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Settling Our Doubts
John 1:46, 'And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.'
JOHN 1:43-51
Nathanael suffered from a skepticism that afflicts many people today.
However, it is to his credit that he came to the Lord and gave Him a chance to prove who He was.
We can only speculate what it was that Jesus saw Nathanael doing under that fig tree (v. 50), but it is very clear that it was something that proved beyond a doubt that Jesus was the Christ.
Jesus didn't rebuke Nathanael for his doubts, instead he removed them. The Lord has an answer for every doubt that we have. We need to be without guile before the Lord as Nathanael was (v. 47) and come to Him...
Sharing Our Faith
John 1:41, 'He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ.'
JOHN 1:37-42
Andrew was the first disciple of Jesus to share his faith and bring another to Christ. And look who it was that he brought.
Peter became one of the greatest apostles of Jesus. He preached on the day of Pentecost and saw 3,000 born again. He healed a lame man at the gate of the temple and 5,000 were born again as a result. He raised Dorcas from the dead, introduced Christianity to the Gentiles, and wrote two books of the Bible which have ministered to millions of people through the centuries.
Just think of how many millions of people Peter touched, and...
ARE YOU IN GOD'S WILL?
Knowing God's Plan
John 1:23, 'He said, I [am] the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.'
JOHN 1:19-36
John knew who he was and what he was called to do. This was one of the keys to his success.
Unlike most of us, John did not have an identity crisis growing up. He knew God's plan and purpose for his life from the beginning and he spent his entire life preparing for it.
God has a plan for your life just as surely as he did for John the Baptist. To succeed in life, you must find God's plan for your life and then devote yourself to fulfilling that plan.
It is not enough to simply 'do your own thing' and then ask God's blessing upon it. Once you know you...
Satan's Power Is Limited
Luke 4:13, 'And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.'
MT. 4:1-11; MK. 1:12-13; LK. 4:1-13
The wording of this verse implies that Satan exhausted his arsenal of temptations on Jesus and then had to leave.
We have mistakenly given Satan too much credit. He does not have a limitless number of temptations that he can pull on us. As 1 Jn. 2:16 says, there are three areas where the devil tempts us: (1) the lust of the flesh, (2) the lust of the eyes, and (3) the pride of life. Jesus' three temptations correspond to these.
By ascribing to Satan limitless temptations and abilities, we have built up our adversary to be bigger than he is. The truth is, 'There hath...
The Weapon Of The Word
Luke 4:4, 'And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.'
MT. 4:1-11; MK. 1:12-13; LK. 4:1-13
Jesus answered every temptation with, 'It is written.' The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17). It is the only offensive spiritual weapon that we have.
Since Jesus was the Word of God (Jn. 1:1), anything he would have spoken would have been the Word. He could have said 'scat' and the devil would have had to go, yet He quoted the written Word of God three times.
This gives us great assurance that the written Word of God is sufficient for us. Jesus, in the face of the greatest temptations that Satan had to offer, did not need to...