In your imagination right now, visualize a rubber duck.  What does it look like?  Certainly its head is distinct from its body, sitting erect on the front edge of the body.  It has an orange beak and two eyes.  It likely has a tail-like feather sticking up in the back and even a wing-like protrusion on each side.  It is molded to…

We continue looking at the New Testament church, seeing what good things they were doing but also looking at that which needed to be improved and then looking to the future to see what “ugly” and what “beautiful” things lay before them. By now you may have guessed we are looking at the seven churches of Asia mentioned in the book of…

Over the last few years, I’ve been learning the value of setting reminders on my phone for all sorts of things. I set reminders for everything now, and I have been much more consistent with meeting all my responsibilities. We can always use a good reminder. In 1 Thessalonians 5:14-22, when closing his letter, Paul left several reminders for the church to…

One of the things that makes Bible study so enjoyable is reading about faithful brothers or sisters in Christ for whom there is very little information given.  Why is that enjoyable?  First, it rejoices the heart that God saw fit to introduce them to us, even if they were not “a big name in the church” (from our perspective).  Second, it refreshes…

In our culture, we sometimes use the expression the good, the bad and the ugly. This is the third time we have used this phrase to describe various congregations in the first century. We have looked at Ephesus and Smyrna, and this week we turn our attention to the church at Pergamum. The church at Pergamum, a city devoted to paganism.  We…

This Saturday marks the 250th anniversary of the United States of America’s Declaration of Independence. On that day, America was born by proclaiming that England no longer had any hold on its North American colonies. It was a cry of freedom based on the Biblical principle that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Independence…

Sometimes a preacher’s mind will work in mysterious ways.  This is one of those times. In November 1986, the Georgia Satellites band released a single called “Keep Your Hands to Yourself.”  The lyrics were about a girl who firmly refused to get physically intimate with her boyfriend until they were married.  In the song, she kept saying to him, “Don’t give me…

Last week we began a brief series of articles based on the character of three main characters. The movie was entitled “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.” We have taken this phrase to use to describe the condition, both the good and the bad, of the churches we study. We use the last part of the phrase, the ugly, to describe the…