1. This week we will take a closer look at God's love in Scripture.
  2. We too are God’s baptized, beloved, blood-bought believers. And no one can ever take that away from us.
  3. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  4. Forty days after giving birth, Mary, along with her husband Joseph, presented their firstborn Son at the temple and "bought" him back with a sacrifice of two small birds. This is known as the "Presentation of Our Lord."
  5. Christ our Word, as with a two-edged sword, burst the devil's belly.
  6. I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.
  7. All of Scripture, every last syllable of it, is meant to drive us to "consider Jesus," the One who comes to "make us right" by gifting us his righteousness.
  8. As the writer to the Hebrews affirms, what makes the Christian gospel so much better is that we are no longer dealing with “types and shadows."
  9. The king has arrived and has already begun his reign forever and ever.
  10. God the Father sent us – his wayward, sinful, and naughty children – his own series of Father Christmas Letters.
  11. Who would ever want all these screamers and haters? It turns out that Christ does.
  12. The lesson of Malachi reveals God’s love for his people. When the people ask for proof of God’s love, he reminds them of their election.