Genesis 45:16-47:12 – God’s Grace In Appearing to Jacob Again
God was not of a mind that His servant should be the slave of dread—HIS FEAR WAS TO BE REMOVED. Therefore, the Lord appeared to Jacob in the night visions, not to tell him of new empires, not to reveal to him the destinies of princes but simply to say to him, “Fear not.” It […]
Genesis 42:1-45:15 – Forgiving Others No Matter How Large The Offense
As freeing as it is to know that God holds no record of confessed sin, the forgiven one is now faced with the command to forgive others (Eph. 4:32). Forgiving others is not an option. It is a command. When we forgive we are conformed to the image of Christ in attitude and behavior. He […]
Genesis 40-41 – Trusting our Sovereign God in the Midst of Trial
Our hero is in prison. Not because he did wrong but because he did right. Here is the single most important fact about Genesis 40. At the beginning Joseph is in prison. At the end he is in prison. That’s not fair, but there it is. Here is [the] question: Are you willing to wait for God? In […]
Genesis 39 – Obedience Doesn’t Mean Trial-Free Living
When you find yourself in trouble, do you sometimes think, ‘I must have done something wrong? Perhaps I’ve missed God’s will and He’s punishing me’? No. Trouble is multi-sourced, and frequently unrelated to our wrongdoing or God’s punishment. The disciples weren’t in the storm by disobeying, but by obeying Jesus; not by rejecting God’s will, […]
Grace Liberates Identity – Women’s Event Recap
Before Friday, April 22, I had never paid so much attention to the glorious, biblical word “my.” I was among many CLC women, meeting in homes all over the Tampa Bay area. Together we watched a sermon by Paul Tripp called “Grace Liberates Our Identity.” With our Bibles open to Psalm 27, Tripp took time […]
Genesis 35:31-38:30 – Waiting on God as a Means of Grace
We live in a time of unprecedented self-centeredness—a time of envy, strife, divisions, immor-ality and broken relationships. Yet there is good news. In the midst of a time and generation like this, there is hope because there is a sovereign God who sits in the heavens and has not left His throne. He is going […]
Genesis 33-35 – The Blessing of Full Obedience and the Consequences of Partial Obedience
“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” All too often we sing the words to this familiar Christian hymn without giving them much thought. These important words convey exactly what the Bible teaches. The divine method for happiness and blessing is full trust in […]
Genesis 29-33 – Delight in the Giver Above the Gift
I wish to speak to you about Jesus, and Jesus only. I often hear people say, “I wish I could get hold of Divine Healing, but I cannot.” Sometimes they say, “I have got it.” If I ask them, “What have you got?” the answer is sometimes, “I have got the blessing”, sometimes it is, […]
Genesis 28 – The Gracious Provision of God In our Need
The vision of Jacob’s ladder is a stunning display of the divine grace. It provoked in the patriarch Jacob, a rather telling response of thanksgiving and gratitude. It was a display of grace that one of the commentators has called ‘unsought and unstinting.’ It was unsought because Jacob was no pilgrim or prodigal returning after […]
Genesis 27 – The Beauty of God’s Grace to the Unworthy
In Genesis 27, we see the blessing passed on to Jacob. As we have walked through the book of Genesis, we’ve been reminded on quite a few occasions of Abraham’s obedience in the light of God’s promises. We see Abraham willing to take his son up the mountain and slay him as a sacrifice. We […]
