“ True Believers Like Wheat ” and “ The Wicked Like Chaff ” “John answered them all, ‘I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire’” (Luke 3:16–17). Let us meditate on this passage and receive its spiritual lessons: (1) When the people, who had long awaited the coming of the Messiah, began to wonder in their hearts whether John the Baptist might be the Messiah (Luke 3:15, Modern Translation ), John testified clearly that he was not the Messiah, but that the One coming after him was. (a) John 1:8 says: “He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light” ( Modern Translation : “He was not the light himself but came only to bear witness to the light”). (i) The purp...
“If God is for us” (2) [Romans 8:31-34] Look at Romans 8:32 – “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” Here, “His own son” refers to God the Son, the only begotten Son of God. The Father God sent His only begotten Son to this earth, and Jesus, the only begotten Son, came to this earth in obedience to the will of the Father God. Among the eight visions that the prophet Zechariah saw, the first was the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to the human world (Zech. 1:8). The vision he saw was of the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, standing [the word that the only begotten was standing three times (vv. 8, 10, 11)]. The Bible mainly depicts Jesus Christ sitting at the right hand of God (Mk. 16:19; Lk. 22:69; Col. 3:1; Heb. 1:3; 10:12; 12:2). But Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God before he...