The Vision (9.26.25): And the LORD was with Joseph

 

Image: Scene from morning walk, North Garden, Virginia, September 26, 2025.

Note: Devotional taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 39.

And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian (Genesis 39:2).

Notice the three statements in v. 2:

First: “And the LORD was with Joseph.” This key statement is repeated no less than four times in this chapter, twice in the beginning (vv. 2, 3) and twice at the end (vv. 21, 23). Some have called this the Emmanuel Principle. Paul summed this up in Romans 8:31 when he asked, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

Second: “and he was a prosperous man.” Last we heard of Joseph in Genesis 37 he had been stripped of his coat of many colors, cast into a pit, most likely naked, and sold into slavery. He had no clothes, no money, no possessions, no family (they had sold him!), and yet Moses says, “and he was a prosperous man.” This is before he rose to the top. He was a prosperous man when he was a naked slave at the bottom of a waterless pit. The man who has Christ in his heart is never a poor man, but he is a prosperous man. This statement is not about the outer but the inner man.

Third: “and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian.” Later, Moses will say, “and he served him” (v. 4). Joseph had respect for those in a sphere of authority over him. He was not anti-authoritarian. He trusted in the providence of God. The LORD was with him, and, in the end, the evil done to him would be turned to good (see Genesis 50:20, perhaps the theme verse of the entire Joseph narrative).

As the LORD was with Joseph, so he is always with his elect.

The Dutch Christian Corrie Ten Boom who suffered in a concentration camp in WW2 wrote, “There is no pit so deep enough, that He is not deeper still” (as cited by J. Currid, Genesis 2:232).

In describing the birth of our Lord, Matthew cites Isaiah 7:14 to say of Christ, “and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us” (Matthew 1:23). In Hebrews 13:5 the Lord says to his saints by his apostle, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

Whether we stand at the pinnacle of power or on the floor of the prison, we who believe in Christ know it to be true. He is with us, and that is always enough.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 335: ERIKA KIRK, "Father, forgive them," & the TENACITY of LUKE 23:34a

 

JTR

The Vision (9.19.25): Can anything good come out of unrighteous Judah? (Genesis 38)

Image: Fall tomatoes ripening in the window, North Garden, Virginia, September 2025.

Note: Devotional taken from last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 38.

“And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I…” (Genesis 38:26).

Genesis 37 ended in v. 36 with the note that Joseph was sold as a slave into the house of Potiphar. The Joseph narrative will continue in Genesis 39:1. But what is in-between Genesis 37 and Genesis 39? Genesis 38.

This chapter is not about Joseph. In fact, Joseph’s name is not even mentioned. Some of the old rationalistic scholars of the modern era even went so far as to say, wrongly, that this chapter had been forcibly inserted into the account of Joseph narrative, sort of like trying to ram a square peg into a round hole, denying the unity and integrity and preservation of Holy Scripture.

Genesis 38 is about Joseph’s brother Judah (cf. 37:26-27). So what are we to make of it? What spiritual lessons do we find? It really is a sordid story. It is an R-rated story. Judah does almost everything wrong:

He chooses ungodly companions (vv. 1, 12).

He does not choose a godly wife (v. 2).

He burns with lust (v. 2, 15-16).

He raises two elder sons who are so wicked that God strikes them down (vv. 7-10).

He does not provide for his son’s widow Tamar (v. 11, 14).

He makes promises to her that he either never had any intention of keeping or simply refused to keep (v. 11).

He seeks out a woman whom he thinks is a harlot (but is really Tamar in disguise) (vv. 15-16).

Driven by impetuous lustful desires, he offers up precious tokens (v. 18).

He commits fornication with a woman he thinks is a prostitute (v. 18).

He is a hypocrite, who orders the death penalty for his daughter in law, but takes no accountability for himself (v. 24).

He only seems to express remorse when he is exposed (v. 26).

The label over this entire chapter could be simply, “total depravity.”

The only sliver of light appears when Judah at least acknowledges that Tamar’s righteousness exceeded his own (v. 26). This foreshadows the fact that later when he and his bothers are confronted with what they did to their brother Joseph, they will feel shame and remorse. Relating to Joseph, it also sets up a foil with what happens next to Joseph in Potiphar’s house in Genesis 39. Whereas Judah ran headlong into fornication, Joseph will flee from it (39:18).

Still, we ask: How could anything good come from unrighteous Judah?

As in Genesis 37, God is also seemingly absent from this chapter, his name never being mentioned. He is there, however, as an unmentioned presence working out his will, and pulling it out of even twisted and ungodly circumstances.

Tamar had twin sons of Judah, Pharez (or Phares) and Zarah (vv. 27-30).  To get the significance of this we need to turn to the genealogies of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels. Matthew 1:3 (in the line of Joseph, Christ’s legal father) lists Phares “of Tamar” in the family tree of our Lord. Luke 3:33 also lists Phares in the line of Mary, his natural mother.

From this line, in the fulness of time, would come the Lord Jesus Christ. As one has put it, God very often strikes straight licks from crooked sticks. From unrighteous Judah came Christ, the standard of righteousness. God is working out his plan of salvation in Christ, in the midst of a fallen world, and this plan cannot be thwarted by the unrighteousness of men!

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

The Vision (9.12.25): Joseph & the Lord Jesus Christ (Genesis 37)

 

Image: Cobwebs by round bales. North Garden, Virginia. September 2025.

Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Genesis 37:

Genesis 37 begins the inspired narrative of the life of Joseph, an account which extends through Genesis 50. It tells us how his envious brothers hated him and sold him into slavery. What do we draw from this inspired account?

We are reminded that there is a sovereign God who is working out his perfect and all-wise will in all the providential circumstances of this life, including in the face of evil, in grief and pain and loss.

It is noteworthy that the name of God nowhere explicitly appears in this chapter. He is not always named, but He is always there.

And we see something in this lesser story, shadows and hints, of a greater story, if we compare Joseph with the Lord Jesus Christ:

Joseph was the beloved son of his father Jacob (Genesis 37:3).

The Lord Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of the Father from all eternity, made flesh in the fullness of time (John 1:14, 18; Galatians 4:4).

Joseph was given special revelation by God, as a dreamer (37:5-11, 19).

Christ is the prophet, priest, and king, who spoke the Word of God. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said, over and again, “Ye have heard it said….but I say unto you…”

Joseph was hated of the brothers he was sent to deliver from the death of famine (37:4).

John said of Christ, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:10). Christ himself said in John 3:19, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

Joseph came seeking his brethren to do them good on behalf of their father (37:13).

John 3:16 says, “God so love the world that he gave [sent] his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

Christ told in Mark 12 the parable of the vineyard owner whose husbandmen abused his servants sent to them, till finally he sent his own dear son, and they said, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours” (Mark 12:7).

Joseph was stripped of his coat and cast into a waterless pit (37:23).

Christ was stripped of his clothing for which the soldiers cast lots; he was crucified, and then placed in a tomb.

Joseph was sold by his brother for 20 pieces of silver (37:28).

Christ was betrayed by Judas one of the twelve, a friend like a dear brother, for 30 pieces of silver (Matthew 26:15).

Joseph’s coat was dipped in the blood of a kid of a goat (37:31).

Christ shed his own blood on the cross, and He gave himself a ransom for many.

Jacob mourned and wept at the loss of his son, though he did not know Joseph still lived (37:34-35).

The disciples wept and mourned at the death of Christ, not knowing, at first, that he would, as he said, be gloriously raised on the third day.

Our Lord was under the power of death for three days. For 36 terrible hours. 12 hours Friday evening. 24 hours from midnight Friday to midnight Saturday. And for six more hours from midnight Saturday till the early morning on the first day of the week. But then he was gloriously raised just as he said, and death was swallowed up in victory.

One of the great themes throughout this Joseph account will be summed up when Joseph meets those brothers years later in Genesis 50:20, and he says to them, “ye thought evil against me, but God meant it for good.” That is the Old Testament equivalent to Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Joseph was a great man with a great story, and he had a great role in God’s plan of salvation. But Christ is a greater man than Joseph, with a greater story. He is the Savior of all men. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 332: Discussion: TYNDALE: The Costly Legacy of Faithful Bible Translations

 

Tyndale Film website.

JTR

The Vision (9.5.25): Ambassador in Bonds

 

Chains, Roman period. Archaeological Museum in Durrës Albania.

Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 6:18-24.

For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak (Ephesians 6:20).

As Paul draws his epistle to the Ephesians to a close, he exhorts them to pray “always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:18). He asks them to make supplication “for all saints,” including himself: “and for me” (vv. 18-19), just as he beseeched the Thessalonians, “Brethren, pray for us” (1 Thessalonians 5:25).

Paul refers to himself in Ephesians 6:20 as “an ambassador in bonds.” This is a title he also used in his second epistle to the Corinthians:

2 Corinthians 5: ²⁰ Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

²¹ For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

The title of ambassador is one taken from secular diplomacy. The ambassador would represent his sovereign king. He did not make announcements or call for actions based on his own personal authority but merely conveyed the commands and instructions that were given him by his king.

Paul is saying that this was his calling as an apostle and a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. We might say that call continues today among all his servants.

In a classic book on preaching, the famed Welsh pastor D. M. Lloyd-Jones wrote about the preacher as "ambassador.” He said,

An ambassador is not a man who voices his own thoughts or his own opinions or views, or his own desires… In other words, the content of the sermon is what is called in the New Testament 'The Word.'

I do not bring my own thoughts and ideas, I do not just tell people what I think or surmise: I deliver to them what has been given to me. I have been given it, and I give it to them. I am a vehicle, I am a channel, I am an instrument, I am a representative (Preaching & Preachers, 61).

That is true for every preacher and for every believer who bears witness to his faith in Christ. Christ is our King, and we must faithfully represent him.

Notice that in v. 20b Paul repeats the request made in v. 19: “that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” This conveys the fact that Paul, though he makes this request from prison, saw himself not as doing something particularly extra-ordinary or praise-worthy. He was simply doing his duty as a minister of Christ, and he asked the church’s prayers to help him maintain this task.

Let us learn from the apostle to be bold, whatever our outward circumstances, to serve as faithful ambassadors for Christ.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 331: "PhD Onlyism": The Critic Critiqued

 

JTR

Newly Revised Edition of Spanish Translation of "John Owen on Scripture"

From my x post.

Got in the mail yesterday a copy of a newly revised edition of the Spanish translation of my book John Owen on Scripture. The revision was completed by David Astudillo and now has Scripture citations using the @tbsbibles Spanish Bible (RV-SBT).

The new edition was prompted by a request from my friend Pastor Julio Benitez who had copies of the new edition of the book printed and distributed earlier this summer to attendees at a conference at @SRLSeminary in Colombia. SDG!

JTR

The Vision (8.29.25): Put on the whole armour of God

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 6:10-17.

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil (Ephesians 6:11).

In Ephesians 6:11-17 the apostle Paul offers one his most expressive, intriguing, and enduring metaphors for the equipment needed by believers for living the Christian life. It requires putting on the whole armour [panoplia] of God.

This is a martial or military image of the Christian life. The Christian life is like a military contest. It involves spiritual warfare. Later theologians will contrast the church on earth as “the church militant,” as over against the church in heaven as “the church at rest.”

There are other places where Paul uses this type of military imagery. He sometimes refers to his ministry colleagues as his “fellowsoldiers.” In Philippians 2:5 he refers to Epaphrodites as “my brother, and companion in labor, and fellowsoldier.” In Philemon 1:2 he refers to Archippus as “our fellowsoldier.” He speaks of Christian service as like that of serving as a soldier in battle. In 1 Timothy 6:12 Paul exhorts Timothy: “Fight the good fight of the faith….” In 2 Timothy 2:3 Paul further exhorted Timothy to “endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”

In modern times, some Christians became uncomfortable with the martial imagery. Back in the 1980s some mainline Protestant churches even removed the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” for fear that its words might be misunderstood. BTW, it is still in our Trinity Hymnal (# 490) under the topic line, “The Christian Warfare.”

Paul, in using this martial imagery, was certainly not advocating violence. It is a metaphor. This is what the spiritual struggle of the Christian life is like. Paul exhorts, “Put on the whole armour of God…” (v. 11) and “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God…” (v. 13).

The apostle was drawing an analogy from a reality that was familiar to his first readers. All the Ephesians would likely have seen a Roman soldier (the most lethal and feared and capable warrior of the first century) fully decked out with his military kit, allowing him not only to defend himself when attacked but also to go on the offensive.

The Christian is to arm himself spiritually with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, having feet shod with the gospel of peace, taking the shield of faith, and taking the helmet of salvation (Ephesians 6:14-17a). Finally, he is to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (v. 17b).

May we thus arm ourselves so that we might stand “in the evil day” (v. 13).

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Article: "To the saints which are at Ephesus": Retrieving the Classic Christian Consensus on the Intended Audience of Ephesians

 

Article: Jeffrey T. Riddle, "To the saints which are at Ephesus": Retrieving the Classic Christian Consensus on the Intended Audience of Ephesians," in Bible League Quarterly, No. 502 (July-September, 2025), 24-33. Read the article here on academia.edu.

JTR

The Vision (8.22.25): Duties of Servants and Masters

 

Image: Zinnias, North Garden, Virginia, August 2025.

Note: Devotion based on last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 6:5-9.

Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh…. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there any respect of persons with him (Ephesians 6:5a, 9).

Paul’s “household code” in Ephesians 5:21—6:9 addresses three key relationships: wives and husbands, children and fathers, and servant and masters. That third pair is the thorniest to understand and interpret in our contemporary context. Some, including R. C. Sproul, have suggested we consider Paul’s instructions as applying to employees and employers (see Ephesians, 146-147). We can also apply all of this teaching, in general, as principles in living the Christian life and especially how we relate to one another as “superior, inferiors, or equals.”

Here are three gleanings:

First, we should consider this passage if we are employees. Do we serve with fear and trembling, with singleness of heart, as to Christ? Or, do we serve only with eyeservice as menpleasers, rather than as slaves of Christ, doing his will? Do we serve with good will, to the Lord and not to men, knowing one day we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10)?

Second, we should consider this passage if we are employers, managers, or supervisors. How do we treat those who work under our authority? Do we treat them as we would like to be treated (Matthew 7:12)? Do we rely on threatening? Do we understand that we have a Master in heaven?

Third, we are reminded that the church is composed of all kinds of people: women and men, young and old, and people with all kinds of societal standings. And the God we worship is not a respecter of persons.

I’ve been reading again recently through D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s classic book Preaching & Preachers. In a chapter on the congregation, he addresses the folly of ministers who are always trying to adjust their message to fit their audience. He noted once preaching the simple gospel at a church in Oxford attended by many university related people. Later a woman approached and thanked him for not trying to put on some kind of intellectual show, but just reminding them they were sinners who needed Christ.

Lloyd-Jones says the preacher does not need to know the particulars of his congregation, but to know there is a general, common need. He writes:

[The Christian preacher] knows the problem of the factory worker, he knows the problem of the professional man; because it is ultimately precisely the same. One may get drunk on beer and the other on wine, as it were, but the point is that they both get drunk; one may sin in rags and the other in an evening dress but they both sin. ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.’ ‘There is righteous, no not one.’ ‘The whole world lieth guilty before God’…. The glory of the Church is that she consists of all these types and kinds and all the possibly varieties and variations of humanity; and yet because they all share this common life they are able to participate together and to enjoy the same preaching (Preaching & Preachers, 135).

We might say the gospel is a simple, one size fits all message, and we, as a church, need always to remember this.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Five Reasons to Use a Full Manuscript in Preaching

 

Note: From ,my X post.

Five quick reasons to use a full manuscript in preaching:

1. It requires and motivates careful preparation and detailed structure.

2. It allows careful articulation of difficult or controversial points.

3. It provides guardrails to avoid unhelpful tangents.

4. It allows freedom, however, for in-the-moment alterations, as needed.

5. It provides a resource for future ministry uses, like teaching, books, booklets, articles, blog posts, podcast scripts, etc.

JTR

The Vision (8.15.25): The Duties of Fathers to Children

 

Image: Cardinal Lobelia, Moscow, Michigan, August 2025.

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 6:1-4:

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4).

This teaching comes in the context of Paul’s “household code” in Ephesians. He addresses first here the duties of children to parents, based on the fifth commandment (Ephesians 6:1-3; cf. Exodus 20:12)

The corresponding admonition to parents in Ephesians 6:4 is directed specifically to the father. This tells us, as with the charges to wives and husbands (Ephesians 5:22-33), about the special responsibilities of men, according to the order of creation, within the family.

Notice again that these instructions to fathers is what would have surprised the first readers. They assumed the power and authority of the father as the Pater Familias, the head of the household. In the Roman context a father was an absolute power in the home. He literally had the authority of life and death when an infant was born. What the first hearers would have been struck by is the fact that he had duties to his children to treat them in a responsible and loving manner, seeking especially their spiritual good.

Paul begins with a negative command, “ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath” (v. 4a). Some modern versions read, “Do not exasperate your children.” The father does not exercise discipline and rule so as to crush the spirits of his children, or to make them angry due to his cruelty or indifference or unloving spirit towards them.

R. C. Sproul wrote on this passage:

This doesn’t mean that every time a child becomes angry with a parent, it is because the parents have been guilty of unjust provocation. But there is such a thing as a belligerent, insensitive, harsh, and stentorian type of discipline which so frustrates children that they are filled with hostility and resentment towards their parents which then spills over into the rest of their lives (Ephesians, 145).

Paul then offers two positive commands:

First, but bring them up in the nurture (paideia, a term referring to education and discipleship), and second, in the instruction (nouthesia, counsel or exhortation) of the Lord.

The Puritans described the family as like a “little church.” The father acts as a pastor and as a priest in his household. He is concerned for the spiritual well-being of his children above all, just as his duty to his wife was for her sanctification (cf. Ephesians 5:26-27).

How beautiful it is when these two things work together in harmony: When children honor parents in the Lord and when godly fathers, alongside their wives and the mother of their children, raise their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Note: In the Practical Application at the close of last Sunday’s sermon on Ephesians 6:1-4, I offered a list of some of the duties of children and parents (fathers) drawn from some teaching from past years. You can review some of this sort of family material previously posted to my blog here:

Five Duties of Children to Parents.

Five Duties of Parents to Children.

The Puritan Thomas Vincent’s list of seven duties for children and parents (1674).

A Summary of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ book Raising Children God’s Way.

Book Review: Keith Underhill, Planted by the Providence of God: The Story of Trinity Baptist Church, Nairobi

 

You can find a pdf of the written review here on my academia.edu page.

JTR

The Vision (7.18.25): Instructions on Singing Praise (Ephesians 5:19)

 

Image: Butterfly bush, North Garden, Virginia, July 2025.

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 5:17-21.

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord (Ephesians 5:19).

In last Lord’s Day morning’s sermon we noted five essential aspects of wise Christian living as presented in Ephesians 5:17-21, including (1) Understand the Lord’s will (v. 17); (2) Be filled with the Spirit (v. 18); (3) Sing in your heart to the Lord (v. 19); (4) Give thanks always for all things (v. 20); and (5) Be submitted in the fear of God (v. 21).

Regarding v. 19, we noted the exhortation for believers to sing praise. This passage, along with Colossians 3:16, is one of the most important prooftexts in Scripture to justify singing as an element in corporate worship.

Can you believe that there was once a great controversy among early Particular Baptists as to whether singing was part of Scripturally sanctioned worship? Eventually singing was affirmed, in part by appeals to Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16.

We strive to follow the Regulative Principle of worship, meaning we want everything we do in worship to be something God has commanded in his word.

Notice at least four insights in Ephesians 5:19 regarding singing:

First, there is a horizontal aspect to singing:

“Speaking to yourselves….” Congregational singing offers mutual exhortation, comfort, and edification to the saints.

Second, we are to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Some say this means, “Psalms, Psalms, and Psalms” (“hymns” means Biblical Psalms and “spiritual songs” means inspired by the Spirit, according to this view).

At the least, it means we should include canonical Psalms (from the book of Psalms) in our singing.

We hold that there can also sing songs drawn from other places in Scripture (beyond the Psalms), and that we can sing uninspired, yet sound, songs of praise, if they are Biblically faithful, just as we can offer prayers and preach sermons whose words are not inspired, but yet, are still edifying. Still, we ought also to sing the Psalms. With singing uninspired texts we always run a risk of saying things in error.

Third, singing must come from the heart.

The standard is not musical excellence, but singing sincerely and faithfully “in your heart.”

Fourth, there is also a predominant vertical aspect to singing.

Although, as noted above, there is a horizontal aspect to singing, in the end, our singing is not merely for man, but it is directed “to the Lord.” As Psalm 96:1 exhorts, “Sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD, all the earth.”

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

WM 330: Changes coming to Modern Bibles

 

JTR

Vision (7.11.25): Walking as children of light and walking circumspectly

 

Image: Blueberries, North Garden, Virginia, July 2025.

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 5:8-16.

“Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8).

“See then that ye walk circumspectly” (Ephesians 5:15).

Paul uses “walking” in Ephesians as a metaphor for conducting the Christian life. This began in Ephesians 4:1 when he exhorted believers to “walk worthy” of their calling and continued in Ephesians 5:2 with the command to “walk in love.”

In Ephesians 5:8 this theme persists as Paul exhorts believers to “walk as children of light,” in other words, to live as Christians.

He adds in 5:15 an exhortation to “walk circumspectly,” which means carefully, intentionally, and deliberately.

At the end of v. 15 we hear the spirit of Solomon. Walk “not as fools but as wise” (cf. Proverbs 3:5-6; 9:10).

He adds in v. 16, “Redeeming the time…” The verb “to redeem” means to purchase out of the marketplace. We usually think of this term as relating to salvation, but here it applies to sanctification. It means, Make the most of your time. Be a good steward of your time. Do not wander about aimlessly in life. Don’t fritter away your time. Make the best use of it for the spiritual good of yourself and of others.

Time is slipping away and soon our days will be gone. How will we have spent them?

R. C. Sproul observed on this passage: “We are called to be productive Christian people, and in order to be productive, we must be careful with our use of time. I have as much time in the day as the President of the United States has. To make the most of every opportunity means to make wise use of it, so that the things we are doing are productive and helpful, not destructive and wasteful” (Ephesians, 129).

It is likely not accidental that a great watch making industry developed in Geneva, Switzerland, the city of John Calvin and a center of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformers taught that we were to be good stewards of every minute in our lives, so they wanted carefully to measure it.

Life can indeed be swept away in a moment. I think of those floods that swept through Texas last week. I think of the dear brother in our church whose mortal life was also swept away so unexpectedly last week. Who knows if we will make it through this day, this week, this month, this year. Psalm 31:15 says, “My times are in thy hand.”

Paul says, “the days are evil” (5:16) He means we are living in this present evil world (cf. Galatians 1:4). We are living between the times, between the ages. We are awaiting the return or our Lord and the redemption of our bodies at the resurrection. But this does not mean we merely rest in passivity in this life. It means active living of the Christian life, active pursuit of faithfulness and holiness.

It calls for walking as children of light and walking circumspectly.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle

Sermon: Does the Bible teach the "Rapture"?

Message from last Sunday afternoon (6.29.25) at CRBC in eschatology series:

Outline: 1. Review of three passages suggested by dispensationalists to provide the "biblical basis" for the "Rapture": John 14:1-3; 1 Thessalonians ; 1 Corinthians -52 (cf. MacArthur's Study Bible). 2. A sober evaluation and interpretation of those passages. 3. Conclusion and practical application.

JTR

The Vision (7.4.25): Following God and Living Life "As Becometh Saints"

 

Image: David's Phlox, North Garden, Virginia, July 2025.

Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Ephesians 5:1-7.

“Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children” (Ephesians 5:1).

“But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints” (Ephesians 5:3).

The beginning of Ephesians 5 continues a theme commenced in Ephesians 4:1 when Paul beseeched believers to walk worthy of the “vocation” wherewith they were called. He was exhorting the Ephesians believers to live as genuine and sincere Christians, not as a phonies or hypocrites.

One of the key statements that stands out as expressing this core thought is found in Ephesians 5:3 which speaks of believers conducting themselves in their practical living “as becoming saints,” or, as is fitting or right for saints. “Saints” means “holy ones,” not super-believers, but ordinary men and women who have been made holy and set apart by Christ.

What things are we to pursue and what things are we to avoid if we desire to live in such a way as is fitting for professed followers of the Lord Jesus?

Paul begins, “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.” The verb here for “to follow” in Greek is mimeo, which means to mimic or to imitate.

Christ called men like Peter and Andrew, James and John to leave their fishing nets and to follow him, to become his disciples and to imitate him, to make him the model or template upon which they constructed their life and behavior.

In 1 Corinthians 11:1 Paul said, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” The word for “followers” here is a noun that comes from the same root as the verb mimeo in Ephesians 5:1. So Paul was saying, “Be ye imitators or mimics of me, as I imitate or mimic Christ.”

In Acts 11:26 Luke says the disciples of the risen Lord Jesus were first called “Christians” at Antioch. “Christians” was meant as a term of disparagement, but the followers of Christ took it as a badge of honor. They were “imitators” of Christ, little “Christs.”

Let us each examine our own hearts and lives. Are we following Christ? Are we living in such way “as becometh saints”? May the Lord himself help us so to do.

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle