“You know, this is really good. Don’t you just love it when gifted Bible expositors show you things in Scripture that you never saw there before? Some of us would never have thought that the embrace of marginality, to take just one example, could even have a trajectory. One hardly knows how to think about …
The Covetous Heart
We come now to the last of the Ten Commandments, the prohibition of covetousness. And with this requirement, we come to the fountainhead of all our love to our neighbor — a prohibition of any sinful refusal to be glad and grateful for the blessings of others. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you …
Attributes of God
1. The Holiness of God — When the biblical doctrine of salvation is first presented, one of the first responses men have is to question how this affects the holiness of God. So we begin there: Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, …
The Great Protection of Having No Roof
“The authors took the risk when they wrote this book that some bonehead readers (like the present reviewer) might be stone cold deaf to some of their nuances. You see, the Bible works against totalization and one of the reasons is that God has an overarching creational intent. Now how God can overarch something like …
Convergence
“Of course in the postevangelical world, when something is problematic, it is not necessary to solve the problem or answer the question. All that is necessary is to wrestle with the contours of it. Nevertheless, as listeners to the biblical story, our authors want us to consider doing the same. After all, if we listen …
Primer on Eschatology 2
14. Okay. Can you go back to hermeneutics? Once again, the word hermeneutic refers to the art, science and methodology of interpretation when approaching the text of the Bible. There are different hermeneutical schools of thought; we shall only consider the three options here that affect our discussion of eschatology. The allegorical method: An allegorist …
Biblical Anger
At this portion of His great sermon, Jesus comes to teach on murder, along with the thoughts and attitudes that are prohibited under the scriptural prohibition of murder. When God prohibits something, we cannot hide our disobedience through clever appeals to the technicalities. “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘”You …
Silence the Foe and Avenger
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! God of God, Light of Light, Father of all, we worship You now in the beauty of holiness. We clothe ourselves in the perfect name of Jesus Christ our Lord, and so it is that we can approach You. In Him, we …
Worship As Service
What have we gathered here to do? We are here to await God’s pleasure. This is what the word worship means—it means to wait upon God in order to offer the service He requires of us. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word is captured by Isaiah’s great response to his vision in the heavenlies, …
The Ultimate Toast
This Table is what it is, and it does what it does. That is to say, it is the Table of the covenant, and it winnows out covenant keepers from covenant breakers. Covenant keepers extend no hand to receive the elements but the hand of faith, and open no mouth to receive the bread and …