Author: Jim Cantelon

Read James 4

Key Verse: James 4:7, 8a “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” Years ago the American comedian Flip Wilson used to get lots of laughs when he would look innocently into the camera and explain some fictional bad behaviour by saying, “The devil made me do it!” It was funny, but that’s all. In the real world, the devil can’t make us do anything. Satan is a creature Like you and me, and all creation, he is subject to the creative activity of a Creator. The Creator. The devil can’t...

July 15, 2020

Matthew 5 The Pure in Heart v.8 – Part 2 Long before Jesus, the Psalms expressed the genius of the pure in heart: “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god” (Ps. 24:3,4). “Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in Heart” (Ps. 73:1) Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow” (Ps. 51:7). The pure in heart are free. Free from over-analysis of their faith. Free from lies. Free...

July 13, 2020

Recently my wife and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. We’re a bit in shock. How does this happen? We feel like it’s been around 20 years. 50 means we’re really old no? But the clock won’t be stopped. The only comfort is that we’re all aging, and at the same rate! At a milestone we tend to take stock of our lives. Have we grown? Have we loved? Have we made a difference in the world? Or have we, as author C.S. Lewis put it, “merely continued”? The encouraging thing is that even if we feel we’ve not lived significantly it’s not too late to change. A great place to start is to...

Read James 3

Key Verse: James 3:2 “For we all stumble in many things. If anyone does not stumble in word, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle the whole body.” If, indeed, the writer of this letter was Jesus’ half-brother, then it should comfort us to hear him say, “We all stumble in many things”. James was known in Jerusalem as “a Jew of the Jews”, a man of utmost piety and devotion to the Temple. There is a long-standing tradition that he used to climb the stairs to the Temple each day on his knees. He was highly regarded and respected as an ultra-Pharisee,...

Read James 2

Key Verse: James 2:18 “But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” One of the great statements from the letter of James is, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” ( (1:27, NIV). Contrast James’ “religion” with that of many others — the “religion” that is self focussed, self-absorbed, and self-defined;...

Read James 1

Key Verse: James 1:22 “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” I like the way the NIV puts it, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” There are three subjects for discussion here: 1. listening to the word, 2. self-deception, and 3. practising the word. When you look at the Greek verbs used in the New Testament for “deceive” (whether deciding others or oneself), there is a common denominator with some of them; it is best expressed by the humorous remark, “Don’t confuse me with...

Read Hebrews 13

Key Verse: Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever ” (NIV). Chapter 13 is sort of a postscript to the letter. The conclusion of the writer’s thought on the subject of Jesus’ superiority over the Law is “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (12:28,29). In this chapter, he rambles through what the NIV Bible calls “concluding exhortations?” But in the middle of it all is an especially...

Read Hebrews 12

Key Verse: Hebrews 12:22-24 “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, who names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (NIV) The anger of God is a fearful thing. The Bible makes it very clear that God’s wrath is raging because of sin, and...

July 8, 2020

Matthew 5 The Pure in Heart v. 8 – Part 1 I was raised on the Canadian prairies, son of a preacher who pastored small town churches. His congregants were subsistence farmers, all poor and semi-literate. My view of church “buildings” was limited. Most of them weren’t even purpose-built houses of worship. They were converted halls, barns, and abandoned store-front buildings. A couple of them even had wood shavings for flooring. So you can imagine my amazement when, years later, I first saw a cathedra. I was in Toronto on a high-school band trip. During some free time I...

Read Hebrews 11

Key Verse: Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” If we were to poll your local church and its members for definitions of faith, we might get as many definitions as people giving them. We’d hear everything from, “faith is religion” to “faith is a feeling”. Or we might hear something like a young boy’s definition in Sunday school one day, “faith is believing something you know isn’t true!” What is faith? Look at the writer’s definition — faith is something: the...

Read Hebrews 10

Key Verse: Hebrews 10:10 “And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (NIV). Let’s follow the writer’s reasoning in the first part of this chapter. The Mosaic Law, and the animal sacrifices it requires for sin, are only a “shadow” of the heavenly reality. Perfection is not achieved incrementally, year after year, but is given to the faithful by God once for all. All that the annual sacrifices on the Day of Atonement do is remind the believer that he/she is still a sinner and still guilty. Why? “Because...

Read Hebrews 9

Key Verse: Hebrews 9:14, 15 “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance — now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant” (NIV). God, for His own reasons (most of which are unknown to us), chose to link forgiveness of sin with the shedding...