Culture is like gravity. We never talk about it, except in physics classes. We don’t include gravity in our weekly planning processes. No one gets up thinking about how gravity will affect their day. ...
John 2:15-16, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 2:1-2, John 15:18-19, James 4:4
The world, though, is protean: each generation has the world to deal with in a new form. World is an atmosphere, a mood. It is nearly as hard for a sinner to recognize the world’s temptations as it is...
Context I had a Bible professor in college who liked to say, “All Scripture is cultural!” He didn’t mean that the truth of who God is changes in different cultures. What he meant was that our God ch...
Context I had a Bible professor in college who liked to say, “All Scripture is cultural!” He didn’t mean that the truth of who God is changes in different cultures. What he meant was that our God ch...
Matthew 13:24-30, Matthew 16:18, Ephesians 2:3, Romans 5:10, Luke 5:31, Matthew 10:30, 1 Peter 5:8, Psalm 73:4-7, 13, 18-20
Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all the humans and animals ...
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43, Matthew 16:18, Ephesians 2:3, Romans 5:10, Luke 5:31, Matthew 10:30, 1 Peter 5:8, Psalm 73:4-7, 13, 18-20
Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Wheat and Weeds Grow Even in the Church God’s good creation grows food for all living creatures. God made the Earth, God made all the plants, and God made all ...
Where do you turn for marriage advice when you aren’t religious? This is becoming an ever-increasing question as western cultures become more and more secular. One option is to turn to the London-base...
In their excellent book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien share the importance of recognizing the lens through which see the world: We speak as insi...
Context of Galatians I still remember my intro to New Testament class in college and the professor discussing Paul’s letter to the Galatians. All of Paul’s other letters begin with words of adoration...
Preaching Commentary Context of Galatians I still remember my intro to New Testament class in college and the professor discussing Paul’s letter to the Galatians. All of Paul’s other letters begin ...
What, then, does the author intend to communicate in verses 1-4? He proclaims that an authoritative and authentic high priest must both identify with and be distinct from those to whom he ministers. ...
Cultural diversity was built into the Christian faith…in Acts 15, which declared that the new gentile Christians didn’t have to enter Jewish culture…. The converts had to work out…a Hellenistic way of...
God’s grace is present in all people and cultures. As we submit ourselves to learning from other cultures, we catch glimpses of God’s grace that would be unavailable in our own culture.
Philippians 3:14, Matthew 7:13-14, 1 Peter 5:8-9, Colossians 2:8, Psalm 1:1-3, Ephesians 4:14, Romans 12:2
Perhaps the most intense place to experience drifting is commonly known as the EAC, the East Australian Current. If you’ve ever seen the Disney Pixar film Finding Nemo, you’ve been exposed to the EAC,...
Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 1:27, Song of Solomon 4:7-10, Proverbs 5:18-19 , 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 , Ephesians 5:31-32, Psalm 139:13-14
The spiritual discipline of honoring the body helps us find our way between the excesses of a culture that glorifies and objectifies the body and the excesses of Christian tradition that have often de...
Luke 18:10-14, Matthew 6:1, Ephesians 2:8-9, James 4:10, Galatians 6:4, Micah 6:8, Romans 12:3
In the Christian subculture, there is an unspoken standard, a notorious goal to “win the contest.” It’s there, the contest. We don’t say it out loud, because it sounds ludicrous spoken into the open a...
Isaiah 57:15, Mark 10:43-45, James 4:6, Ephesians 4:2, Micah 6:8, Matthew 23:12
In the Greco-Roman world of Paul’s day, humility was a despised trait. They viewed it as a sign of weakness. And our culture today is no different from that world of two thousand years ago. Maybe it’s...
Our selves are fashioned; we are adorned with histories that incline us to saunter, swagger, or shuffle. Given our histories, some of us move through the world with a cape; some of us don baggy sweate...
Former Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple describing original sin I am the centre of the world I see; where the horizon is depends on where I stand…Education may make my self-centeredness less ...
Ephesians 1:9-10, Romans 13:11-12, Matthew 13:39-43, Revelation 22:6-7, Luke 21:24-28, 1 Corinthians 10:11, Psalm 98:7-9
Early Christian writing has the ends of the world upon it, hence its emphasis on fulfillment, fullness of time: the shape of the world-plot can now be seen.
John 14:6, Philippians 3:8, Ephesians 2:13, 1 John 1:3, John 10:10, Hebrews 1:3, Colossians 1:15-17
Christianity at its core is not about subscription to a theological system or the authority of a sacred text or ethical perspectives, although they are all important. Christianity at its core is about...
The Christian’s life in all its aspects—intellectual and ethical, devotional and relational, upsurging in worship and outgoing in witness—is supernatural; only the Spirit can initiate and sustain it.
One key difference between much of the early church vs. the church of today (at least in the West) was the belief in, and regular experience of, miracles. As Joel Green, the noted professor and writer...
Matthew 5:48, 1 John 3:2-3, Galatians 5:16-17, Philippians 3:13-14, Colossians 3:1-2, Ephesians 4:22-24
The scholastics used to say: Homo non proprie humanus sed superhumanus est —which means that to be properly human, you must go beyond the merely human.
2 Corinthians 10:1, Ephesians 4:2-3, Romans 12:3, Colossians 4:6, Matthew 23:11-12, Proverbs 11:2, James 1:19
In a statement created by Christian leaders across the world, the Lausanne Willowbank Report calls for church leaders to return to the humility and servanthood that Jesus manifested in His earthly min...
Truth-oriented Christians love studying Scripture and theology. But sometimes they’re quick to judge and slow to forgive. They’re strong on truth, weak on grace. Grace-oriented Christians love forgive...
I wasn’t raised in a Christian family. I only entered the “Christian bubble” of a Southern Baptist youth group in junior high, where I pledged myself to abstinence before marriage at a True Love Waits...
Far too many people, especially within evangelicalism, think that the individual is all that matters, and that the corporate dimension is a distraction or diversion. Of course Christianity is deeply p...
John 13:34-35, Luke 6:27-28, John 14:6, Philippians 2:5-8, 1 John 4:9-11, Ephesians 2:8-9, Psalm 103:8-12
A friend sat down in a small London restaurant and picked up a menu. “What will it be?” the waiter asked. Studying the puzzling selections, my friend said, “Uhh …” The waiter smiled. “Oh, a Yank. What...
Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation. We can have a flourishing, fruitful life even if we don’t get a...