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John is making an astounding claim: "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" which he sets out to prove in his Gospel, first with various "signs" or miracles, and then by gathering witnesses. Why would such a claim be so shocking to Jesus's contemporaries? How did unbelieving Jews and God-fearing Gentiles of Jesus's day understand what was meant by the names "Jesus," "the Christ," "the Son of God"? We canvas the entire Gospel for the answer.

Throughout his letter the author of Hebrews has been contrasting in detail the ineffectual Old Testament sacrificial system with the superiority of Christ. In Hebrews 13:10 presents Christ as the altar from which those who believe on him "eat" and are nourished in the same way that the priests under the old covenant ate from the meats offered on the first altar which has been abolished by the altar which is Christ.

We begin our exposition of John's Gospel at the end because it is here, in these two verses, that John reveals the aim of what he has written in his Gospel. In point of fact, in these two verses, John tells us in capsule form EVERYTHING that he has written in his Gospel. The 21 chapters of John's Gospel are written evidence that the long awaited Messiah is an obscure Galilean Jew from the no account town of Nazareth, with no reputation and no apparent lineage, named Jesus.

It is the word of God spoken by the pastors, and their faithfulness to the gospel even under persecution that is to be remembered and followed, not the leaders themselves per se. God has so designed the government of His church that though leaders may come and go, there is a continuity that stabilizes the church and secures its future.

Creation order, and not cultural context, is the basis upon which the Apostle Paul offers his prohibition against women "teaching." But clearly women DO teach, even in the most conservative evangelical churches. How broad is this prohibition, and iin what context is it to be enforced?

What do the members of a congregation owe their leaders? Hebrews 13:7-19 exhorts us to "remember" our leaders (v. 7) and to "obey" our leaders (v. 17), two exhortations which form the bookends of church leadership. But what does it mean to "remember" and "obey"? Throughout the history of the church these two verses (7 and 17) have been abused by abusive church leaders and used by the Roman Catholic Church to grant an authority to the pope that is against what these verses actually teach.

David closes his majestic Psalm of Praise with a meditation on God's love for His own. These verses would be nothing more than mere poetry were they not grounded in the 17th verse: "The Lord is righteous in all his ways," a theological expression of God's sovereign providence which always does that which is "right" and in accord with his eternal purposes, even if the circumstances are evil.

What is the difference between God's Sovereignty and God's Providence? David gives us the answer in his Psalm of Praise in Psalm 145.

What is the Kingdom of God? It is not a realm or a place. It is the rule and reign of the Sovereign Lord Jesus Christ. The Kingdom of God is God mysteriously acting in history to rescue and redeem the people he has chosen for the display of his glory. The Kingdom of God is Salvation.

Next in our writer's list of practical expressions of love we come to covetousness - or more specifically, an exhortation to not allow covetousness to be characteristic of our way of life. We think we know what covetousness is. But as we will see in the exposition of this text, there is more to covetousness that the love of money and material possessions.

We often think of praise in terms of singing. But Psalm 145 - and most of the psalms - places the emphasis of praise not on what we sing but what we speak about the glorious honor of God's majesty. Psalm 145:4-7 centers our praise in what each age group in the church is speaking to one another, what we as individuals are speaking to ourselves, what the congregation is speaking, and what the church is speaking to the world.

What does worship that is acceptable to God look like (Hebrews 12:28)? From the exhortations in Hebrews 13 we learn that worship is not confined to a sanctuary. Worship that is acceptable to God encompasses how we relate to other believers every day.

Psalm 145 is David's personal psalm of praise. Coming as it does at the end of his long life, it is an eyewitness account of the majesty of God in the beauty of his holiness displayed in his varied attributes. If we are to rightly praise the Lord, our praise must flow from our intimate knowledge of God.