old testament on Covenant

Testament  means “covenant,” an alliance between two partners, an “agreement,” a “promise.” The Old Testament covenant was brought to fulfillment in the New Testament. Through Israel, the entire world...

Preaching Commentary Ministry Ain't Easy Ministry is arduous.  While it is difficult to deal with the day-in, day-out dramas that can come from dealing with people, imagine the grind of constan...

Ministry Ain't Easy Ministry is arduous.  While it is difficult to deal with the day-in, day-out dramas that can come from dealing with people, imagine the grind of constantly sacrificing animals...

Old Testament Israel had some foundational pillars of faith. They were true and robust and God given. The trouble was that people had come to trust in them merely by repeating them, without paying any...

Every command [from the Old Testament] reflects principles at some level that are binding on Christians (2 Timothy 3:16)

The Old Testament Hebrew word for blessing means the transmission or endowment of the power of God’s goodness or favor. And the Old Testament affirms that God is the source of the favor and well-being...

God did not canonize Israel’s culture. Rather, he simply used that culture as a vehicle through which to communicate the eternal truth of his character and his will for humanity.

In the OT sacrificial system, the worshipper himself would kill the animal used for the sacrifice. First they would bring the animal near, indicating their desire to be made clean and worship. Next th...

Hope, never destroyed, however overthrown, never obscured even amid the storm and dust of ruin, is the prominent characteristic of the Old Testament.

Yahweh demanded justice for the poor, compassion and equality for foreigners and refugees, systemic redress for poverty, structural mechanisms to protect the homeless and family-less from abuse and de...

Scripture does not say God owes us a long life. But paradoxically, this does not mean that we accept suffering and death with a stoic fatalism. Instead, God’s people lament. In the Old Testament, not ...

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...

Yahweh, unlike the mountain and fertility gods of the ancient Canaanites, refuses to be bound by any geographical locale. All of the 'high places' pretending to capture the divine presence mus...

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...

Preaching Commentary What, then, does the author intend to communicate in verses 1-4? He proclaims that an authoritative and authentic high priest must both identify with and be distinct from those...

In the Old Testament there is no timeless space, but there is also no spaceless time. There is rather storied place, that is a place which has meaning because of the history lodged there. There are st...

“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...

So what is the purpose of the Old Testament law? The law reveals God’s righteous character, but it can’t make us righteous (Gal. 2:21). The law is a tutor to teach us about the Savior, but it can’t sa...

If you had asked a devout Israelite in the Old Testament period “Are you redeemed?” the answer would have been a most definite yes. And if you had asked “How do you know?” you would be taken aside to ...

Contrary to popular opinion, the Old Testament is not a hodgepodge of unrelated materials thrown together by some late, uninformed redactor. Nor has it come to us as the result of an empty-headed secr...

It is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings…If there is any c...

The Old Testament on its own is an unfinished story; a promise without a fulfilment. We must read on to the New Testament if we want to know what it really means. And the New Testament constantly look...

In the Law and the Prophets, God reaches out to man. The initiative is His. He communicates, we receive. Our God-given free will allows us to be receptive, to be accepting, to turn a deaf ear, to reje...

Many Israelites Had Leprosy, but Naaman Was Healed As we go from mountains to fresh water, we go from Elijah to Elisha.  Despite having a double dose of Elijah’s power and a fraction of his hair, Eli...

The Old Testament portrays the world as it is, no holds barred. In its pages you will find passionate stories of love and hate, blood-chilling stories of rape and dismemberment, matter-of-fact account...

Nahum Sarna points out in Understanding Genesis that it is a remarkable fact that the Old Testament exists at all. Most ancient texts have not survived. Ancient Israel did not spread its works by mi...

Robinson's Winsome Faith I’ve been reading Marilynne Robinson's novels and essays for some time now. Of her fiction, I’ve read Gilead , reflections of a retired minister written for his ...

The Old Testament is a story in search of an ending.

Every year at Christmastime, the world looks back two thousand years to the birth of a baby. But for more than four thousand years, people living on the other side of that birth looked forward to the ...

The Old Testament isn’t written in order simply to “tell us about God” in the abstract. It isn’t designed primarily to provide information, to satisfy the inquiring mind. It’s written to tell the stor...