Crossway Christian Church

In our baptism, we are buried with Christ in his death and raised in his life. We are with him, united to him, tied to him. But is this just passive? In a certain sense, yes; we rely fully and finally on God's abiding presence with us. After all, the Son took on flesh to save us -- we didn't come to him. But these realities do not mean that we have no responsibility in our union to Christ. John 12...

We are all wrong at some time in our lives. Whether we admit it or not, it is a typical state of affairs for most of us. To err, after all, is said to be human. However, there are some things that are more important to get right than others. For most of us, whether we have gotten a math problem right or wrong is not a life or death decision. When it comes to how we respond to Jesus’ miracles, howe...

Jesus raises Lazarus

The death of Lazarus has affected many. Crowds pour out of Jerusalem and the countryside to be with the family, but that comfort must come to all differently. Martha has questions; her sister has emotional needs. Both seek out Jesus. In our passage today, we learn of Jesus' great concern for us, and for us as whole beings. He is not just a shoulder to cry on, but one who knows and arranges all thi...

Written in 1984 and released in 1991, the popular Christmas song Mary Did You Know? has reached the top ten songs on two different Billboard charts. But it is an odd song – the questions don’t really ever get answered and some are not even worth asking! From a biblical perspective, it is a better option to ask of her questions we already have answered. What did Mary know? In Luke, Mary’s praise of...

Pain is a part of life. This world is filled with sickness, sorrow, and at times it is hard to understand why. Why doesn’t Jesus intercede? Why doesn’t he, sovereign as he is, stop it? John 11 is a picture of our salvation, and a picture of Jesus’ sovereign control over the world. We get some insight, for those with the faith to see, why the world looks like it does, and why Jesus delays in his sa...

Often has man dreamed of having the rights and privileges of God. Men dream of having unlimited creativity, of having unsearchable power, of having unrestrained authority. Christians instinctively know that such things are not ours to have. Yet, in John 10:34 we have one of the oddest passages in Scripture quoted and affirmed by Jesus. Here, we are told, God has looked at us and has said “you are...

Jesus is our Good Shepherd. This means his love is best seen in his laying down his life for us. Last week, we spoke of the loving side of Jesus as the shepherd, today we look at his strength. A shepherd must be willing to fight for his sheep, to lay down his life and risk his limbs to fight away the predators that assail them on every side. In this world, we will have many seeking to harm and des...

Shepherds were not how we might picture them today. We often think of shepherds as being somewhat soft or effeminate, but they were hardly that. Shepherds are much closer to our modern myth of the cowboy than to the gentle pictures of a smiling, clean man holding a luxuriously soft sheep in his arms. In both pictures, the weak and the strong, are wrong in certain respects, yet speak the truth in o...

When people today call others sheep, they typically mean it as an insult. It is meant to indicate someone who is only capable of following, unable to lead or to have original thoughts on their own. Biblically, though, while sheep were known to be dull and helpless, being called the sheep of God's pasture was not meant as an insult, but rather as a comfort. Truth is, we are fairly dull in knowing h...

The man born blind has stood his ground in John 9:13-34; confronted with harsh and unmoving Jewish leadership, he refuses to throw Jesus under the bus, and instead rightly confesses the truth, as far as he understands it, before the hostile leaders. And yet, when we look closer at his confession, it is filled with necessary truths, but it is still insufficient as a true and real confession. So, wh...

Jesus’ parables are treasure troves of insight and knowledge. For the first hearers, they may have been difficult to comprehend. And not always just for the first hearers! While John doesn’t include Jesus’ parables, in John 9 we can see the parable of the soils acted out in the characters and groups engaged in a battle over the healing of the man. The word, Jesus himself, has been thrown into thei...

While the process of writing a great story might be difficult to detail and describe, the results of a great story are easy to spot. Great stories bring you back to them again, and always reward another reading. John 9, the story of a blind man given sight by Jesus, is perhaps one of the greatest stories in the Bible. It stands as a symbol off our salvation, an encapsulation of the very act of Chr...

C. S. Lewis famously stated the argument that Jesus never wanted to leave us with the possible idea that he was just a nice moral teacher, however misunderstood. Either he was a lunatic, a liar, or our Lord. Possibly nowhere in the Bible does this truth become more apparent than here at the end of John 8. Jesus, charged with having a demon, continues to press those around him to have faith in him...

What if we are just living in a simulation? What if some being, brighter and bigger than us, is just pulling the strings and making us dance in some complicated computing scheme? While such problems and ideas have long been addressed by philosophy and science, we know that these are best addressed by religion. Jesus has come to help us understand the very nature of reality as it truly exists. But,...

In John 8:12-20, we considered the fact that Jesus was indeed the light of the world. Today, in a continuation of that theme, we get to consider more carefully what Jesus might mean when he says that he is the “Light of the World.” Jesus is not one who will allow us to be confused about who he is. He is indeed the servant, send to achieve the salvation of the world; yet, he is not just a servant s...

John’s gospel is unashamedly about the nature and wonder of Jesus Christ. He began his gospel with the most theological of all origin stories, as he told of the Word in/as God before time began. Yet, as Jesus comes on the scene, we expect more reaction than we actually get. His glory as God is covered, muted, hidden. But for those with eyes to see, Jesus is the light of the world. Today, we get a...

This chapter in Acts is not the first time Paul has had occasion to defend himself. It tells of a man who is bold to point to Christ for a life that has been changed. His testimony is not that of a man who is giving witness in his own defense, but that of a man who can only give public profession of what Christ has done is his life. His example is worth a good look - not only to encourage us but a...

The central focus of 1 Timothy has been the pursuit of godliness in the lives of the people of God. The church, in all her functions and usefulness, is the means on the earth that God has provided to help his people rightly pursue godliness in an ungodly age. Here we have a summary of the journey God's church is continually on, and what we must be aware of along the way.

Many heros of our faith have put up with extraordinary circumstances. These simply stand in a long history of Christian patience and longsuffering, starting with Jesus and continuning through the apostles, including Paul. Jesus instructed us not to be anxious about anything, even clothing nor food - a tall order indeed! This is not really our experience, as we are told by our culture that the best...

God cares about how we interact with authorities in our lives, and true Chrisstian obedience adorns the gospel and glorifies God. The passage today outlines the ways in which God expects us to interact with authority.

We are said to relate to God in many ways. He is, simply, our God and Creator, the great Potter, who forms us and fashions us. He is our King, and we are the citizens of his realm. Yet, God is also (amazingly) our Father, who provides and prtoects us against the hard that others might wish to inflict. He is our brother, who lays down his life that we might be co-heirs with him. So, then, we are fa...

Our God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And while he never changes – we do nothing but change! It is in the very nature that God has given to us. We are forever learning, experiencing, morphing. Given that, what kind of assurance do we have that we won’t fall away from the God who has saved us? While we know that Jesus holds fast all who are his – what is the human side of that equation...

God has given you something of infinite value. How do you guard and protect that? As we see in our passage today, God has instituted the church for this purpose. The church is a communty formed by God to guard and uphold the truth.

Great movements typically have at least one thing in common: great leadership. This is the ultimate secret behind the success of the Church: we have a wonderful leader in Jesus Christ our Lord! But all great movements need more than one great leader; it needs others to step up to make it successful. The church is no different. While Christ rules from heaven, he must also have his people rule well...