Writing to Christians, Peter used all of the ideas in Exodus 19:5,6: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you . . . " (1 Peter 2:9).

Abraham is the prime example of how salvation works: the forefather of all who trust in God’s promises enough to actually walk by faith. And when the whole host of Abraham’s spiritual family gets together in heaven, what a reunion that’s going to be!

"It is to [the coming Prophet] you shall listen," Moses had said in Deuteronomy 18:15. And when Jesus was transfigured and seen talking to Moses and Elijah, God spoke from heaven and said, "This is my beloved Son; listen to him" (Mark 9:7).

When it comes to the most important parts of life, the broken heart is not a problem; it’s a blessing (Matthew 5:3,4). As long as sin is a reality in our lives, we will need to see it for what it is and, in godly sorrow, seek God’s forgiveness.

In Hebrews 12:2, Jesus is the supreme example of faith: both the 'archegos' (leader, pioneer) and the 'teleiotes' (completer, perfecter) of faith’s endurance. As far as “the faith” is concerned, Jesus is both the Originator and the Consummator of it.

Martha saw the force of what Jesus said. He would be nothing less than God Himself, totally breaking the power of sin and death -- founding a kingdom where the redeemed people of God could enjoy a life that was "eternal" in every sense of the word.

Is the stupendous glory of God's creation lost on us? Do we not have eyes to see? Are we not paying attention? If not, it's imperative that we rise above the little worries of our lives. We must allow ourselves to be moved by the majesty of our God.

Because we need to know more of God than we can know with our present limitations, we need to have greater minds and hearts. The ability to know God more fully and glorify Him more properly is the noblest goal to which our intellect can aspire.

Because God is good, any word that He has spoken is good. To love, revere, and respect Him is to rejoice whenever He speaks. "The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart . . . more to be desired are they than gold" (Psalm 19:8,10).

The lives we lead grow out of the thoughts we think. And since our thinking about God is the most basic thinking we do, it's also the most basic determinant of our behavior. Our character and our conduct are determined by the way we think about God.

The gravity of saying anything untrue about God is such that it would be better to remain silent than to speak in error. And yet, we often speak with shocking carelessness about God, casually tossing around opinions about Him as if it were a game.

Maybe the reason we don't make any more progress than we do is that we're content with so little. We pick up a scrap or two of knowledge and we cease our search, when in reality we can know a God whose riches of truth are vast and deep and strong.

To be without God in the world is a nightmare of loneliness to any honest person. But to be without Him in the next will be worse -- worse than any earthly nightmare can know. "No one is so much alone in the universe as a denier of God" (Richter).

God doesn't answer all our questions, and it's often frightening to be without information that we think we need. Yet if we trust God, we'll do this. When we don't have all the information we want, we must be content to have Him, our only true need.

Compared to our eternal hope, pain can be seen as a temporary problem. At present, we're still in the temporary part of God's scheme of redemption. But the eternal part is coming, and that's where our hearts and minds need to be fixed.

Jesus did not experience the negative, corrosive emotions that normally make pain so horrible for us. Much of our suffering comes from anger, resentment, and self-pity. But Jesus refused to respond to pain in these ways; so His pain was much purer.

It's not a burden but a privilege to be such creatures as we are: human beings. We should accept the honor that God has bestowed upon us. Our God-given endowments are wonderful; we should be grateful for them and use them to the praise of His glory.

Our only hope is the gospel of Christ, which is a plan of forgiveness based on grace. Yet the grace is extended only to those who have enough love for the truth to acknowledge the damage they've done, without any attempt to soften the situation.