Ancient Lens What's the historical context? Dissolving the Divisions Generally speaking, the Psalms divide the people of the earth into two groups: “Israel” and “the nations.” Psalm 98 surpr...
Matthew 4:12-23, Romans 5:12-21, Matthew 3:2-3, Isaiah 42:1-4, Hebrews 12:2, Genesis 1:3, Ephesians 2:1-10, Romans 8:3, Psalm 68:18, Ephesians 4:8
Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: John Arrested, Jesus Preaches the Kingdom The major event in redemptive history which immediately precedes this passage is Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness....
Lent 2021: A 40-day Heart Restoration Destruction No More Bonus Content: Video prep session with Scott Bullock on Genesis 9:8-17 . Password: fHUk*p2* AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we ...
Genesis 1:1-3, Genesis 2:7, Matthew 10:30, Psalm 139:1-4, Romans 5:8, Luke 19:1-10, Hebrews 13:15
God of majesty and power, Who spoke and this world was, Who breathed and this world lived, Who counts the hairs upon our head, Who sees our thoughts and reads our hearts, Who loves us more than we des...
You, Lord God, made the eternal fabric of the world appear, and you created the earth. You are always trustworthy, you judge fairly, excellent and marvelous in your power; wise in creating and careful...
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5, Revelation 21:2, 10, 22-27, Revelation 22:1-5, 1 Kings 6:20, Genesis 12:1-3, Genesis 2:9, Genesis 3:23-24, Genesis 1:28, Genesis 2:15, Genesis 3:17-19, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:23, Genesis 1:26-27, Exodus 33:20-23, John 14:9, Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3, Mark 15:34, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Exodus 28:15-21, 29-30, John 4:13-14, John 7:37-38, Matthew 27:46, John 3:2, Romans 8:29
Preaching Commentary Pulling Back the Curtain The Revelation of Jesus Christ is a “pulling back of the curtain” to reveal both the unseen realities of the present (what is really going on in the wo...
Matthew 4:12-23, Romans 5:12-21, Matthew 3:2-3, Isaiah 42:1-4, Hebrews 12:2, Genesis 1:3, Ephesians 2:1-10, Romans 8:3, Psalm 68:18, Ephesians 4:8
Preaching Angle: John Arrested, Jesus Preaches the Kingdom The major event in redemptive history which immediately precedes this passage is Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. I can’t imagine a 40 d...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? How did we get here? When relationships disintegrate and fall apart it is a fair question to ask. The question may come on the brink of...
John 14:6, Genesis 1:1, Psalm 19:1, Isaiah 40:28, John 14:6, Psalm 100:3, Colossians 1:16, Romans 5:8
Heavenly Father, we stand in awe of Your creation. You are the master of design. You know the change of seasons, You know the orbit of planets, and You know exactly what human beings were made for: a ...
Creator Spirit, by whose aid The world's foundations first were laid, Come, visit every pious mind; Come, pour thy joys on humankind; From sin and sorrow set us free, And make thy temples worthy t...
Genesis 1:27-28, Psalm 104:24-25, Romans 8:14-16, 1 John 3:1-3, Genesis 1:1-31, Hebrews 11:3, John 1:1-3
Dear Lord, we come before You today as Your children. We praise You as the God of all creation and the giver of life. You have made us, saved us, and called us to be Your people and to serve in Your K...
Revelation 21:10, Revelation 21:2, 10, 22-27, Revelation 22:1-5, 1 Kings 6:20, Genesis 12:1-3, Genesis 2:9, Genesis 3:23-24, Genesis 1:28, Genesis 2:15, Genesis 3:17-19, 1 Corinthians 15:58, Ephesians 6:5-9, Colossians 3:23, Genesis 1:26-27, Exodus 33:20-23, John 14:9, Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3, Mark 15:34, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Exodus 28:15-21, 29-30, John 4:13-14, John 7:37-38, Matthew 27:46, John 3:2, Romans 8:29
Pulling Back the Curtain The Revelation of Jesus Christ is a “pulling back of the curtain” to reveal both the unseen realities of the present (what is really going on in the world from God’s perspect...
It is there within and among us, for we are ordained of God to be people of hope. It is there by virtue of our being in the image of the promissory God. It is sealed there in the sacrament of baptism....
Ephesians 1:4, 1 John 4:19, Romans 5:8, John 1:1-2, Genesis 1:1
In his classic work, Basic Christianity , John Stott shares this most fundamental truth about God: God always makes the first move. Whether it is the creation or our personal relationship, we are n...
As the place where the divine presence dwells, our bodies are worthy of care and blessing. . . . It is through our bodies that we participate in God’s activity in the world.
We were in London watching the musical The Lion King. Surely you’ve seen the movie; the opening number is worth watching again this week to help your imagination seize the new earth with both hands. A...
Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century mystic-theologian who maybe understood the belovedness of creation and new creation better than anyone. In the fifth chapter of her book Revelations of Divin...
After finishing a major project, have you ever stood back, taken in what you have accomplished, and said to yourself, “That’s pretty good”? I’ll admit that I have on numerous occasions, especially aft...
Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will percei...
The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of sin, as the villain. Such an error conceives of the good-evil dichotomy ...
O Father of all creation, who hovered over the deep at the beginning, who spoke light into darkness, who split the heavens open and descended upon the Son of God in the waters of the Jordan, who creat...
When the Reformers broke with Rome and claimed the view that the Bible was to be the supreme authority of the church (sola Scriptura), they were very careful to define basic principles of interpretati...
Genesis 1:1–3 , Exodus 20:1–17, Daniel 6:16–23, Luke 10:25–37, Romans 3:21–26, Psalm 119:105
In the sixteenth century the Reformers declared their total confidence in what they called the perspicuity of Scripture. What they meant by that technical term was the clarity of Scripture. They maint...
Christians are often accused of two wrong-headed views of the body. One is that we ignore the body in favor of a disembodied, spirits-floating-on-clouds spirituality. The other is that we are obsessed...
In his classic fictional work on spiritual warfare, The Screwtape Letters , C. S. Lewis imagined a senior demon (Screwtape) corresponding with one of his protégés (his nephew Wormwood) as the latte...
J.M. Montgomery’s novel Emily of New Moon has a passage that conveys the attractive and terrifying aspects of the mystery of God: It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, th...
God is the author of the physical world, and in his wisdom, he designed physical realities to convey spiritual mysteries. “There is no good trying to be more spiritual than God,” as C. S. Lewis insist...
I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, inso...
Surprisingly enough, it was in the process of staying faithful to the spiritual journey that I first began to face my profound ambivalence about life in a body. At the ripe old age of thirty, I could ...