back to post apostolic times, have interpreted this as a sort of formula and have applied it to human history over a period of one week or 7,000 years.     According to Archbishop Ussher’s calculations, Adam was created around 4,000 BC, so there  were four days before the coming of Christ; another two days take us to 2,000 AD, at which time the seventh day, the millennial age, should arrive. Now that we are in the year 2012*, that theory doesn’t look too likely. In any case, if Peter ...

"And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.  And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken."   Isaiah 8:14-15    "They stumbled at the stumbling stone..."    Romans 9:32 "Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner,  And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed". 1 Peter 2:7-8  Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote: "Christ is the stumbling stone. This is an astonishing figure of speech until we look at it closely. They we realize how God presents Christ to us, and how that presentation offends everything that is in the natural heart. Men are...

"Jeremiah has always a fascination to Christian hearts, because of the close similarity that exists between his life and that of Jesus Christ. Each of them was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief"; each came to his own, and his own received him not; each passed through hours of rejection, desolation, and forsakeness. And in Jeremiah we may see beaten out into detail, experiences which, in our Lord, are but lightly touched on by the evangelists... ...There is an especial message in the ministry of Jeremiah for those who are compelled to stand alone, who fall into the ground to die, who fill up what is behind of the sufferings of Christ, and through death arise to bear fruit in the great world of men, which they passionately love. 1 "THE WORD OF THE LORD CAME UNTO ME" (Jeremiah 1:4, 12, 13)      If the days of David and Solomon may be compared to spring and summer in the history of the Kingdom of Israel, it was late autumn when our ...