One of my joys is to hear students say, “I had heard of the Bible before I came here, but I never knew how the whole story was connected. Now I understand why people believe it.” I develop studies to give students an overview of the Bible and its core message, because students ask for […]
. . . God was creating again. He created a new man to get right what every other human had missed. He would be the fulfillment of the story begun in Genesis. God is the Savior, and this new man would save his people from their rebellious failure. To do that, God was entering his […]
. . . Matthew points to three divisions in the story: Fourteen generations from Abraham to David tell the story of a God unlike any known in the pagan world. This is a God known not by his demand for child sacrifice, not by sex rituals, not by someone’s ability to enslave others, not by […]
The fourteen generations from David to Jechoniah are the story of people who repeatedly reject the grace of God. Instead, they choose gods they think they can control to give them wealth and power. The gods they chose were gods of human sacrifice and ritual abuse of young women. These generations were not wavering between […]
. . . The genealogy from Abraham to David is a story of God’s surprising grace to one marginalized person after another. We don’t get far into the generations from Abraham to Jesus before our attention is called to the names of four remarkable women. Their mention in this list is not a small matter. […]
. . . Abraham left the great civilization, the life of trying to build stairways to heaven, and walked faithfully with God on God’s earth. “Son of Abraham” is a term for those who live by faith in God. They believe that God is good and purposeful. They believe that God knows what he is […]
To read this post click here: Good News 3.1 Anointed About this series of reflections If God were to come to us in the flesh–if the Main Character of the story were to walk into our lives–we should recognize him from what he had revealed already. Matthew wrote his Gospel to a people group who […]
To read this reflection on the Lord’s Prayer click here: Kingdom Conversation . . . Do we initiate anything, or does everything simply happen to us? What if those are not the only options? What if neither of those accurately describes the relationship into which God calls us? What if we need a middle voice in which […]
To read this reflection on Mark 4 and Matthew 13 click here: Kingdom Living Here’s the challenge, Jesus seems to be saying: Whenever I start talking about the Kingdom, you start picturing earthly kingdoms of industry, weaponry and political power (Right-handed power). When I call it the Kingdom of Heaven, you start picturing a far-off […]
To read, click here: Defensive Thinking . . . Jesus is not standing on the sidelines with a clipboard grading us on our failures. We default in that direction, but Jesus doesn’t. He gave fair and blunt warning to the teachers of the law that continuing down that path does not get you to Heaven. […]