Isaiah 43:25. Do you remember the Etch-a-Sketch toys? You could be creative and detailed, or just play around with it. And if you messed up, what could you do? Erase it, right? Shake it a little and everything would be gone, and your screen was clear. In a similar way, that’s what God does with our sins. We’re going to look at Isaiah 43:25 where the Bible says God has blotted out your sins.
Psalm 32:1-2. 2. Psalm 32 was written by David and written after Psalm 51, the most well-known psalm of confession that David wrote after his sin against Bathsheba and Uriah. It’s highly likely that David wrote Psalm 32 about the same event and is looking back at his terrible sin and remembering God’s forgiveness. David expresses the severity of sin and the magnitude of God’s forgiveness. He wants to express that no matter how terrible your sin is, God’s forgiveness is thorough and complete. God...
Isaiah 53:6. Jesus came into this world to take away sin so we don’t have to get what we deserve because of our sin. We can be saved by the grace of God and instead of eternal death, we can have eternal life. Isaiah said "All we...have gone astray". In other words, all have sinned. But the end of that verse says God laid on Christ the sin of "us all". God did this because he wants us to be saved in Christ. Either Jesus bears the wrath of God in your place, or you bear it yourself on Judgment Day...
1 Corinthians 13:4-7. Is love always easy? We like to think it is. We may wish it was. Maybe we have a belief that real love is easy and the love I share with someone is sometimes hard, then maybe it’s not real love and there’s a problem. So, what’s the truth? 1 Corinthians 13 is often called “The Love Chapter” because Paul gives a wonderful description of love. If you notice, Paul says what love is and what love isn’t. He shows us how to identify true love, the love that we learn from God and w...
1 John 4:7-12. The popular phrase, "Love is love" suggests that all love, in any form, is equally valid. It implies that there are no boundaries to love. It says that each individual gets to define for themselves what they believe love to be, and everyone else should affirm everyone else's personal definition of love. Is that the truth? When we examine God's Word on this subject we find that love does have moral boundaries, that love can be sinful, and we're reminded that Christians are to be id...
1 Corinthians 13:8. The thought of a life-long loving relationship is a wonderful and beautiful thing. It may be a spouse, parent, grandparent, or close friend. But is it guaranteed that love will grow over time? Not every relationship continues to grow in love. Paul wrote, "Love never ends". What kind of love is this? How does this kind of love never end or fail? What we'll discover is that this kind of love is "agape" love that we receive from God, learn from God, return it to God, and give it...
Proverbs 31:30-31. Are you falling in love or falling in lust? How do you know the difference? You have to know what real, true love is to love someone. Culture pushes us towards lust instead of love. But, as we learn from Scripture, true beauty and love are found deeper than looks.
Romans 5:6-8. What really draws you to a person is not love, but attraction. It might be their looks or personality that get your attention and draw you to them. And we think those feelings are love. The Bible says, “God is love” and he created us to love, so it’s natural that we would have feelings of love for others. But I want us to see that true love is deeper than feelings and initial attraction. We’ve got to learn to love from God who is love, and he proved his love for us when we were tot...
Philippians 2:5-8. If you watch romantic comedies, you see a few things that jump out very quickly. When you love someone or something: You always feel butterflies; Love means you’re always happy with/around that person; Loving someone is always easy; Love means you’re never mad at the other person. Most of us are probably well aware that the stereotypes we see in these movies aren’t true. Perhaps we always knew that, perhaps time and experience have taught us some of these things. Love is often...
Psalm 93. The theme of this psalm is that God reigns. God is King. God is in control. He created the universe and all that is in it and it's all his. This psalm also mentions the mighty power of the waves and floods of the sea. That's a poetic way of describing the troubles of life and wickedness in the world that seem so mighty. But the psalmist says, God is mightier than the troubles and wickedness of this world and we can trust in him and every word he has spoken. We also see how this psalm f...
Psalm 37. Psalm 37 is a wisdom psalm written by David. But this time, it’s not a prayer or a song, like we usually see. In this psalm, David takes on the role of a teacher writing to students to give instructions on how to respond to the success of the wicked. David tells us not to fret over the apparent success of evildoers, but to trust in the Lord and do good. In the end, God's children will receive their reward of the eternal promised land and be with God forever.
Psalm 22. David spoke these words about himself and his desperate situation, and didn’t know that one day the Messiah would use these same words while on the cruel cross and cry out to God as he suffered for us, and that they would describe more details about the crucifixion. But, as we'll see, there is a clear shift from a prayer for help to a praise for help as David is answered and rescued by God, and it also describes God hearing Jesus' cry from the cross and answering him in the resurrectio...
Psalm 139. This psalm by David expresses great praise to God and great desire to follow God's ways. David says he knows God knows him, he knows God is with him, he knows God made him, and we see that God matters to David and he only wants to walk in God's ways.
Psalm 127. This psalm tells us that unless we depend on God's guidance and blessings and align our plans with his purposes, all our efforts are empty and pointless. We also learn some things about how to build a God-centered family.
Psalm 110. David was looking ahead to the day when the Christ, who was his son as a descendent, but also the Son of God, would take his place on the throne as king of God’s people. He was more than a human king. He was divinity. So, David called him “Lord”. Because Jesus sits at God’s right hand in heaven, it means he has accomplished salvation for all who put their faith in him.
Psalm 73. In this psalm, we find Asaph who is one of God’s priests in Israel, in a low spot in his faith as he looks over at the other side, at the unrighteous, and begins to think their grass looks greener, and he almost walks away from his faith. Have you ever been there? Have you ever been through a time when life just has you fed up and beat down? You’ve devoted yourself to God, but it seems like you take one step forward and two steps back, and you’ve begun to wonder if living for God is ev...
Psalm 51. King David was in a terrible mess. He had done some awful things. Psalm 51 is the prayer David prayed to God after he had come face to face with the darkness and ugliness of his sin. To some degree, all of us can relate to David because we’ve all sinned and have seen its effects in our own life and in the lives of others. We’ve seen the destruction and ugliness of sin, and we’ve longed for God’s grace and mercy to make us clean. And all that David prayed and longed for, God’s grace and...
Psalm 1. Psalm 1 is a gateway into the whole book. It sets the stage for everything else by telling us that anyone who genuinely wants to live for God must embrace his word. It shows us that God’s way is best and leads to eternal life. You can’t walk down two roads at the same time. This opening psalm gives us a choice to make about our lives that determines everything else about our lives.
2 Corinthians 9:6-15. In verse 7, Paul tells us something that God loves. He loves a cheerful giver. Paul teaches that Christians are to give generously from the heart knowing that our giving is an act of worship to God for the indescribable gift of Jesus and salvation.
2 Corinthians 5:10-21. We don’t always really need the things we think we do. More often they’re wants. Let's think about something that every person in the whole world needs. They may not realize it, and they may not even want it right now, but they need it. And that’s the Lord’s church.
1 Peter 1:3-5. The hope of the church is salvation in heaven. It’s not a hope like we hope ice cream goes on sale, or we hope we make it to the gas station before we run out of gas. It’s a certain and sure confidence, because when we are born again in Christ, we have salvation in him as long as we hold on to our hope.
1 John 1:6-7. If you choose to walk in the light and to follow God’s ways, then you continue to have fellowship with God and with one another. You can’t go two directions. You choose every day to walk in the light of God or in the darkness of sin. Additionally, when you choose to stay in the light, to practice God’s truth, then you have the benefit of fellowship with the church and the benefit of continual cleansing from your sins.
Ephesians 4:11-16. If you’ve ever been on a team, had a job, or been in a family, you understand the concept of organization. You understand that there are different roles with different responsibilities within any organization. The Lord’s church is no different. We like to think about the church as a family, and it certainly is. God is our Heavenly Father and has adopted us as his children, but there is a God-given organization to the church. Talking about the organization of the church matters...
Matthew 5:13-16. Christians do good works in the world around us because we want others to be blessed by those good deeds, to consider why we would do what we do, and turn to look at God.
Acts 2:42-27. The Lord’s church is “undenominational”, meaning it knows nothing of denominations which came after it was established. It is “predenominational”. And that church still exists today if we follow the plain teaching of Scripture. Today we’re looking at the identifying marks of the church. To do so, we turn to the beginning of the church, the earliest days of the Lord’s church to see what they did and how they lived.
Matthew 16:18. In this series, “Jesus and His Church”, we’re going to look at different subjects related to the church. The first thing we want to examine is to see who owns the church. To whom does it belong? Why is this important for us to know? Because Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and he purchased the church with his own blood that he shed on the cross. And for that reason, we need to be sure to be in the church that Jesus owns. The one that is his, not a church that someone else sta...
2 Corinthians 5:17. In this lesson, we look at seven spiritual resolutions for the Christian in 2025 and are encouraged to live as new creations that serve and glorify God.
Revelation 21-22. The church is called here the new city of Jerusalem, the bride of Christ. And it is brought to the new heaven and earth, which will be the new heavenly dwelling place for God's redeemed. This is where God will dwell with his people. We will see God face to face and be in his presence forever. This is the reward of heaven – to be with God.
Acts 2:1-47. When we think of “church”, we might think of where we’re going on Sunday or Wednesday. We might think about how we have to get up early to go to church on Sunday mornings instead of sleeping in. When I was a kid, I liked seeing my friends and I liked church, but I didn’t like wearing slacks, a button up shirt, dress socks and “church shoes”, and I didn’t like trying to stay awake during the sermon! But church is more than that, isn’t it? Church is more than a place we go to, right?
Matthew 1:1-6. Why is Jesus so important? Why does the OT point to Jesus? How does Jesus fit into the story of the Bible? Matthew’s focus is on Jesus’ royal lineage because he so badly wanted to convince the Jewish people that Jesus from the town of Nazareth was the one the Old Testament promised and was the Christ they had been waiting for. Jesus didn’t come to get rid of the law and the prophets. He came to fulfill them. They both were designed by God to lead us to Jesus. The whole OT pointed ...
