Every person in Scripture lived out a personal story incarnated by an even greater story about God, life, and the world. That story came from the politics, theology, and culture ingrained in their mem...
The biblical narrative begins and ends at home. From the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem we are hardwired for place and for permanence, for rest and refuge, for presence and protection. We long fo...
The Hebrew word yada (“to know”) is, in fact, used for both sexual intercourse as well as our relationship with God. Every relational event is a stage that affords one a glimpse into the consumm...
Proverbs 3:5-6, Isaiah 55:8-9 , Luke 9:23-24, Philippians 2:3-4 , Matthew 6:33-34, Psalm 37:5-6
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams observes that the biblical ideal is not so much that we need to deny the self as to decenter the self: To see the self in truth, as an integral member of a comm...
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 ...
The question often arises as to whether angels appear today as they did in biblical times. Experience does not indicate that such appearances are usual. There is, however, no biblical teaching that ru...
Mark 13:24-37, Daniel 7:13-14, Revelation 21:null, Revelation 21:3-4
Advent 2023: Make some noise Alive, Awake, and Alert AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? The Worst Is Yet To Come I wonder if some of Jesus’ Galilean crew regre...
Mark 13:24-27, Daniel 7:13-14, Revelation 21:null, Revelation 21:3-4
Ancient lens What's the historical context? The Worst Is Yet To Come I wonder if some of Jesus’ Galilean crew regretted volubly admiring the beauty of Herod the Great’s temple. I can see Pete...
Stories, after all, are one of the most basic modes of human life and are a characteristic expression of worldview. Human life is constituted by a series of stories, implicit and explicit, that makes ...
Judges 16:1-31, Job 1:6-22, 2 Samuel 13:1-22, Matthew 14:1-12, Luke 23:13-25, Psalm 22:1-31
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...
One of the most fascinating features of the Bible is that it tells what is ahead for our world. Both Old and New Testaments contend that history is moving to a climax and that the sovereign God is in ...
Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son. Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of Israel’s past. Here, ...
Textual Overview By the time we reach Acts 16, we’ve come a long way from resurrection morning. The good news about Jesus Christ has burst out of the tomb, out of Jerusalem, out of Judea, out of Juda...
The cosmology of the ancient world was dramatically different from the way that we think of ours. Scholar John Walton writes in The Lost World of Genesis One , “Old world cosmic geography is based on...
Textual Overview We’ve reached the last Sunday of Easter, the last Sunday before Pentecost, and by this point in Acts we’ve come a long way from that resurrection morning. The good news about Jesus C...
Genesis 3:, Romans 3:23, Psalm 51:, Luke 15:11-32, Hebrews 10:17, 1 John 1:9
The genius of the biblical revelation is that it refuses to deny the dark side of things, but forgives failure and integrates falling to achieve its only promised wholeness.
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...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Letter to Real People In the understanding of, and preaching on, any section of the Revelation of John , it is critical to know that t...
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. And God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters. 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...
Between God and God's People This passage is often linked with the Transfiguration of Jesus and is included with lectionary passages related to it. It is part of a constellation of texts which ra...
AIM Commentary Ancient Lens “ What’s the historical context?” Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled A contemporary commentator ends each daily program with these words, “Let not your hearts be trou...
Between God and God's People This whole Sunday’s worth of texts is about the relationship of God to God’s people. In what way has God been present among us in the past? How is God present...
Preaching Commentary Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son. Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of...
Luke 13:31-35, Luke 11:51, Jeremiah 23:6, Deuteronomy 32:11, Ruth 2:12, Psalm 17:8, Isaiah 31:5
AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? On the Road to Jerusalem Luke 13 begins with Jesus teaching on the nature of the kingdom of God and it concludes with ...
It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil,...
Preaching Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A Letter to Real People In the understanding of, and preaching on, any section of the Revelation of John , it is ...
The [Mesopotamian ancient texts] serve as sources of information for us to formulate the shape of each culture’s ways of thinking. In most areas there is more similarity between Israel and its neighbo...
John 1:1-14, Proverbs 8:22-23, 30-31, John 20:28-29
Preaching Commentary Introduction John 1 contains some of the richest Christological passages in all of Scripture. It rewards deep meditation on its meaning. Its use as the Christmas gospel text is...