We all know “major sins” like adultery, murder, and stealing are clearly prohibited in the Bible and most Christians steer clear of these kinds of offenses. Yet, while avoiding these “major sins”, we often lose sight of our need to deal with our own more subtle sins. In fact, we often tolerate these more “acceptable sins” in ourselves thinking them to be…
If you have been attending our Doctrine of End Times class recently, you know that we have referenced Paul Benware’s book Understanding End Times Prophecy a number of times. This is an excellent resource if you want a comprehensive but readable and understandable book on the end times. Benware carefully explains how a proper method of interpretation, a proper understanding of the…
Every student of the Bible needs a good commentary series to help them understand the flow of the text, tackle problem passages, and gain practical insights for life application. While some commentary series are overly technical and others emphasize application over interpretation, the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series offers a good balance between the two. Intellectually stimulating and personally relevant, this insightful…
How important are the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ really? For many people, the cross and Christ’s resurrection from the dead are such scandalous events that once they begin to get a glimpse of them, they conclude it must be fiction at best or a lie at worst. How about you? Perhaps there is no better time to consider what really…
Being a believer does not exempt us from having conflict with others; it simply means that we have the obligation to and means by which we can resolve that conflict. At the heart of being a follower of Christ is being a peacemaker, one who seeks to make things right with those they have offended and to be at peace with all…
What is genuine faith and how do you know if someone has it? This question is one of the most important questions we could ever ask of ourselves and one which we need to be well equipped to answer when dealing with others. Perhaps no other book deals better with this issue than John MacArthur’s book The Gospel According to Jesus. In…
Do you have a passion for the church? Not just the universal church but the local church? Are you committed to MBC the way God intends? Unfortunately, many Christians today attend church but don’t possess a passionate commitment to Christ’s body. While they go to church periodically, they are only half-heartedly committed to it and are not truly invested into the life…
Someone has said that nothing changes a human being faster than a deeper understanding of who God is. It’s true! Our lives are simply the outworking of what we conceive God to be like. Thus, to live rightly, we must think about who God is rightly. A.W. Tozer captured the essence of this thought when he famously wrote in The Knowledge of…
The principle “how you think is how you live” is taught repeatedly throughout Scripture. Since the mind and heart are the source from which the springs of life flow from, God’s Word frequently emphasizes the priority of the one’s thinking. Because of this, our minds must be renewed on a daily basis to avoid adopting the culture of the world around us…
The Protestant Reformation which occurred 500 years ago was the result of a number of key figures in church history. One of the most significant was William Tyndale who began to understand the need for the people to have the Bible in their own language so that they could see the truth for themselves, directly from the Word of God. As a…
Atheists frequently deny the existence of God citing the world’s injustice, pain and suffering. They use standards of good and evil – justice – that can only come from God to argue that there is no God. One of the great paradoxes of suffering is that those who haven’t suffered much allow the suffering of others to turn them away from God;…
Summer is a great time for reading Christian biographies. To that end, let me commend to you Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, a biography which will challenge you to trust God wholly and to not waver in your faith in Him. Following his conversion, Hudson Taylor traveled to China as a pioneer missionary. There he endured tribulation, hardship, poverty, frustrations, and misunderstandings. Despite…
It was Augustine who wrote, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in every man that only Christ can fill.” This statement captures the essence of an intimate relationship with the Lord…God has designed us to know Him and walk with Him closely. Too often, however, we seek to fill that God-shaped vacuum with other things, pursuits, relationships, and pleasures. Thus, we must constantly…
A frightening trend has reached the church in America – nearly 2/3 of those 20-somethings who were raised in the church are already gone. The same spiritual epidemic which decimated the church in Europe has now reached America and is spreading rapidly. Many young people have little or no interest in spiritual things and, consequently, have abandoned the church. Such trends are…
The church must be leading the way in adopting children! God tells us that pure and undefiled religion is to visit orphans in their distress (James 1:27). For this reason, the church must not relegate adopting children to state agencies or hope that “others” will do it, but must practice this very tangible expression of the Gospel. At MBC, we want to…
Dear Brothers and Sisters at Maranatha Bible Church, A number of you have asked me for my thoughts on Rob Bell’s latest book Love Wins. Since the book came out this week, the blogosphere has been buzzing with posts and comments about it. Many reviews have been written in the last few days and I would encourage you to read them to…
Have you ever wondered how the cross of Christ and the Gospel relates to you now that you are a Christian? While it is easy to put the Gospel on the shelf after coming to Christ, it is imperative that we keep it central in our lives since it is the very lifeblood of our relationship with God. All of God’s grace…
