Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...
Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...
Preaching Commentary Plenipotentiary Anyone know what a “plenipotentiary” is? Try that compound Latin word on for size! It is derived from the Latin words plenus “full” and potens “power.” It r...
Everything in the universe is all jumbled together. So God begins to do some creative separating: he separates light from darkness, day from night, water from land, the sea creatures from the land cru...
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 ...
Leader: Scripture teaches us that there is one good and holy God; that we were created in God’s image, to commit ourselves to Him, to do good works, to reflect His glory, and to know Him as loving Fat...
Gracious God, sometimes I am so caught up in my failures, in all the ways I am not like you, that I neglect the deeper truth, the earlier truth of Genesis 1. You have made me, as a human being, in you...
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...
Plenipotentiary Anyone know what a “plenipotentiary” is? Try that compound Latin word on for size! It is derived from the Latin words plenus “full” and potens “power.” It refers to a person who p...
We are made in God’s image, with original goodness, which cannot be marred by our sin. But we are also made in God’s likeness, which we distort every time we choose to sin.
Gracious God, again we thank you for creating us in your image. Today, we are reminded that your image is not captured fully in the solitary individual but also and necessarily in human community. In ...
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...
Eyes of Faith Verse 17 summarizes the Apostle Paul’s argument in this passage: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Throughou...
This sense of being made in God’s image calls us all constantly to look for it in others and to do what we can to help them acknowledge it and to realize it by joining in worship. We thereby carry to ...
We were given appetites, not to consume the world and forget it, but to taste its goodness and hunger to make it great. That is the inconsolable heartburn, the lifelong disquietude of having been made...
In sovereign love, you, O God, created the world good And made everyone equally in your image, Male and female, of every race and people, To live as one community. But we rebel against you; we hid...
Psalm 8 reminds us, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have created; What is man, that you are mindful of him? and the son of man, that you care...
The anthropologist Desmond Morris has written: ‘Human beings are animals. They are sometimes monsters, sometimes magnificent, but always animals.’ That statement is correct as far as it goes. We are c...
Luke 6:27-38, Isaiah 50:6, Lamentations 3:28-30, Psalm 37:null, Romans 5:7-8, Matthew 18:23-35, Deuteronomy 10:17-19, Leviticus 19:33-34, Ephesians 2:11-22, Galatians 3:28
Preaching Commentary The context Having addressed his disciples with the blessings and woes (6:20-26), Jesus now addresses the multitude of people (6:17, cf. 7:1). As with the blessings and woes, L...
If we are to be God’s image-bearers with regard to creation, then we will carry on his pattern of work. His world is not hostile, so that it needs to be beaten down like an enemy. Rather, its potentia...
To live was to enjoy – when every faculty was in its perfection, amidst abundance of objects which infinite wisdom had purposely suited to it… when he was at full liberty to enjoy either the Creator o...
Lord God, You have created us all in Your image and have loved your creation with an everlasting and costly love. But all too often we are blind and fail to see Your image in others. We exclude those ...
Our defining narrative says that we’re made “in the image of God,”[i] but also: we’re made “from the dust.”[ii] Image and dust. To be made in the image of God means that we’re rife with potential. W...
This is the beautiful community that Herman Bavinck gets at when he writes, The image of God is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human bein...
Heavenly Father, We confess that we are not always able to see your handiwork in the people and things around us. We do not always see your image in our neighbors, and we do not always see your creat...
God formed us in his image — a glorious thought! — but we all participate in the abandonment of that original identity…Does that mean that your precious little child is a dirty rotten sinner, as some ...
Preaching Commentary a brief introduction I would like to start with a rather big question. How do we know that we are, in fact, Christians? We find some direction from Jesus on this subject in Mat...
Have you ever been told that you’re like someone else, someone you admire and respect, someone you’d love to be like? I had that experience many times while growing up. My family and I were members of...
How much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the insides of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses, and the juice of pine trees to realiz...
The context Having addressed his disciples with the blessings and woes (6:20-26), Jesus now addresses the multitude of people (6:17, cf. 7:1). As with the blessings and woes, Luke records four impera...