Simple Grace Radio

Ephesians is a letter written to help believers see themselves in truth – as they really are, by God’s electing love and saving power. Paul planted this church and pastors them for 3 years. He is writing to them from a prison in Rome. And as he writes to this dearly beloved congregation, he wants them to grasp the sheer blessedness of being a Christian. 

The glorious news of Christmas is that God miraculously intervenes. In the birth of Mary’s baby boy God invaded this world of death with the seed of Life. He began a work which would culminate in the death of deaths and lead one day to the overthrowing of every grave. Our text is the wonderful story of an old man who got to see that miracle. 

The miracle of God Himself becoming man in the womb of the virgin Mary is the miracle that makes the Christian faith true. The hope is that, as we revisit this wonderful story, we will be encouraged, emboldened and empowered in our faith. That we will be more deeply convinced and more thoroughly assured in all that God has accomplished for us and promised to us in Jesus Christ, Mary’s son. 

One of the things about the Christmas story is how it thoroughly upends our sentimentalized versions of the event. The real thing was a lot messier, harder and vastly more disruptive than we tend to imagine. We find Mary, both incredibly blessed and with her carefully planned life in shambles.

Do you believe in the story of Christmas? Do you really believe it – in a way that transforms the way that you think and feel and live? Does the fact that God physically invaded the world of fallen man in the person of baby Jesus – does that fact have any real impact on you? Does it change the way you see yourself and this world and God Himself? Because it’s meant to.

While the suffering of Job is extreme, the pattern of his life is the normal pattern of all those who belong to Christ – suffering now, glory later. Suffering is part of the plan. Suffering is the normal pattern for Gods’ people, not in spite of their faith in God, but precisely because of it. Job did not suffer, even though he was a believer, he suffered precisely because he was a believer.

One of the most commonly raised objections to the Christian faith is the “problem of evil”. The challenge goes like this: If God is really all-good and all-powerful, why is there so much pain and suffering in the world? It’s a fair question. The book of Job was written, in part, to destroy our assumptions of what God should be allowed to do. And in the process, it reveals to us a God much greater...

Job’s life has been decimated by God, and it has shaken his faith. Job would like God to acknowledge that fact. Well, in chapter 38, Job gets his wish. The Lord comes to answer him.

If God is willing to bring devastation into our lives irrespective of our moral behavior - What’s the point in being good? So, the great challenge was this: will Job still obey when it doesn’t pay? Will he still worship when there are no material benefits to being good? 

Job’s devastation is still a mystery – both for Job and his three friends. How are we to make sense of his suffering – and our own? What do you do when it seems like your Heavenly Father has failed to protect you from a tragedy and then remains silent as you grieve? How do we make sense of the Lord’s seeming absence and silence in our time of greatest need? 

This chapter is very helpful because it reveals to us, in wonderful detail what a righteous life looks like. We’ve been told in chapters 1 and 2, that Job was a blameless man, a man who feared God and shunned evil. But what does that actually mean? What does it look like in real life? If Proverbs 31 is a picture of a virtuous woman, Job 31 is a picture of a righteous man. 

Job was living his normal life, surrounded by his loving family and enjoying God’s good gifts, and then it seemed as if the dam broke and all the wrath of God and powers of hell were unleashed, and his life was swept away. All that was left was the ash-heap on which he sat, scraping his sores, and asking “why?” 

As we have been studying the book of Job, we have been watching the miracle of a growing faith.  Job’s trials have not destroyed his faith in God. The vast majority of his speeches are addressed to God. He hasn’t lost his faith – his faith is the foundation for his laments. 

One of the most crucial things for a Christian to know is that the God who rules in heaven, cares for us. This is the stunning discovery Job makes in chapter 16. Job comes to a wonderful conviction that he has a Friend in Heaven, an Intercessor who would take up his cause and restore him to God.

We have one of the great questions in the Bible that we are going to ask today: “If a man dies, can he live again?” This is not a hypothetical question for Job. He asks it from the ash heap of his life, and in the shadow of his own demise. He believes he is about to die. In chapter 14 Job is reflecting on the matters of life, death and eternity from the perspective of a death bed. 

Is God completely sovereign over suffering? Is He sovereign over all the pain in this world? We get to hear Job's thoughts on this particular topic as he responds to his "friends" who come to comfort him in his suffering. 

In chapter 19, it is clear that Job believes that he is about to die. Job records the most painful experiences of his suffering. He highlights the loss, the loneliness and a profound sense of condemnation. And against the black night of Job’s loss and loneliness and despair – he discovers a brilliant jewel of gospel hope. 

One of the things about the suffering of Job is how God uses it to expose the false assumptions and mistaken faith of Job’s three friends. They come to Job to comfort him but spend most of their time accusing him of sin. Consequently, not only do they fail to comfort him, they offend God! Little did they realize; as they were analyzing and indicting Job’s faith, God was analyzing and indicting the...

How do you comfort a man like Job, sitting in the abyss of all that he has lost? What do you say to this apparently God-forsaken man, rotting way on an ash heap – though he did nothing wrong. How do you comfort him? That is the question facing Job’s three friends. They’ve come to comfort Job.

 Job 3 is one of the darkest chapters in all of Scripture. There is no light here. Only darkness, only heartbreak and weeping, only the deep bitterness of soul caused by unimaginable loss. God is writing the story of Job’s life, as He is writing ours, and God determined to continue the suffering. 

Most of us can take a shock to the system from time to time: a car accident that puts us in the hospital, an unexpected diagnosis that alters our life, a relationship that falls apart, a child that is wandering. These are all hard things individually – but God gives us the strength and we move forward – wounded but standing. But when trials mount up,  that’s when our resources break down and we ca...

The book of Job teaches one of the most profound and most difficult doctrines in all of Scripture. It teaches us that the glory of God is more important than our comfort. Are we willing to trust the God who loved us and gave his life for us? Are we willing to be a part of showing to the world the greatness and glory of God – particularly as the Lord calls us to suffer? Is God worth our worship – e...

Job is a book that addresses, in a unique and profound way, the reality of suffering. It’s an extremely relevant book. Life is filled with loss and sorrows. Some of you are in the midst of great sorrows right now. Job forces us to face the fact that we live in a world where great, devastating tragedies do happen – and those tragedies often seem pointless and random.

We are going to look at the last two verses of the letter which capture the two prominent themes of the letter as a whole: 1) The authority of Jesus and 2) salvation by grace alone. These are essential principles of the Christian religion.  Whenever the church strays from these the consequences are devastating. But wherever you see a church thriving in spiritual health and bearing fruit to the glo...

Some false teachers were causing a great deal of confusion in the church. They were blending the rules of Judaism with the religion of Christianity.  Paul has written this letter to clearly outline the essential truths of the Christian faith – the truths that define the Christian faith. And he closes the letter with short reminder of those things the make a Christian a true Christian.