God's next to last word to Israel (and to us) is clear: don't ignore God's warnings, remember his word, and hope in the power of the gospel.
God’s justice should drive us to be really humble and honest about our moral failings.
Since the day of God’s judgment is coming, devotion to God will be worth it.
God is goodness itself. Because he acts completely in line with his good nature, God does good to all his creatures, but especially he does good to his people, even using suffering to bring about their good. God also must make us good. He does so by teaching us his word. And to do that, he must first open our eyes to the reality that on our own, we are not good.
They are not forgiven only—not only have their infinite sins been blotted out, but they are made righteous. They are not only made innocent, as if they had done no sin, but righteous, as if they had fulfilled all righteousness. All that Christ did and suffered is counted theirs.
We all struggle with feeling like imposters. The good news is that Jesus gives believers a new identity as God's treasured possession.
The way God is, should shape who we’re becoming.
We often want earthly treasure for serving God, but what we need to know is that those who serve God are his greatest treasure.
'Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.'
Even the greatest kings and armies of the earth are just small specks of nothing compared to God.
We are weak vessels holding a glorious gospel treasure. The treasure was never meant to magnify the vessel. The vessel exists to magnify the treasure.
When Joshua the High Priest stands before God in filthy clothes, we learn that on our own we stand condemned before God. But the good news is that Jesus has taken our filthy garments on himself and paid for our sin on the cross, and he gives us robes of perfect righteousness. And not only do we stand clothed before God when we put our faith in Christ, but we live in those clothes, as we stand called to point to Christ as testaments to his great grace in our lives.
At the cross, God addressed the sin problem we couldn’t see, with a Savior we didn’t know we needed, in order to bring us eternal life that we didn’t even know was possible.
We don't want to have missed expectations about Jesus' coming. He is coming. He is refining his church, and he will judge the world one day.
Because God's being is entirely unlike us, it should astound us that he draws near to us, by even taking on human nature and dying for us.
God will never become anything less than the perfect deity that he is. The foundation stone of God’s divine rightness and integrity will never be moved.
You have wearied the Lord with your words. But you say, “How have we wearied him?”
God cares about marriage and divorce. Our sexuality is a precious part of our humanity, and God wants us to glorify him with how we use it.
We should always be wowed by God's greatness! He turns death into life, prosperity into adversity, and mourning into dancing.
In Titus 3:3-7, we're supposed to remember the misery of our sin, see the grace that God has poured out on us through his Son and the Holy Spirit, and to cherish the hope we have as heirs of eternal life.