Christ told a vast multitude twin parables, first of a high-achiever building a conspicuous tower for self-gratification and of a hostile ruler waging war. Both depict the human desire to live independently of God’s rule and help. Here is the vastly happier better course.
A biblical case history – the life of Micah, who possessed great faith in religion, but a shallow empty life, devastated when his earthly goods were plundered. By contrast, here are others, whose faith led them to know the living God, and real fulfillment and happiness.
With rough water in the Sea of Galilee the hard-rowing disciples see the Lord walking on the water. This was a faith-building event for them, an incident intended to teach them-and us-how to yield their lives to Him. Here is the process of conversion for us all.
It is a humbling thought that no ‘flesh’ shall glory in the presence of God. When He is left out of life, no human ability or accomplishment is acceptable to Him. Here is why; and here is the way, through Christ, to acceptance and union with God.
With graphic and intriguing appeals the prophet presents our typical approaches to life, our expectations and desires. Each brief picture says something startlingly true about life, and points to our need of the Saviour of the world to bring an eternal direction into our earthly journey.
Christ’s parable of labourers hired at different times of a day portrays the stages of life in which people either accept or reject His call to salvation. Here are these stages, and how and why we react to Christ, either to refuse Him or to find Him.
Matthew 1:20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. v21 And she shall bring forth a son, … Continued
A Roman centurion came to faith in Christ, but how? It begins with a great need, continues with the realisation of sinfulness, is accelerated by his awareness of who Christ is, and concludes with his believing appeal for the Lord’s help. Here is how we may have a parallel experience.
To shock complacent hearers Christ spoke of conversion being harder than a camel going through the eye of a needle. Many do not realise that they need personal faith and a personal relationship with God. Here is what the Lord meant, and the way to know Him.
The Lord’s second great public declaration of His messiahship using the words, ‘I am’. The prophets said ‘the sun of righteousness’ would arise, and He duly came, working countless authenticating healing miracles. Here is how He is light to our souls if we yield to Him.
Christ uses water as an illustration of all that we need to support physical life and contentment – but it has limits. He then uses ‘living water’ to illustrate the inner spiritual life that only He can give. Do we have this ‘more abundant life’ which never ends?
A sermon in a single verse from the Saviour of the World tells us not to be astonished or offended that a complete renewal of life and nature – performed by God – is essential in order to know Him, and go to Heaven. Here is the way to life.
A world without God does not recognise God-given standards. It has no ‘Book of God’ explaining His purpose. It denies life after death. It offers no motives, or effective help to overcome personal wrongdoing, and to live a better life. Here, by contrast, is God’s life-plan for us.
The best known of all Christ’s parables is surely the prodigal son, showing the nature of our rebellion against God, our spiritual vacuum, and what happens when God wakes us up to our condition, and draws us to find Him by repentance and faith.
Christ’s parable of the barren fig tree portrays our privileges as human souls, our failure to produce homage for our Creator, and His mercy in providing a way of salvation. Here is what Christ did to secure pardon, and what He does in the lives of all who seek Him.
When the disciple Nathaniel was called to follow Christ, he had initial doubts, soon dispelled by the Lord. Here are our doubts and barriers to believing in God, and the answers to them. A message for all who need to find the Lord, and prove Him personally.
Sin and guilt do not come, says Christ, from eating ritually banned foods, but are generated from the thoughts of the mind – the ‘heart’. These contaminate us, shutting us off from God and Heaven. Here is the Lord’s list of our sins, and His remedy for a new life.
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The Bible presents the only meaningful explanation of the source of evil behaviour in the world, showing that it stems from wilful independence from God, and self-indulgence. Here is how it began, its extensiveness, its effects, and how, amazingly, people may be forgiven and restored by God.
As the disciples witnessed the miracles of Christ, they increasingly grasped that He was divine, the promised Messiah. This parallels our dawning realisation of His work in saving souls, which in turn brings us to seek His forgiveness, and the life-changing experience of conversion.
The experience of conversion to God usually begins when we see our inner person – what we are really like. Christ taught that three features of our real self are recognised, and then we realise how much we need His forgiveness, and His rebuilding work on our lives.
Here is a view of the astounding love of God for fallen humanity, and of the lengths to which He went to bring salvation. Here also is how we must respond to be saved, and the great goal of everlasting bliss, the true purpose of this present brief life.
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The Lord’s first miracle – water into wine – is an unfolding picture of what He had come to give mankind. Here are all the elements of the Gospel and salvation in one magnificent illustration, showing how Christ brings forgiveness, transformation and eternal life to seeking souls.
Christ’s parable of the pounds challenges us about something that God has placed in our constitution – an awareness, by instinct, that He exists. Do we invest this knowledge, or suppress it? To invest means to find out about God, and how to approach Him for pardon and life.
Here is how bread, through most of history vital to wellbeing, pictures the way life comes to the soul through the gift of Christ. Using the bread metaphor, the Lord shows how He alone prepares and conveys new spiritual life – to seeking souls.
All have the urge to choose their own ‘gods’, things to bring fulfillment or pleasure. These get our homage, but our ‘gods’ are lifeless and far too small to satisfy the soul. Here are the eternally superior qualities of the true God and Saviour.
The dramatic narrative of Paul preaching to deeply cynical philosophers at Athens reveals the collision between opposing views of life – atheistic or Christian. What is the aim and purpose of life? What makes sense? May God be found and known? Here are the timeless answers of God’s Book.
One of the thieves crucified next to Christ came to view Him in a new way, and to ask for eternal life. This event provides a perfect picture of conversion to God. What brings us to seek Him? How may we find Him? A message to change lives.
Christ’s parable of a great supper with invitations refused, reflects our rejection of God’s overtures to us. Here are our main reasons for refusing Him, and all that we lose by it. Here, too, is how we may reverse our rejection, the greatest moment of our life.
Most people would be amazed to hear that they owe anything to God, or rob Him. Does not God possess the universe and infinite resources? Yet the Bible calls us thieves, duly cut off from God. Here is what we steal, and how we must be reconciled
Conversion is often thought to be just a change of loyalty from one religion to another, but it is far more. It involves a great change in one’s life, and a new experience of God Himself. Here are the details of what Christ does for us.
The first preachers of Christianity were not embarrassed by their message offering personal reconciliation with God, for it towered above all religions of the day, and still does (including atheism). Here are its superior features of beauty, credibility, and power to change.
In one of his most surprising illustrations Paul shows that, before conversion, we are in the employment of sin. If only we could see that it is the worst possible employer, giving disastrous rewards. By contrast, here is what we gain by turning to Christ.
In the parable of the rich fool, Christ the Lord, shows us our self-confidence, self-esteem, self-consideration and self-destruction. We see all that we lose by a life of materialism, and its inherent foolishness. Here, Christ pleads with our souls.
King David sympathetically and appealingly spells out the terms and conditions of salvation. Speaking from his own experience, he shows what we must believe, what our attitude should be, and how we ought to ask for new life from God. He also describes God’s response.
Belief in Christ is not blind faith. It is based on understanding His message and seeing the authenticating evidences. It follows the discovery that only He has atoned for human sin, and only He has the words of eternal life. A message for all who are searching for meaning.
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Here is why Christ was rejected by the leaders of the people, and why we too recoil from Him today. These are our mistakes – which make us spiritually lost. Here also, is what we gain when we see who Christ is, and what He has done for our souls.
Is Christ true? Is reconciliation with God possible? Is the source of Christian salvation – the Bible – true? Can it be tested? Does it work? What about alternative explanations and policies for life? These answers to plain questions will help all who seek reality, and peace with God.
Our greatest problem is not sickness, hardship or even death, but something we carry beyond death – the silent burden of guilt. Only the forgiveness of God can eradicate guilt and here is how God has made this possible, and how we may be reconciled with Him.
Having no hope of God’s friendship and eternal life forces all our hope and anticipation to look for short-term earthly gains. This message is about the human necessity of hope, its origin and its penalties, and especially the only satisfying hope and how to possess it.
Life can only be measured in terms of our value and significance before God. King David recalls that he had fallen into backsliding, but grasped afresh the brevity and futility of life without a living experience of God. Here are the thoughts that brought him to renew that experience.
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‘Refuge’ is a significant Bible word, echoing the cities of refuge set up by Moses for people fleeing from ‘mob’ justice. But these cities also illustrate how we must all take refuge in Christ’s salvation to escape our deserved justice for rebellion against God. Help for seeking souls.
Famous militant atheists make many mistakes in their claims, and here are some, along with powerful proofs of God. Here too are the strong attractions of atheism, together with the deep and lasting losses. Also, here are the immense gains of belief in God and the experience of conversion.
Other issues in life may sweep God out of our thought, or we may be indifferent to Him, or deliberately forget Him. But God and the soul are the most tragic losses to any person. Here is what we lose, and how we may find all we have lost.
The supreme and most vital teaching of Christianity about salvation – the key to knowing God – is the teaching of justification by faith alone. What does it mean, in plain terms, and why is it essential for any personal discovery of God?
Saul of Tarsus held a high opinion of himself and his standing before God, but one day it all came crashing down, and he saw the real situation. It led him to know God truly, and receive a new life. His great and eternal gains may also be ours.
Countless people, pre-occupied with material things, have suddenly heard about the real God, His powers and plans, and been totally surprised. Then they have heard about human alienation from God and the remedy and have found Him for themselves. This is for all who have never considered their God.
Christ’s teaching on Heaven and future glory constitutes the only hope for eternal souls. Here is the promised future realm: its holiness, beauty and marvels. Here too are its people and their privileges. Here are the qualifications for admission and the terrors of exclusion. Are we ready?
Before conversion, the claims of God mean nothing to us, but when God’s Word speaks to our hearts, the challenge becomes inescapable. Self-searching begins, and the kindness of God’s forgiving love is grasped as never before. Here is God’s reasoning with souls.
Through the life of Simon Peter we may trace several stages of his opening up to Christ and seeking personal spiritual life. Conflicting aims and misunderstandings are resolved as he comes to the decisive point of faith and surrender to the Lord of life. His experience helps us.
Paul again speaks about his own conversion, showing how God has mercy even for enemies, and how the most unbelieving and hostile heart may be brought to seeking and faith. Here are the details of how cynical unbelief is dissolved, and reconciliation with God comes.
What is the purpose of your life? Is your objective earthly or eternal? Is it material or spiritual? Christ lived on earth according to a set plan to accomplish our reconciliation with God. Our response to His life and work determines whether we have a heavenly destiny or purpose.
Christ’s mini-parable of the defective eye shows how distorted our view of ourselves and of spiritual realities may be. Here are typical distortions – they may be ours – and the key things we must see to successfully find the Lord.
The message of personal salvation and eternal life obtained through Christ naturally provokes the question – Is it true? It seems too good to be true. Here is a review of its credibility, its effectiveness, and the many proofs experienced by those who trust it.
A challenge about the soul from Moses, who sets out the issue of choosing life or death, urging us to see what we miss by rejecting God, and calling us to weigh the eternal advantages and results of walking with Him. ‘Choose life!’ he pleads.
The most important ‘if’ in the Bible is here – ‘If any man be in Christ’ he is a new creation. How do we come to be ‘in Christ’ – united with Him? And in what way is our life newly created? What exactly do we experience?
King Solomon demonstrates in a famous and remarkable masterpiece of literature how trapped and limited we are, dominated by the events of life. But freedom is available to us, and limitations are removed, when a new spiritual dimension is received into our life.
Christ’s parable of a crooked manager pictures our misappropriation of our God-given lives, except that the manager made provision for his future survival. How should we relate to the God of eternity? A message to show how Christ may be found and known.
Here are famous words of Paul identifying our greatest problem of thinking and outlook. Life is all a matter of how we feel, want, like and need. We do not see our spiritual needs. Paul points to a far better life walking with God.
The world’s worst tyrants turn out to be insecure hypochondriacs, because people are never what they seem. And nor are we the people we often think we are. Here is God’s diagnosis of our problems, and His unspeakably gracious remedy, securing our eternal happiness
How vastly different God’s thoughts are from ours! Here is what He thinks about our indifference to Him and about showing mercy and love to us by sending an atoning Saviour. Here also is a comparison of God’s views and ours on matters that decide our eternal calling.
Christ’s parable about not covering a lampstand challenges us to listen to God, and not to remain unaware of how He must reject all who will not seek and find Him. How to listen so that we experience powerful life-changing answers to our prayers.
The Bible says that unbelief in God is our willing choice, and an act of antagonism toward Him. Is this reasonable? This passage presents the case from God’s point of view, showing why we disbelieve, how this affects us, and how God saves us.
People may believe in essential human goodness, or in permissiveness, or in themselves and their power to be happy. Often there is a refusal to actively believe in God. Here is what we miss without a hold on God and how we may approach Him and know Him.
The miracle of the feeding of the 5000 people was intended both as a proof of Christ’s divinity, and a lesson on conversion. Every stage of the miracle illustrates how moral and spiritual transformation comes only by trust in Christ.
This is Christ’s own evangelistic message to Nicodemus, using the symbol of the bronze serpent once lifted up for all healing of dying Israelites. It shows the elements of faith, and why it is the only way to obtain forgiveness, new life and blessing from God.
Although vastly superior to animals, man is a flawed being, severed from God. Here are things he can accomplish, but with limited success. Here, also, are things of a spiritual and eternal kind, that he cannot achieve without Christ. How may he relate to Christ to gain these goals?
If we are boxed in to a material view of life, this psalm is like a camera drawing back and showing the real context of our earthly journey. We see ourselves passing through a ravine oblivious to the dangers and destination. Here is vital information for those seeking their Creator.
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About 850 BC Samaria was under siege, and the people starving, when four men abandoned faith, fled, and found riches without God. But the narrative reveals the ephemeral benefits of a life without God, and the necessity of knowing Him.
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The immortality of the soul makes death either peaceful or terrifying, according to whether we are walking with God. All human life is ultimately a losing battle with death, the unavoidable appointment. Here is Christ’s way of breaking its power and bringing souls to eternal life.
Coming to God is not just a matter of having good opinions about Him. It involves the heart as well as the mind. Here are the differences between mental belief only, and believing in Christ with the entire person.
Doubts about God have always disturbed people wondering about their souls and the possibility of life after death. Here is how Christ helped doubters in His day to determine what was true, and how He could be approached, found and proved.
When Christ healed the twelve-year-old daughter of one named Jairus, he said, ‘Only believe!’ Why is this so vital, and exactly what form should our belief take in order for us to experience the unmistakable response of the Lord?
The Lord’s healings were acts of compassion demonstrating His divinity, and also pictures of spiritual healing. Here we see the losses incurred by soul-paralysis, compared with the benefits of obtaining healing and life for the soul. This is about having God’s forgiveness.
Not the four from Greek teaching, but four types of outlook sketched by Christ in the parable of the sower. Everyone fits in here as our lives are scanned and our reactions to God described. Where is life going?
A message for those seeking for God, taken from Paul’s great illustration of the body as a temporary tent of the soul. Despite our breaking the terms of the ‘lease’, Christ has made a way of forgiveness and new life
Not to believe in Christ as the Son of God is called a sin leading to damnation in the Bible, and this message shows why. It also shows how individual people may receive Christ, exactly what this involves, what it leads to.
Christ’s encounter with a rich young ruler shows four reasons why this man – along with most other people – are unable to find God in a personal way. If these misunderstandings are resolved, He may be sought and known.
What Christ the Lord is really like in knowledge, power, love, generosity, majesty and glory. How He compares with the greatest human beings, and how we may come to experience His friendly and powerful involvement in our lives.
Christ’s healing of a blind man, uniquely accomplished in two stages, was designed to show how spiritual conversion frequently involves a phased discovery of what separates us from God, and Christ’s method of uniting us with Himself.
Two famous commands from God give total insight into how we should approach Him for new life – ‘Stand still! Go forward!’ The message is about how to resolve our inner struggles and concerns in calling upon Christ for forgiveness and conversion
Why are we often so resistant to reconciliation with God? This is about our various reactions to the call of Christ, and how we avoid spiritual and eternal issues. Here, also, are some of the real dangers of delay, and the way to respond to God, and find His blessings.
Manasseh – a long-reigning king of Judah – heard Isaiah preach in his youth, but rejected God to plunge into extreme evil. Yet, despite a near-lifetime of this, he was humbled and turned to Him for mercy. Here is a narrative of the extraordinary mercy of God in the saving of a soul.
We are called to turn away from lives in which God is excluded, and to seek and rely on Jesus Christ. Why? What is He really like? What has He done? What can He do for us, now, and eternally? What is it like to know Him, and what are the terms for responding to His call?
Present-day Western ‘idolatry’ is the worship of a god invented by us, or of earthly objects and goals which we substitute for God. Here are the massive differences between the true and living God and all substitutes.
Is pride ever good? Yes, but here are the dangers and delusions that blind us to ourselves, cause us to resent the oversight of God, deform the character, spoil decisions, and take away our power to believe in Christ and gain eternal life.
True atheism is rare. Everyone prays at some time, but how? Here are prayers that fall to the ground, and why, contrasted with the kind that God has promised to answer. To know these things is to know how to approach and find God in a true and personal way.
To lose sight of the Cross of Calvary is to miss the central event of all history – the kindest act of unparallelled love, the great transaction, the most profound and enduring accomplishment and the most honest and powerful. Here is why.
Moses was already a ‘man of God’, when he chose to leave his royal life for God’s service, but his choice vividly highlights the issues in responding to the call of the Gospel – the call to Christ and to eternal life. Here are the cries of both dissuasion and persuasion.
What is universally worshiped and served by everyone in every age, and why? Our greatest need is to be turned from this chief idol to the forgiveness, new life and eternal home that comes only from Christ the Lord.
Christ’s miracle of sight to the blind illustrate the depth of human unawareness of spiritual realities, and the transformation brought about when we come into union with God. Here are the losses of spiritual blindness and the gains of conversion.
Here is the most detailed prophecy – 900 years before the event – of Christ’s work and of the way He would capture the hearts of billions until the final day of earth’s history. This is the message of eternal life.
Viewed spiritually, we may be dead on our feet, responsible for our moral behaviour, and yet unconscious, of our need of God, and of the smallness of our lives. Here is the way of escape from a life of spiritual pointlessness, to discovery of spiritual life.
