For years, Bible scholars have danced around the matter by saying slavery in Rome was far different from slavery in the first few centuries of American history. No doubt their observations carry a mea...
Luke 1:26-38, Luke 1:46, Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:19, Revelation 11:15, Luke 1:46-48, John 8:41, Luke 1:29, 1 Corinthians 1:23, 1 Corinthians 1:27-29
Advent 2023: Make Some Noise! AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the David...
Luke 1:26-38, Luke 1:46, Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:19, Revelation 11:15, Luke 1:46-48, John 8:41, 1 Corinthians 1:23, 1 Corinthians 1:27-29
Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the Davidic line was the common narrative for how most peop...
How do we prepare for Jesus? Where is Jesus when the waiting hurts? Where is Jesus when our needs are great? Where is Jesus when life turns upside down? The real answer to those questions is offered ...
As we've been progressing through Advent, we've been asking: How do we prepare for Jesus? Where is Jesus when the waiting hurts? Where is Jesus when our needs are great? Where is Jesus when li...
Is God stingy? Mark D. Roberts observes that many writers and preachers focus on the prohibition of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil instead of Genesis 2:16: "You may freely eat of each...
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.
The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lor...
Genesis 1:1-2, Genesis 2:7, John 1:3, Colossians 1:16-17, Isaiah 64:8
Our Father, Lord, when the world was without form and void did you roll the clay into shapes of life? Did you sing on that far distant Friday, when you fashioned the caterpillar, and the cobra? And Je...
John 1:46, 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, Matthew 20:16, Luke 1:51-53, James 2:1-9, Matthew 11:25, Isaiah 52:2-3, Philippians 2:5-8
The world has always despised people from the wrong places and with the wrong credentials. We are always trying to justify ourselves. We need desperately to feel superior to others. And everything abo...
After the fall of our first parents, boundaries were something to push past, to transgress. It’s worth pausing to note how we use the word transgression for “sin.” With its Latin roots, “across” and ...
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12, Hebrews 1:1-4, Hebrews 2:5-12, Acts 18:24-26, John 1:1-18, Acts 18:24, Psalm 8:null, Acts 15:39, Mark 13:1-8, Daniel 12:1-3, Psalm 16:, 1 Samuel 1:4-20, 1 Samuel 2:1-10
Introduction, 1:1-4 While Hebrews is an anonymous letter, it is interesting to note that the KJV’s first verse is, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers ...
...Descartes described us to be: thinking things that are containers for ideas. What if that is actually only a small slice of who we are? And what if that’s not even the most important part? In the r...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Back to Bethany The trans-Jordan village of Bethany was the place in which Jesus’ ministry began. It is now the place in which our text...
[The] Puritans made good use of the Latin phrase omnis vita gustu ducitur -every life is led along by its tastes. They knew that each creature is piloted by an inner yearning for its favorite food. E...
There’s a somewhat naïve belief among some that, in general, most people are inherently good. While many Christians may not fully embrace John Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity (which I believe is ...
John 1:14, Hebrews 4:15, Luke 8:43-48, Isaiah 53:3-5, Matthew 8:17, John 11:1-44, Psalm 103:13-14
A few years ago, a vicious stomach bug swept through our community. (When you live in a religious community and one person gets sick, it’s just a matter of time before everyone else does too.) And one...
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...
Genesis 41:46-57 , Proverbs 31:10-31, Deuteronomy 8:17-18, Matthew 25:14-30, Luke 12:13-21, Psalm 128:1-2
Seeing that wealth is neither to be avoided nor praised but rather stewarded wisely and generously, how should we think about material wealth creation? This is an important question worthy of thoughtf...
Philippians 2:5-8, Isaiah 53:2-3, Luke 22:27, Mark 10:45, John 13:14-15
St. Paul tells us that Jesus Christ, the revelation of God become human, “set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It wa...
Being fully human is to inhabit the wild mysteries of our bodies and trust that, because Christ was a body, and still is a body, we don’t need to fear this place. We can say, it is good, because Chris...
The fact [is] that original sin is really original. Not merely in theology but in history it is a thing rooted in the origins. Whatever else men have believed, they have all believed that there is som...
The crux and crisis is that man found it natural to worship; even natural to worship unnatural things. . . . If man cannot pray, he is gagged; if he cannot kneel, he is in irons.
Before we get to Easter, we need to linger: in the vulnerability of the basin and the towel at the remembrance and promise of the table in the struggle and betrayal of the garden in the shadows and sh...
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 ...
Mark 1:4-11, Mark 1:1-3, Isaiah 40:3, Mark 2:7, Philippians 2:7, Isaiah 53:null, Hebrews 4:15, 2 Corinthians 8:9
Preaching Commentary Enter John the Baptist John the Baptist enters the stage in Mark 1 as the “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” (Isaiah 40:3) whose message and ministry is to “prepare the w...
Galatians 5:13, John 8:36, Isaiah 30:1, Proverbs 14:12, Genesis 3:6-7
Modern man is “a bleak business…To our chagrin we discover that the declaration of autonomy has issued not in a race of free, masterly men, but rather in a race that can be described by its poets and ...
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.
Nahum Sarna writes in Understanding Genesis: Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between the mythological and the Israelite conceptions more striking and more illuminating than in their respective descr...
Exodus 3:11-12 , 1 Kings 19:9-13, Isaiah 42:1 , Matthew 3:16-17 , Luke 9:28-36, Psalm 22:1
Jesus needed, not once, but again and again at each stage of his mission and each crisis in his living and dying, a freshly confirmed knowledge of his own identity.