We have seen that the great glory of the gospel allows us to confidently speak of it without holding back. There is a big problem, however, in that unbelievers cannot understand the Bible. This problem arises because of the effects of sin and lack of faith. The solution is salvation—in which the veil is taken away, and we are enabled to see the true significance of the Bible. Then comes sanctification by which the believer grows in likeness to Jesus.

We introduced the message with the notion that without God, there is not only no truth, but there is nothing at all. God is the standard of truth. We then continued our study of the Bible's teaching on truth in the New Testament, with some reference to the Old Testament as well. Much remains in the notes that we did not cover.

The text of Joshua records how Joshua, the successor to Moses, led the people of Israel into the land of Canaan or “Palestine” as it is now called, but more properly “Israel” or “the promised land.” They crossed from the other side of the Jordan near the city of Jericho and took that city, followed in fairly rapid succession by defeating city-states both north and south of that location. Quite a few chapters are spend in explaining how the conquered land was distributed among the 12 tribes.

Two things about God stand out in the book of Joshua: His faithfulness to His promises, even to a very imperfect people, is one. The second is God’s judgment against evil, which is displayed in the destruction of many of the pagan city-states.

The Lord's Table is a matter of thanksgiving, symbolic significance, frequent obedience, remembrance, proclamation, expectation, examination, worship, and fellowship.

Paul begins to turn our attention from the matters of his ministry qualification and relationship to the church…to the character of the New Testament ministry that Paul was privileged to minister. God outfitted Paul to minister an amazing thing—the glorious gospel of grace, which was a ministry of Spirit and life instead of a ministry of the letter of death.

We studied the contrasting elements of the old and new administrations (the Law and the Gospel), and then studied some about the relationship of the New Covenant and the Church. We close by looking at the relative glory of the old and new administrations.

We use a simple working definition in this lesson that truth corresponds to the way God sees things. Truth is accurate to the standard that God has set forth. It has been in vogue for a while that many people think there is no absolute truth or morality, but the Christian worldview holds that there is such a thing as truth, originating in God, and that can better withstand scrutiny than the "everyone has his own truth" worldview. The main point of this message is to encourage us all to be truthful people because that is God's desire, for us to be like Jesus.

Mark's gospel shows Jesus as the servant of God and of mankind. He came to serve, not to be served, and to give His life a ransom for many. We examine some key verses, doctrines, and literary features of Mark's theological biography.

In this sermon, we examine the general nature of how we can build Christian character without falling prey to a law-based approach, which did not work in the prior era and will not work in the modern time. We learned about God's "tools" to develop our character, including His Spirit, His Word, and His Church. We also thought about the transformative nature of our union with Christ and ongoing relationship with Him. These things cause Christian growth, which changes the nature and amount of behavioral "fruit" that we produce in our lives.

Paul was confident about the Corinthian’s recommendation-letter-status because Jesus Christ gave him that confidence. And he had good reason: he gave them the genuine gospel message, the church was started, and he could see God was doing a work there. So he continued in faith with confidence that the work of the gospel was having an impact. The source of his ministry sufficiency was God, who gave him authority to preach the gospel and enabled him to be effective in that ministry. This is all the more remarkable to Paul because of the nature of his message, a message that is connected to the new covenant.

For our Christmas Eve service, we read some in Jesus's birth narrative, and then considered several matters regarding when Jesus came. First has to do with the calendar date--December 25? Second was the condition of the spirit world that operates unseen "behind" our world. And third is the condition of humanity at the time of Jesus's coming. A little bonus music is at the end of the service.