Pastor's Bible Study

 There are two words in Greek that are translated as either “longsuffering,” “endurance,” “perseverance” or “patience” in the Bible: makrothumia and hupomone.  Makrothumia is patience in respect to persons, while hupomone, endurance, is putting up with things or circumstances. Longsuffering is a characteristic of the character of Jesus and a quality of the Fruit of Spirit that we can demonstrate i...

The author of our joy is God. The avenue through which God brings joy into our lives is Jesus. The agent that makes it possible is the Spirit. And it is our faith that activates the process which brings about the fruit of joy in our lives.

Others will know that we are the disciples of Christ when we love the way Christ loves. What kind of love is this? And who do we do it? This lesson focuses on love as a fruit of the Spirit and how we can express love to others in our actions and behaviors.

It is important that disciples in a church participate in the observance of the Lord’s Supper. Why? Because we are commanded to do it. Remembrance brings reflection, appreciation, communion, adoration, proclamation, and confession.

Baptism is a public declaration of our faith and trust in Christ, and it is vitally important to being a disciple, a follower of Jesus. Baptism doesn't save us. Baptism is a testimony of the reality that Jesus has saved us. In terms of being a believer in Christ, our very first act of obedience to Jesus is to follow His example and be baptized. We’ll have a tough time truly following Jesus persona...

Jesus didn’t come to call us simply as individual, private, personal disciples of Himself. He calls us collectively, corporately to follow Him as a part of a local church. A local church is a called out assembly of believers covenanted together to carry out the great commission. Faithfulness to one another in the context of a local church is vitally important to our being faithful to Jesus as disc...

Hell is real. It is as real as Heaven. If we can believe what Jesus spoke about the reality of heaven, the we can trust what he spoke about the reality of hell. Hell is a real place where real people spend an eternity when they refuse to accept the grace of God offered to them through the finished work of Jesus.

The truth of the Second Coming of Jesus should influence our lives and behavior greatly. The King is coming. Will we be ready? Let us be loving His appearing, looking for His appearing, labor until He appears, and live like He could appear at any moment.

Jesus was raised from the dead, and because He was, every believer will be too. Our resurrection is assured by His resurrection. He is the first to be raised to never die again. He is not the only one to be raised and never die again. The truth of His resurrection is vitally important to how we live. Because He lives, we can live with peace, power, purpose, praise, etc.

The thrust of this truth for believers is that our Savior not only delivered us from sin and its judgment, but also delivers us from uncertainty and doubt about the deliverance. If God has already made sure our rescue from sin, death, and future judgment, how could our present spiritual life possibly be in jeopardy? How can a Christian, whose past and future salvation are secured by God, be insecu...

Salvation is wholly by grace. What do we mean when we say that salvation is wholly by grace? We might say it this way – salvation is only by grace. You cannot earn it, work for it, deserve it, or be worthy of it. There is nothing that you can add to the grace of God or else God’s grace wouldn’t be grace. The bottom line is that salvation is a gift that we receive when we put our faith and trust in...

Jesus, was selected, appointed, chosen, and anointed by God to become the sacrifice for the sin of the whole human race.

Jesus is God robed in the flesh of humanity.

The importance of virgin birth of Jesus Christ cannot be overstated. If Jesus were not born of a virgin, then Jesus was a man like you or me. He had a sin nature like you or me. If Jesus were not born of a virgin, then he could not be the Son of God, he could not be sinless, he could not be a substitutionary sacrifice, he could not be the Savior of mankind.

The word “trinity” is derived from two Latin words: “Tres,” which means three, and “unitas,” which means unity. The meaning of the word trinity is “three in one unity.” There are not three Gods. There is only one God. In the totality of His essence, He is revealed to us in the scriptures as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Is the Bible the Word of God? There are two possible answers. Yes or No. It either is or isn’t. If you are not clear on the understanding of what the Bible is, then you will not be clear on any other truth that relates to genuine Christianity. Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible Word of God.

After a person has become a believer, they need to proceed in the area of discipleship, i.e. become a learner and follower of Jesus. This deals not only with acquiring knowledge about Jesus, but even more importantly, applying that knowledge to our attitudes and behavior.

Paul is coming to the end of his letter to Timothy and to the end of his life. He knows that his trial could be any day now and his expectation is a sentence of death which would be carried out swiftly. As hard as it was for Paul, he was gracious. He exuded grace in the face of death. The Apostle Paul at this point in his life has no one with him but Luke. And yet when you hear his final parting w...

Paul is coming to the end of his letter to Timothy and to the end of his life. He knows that his trial could be any day now and his expectation is a sentence of death which would be carried out swiftly. In these moments he is alone and lonely. Leadership and loneliness go hand in hand. Paul had always had an entourage, students he taught, people he ministered to. Now he is alone. The lonely leader...

In verse 6 Paul turns his attention away from “you” to “I,” “me,” and “my.” Paul shifts his focus from Timothy to himself. As he nears and approaches what he knows is the end of his earthly life, Paul glances back over his shoulder and then peers into the future as a man prepared to die and do it with no regrets.

AW Tozer - “What comes to our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. …No people has ever risen above its religion, and…no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.” This lesson presents 6 philosophical arguments for the existence of God.

Paul encourages Timothy to preach the Word. "Timothy, just as I have sought to teach and encourage you, now I want you to teach and encourage others with the Word." Paul summons Timothy to remember that he will stand before Jesus, the one who called him, to give an account of how he has served. He asks Timothy to do three things: preach the Word, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill his minis...

Timothy had benefited from the very best training from the earliest days of his life (v. 15), which continued for no less than fifteen years under Paul’s discipling (vv. 10-11). Paul has told Timothy to stick with it, you can do it. You can do it in the future, you can do it now. (vv. 12-15), and you can finish well. Finishing well is predicated on allowing God’s Word to do what it is designed to...

In these verse Paul encourages Timothy by pointing out that he can make a difference in the world and to the people around him in spite of the depravity of mankind all around him.

As Paul writes this last letter to Timothy, he seeks to encourage Timothy to journey on to spiritual maturity. The journey won’t necessarily be easy, but it will be rewarding in this life and the life to come.