“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved ” (Luke 5:37, 38). My contention is that these words of Jesus can be applied to the  NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH, as it forms a “NEW WINESKIN” that is ordained by God to hold the “NEW WINE” OF THE GOSPEL.” This limitless, unconditional grace of…

After 10 years as an earnest believer in Jesus Christ, the last six of those as a full-time staff member of a nation-wide, campus organization through which I had met the Lord, I had begun to have serious questions about that organization.  Some of us on its staff had just discovered the full-on, unmitigated grace of God poured out on us at the cross. I was realizing that the constant pressure to witness by this organization, exerted on both staff and students, WAS NOT…

In last week’s posting, we discussed the first two of the three lines of Kingdom distinctives in the FAMILY—authority and responsibility. Today, I want to look at the third: accountability. All of these distinctives function differently in each of the three God-ordained institutions, family, church and civil government, as each of these institutions have distinctly different organizational structures. As we have seen, leadership in the biblical family resides in a single person, the husband. He has final authority and full responsibility for the well-being…

After studying “the forest” of God’s Kingdom (for what may seem like an eternity to many!) we are finally (I promise!) going to begin our study of “the individual tree” of the first of God’s Kingdom tools through which He will rule—THE FAMILY. In our diagram of the Ship of the Kingdom, the vertical line from Jesus, seated on His throne in Heaven, flowing down to the Family, is today’s topic of discussion. Remember, the characteristics that flow in this line, two from Jesus…

We have been discussing the three tools God has given mankind to fulfill the purpose for which He created us—ruling over His earth. They are the family, the church, and the civil government, and each of them has its own unique and indispensable role to play to accomplish our task. Years ago, when I was first hearing and just beginning to learn these ideas, Jill and I were fully involved in raising three children, so our natural inclination was to focus on the family.…

As we saw last week, for the first time God’s eternal purpose for the earth was realized at the Ascension, forty days after Jesus’ death and resurrection. There God delegated the authority to rule over the earth to a Man, His returned-to-Heaven, triumphant Son, Jesus (Daniel 7:13, 14)!  We saw how this is pictured in the “Ship of the Kingdom” diagram by the first vertical line from God the Father to that Man Jesus, who now rules while remaining seated at His Father’s right…

The stage is set. Over the past few weeks, we have reviewed both the necessity and the reality of the Sword of the Word of God having two edges. In order to ultimately be effective, the Sword must swing both ways—1.) as the LAW, cutting us open to expose our sin, and 2.) as the GOSPEL, cutting out that sin to free us of it! Do you remember my “Ship of the Kingdom” diagram? You may, as “a picture is worth a thousand words,”…

We are constantly aware of the fact that the sword of the Word of God has two edges,  Kingdom and Gospel, and we want them both to be sharp as we wield that sword in these postings.  We sharpened the Kingdom edge for several weeks as we looked at Donald Trump, his election, his initial successes, and how civil government functions biblically. Then in the last posting, we worked on sharpening the Gospel edge as we reminded ourselves again that our relationship with God,…

All who grew up in traditional, evangelical churches are undoubtedly familiar with the old hymn, Trust and Obey, one of the regular staples in the cupboard of old hymns. It teaches the standard “old time religion” of faith and obedience as the two things we must do to “be happy in Jesus:” “Trust and Obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus – but to Trust and Obey.” When I was singing in the Glee Club Choir in Jr. High as…

Last week in our blog posting, we looked at what standard we will use in evaluating our civil government. We saw that, according to E.W. Wines’ book Roots of the American Republic, much of our Constitution springs from the Hebrew Republic in the Bible.  However, as we look at Wines’ very first two items on his list of Hebrew Republic characteristics (religious unity of both God and the people) they would seem to be directly antithetical to a statement in our Constitution! Article 6,…