The weight of words. Our tongue is a dangerous thing, therefore those who teach must be exceedingly careful. And there shouldn't be many of them.

Fathers, mothers, employees, and employers, children and all others must guard their words and be careful to unleash unthoughtful, unloving, and uncaring words.

Can the tongue be tamed?

The mystery has been revealed. Sin has broken apart man and Creator, man within himself, man and man, man and his body at death, the nations are divided, Israel is divided, and the church is divided. All these things, God has promised to unify in Christ ultimately. But it seems for unity to come, there must often first be war. Man seeks unity and they'll find it under the antichrist. The church needs unity, but it must be centered around the person of Jesus Christ and the truth of Him as revealed in the Scriptures.

Redemption in the Christian sense means purchasing. God has purchased His people with the precious blood of Christ. It had to be through violence, as the day of atonement showed us. Violence done equals violence needed to atone for sin.

Having been redeemed, Christians must understand that they are not their own. They don't belong to themselves!

Only in unity to Jesus can anyone and will anyone ever be blessed. The world outside Him is cursed. He is the the source of God's blessing. This is a great comfort for the believer and an appeal to the unbeliever, come unto Him!

When salvation is merely man centered, we fall short of the glory of God. We do not recognize His work behind the scenes, work that we would not know He did unless He told us. We must choose to follow God yes, but He also wants us to realize that we who choose Him were first chosen by Him, before the foundation of the world. The text says it. Do you believe it?

The precious relationship within the Triune God is shown to us in Scripture. It is clearer than is sometimes stated. Not full comprehension but clarity. Yet of course, natural man will not understand for these are spiritual truths (1 Corinthians 2:15). The Father is the originator of all things, and He works through His Son. The Son does nothing of Himself but only according to what He sees the Father doing.

Jesus is in a relationship of submission to His Father. And it's a relationship of love.

The relationship between the Father and Son is a pattern of our relationship to Jesus.

Jesus wants us to be one and unified but not the exact same and uniform. How can the church do this?

2 extremes in church history. They both started early, and the apostles had to deal with both of these early on and we're still dealing with them today.