1Timothy 1:18-20
Paul charges Timothy in the text, meaning he lays the responsibility upon him, according to the prophecies that came beforehand concerning him. The Spirit of God revealed things through the prophets of the early church that were to be both educational and an exhortation to help Timothy in the spiritual battles he would face. Paul’s charge was concerning two points to avoid a shipwreck of faith. He said, “holding faith, and a good conscience, which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck”. Then he uses two examples, Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom we find out later had gone in the ditch doctrinally, saying that the resurrection had passed already. Their blasphemies had overthrown the faith of other saints, not in the Lord, but in the resurrection. Paul said he had delivered them to Satan, meaning that he had excommunicated them from the local church.

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The nature of God is holiness – God is love, light, life, merciful, gracious, just, jealous, righteous, and a God of wrath and judgment but all these attributes are controlled by His holiness. Habakkuk 1:13 says that He cannot look upon iniquity so God cannot nor will not tolerate sin.
Perfection is His standard – That’s what He requires. Adam and Eve only had to sin once for death to pass upon them and to get displaced from the garden of God. Lucifer only had to want his will instead of submitting to God’s one time and he fell like lightning from heaven. That is the kind of God we will all face someday.

Hebrews 11:8-16
Abraham was, Saved, Sojourner, Stranger, and a Searcher.

In the text we just read, Jesus likens himself and his followers to a vineyard. He called himself the “true vine” or we would say root. He is the life source for all of the saved. He called his followers “branches” because of our connection and dependence on him. Just after he says that he is the true vine, he says “and my Father is the husbandman”. That’s not a term we use today; we would call him the farmer or the gardener. The husbandman owns the land on which he labors, it all belongs to him

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Immediately after the birth of Christ in scripture, the scene shifts to a group of shepherds that were in the same region doing what shepherds do…watching over sheep. The angel of the Lord appears to them and reveals that the greatest event in all of history has just taken place. The angel says the most gracious statement ever heard “for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord”. And over two thousand years later, we comprehend that these are tidings of great joy and they have been to all people. For the crowd that says that the birth of Christ shouldn’t be celebrated…heaven celebrated it!

This is the third message in a series called “For the glory of God”. The phrase “the glory of God” refers to when God can be seen…either his attributes, power or presence. The meaning of life on earth is to glorify God meaning that through our lives, God can be seen. God is glorified in us when are character reflects his character. He is glorified when we do his will – Matthew 6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. So God can be glorified in both who we are, and what we do. Sometimes God is glorified in our circumstances. The things that happen around us and to us that we have no control over.

When I was young sitting in Sunday school and they would teach the Bible stories about the well-known figures in scripture, I would build up an image of the people used by God as almost superhuman. That they were so far removed from someone like me that I had nothing in common with them. We sometimes think that there was something special about these people that God would call them to work through. But when I got older and studied the Bible through a more mature lens, I realized that that notion was completely wrong. God does the opposite of what we would do.