Thought Exercise on Patriarchs

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The Story of Joseph & High and Low Cultures

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Keywords

We individualists generally belong to what anthropologists term low-context cultures. That means that when we communicate, we assume a low level of shared information. We therefore assume it is good c...

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A Surprise Pregnancy

Author

Vaughan Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 21:1-7

The years continue to pass and Sarah still does not conceive, but one day God speaks to Abraham and reassures him that, despite her great age, she will bear a son. And, sure enough, it happens. I once...

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The Song of Israel

Author

Mike Cosper

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This is the song of Israel. It begins with the starlit hope of the patriarchs as they sing bleary-eyed songs of their promised future. It becomes a slave song, sung in the chains of Egypt, and evolves...

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Patrilineal & Patrilocal Life in Ancient Israel

Author

Sandra L. Richter

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 35:, Genesis 36:, Numbers 26:33, Numbers 27:1-11, Numbers 36:1-12, Joshua 17:3-6, Matthew 1:

The term patrilineal has to do with tracing ancestral descent (and therefore tribal affiliation and inheritance) through the male line. In Israel the possessions of a particular lineage were carefully...

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Shepherds versus Farmers?

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

In Understanding Genesis Nahum Sarna explodes the myth that in the story of Cain and Abel represents a biblical preference for the shepherd over the tiller of the soil. He points out that “there is no...

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Leaving Home

Author

E. Randolph Richards and Richard James

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 12:10-20, Exodus 3:15

“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...

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Eden a Temple, Adam a Priest

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:null, Genesis 2:null

John Walton, in The Lost World of Adam and Eve, argues that the Garden of Eden should be seen as a sacred space (a kind of "Holy of Holies") set off from the rest of creation, with the seven...

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A Christian Alzheimer’s Disease

Author

Sandra L. Richter

Keywords

Two-thirds of the story of redemption is known to Christians as the Old Testament. Yet in the decades that I have been teaching Bible, I have found that most Christians, if allowed to answer honestly,...

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Considering His Wonderful Goodness Towards Us

Author

John Calvin

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 6:26, Acts 17:24-25, Job 12:10, Matthew 10:29-31, James 1:17

We ought in the very order of things [in creation] diligently to contemplate God’s fatherly love . . . [for as] a foreseeing and diligent father of the family he shows his wonderful goodness toward us...

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Comparing the Genesis Creation Account with their Neighbors

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

Scripture

John 1:3, Psalm 104:24, Genesis 2:2-3, Genesis 1:27, Genesis 1:31

The Jews were not the only religious people in the ancient world. There were others, such as the Akkadians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, and they had their own creation stories. When one compares the ...

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The Covenants of Scripture

Author

Merrill F. Unger

Keywords

Covenant

Scripture

Hebrews 13:20, Genesis 1:26-28, Genesis 1:26, Genesis 3:14-19, Genesis 3:14, Genesis 8:20-9, Genesis 9:5-6, Genesis 12:1-3, Galatians 3:16, John 8:56-58, 2 Corinthians 3:7-9, Deuteronomy 30:1-10, Deuteronomy 30:1, 2 Samuel 7:4-17, Luke 1:31-33, Acts 1:6, Revelation 19:16, Matthew 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, Hebrews 8:8-12, Galatians 3:13-20

Eternal covenant, Heb 13:20—The redemptive covenant before time began, between the Father and the Son. By this covenant we have eternal redemption, an eternal peace from the ‘God of peace’, through th...

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Redemption in Ancient Israel

Author

Sandra L. Richter

Keywords

In Israel’s tribal society redemption was the act of a patriarch who put his own resources on the line to ransom a family member who had been driven to the margins of society by poverty, who had been ...

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The Earliest Known Uses of the Trinity

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Many of us are aware that the Trinity is not specifically referred to in scripture, though it would eventually become accepted among all major branches of the Christian faith as an authentic interpret...

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Let Him Rest

Author

Benedicta Ward

Keywords

The following story comes from the collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers in Egypt, teaching that would have first been transmitted orally (around 350-450 A.D.) and later written down...

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The Heroes of the Bible (mostly) had Regular Jobs

Author

John Ortberg

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Most of the heroes in the Bible had what we would think of as secular vocations. Isaac developed real estate, Jacob was a rancher, and Joseph was a government official (in charge of agriculture, the e...

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God Gets His Family Back

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In my lifelong study of the Bible I have looked for an overarching theme, a summary statement of what the whole sprawling book is about. I have settled on this: “God gets his family back.” From the fi...

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When “Father” Is A Bad Thing

Author

Michael Reeves

Keywords

Not everyone instinctively warms to the idea that God is a Father. There are many for whom their own experiences of overbearing, indifferent or abusive fathers make their very guts squirm when they he...

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The Costly Efforts of the Father

Author

Kenneth E. Bailey

Keywords

Fathers

Scripture

Luke 15:11-32

In the old American South (and in many places in the American North) a European American who invited an African American as a guest to an expensive restaurant in a white section of town would subject ...

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Shepherd-Kings from David to Jesus

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

2 Samuel 23:1-7, Psalm 23:, 2 Samuel 7:5-16, John 10:1-18, Matthew 18:12-14, Luke 15:3-7, Ezekiel 34:11-16

Do you remember seeing the golden sarcophagus of the pharaoh Tutankhamun ? What has he got in his hands? If you remembered that he was holding a shepherd’s crook, you’re right (he is also holding a...

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The Central Vision

Author

Walter Brueggemann

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 15:5, Isaiah 41:8, Isaiah 2:2-4, Matthew 28:16-20, John 12:32, Acts 2:1-11

The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every oth...

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Jesus, the Prodigal Son

Author

Frère Pierre Marie

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 2:6-8, John 1:10-11, Isaiah 53:3-4, Matthew 11:19, Mark 15:34, Isaiah 53:12, Luke 15:20-24, Revelation 7:13-14

In this excerpt, the French monastic leader Frere Pierre Marie, shares an interpretation of Jesus as the true prodigal son—bringing all of us home with him: He, who is born not from human stock, or ...

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Requesting an Inheritance While the Father is Still Alive

Author

Kenneth E. Bailey

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 15:11-32, Proverbs 13:22

In his book Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes , professor and missionary Kenneth Bailey unlocked some very interesting features of the parable of the prodigal son, here focused on what it m...

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Papa God

Author

Gary Thomas

Keywords

Parenting

In his book_, Sacred Parenting _, Gary Thomas shares a story from his own parenting life. A story that illustrates this truth: when our children are young, they look at their earthly fathers and assu...

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A Kingdom of Priests

Author

Eugene H. Peterson

Keywords

Scripture

1 Peter 2:9, Isaiah 11:6

When the Hebrews, recently enslaved but now free, were gathered at Sinai to begin their formation as a free people, God spoke the words that defined them over against their four centuries of slavery i...

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The Puzzle of Polygamy

Author

Bradley Long

Keywords

Scripture

1 Timothy 3:2, 12, Titus 1:6

A classic mission dilemma: The chief of a village in a remote area, whose people practice a tribal religion, becomes a believer and declares the whole village is now Christian. Most of the leading m...

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Polemic Against Paganism

Author

Nahum Sarna

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:, Genesis 2:, Exodus 3:14, Deuteronomy 4:14-19, 1 Corinthians 1:16-17

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...

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Fires, Earthquakes, Thunderbolts, and Fathers

Author

James Bryan Smith

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 7:9-11, Luke 15:11-32, Galatians 4:6-7, 1 John 3:1, Proverbs 3:11-12, 2 Corinthians 6:18, Hebrews 12:7-10

In his excellent book, The Magnificent Story , James Bryan Smith shares a true story from Japanese culture that illustrates just how demanding strict disciplinarian fathers can be. The Japanese...

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Words of a Father

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

How many of you have ever been told that women talk more than men? How many of you have heard this statistic, on average women use 20,000 words a day to men’s 7,000? I know I’ve heard this quote in se...

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God the Father had Two Sons?

Author

John Stott

Keywords

Some years ago I received a letter from a young man I knew slightly. ‘I have just made a great discovery,’ he wrote. ‘Almighty God had two sons. Jesus Christ was the first; I am the second.’ I glanced...

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An Unlikely Adoption

Author

Daniel Darling

Keywords

Scripture

James 1:27

Joseph exhibited the true spirit of adoption. It is a vivid picture both of God’s adoption of us as His children in Christ, but also the call every believer has in welcoming into our homes and communi...

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