Crossway Christian Church

Jesus, in speaking with Nicodemus in John 3, reminds Nicodemus that we do not know where the wind has come from or where it is going – but we can see its effects all around us. We know that the wind is there, for we see the results of its presence. Today, while we don’t see God, we see the effects of his presence all over Esther 6, especially in the working out of his justice. How do we know that...

Jesus often tells us very difficult things. One of the most difficult sayings that Jesus gives to us is found in Luke 16 (the parable of the dishonest manager). Shall we also be dishonest as this man was? What does Jesus want us to do? At the very least, I think, he desires for his people to be as Esther, who shows great deftness and savvy in how she handles the king. At the same time, the pride o...

There are many times that the Bible speaks to us about things that, if we’re being honest, have no immediate application for us. Many of you have no children, yet we still think it wise to read and preach passages related to parenting from Proverbs and Ephesians. For many in America, passages dealing with persecution and suffering are the same. We might not experience those problems right now – bu...

We have all had those kinds of days – where nothing seems to be going right, and the dominoes of misfortune seem to fall one after another on top of us. Mordecai, at the end of Esther 2, seems to be riding high. Esther appears to be well taken care of, and he himself has thwarted a plot to assassinate the King, which certainly will come with a reward! Yet, by the time we get to the beginning of ch...

There is no doubt that the people of Persia had different standards of right and wrong then we do today. Their relationship to authority, individual and social rights, government, and even God would have been so radically different from our we likely have a hard time even understanding how deep the differences go. The same would be true for those living in the Persian empire who were Jews. The dif...

Esther is a strange book. Out of the 66 books of the Bible, it is the only one not to mention God, or use his covenantal name. It mentions nothing of the law, Torah, the history of the Jewish nation, or its hope for the future. Yet, this is part of its beauty and genius. Esther desires to show us how God’s power, even when unseen and unspoken, is still stronger than the mightiest of men. While it...

Today, we reach the end of John’s Gospel. We will attempt to summarize the teaching of John’s lifetime of reflection on the wonder of Jesus, fine-tuned and clarified over decades, compiled in 21 chapters and some 866 verses. Surely, that is a tall order! And while any summary is bound to be, by nature, reductionistic, we can hit the highlights of John’s vision into the wonder of Jesus’ life and mi...

What glory there is in our salvation! Christ has indeed saved us from our sin, freed us from our destiny to death, delivered us from the power of the Devil! There is glory in our salvation, but there is also the great need for humility. After all, our sin is detestable, and it comes with a great cost. Today, we see how deep the care of our Lord is for us, seen through his own care and concern for...

Have you ever been to a movie you think should end, but it seems to have an extra 20 minutes of extra, and seemingly unneeded, material? Many scholars think that is what John 21 is like. The ending of chapter 20 wrapped up both the book and the resurrection appearances nicely. Yet, after that summary and purpose statement, we have yet another resurrection appearance! Why would John include this st...

We live in an age of skepticism. We find there to be much merit, even virtue, in thinking that if we can’t see it, if there is no overwhelming proof, then we won’t believe it. This attitude of skepticism has obvious trouble with the claim that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. How can we be sure? There are many answers to this question, but the most important is simply the mercy of Jesus our Lo...

Mary's Magnificat is oneof the best known songs in Scripture. It is a song that magnifies what God has done in her; indeed, it magnifies the very work that God typically does. He magnifies the lowly and humble, and brings down the mighty and proud. This is not just a pattern of God's work, it is the very work of the gospel! So, let us sing with glad rejoicing, and in humility, for our great Savior...

The Christmas season is one made for families; many of our best and strongest memories of this season are of time spent with family. Yet, this year, many of us are saddened to only see family distantly, via phone or video. This sadness makes good theological sense, for the entire reason for the season is that God came to be near us, Immanuel! Today, we remember not the birth of Jesus, but the resu...

Last week, we began our look at the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, and noted some of the ways in which his death and its effects were pictured and prophesied already in Scripture. The suffering and vicarious death of our God in the person of Christ was on display in David’s life, in the Passover, and through the prophets. Today, we continue to look at how the OT is fulfilled in the de...

Post Thanksgiving, we have entered into our Advent season, where we celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus as a humble child in a manger. Yet, as we work through John, we seem to be at the opposite end of the spectrum, reading and thinking through his trial, crucifixion, and death. However, in God’s providence, these two realities are not random separate events, but all part of a long plan to save...

God has been incredibly kind to us in the smallest of things, many of which we are so accustomed to that we typically miss them entirely. How difficult would life be without the slight delay, the filter, between what we think and feel and what we say? How would others view us if the thoughts of our hearts escaped immediately upon their thought? If we are honest, such a reality would be a dreadfull...

Many philosophers throughout the ages have considered an interesting thought-experiment: how can we prove the existence of other minds? How do you know that what is around you is real? Or, is there some better, truer reality lurking just behind what you can see? Descartes thought about this in the 17th century, and the film The Matrix considered it popularly just 20 some years ago. What if I told...

We find many great examples of righteous courage throughout Scripture. Joshua took over the promised land with a rag-tag army; David faced the monstrous Goliath with five small stones; Esther faced her death simply to pose a question. These are valuable examples for us to follow. It is, however, perhaps better not to look at the positive examples of courage, but also at the negative examples of th...

The great liberal scholar project was to search through the rubble, remains, and ramblings of the Bible and to try to reconstruct the picture of the “real” Jesus. Certain that what we have in the Bible is skewed history (at best!), liberal scholars sought to find out who Jesus really was and what he really taught. Today, let us do better, and try to find something about the “real” Jesus of Scriptu...

Unity and togetherness are concepts that occupy much of the world’s attention. That our country, indeed our world, is fragmented, and that such a fragmentation is a bad thing, is readily understood. The church should be a place for unity and harmony. None of these things is widely debated. But, how ought the church strive for that unity? Should we pursue it by removing obstacles? Ought we be less...

This life is hard to keep balance in. Sin so affects us that we have a difficult time not over-adjusting to the problems that we face. We often see our problems in life, and think that Jesus is the easy solution to them. But, in doing this, we often just use Jesus as a holy talisman, a trinket used to get us what we really want. Or, reacting to that, we show Jesus as the high and mighty God, but f...

Humility is the corrective for an adulterous heart, an aspersive spirit and an arrogant mindset.

Those who profess God should control their tongue. Earthly wisdom is jealously self seeking but, true wisdom shapes the wise. Teachers should continue in humility and in a spirit of a learner.

If you watch many medical mysteries, you find something of a well-worn pattern in them. Something goes wrong medically which is hard to explain. Yet, the symptoms, seemingly random, point to something more sinister lying just below the surface. The rest of the show is, of course, getting at that underlying cause. In our passage this morning, the symptom of idleness, of the avoidance of work, is a...

We are taught, if we listen well, how to pray by our Lord. This instruction, found in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) as well as Luke 11, provides a template for faithful prayers, given in a memorable, if general, fashion. We do well to memorize this prayer, but we must realize that it was always meant to guide our own personal, heartfelt desires and needs. We can see something of how this was...

Balance is difficult to achieve in this life. Given a beam on the ground, many of us would be able to walk over it with no alarm or problem. But placed over the Grand Canyon, with certain death below, and balance seems hard to come by! Christians realize the dangers and death that surround us and know that to fall on either side of many issues is to fall into death. Here is legalism – there is lic...