William Barclay

Now, what are you gonna do about it? That's the cooperation between something He has done in eternity past that you ratified by your own belief in His Son.

Now, are you gonna live up to it? If God is doing His part, are we doing ours? I love the way William Barclay dealt with this idea of cooperating with His sovereign will with our own moral choices.

He, he put it this way.

Let me read it.

The simple fact that he mentioned wives first and mentioned them at all flew in the face of the culture in his day.

In his commentary, William Barclay has this to say, "Under Jewish law, a woman was a thing.

She was the possession of her husband.

She had no legal right whatsoever.

And I wonder, what tests of patience and kindness are you going through today? Paul goes on to write, "Love does not envy." It's not envious.

William Barclay writes, "There are only two classes of people in our country, those who are millionaires and those who wanna be." But the verb runs deeper than just desiring to be rich.

It's actually a dangerous warning.

Carries the idea of boiling over.

Uh, the old age is passing away, but the new age is never gonna pass away, and it's this into which we're following Jesus.

The New Testament, uh, scholar, William Barclay, uh, described it in this way, "The idea behind eternal life is the idea of a certain quality, a certain kind of life.

But what kind of life? Well, there's only one person who can properly be described by this adjective, eternal, and that one person is God.

Eternal life is the kind of life that, that God lives.

It's not envious.

William Barclay writes, there are only two classes of people in our country, those who are millionaires and those who want to be.

But the verb runs deeper than just desiring to be rich.

It's actually a dangerous warning.

Jesus, I'm not suggesting that I deserve to be counted amongst your covenant people, but Jesus, I need your help because my daughter is overwhelmed, because her situation is just desperate and I believe, I believe that you are the only one who can fix this.

Commentator William Barclay says, we can be sure that the smile on Jesus' face and the compassion in Jesus' eyes would have robbed his earlier words of any insult and bitterness.

So what do we have? We have a mother's love without doubt, don't we? We have a shocking response.

Well, yes, on the face of it, but one which makes us think much more deeply about the nature of the Lord Jesus' mission on earth, but also on the importance of persevering faith.

He cannot give grace if we're living in pride.

A Bible commentator by the name of William Barclay writes this, and I don't know if you have this in your notes, but you might wanna jot these down.

He says, "Pride shuts out God's, uh, God from us for three reasons.

Number one, pride does not know its own need." Pride does not know its own need.

Why? Because of pride.

So pride does not know its own need.

This is from William Barclay, B-A-R-C-L-A-Y.

Second, pride cherishes its own independence.