The greatest obstacle to friendship in middle age isn't that nobody wants friends. It's that everyone is waiting for someone else to go first. But here's the good news: Christ has already gone first for you. And because He has, you are free to go first for someone else.
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything under heaven. But God has also placed eternity in our hearts, and that makes us strange creatures: able to rejoice in this life yet always aching for a life that only Christ can give.
What does it take to draw near to God? It takes a perfect priest, a finished work, and a broken body to open the way. In short, it takes everything, which is exactly what Christ has given for you.

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In our preaching it is important to decide how to understand this. Are we going to preach the “now” or the “not yet”? As the people of Israel are living in their “now,” are they hearing the words of Isaiah as the “not yet” or, the “not yet of the not yet”?
Luther recognized that in the penitential psalms, God gives us the words to cry out to Him in our distress, lament our sins, and confess trust in the promise of His righteousness in which alone is our sure and certain hope.
This is a difficult time, but Ezekiel is giving great hope in our text for today. In spite of the circumstances, the Gospel predominates.
God is mercy. He was mercy then. He’s mercy now. God showed them His glory, if only a reflection, in the face of Moses.
God is still faithful. There are still the covenantal promises. There is still the preservation of the Messianic line because He who promised, He who covenanted, must be faithful.
The Promise Land's true value is in the gift of Jesus who will provide His blood and very life to endow all people with forgiveness and everlasting life for His children.
The LORD God shows His favor and presence with Joshua in the parting of the Jordan and other signs which suggest Joshua is the new Moses… but he is not!
The theology is obvious: God is in control—so much so, that He can even use evil to accomplish His purposes.
The language of faith speaks promise and persecution, hope and trial, victory and pain. The language of the world may well speak the former, but rarely the latter.
Mephibosheth’s story is a living parable of the gospel. It reeks of redemption, demonstrating precisely what Christ does for even the chiefest of sinners.
The question the pericope begs us to contemplate is not whether the heart trusts or believes, but rather, what does the heart trust and believe in.
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