Author: BTP

“That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace” (Psalm 144:12).

This verse toward the end of the Psalms really refers to what will happen during the millennium, that wonderful time on this earth after the Lord Jesus comes back to judge this world, and then sets up His kingdom. However, you and I can apply the words to ourselves too.

It is an encouraging thing to see young men who are “grown up in their youth.” What does this mean? Does it mean that young men should try to act older than they really are? No, it does not mean that, for those who act beyond their years only make fools of themselves. It means that young Christian men ought to be serious about life, about their testimony, and about living for Christ. When we are young we can waste time doing many things, and then later wonder why we did them. Perhaps your parents have at times told you to “grow up!” It means recognizing that we are living for eternity and taking life seriously.

With young women, they are described as “corner stones,” or corner columns, polished (or sculptured) after the similitude of a palace. It is not physical beauty that is being described in these words, but rather a dignified moral character that displays Christ. In most western countries the modern world has often tried to push girls and women into an outlook on life that encourages them in roles that make them more like men. Instead of guiding the home and being a “helpmeet” to their husbands, they are urged to do all the things that men have done. This leaves a gap in the home that men cannot fill. But those who show by example what we have in our verse fill the role for which God has fitted them, and thus the man and the woman complement each other.

It is important for Christian young men and women not to follow the wisdom of this world, but rather to follow God’s wisdom.

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Growing in Grace Blog by Bible Truth Publishers

“Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5).

On July 9, 1960, a man named Jim Honeycutt offered to take Deanne Woodward, a girl of seventeen and her brother Roger, who was seven years old, for a boat ride on the Niagara River above the falls. Jim and their father worked together, and Deanne and Roger eagerly accepted. As they passed under the Grand Island Bridge, Roger asked to drive the boat, which had a small outboard motor. Suddenly the propeller struck a rock, broke the shear pin, and now they had no power! All Jim’s efforts with the oars were futile; they were carried swiftly towards the falls. They struck a large wave, and all three were thrown into the water. Roger and Deanne wore life jackets; Honeycutt had none.

Deanne managed to swim to shore and was pulled out of the river at the last minute by two men who saw her, and risked their own lives to reach out to her. She was only about fifteen feet (less than five meters) from the falls. Any of you who have visited Niagara Falls know what a thundering, massive falls it is. Totally awesome! Roger and Jim Honeycutt were carried over the falls. Jim did not survive, and his body was found several days later, but Roger landed below the falls in the whirlpool, still wearing his red life jacket. Miraculously he was unhurt except for a few bruises, and was picked up by the Maid of the Mist, from which they threw him a life ring. No human being had ever plunged over Niagara Falls with nothing but a life jacket and survived. It is doubtful that anyone else ever will. His experience was unique.

For the next twenty years, Roger kept asking himself why he and his sister had been spared from almost certain death. People would even tell him that someone must be watching over him, and that God had something special for him.

Twenty years later, in 1980, Roger attended a gospel meeting, and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as His Savior. His questions were finally answered! Ten years later in 1990 he came back to preach the gospel in Niagara Falls, telling people, “Something happened thirty years ago that was very, very special. I lived. Why? So that I could live again … so that others would come to the saving knowledge of Christ and have the gift of eternal life.”

Have you accepted God’s gift of eternal life, as Roger did? It was the Lord’s mercy that saved Roger and Deanne from being killed at Niagara Falls, and it was His mercy that saved him from going into a lost eternity. That same mercy is available to you too, if you are not saved.

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Growing in Grace Blog by Bible Truth Publishers

“But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth” (Colossians 3:8).

“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering … and above all these things put on charity (love), which is the bond of perfectness” (Colossians 3:12, 14).

Yesterday I was doing some yard work — shoveling dirt, planting grass seed, laying sod, and other outdoor jobs. When I came into the house, my wife remarked that I looked pretty dirty, and suggested that I should take a shower and change into some clean clothes. Maybe you have had your parents tell you the same thing, if you got your clothes all dirty either working or playing outside. But before I could put on clean clothes, I needed to take the dirty ones off. I could not put the clean ones over the dirty ones.

Here in our verses today we are told to put off something, and to put on something. As we have been reminded before, if we are truly saved, we have a new life in Christ — a new life that wants to please the Lord. That new life cannot sin, for it is the same life that the Lord Jesus has. But as we all know, we still have the old sinful nature, and it cannot do anything but sin. It cannot do one right thing toward God.

All the things mentioned in our first verse today are connected with our old sinful nature. They are not the only things that come from our “flesh,” which is the old nature; there are many other things, but these are good examples of them. They are like the dirty clothes that I had to take off. We must put these things off, and we can do that with the Lord’s help. We do not have to let the old nature rule our lives, for as we read earlier in this same chapter (Colossians 3), we are dead and risen with Christ. As we get in Romans 6, we can consider ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God (verse 11). Then, when we have put off these things, we can put on the things in today’s second verse. All of these are produced by the new life we have in Christ. Again, these are only examples of what is produced by our new life; there are many more. They are like the clean clothes that I put on, after I had put my dirty clothes in the laundry basket and taken a shower.

You and I can put on the things that are produced by our new nature. Then when people see us, they will not see bad things; rather, they will see Christ in us.

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Growing in Grace Blog by Bible Truth Publishers

“Then from that day forth they (the Jewish chief priests and Pharisees) took counsel together for to put Him to death” (John 11:53).

“For he (Pilate) knew that for envy they had delivered Him” (Matthew 27:18).

The Lord Jesus had just performed a most amazing miracle — He had raised from the dead a man who had been dead four days. The Jewish leaders could not deny it, for Lazarus was living evidence of what had happened, and as a result, many people believed on the Lord Jesus. But as our first verse today says, those same leaders decided that they had to get rid of Jesus, because He did so many miracles. We know, of course, that in putting the Lord Jesus to death, they were only doing what God had planned from a past eternity, for there was no other way for us to be saved. But all this does not make those who plotted to kill Him less guilty.

We learn from our second verse that it was mostly for envy that the Jewish leaders delivered the Lord Jesus to Pilate, asking that He be crucified. Envy is one of the strongest and most wicked emotions in our sinful nature, and in Proverbs 27:4 we read, “Who is able to stand before envy?” What is envy? It is wanting something that rightfully belongs to someone else. The Jewish priests, scribes and Pharisees wanted authority and influence over the people, and took the place of being their religious leaders. However, while they taught the people what was right, they themselves always found ways to do what they wanted, and resorted to lying, Jewish traditions, and their own “loopholes” to avoid keeping the law. When the Lord Jesus exposed all this, they hated Him, and wanted to get rid of Him. They even considered killing Lazarus, because so many people believed on the Lord Jesus when they saw the wonderful miracle of raising Lazarus back to life (see John 12:10). Back in the Old Testament, Joseph’s brothers envied him too, and it was largely because of this that they sold him into Egypt (see Genesis 37:11), hoping that it would be the end of him.

This is a good lesson for us. It is easy to be envious of others who have something we do not have, whether it is possessions, abilities, good looks, and perhaps other things. But envy is a most serious sin, and as we have seen, it even led people to put the Lord Jesus to death. Let us be content with what the Lord has given us and use it for Him.

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“Jesus wept” (John 11:35).

This is the shortest verse in the Bible, yet it says a lot! When I was young, we sometimes picked this verse to memorize because it was so short, but later, as we realized what it meant, we thought of it in a different way. Here was the Lord Jesus at the grave of Lazarus, and he had lain in that grave four days. But Jesus was about to raise Lazarus from the dead; in a few minutes he would be alive and well again. Why then did Jesus weep? It is true that other friends of Lazarus were weeping, and especially his sisters, Martha and Mary. But why did not the Lord Jesus say, “You do not need to cry; I am going to raise him back to life again?” Why did He join in with their weeping?

It was true that in a few moments Lazarus would rise from the dead, but the Lord Jesus wept for another reason. He saw all the heartache and sorrow that sin had brought into this world, and He truly felt it with those who were so sad. They had probably seen Lazarus get sick, then get worse, and finally get weaker and weaker until he died. Jesus knew all this, and He felt it too.

Some people today accuse God of being indifferent to the suffering in this world, but that is not so. God cares a great deal about it. The Lord Jesus came right down into the world as a man, and experienced what it was like. Then He went to the cross, and suffered so that men and women could be saved.

Sometimes you and I, even as Christians, go through suffering. Perhaps someone we love gets seriously ill, or even dies. I knew a young girl (about twelve years old) some years ago whose grandmother died of cancer, and she was very upset about it. She had prayed that the Lord would heal her grandmother, but instead she died. Sometimes someone we love is involved in a serious car accident, and is badly hurt. Or maybe we lose something valuable, and it makes us very sad. The Lord Jesus cares about all that, and He wants to comfort us. He wants us to come to Him, because He loves us so much. He can comfort us better than anyone else.

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“If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not … but if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth” (John 11:9-10).

We might wonder why the Lord Jesus said these words, but He was explaining something very important to His disciples. He had just heard that His good friend Lazarus was very sick, but instead of going immediately to heal him, He had stayed where He was for two more days. Then, when he announced that they were going south to Judea again, His disciples reminded Him that just a little while ago, the Jews down there had tried to stone Him. Naturally speaking, we could say that the Lord Jesus had a hard decision to make. Should He go to help His good friend Lazarus, or avoid going to an area where He might get stoned?

Perhaps you have tried to walk at night without a flashlight, and found yourself stumbling and tripping over things. But if you walk in daytime, you can easily see. The Lord Jesus likens His guidance by the Holy Spirit to walking in the light. He did not simply guess at what He should do; He asked for guidance from His Father by the Holy Spirit, and He knew exactly what to do. He was not walking in darkness; He had perfect guidance, and knew that it was now time to go down to Judea. Of course, by this time Lazarus had died and was in his grave, but all this became an opportunity for an even greater miracle than simply healing him while he was still alive. God’s ways are always perfect.

If we are truly saved, we have the Spirit of God living in us, and can ask for guidance in our lives. Sometimes we are in difficult situations, and no matter what choice we might make, there seems to be some reason not to do it! But if we ask the Lord for guidance, He will show us what to do, and then we can go ahead with confidence.

Remember though, when we ask for help, we must be willing to do what He tells us. Sometimes when we ask the Lord about something, we have already made up our minds what we want to do, and we want the Lord to agree to it. But if we ask Him to help us, we must be perfectly willing to follow what He tells us.

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Growing in Grace Blog by Bible Truth Publishers

“And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour” (Matthew 17:18).

Many people today do not want to believe that demons (called devils in our verse) are real. They like to think that they are just imaginary beings, and do not actually exist. But demons are real; they are fallen angels who rebelled against God long ago, and Satan is their leader. They have a certain amount of power, and use this power to try and turn people away from God.

Here in our chapter there was evidently a child, a boy, who was possessed of a demon. That means that the demon actually lived in him, and made him do dangerous things. Sometimes demons make people have strange diseases that no one can cure, not even good doctors. People are afraid of the demons because of the power they have, but the Lord Jesus is more powerful.

Several years ago, a man in a foreign country I was visiting told me a story about a young man who heard the gospel and accepted Christ as His Savior. His parents worshiped idols, and were so angry that they told him to leave home and go to live somewhere else. He went to live with the family who had told him about the Lord Jesus, but after a few weeks his family contacted him and asked him to come home. Your younger sister is very sick, they said, and we do not know what to do. The doctors say that it is a demon, and that only a Christian can help her!

The young man immediately went home, knelt down beside his sister, put his hand on her shoulder, and prayed to the Lord, asking the demon to leave in the name of the Lord Jesus. The demon immediately left her and she felt perfectly well. That is the power of the name of the Lord Jesus! I wish I could tell you that her parents got saved, but that did not happen right away. But as you may imagine, they were very happy for their son to move back home again.

Demonic power was not so common in so-called Christian countries for many years, but as the Bible is being given up and people turn to false religions (or no religion at all!), Satan’s influence is increasing. We are seeing more evidence of demonic power in Western Europe and North America. But name of the Lord Jesus is still just as powerful as it was when He was here on earth, for He came into the world to destroy the works of the devil.

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“And He (Jesus) said unto them (His disciples), Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.

“And the people saw them departing … and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and outwent them, and came together unto Him. And Jesus … was moved with compassion toward them” (Mark 6:31-34).

The Lord Jesus had just heard that Herod had beheaded John the Baptist. As our verses tell us, He and His disciples were also weary, for there had been so many people coming and going that they had not had time even to eat! The Lord Jesus told His disciples that they were going to a desert place for a rest.

But the people saw them leave in a ship, and being rather thoughtless, they ran around the Sea of Galilee, and were waiting for the Lord Jesus and His disciples when they arrived on the other side. How would you have reacted if that had happened to you? I hate to think of what I would have said! Those people were thinking only of themselves! But the Lord Jesus felt sorry for them, and instead of “telling them off,” He began to teach them. In another scripture it says that He healed their sick (Matthew 14:14). Then later, when it was time for them to go home, the Lord Jesus did not want to send them away hungry. He took five loaves and two fishes, and multiplied them so that they fed about five thousand men. There was even food left over! Only then did He send the people away. There is no record that either the Lord Jesus or His disciples got any rest that day.

This story is a good example for us. The Lord Jesus was a real man, and like you and me, He needed rest. But He did not come into this world to take a rest; He came to do the Father’s will. When He saw people who needed healing and teaching, He took the time to do it instead of resting.

God has left us here in this world to serve Him, and to represent Him to the people here. Sometimes they are thoughtless and may want us to do things for them when we are tired. At times like these we need to ask the Lord if these requests are something He wants us to do. Then the Lord will give us the strength to do it, and give us the right attitude too. Our rest will be in heaven, not down here.

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Growing in Grace Blog by Bible Truth Publishers

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14).

“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division” (Luke 12:51).

When the Lord Jesus was born in the manger in Bethlehem, we read in our first verse that the angels came and told the shepherds, who were out keeping watch over their flocks at night. Then suddenly the angels spoke, telling everyone that this occasion meant glory to God, and peace on earth. What a wonderful message this was! Men had been fighting ever since sin entered this world. How nice it would be to have peace on earth!

Yet we find later on in the same gospel of Luke that the Lord Jesus warned people that He had not come to give peace on earth, but rather division. What had happened? Why could He not give peace on earth? Had the angels really said something that the Lord Jesus was not ready to do?

The answer is that the Lord Jesus came into the world as the rightful King of Israel. If He had been accepted by the nation of Israel, He would have set up His kingdom and reigned over this world. But people, especially the Jewish nation, did not want the Lord Jesus. They eventually said, “We will not have this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:14). They wanted to get rid of the Lord Jesus, because He reminded them that they were sinners and needed a Savior.

But thankfully some people did believe on the Lord Jesus, and this produced the division that the Lord Jesus speaks of in our second verse today. Ever since the Lord Jesus has come into this world, it has been divided between those who are saved and those who are lost. As the Lord Jesus pointed out, sometimes even families are split on this most important decision.

The world today continues to be divided on the Lord Jesus. Some do not want Him, and do not want to be reminded that they need a Savior. Others who know Him as Savior love Him, and love to hear about Him. To which group do you belong?

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Growing in Grace Blog by Bible Truth Publishers

“But the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30).

Do you know how many hairs there are on your head? It would be quite a big job to count them all, yet this verse tells us that the Lord knows how many are on each of our heads. If you are interested, then I can tell you approximately how many hairs you have, and it actually depends on your hair color. People with blond hair usually have the most; they can have up to 150,000 hairs on their scalps. Others with darker hair probably have close to 100,000, or maybe even 110,000. People with red hair have the fewest, perhaps about 90,000. Of course all these numbers can vary, depending on the size of your head. Also, as we get older, we tend to lose some of our hair, as it gets thinner. Some people, especially men, frequently go bald, and then their “hair count” goes down considerably. But what an amazing fact it is that the Lord actually keeps track of all this!

The Lord does this to show us how much He cares for us, and how much He loves us. But more important than our hair count, is the fact that He knows everything about us, even what we are thinking. When the Lord Jesus was on earth, he sometimes answered people according to their thoughts, for he knew exactly what was going through their minds. When He answered them this way, it ought to have shown them clearly that He was God, although He became a man too. But sad to say, most people did not believe on Him.

However, for us who know the Lord Jesus, it should give us real peace to know that He knows all about us, and cares for us. It is a great comfort to know that someone who knows everything about us is also looking after us!

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