In 1 Corinthians 6:18, the Spirit of God straightforwardly commands, “Flee from sexual immorality.”
Keep living and temptation will keep coming. What’s your plan for your next encounter?
This sermon is an encouragement to remember a simple acronym drawn from 1 Corinthians 6:18 — F.L.E.E.
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My Modern Met gives us an idea how the night sky would look if the planets were as close as the moon.
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Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD. (Hos 6:3)
In 2 Peter, an inspired “servant and apostle of Jesus Christ” (1:1) shows us why our knowledge of God matters.
Grace and peace are multiplied to us in the knowledge of God and Jesus (1:2).
The home was God’s idea, but life at home isn’t always perfect. Or easy. Or pleasant. Or like we expected it to be.
On this first day of Spring, might the Bible provide some help? Many of us know it’s time for a good “Spring cleaning” around our physical houses. But what about our homes? Our marriages? Our parent-child relationships? Our individual lives of integrity?
Here’s a Spring Cleaning Checklist to get us thinking about the issues that matter most:
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. (1 Pet 5:8-9)
What Can We Know About This Adversary?
Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed… There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Cor 12:1-7)
What were these gifts? What role did the Holy Spirit play in conjunction with them? How did they advance the plan of God for mankind?
This sermon uses the New Testament to explore this topic of miraculous spiritual gifts. It was delivered on October 14, 2012 as Part 6 in a series of sermons on the Holy Spirit.
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“How lonely sits the city that was full of people!” In 587 BC, Jerusalem was crushed by mighty Babylon. Throughout Lamentations 1, the city of David is personified as “weeping bitterly” in the night. “With tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies” (Lam 1:1-2).
Words can hardly encapsulate how much good had been sacrificed in order to acquire so little. “Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and wandering all the precious things that were hers from days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was none to help her, her foes gloated over her; they mocked at her downfall” (Lam 1:7).
But so much more is involved here than the ancient history of a Jewish city. Pay particular attention to the first phrase of Lamentations 1:19— “I called to my lovers, but they deceived me.” Here is a principle that is timeless. Those things that tantalizingly beckon us away from wholehearted faithfulness to God? They are lying to us.
