With the rapidly growing popularity of social media, writing letters has become somewhat of a lost art.  But in  Bible days, writing letters was a primary means of communicating with people who lived in other places.  The majority of the books in the New Testament are letters, with God’s truth put in writing.  And tucked away in the middle of the book of Acts is a brief, but very important, letter.

I grew up in a Christian home, and I was saved at an early age.  And I’m grateful for that.  I learned things from my Christian parents that I’m still using in ministry today.  But I know of a man who grew up in the same home as the Lord Jesus Christ, but for a long time this man was not a believer in Jesus.  But when he put his faith in Jesus, God really used this man in an important way.

Unfortunately, churches do sometimes squabble among themselves over things such as the location of the piano or the color of the carpeting, whether to have a chandelier or canister lights or track lighting, and other hugely important spiritual matters.

But in Acts chapter 15, a church debate took place over what really was a very important spiritual matter: how to be saved.

Paul and Barnabas had been faithfully serving the Lord in the church in the city of Antioch, when the Holy Spirit selected them to take the gospel to other places where people had never heard of Jesus before.  Their trip had lasted about two years; they traveled more than 700 miles by land and more than 500 miles by sea.  

But then some men came to Antioch and were spreading an extremely dangerous false teaching — false teaching regarding the salvation of Gentiles.

A NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME

Dr. David Bouler

January 28, 2018

Mathew 1:20

It was 45 years ago on Monday that the Supreme Court handed down their verdict on the issue of the constitutionality of laws that criminalized or restricted access to abortions. The court ruled that a right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extended to a woman's decision to have an abortion, and the court disallowed many state and federal restrictions on abortion.

City officials praised the workmanship of the weavers. People commented on the beautiful colors of the imaginary fabric. No one was willing to admit the emperor’s true condition, until a little child spoke up: “But the emperor has nothing on!”

There have always been people who, just like that emperor, have deliberately denied their own condition.

We do things to help us remember: we write ourselves a note, we tie a string around our finger, we program a reminder into our phone, we design techniques to help us remember things. But of all the things that we absolutely must remember, it’s that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. And Jesus Himself has given us a special way of remembering that.

Join us as Matt Neal teach us today from Luke 2.