The Hebrew cosmology represents a revolutionary break with the contemporary world, a parting of the spiritual ways that involved the undermining of the entire prevailing mythological world-view... The...
Whether the Hebrew Genesis account was meant to be science or not, it was certainly meant to convey statements of faith. As will be shown it is part of the biblical polemic against paganism and an int...
Father God, You alone are holy. We revere You as our one true God. Your name is higher than any other name. However, we confess that we can use that Name frivolously, without concern for its supremacy...
What Moses saw in the burning bush was nothing less than “the transcendent essence and cause of the universe, on which everything depends, alone subsists.
Names in the ancient world were associated with identity, role and function. Consequently, naming is a typical part of the creation narratives. The Egyptian Memphite Theology identifies the Creator as...
Why did Israel create at Sinai a calf idol instead of an image of some other animal? The likely reason is that a calf or bull was among the most important of the Egyptian animal images that represente...
We confess, “I believe in God.” That confession is not an expression of a creative imagination or an instance of projection, but a response to the One who manifests himself in creation, in history, in...
“If there is no God, never was a God, why do we miss him so much?” asked one agnostic European Jew as he looked back on the horrors of the twentieth century.
The [Mesopotamian ancient texts] serve as sources of information for us to formulate the shape of each culture’s ways of thinking. In most areas there is more similarity between Israel and its neighbo...
The temptation to sculpt God according to our expectations and presuppositions, to make this God much like another, is strong with us. You see it all down through history: in the Middle Ages it seemed...
Exodus 32:1-6 , 1 Samuel 4:3-10, Isaiah 40:18-25, Matthew 16:13-20, Acts 5:1-11 , Psalm 115:4-8
A. W. Tozer once wrote, Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him. We want a ...
The fire that burns and does not burn out, which has no tendency to destruction in its very energy, and is not consumed by its own activity, is surely a symbol of the One Being, whose being derives it...
There are no vowels in the Hebrew (YHWH), which makes it impossible to know exactly what the word is. Some old translations say ‘Jehovah’. Modern scholars tend to speak of ‘Yahweh’. When the word appe...
“Holy, holy, holy.” What are they saying? Have you ever wondered that? What does that mean? Many people have tried to understand what God’s holiness means. Some describe it as his perfect morality. Go...
“When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman” (Gen 12:14). What is considered beautiful is one of those things that often goes without being said. Sarah was about...
Genesis 18:22-33, Exodus 3:1-12 , 1 Kings 19:9-13, John 5:19-30, John 16:12-15, Psalm 116:1-2
The God who shares power is a listener. Listening is not something that becomes necessary for God only after the world is created. Listening is who God is. In God’s very being, communication does not ...
The idea of covenant is fundamental to the Bible’s story. At its most basic, covenant presents God’s desire to enter into relationship with men and women created in his image. This is reflected in the...
Aseity refers to God’s self-existence (a—from, se—oneself). God exists ‘from himself.’ God owes his existence and completeness as God to nothing outside himself. . . . God’s act of creation was not c...
Isaiah 6:3b, Psalm 150:6, Genesis 1:1-2, Exodus 15:11, Matthew 28:18-20
Pastor: We worship today in the name of God the Father, People: Praise to our creating God! Pastor: In the name of His Son, Jesus Christ: People: Praise to our redeeming God!...
Put another way, what you think about God will shape your destiny in life. If you think of God as homophobic, racist, and mad at the world, this distorted vision of reality will shape you into a relig...
God's Sovereignty The sovereignty of God is a pervasive theme in the Bible, expressed in a variety of ways. Daniel’s vision is one of those expressions and a bit more challenging than the declara...
Exodus 24:null, Philippians 4:9, James 1:22-23, James 1:22, Matthew 7:24
Practice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity. That is not to say that Judaism doesn’t have dogma or doctrine. It is rather to say that for Jews, the essence of the thing is a doing, an action...
Exodus 34:29-35, Matthew 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-13, Luke 9:28-36
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, as we gather for worship we invite you to come down and meet with us. The desires, distractions, thoughts and temptations that plague us are already known to you and...
Preaching Commentary God's Sovereignty The sovereignty of God is a pervasive theme in the Bible, expressed in a variety of ways. Daniel’s vision is one of those expressions and a bit more chall...
Exodus 20:3-7, 12-17, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Mark 2:27-28, Matthew 12:8, Luke 6:5, Hebrews 4:9-10, Isaiah 58:13-14
Interpretation series editor Patrick Miller has shrewdly observed that the fourth commandment on Sabbath is the “crucial bridge” that connects the Ten Commandments together. The fourth commandment loo...
Pastor: Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the ange...
Pastor: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. People: Amen. Pastor: Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; People: his greatness no one c...
God calls people. Whether it is the calling of Abraham to leave the land of Ur and go he knew not where, or the calling of Moses, confronted with the burning bush, or the calling of Isaiah who encount...