Well, since you all did so well last week, I thought we would start with another pop quiz this week. Are you ready? First question: there’s a man who lives in a garden with his wife. Their job is to grow the garden until it fills the whole earth with beauty and order. But they […]
Way back near the beginning of the Book of Genesis, God called a man named Abraham out of the ruins of a collapsing civilization that had been built on a plain between two great rivers. Leading Abraham across the wilderness, God brought him to a land of mountains. And Abraham settled down on one of […]
In the opening sentences of Book 12 of Genesis — the account of Jacob and his sons — we were told that Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, and when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a […]
For the last few weeks we have been wrestling with a mystery. Really, our questions started back in Chapter 6, when we started asking how long this whole process of judgement and redemption is going to take, when all this is going to come to an end. And we were told to wait a little […]
The Book of Genesis tells us that God tested Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac on a special mountain God would show him. And Abraham did it! He went to the mountain, prepared the altar and the wood, bound his son upon it, and reached for the knife. But that is when […]
Once upon a time in the west — in Europe and America — church membership was the norm. If you were a Christian, you were baptized, you made vows of faithfulness to one particular church, and then your name was entered on a roll, a list of who belonged to that local church. But over […]
The story of Naomi is almost finished. In Chapter 1 she came home from exile angry, wondering if God was on her side. In Chapter 2 she learned that God had been on her side the whole time. In Chapter 3 she learned that God does not need her help. She finally came to true […]
Bong-bongggg… Last week, on “Echoes of a Far-Off Country”: Mordecai: “How can I save my people from Haman’s law of genocide when I am not allowed to repeal Haman’s law…? I know! I will write a new law that is the exact opposite of Haman’s law, giving my people permission to defend themselves if attacked.” […]
Is This Friendship? One bright spring day the leader of the Republic strode confidently across the square. He was on his way to the Senate where he would give a speech prior to his departure, for he was leading the armies east to engage the enemies on the eastern front. He had already proven himself […]
In the bible a story is told of a man who was commissioned to be a High Priest. As a priest, he had two main responsibilities: first, to protect the temple that God had placed under his care, so that unbelievers would not come in and bring disorder into it through false ideas and false […]
After Moses led the people of Israel out of their slavery to the Egyptian empire, through the Red Sea to the shore on the other side; after he sealed them as “holy to the LORD” and counted them; after he made a set of silver trumpets to help coordinate their movements; then he led them […]
At the beginning of the Book of Genesis, in the first moments after God first created the heavens and the earth, the writer — Moses — tells us that the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And what […]
Way back in Book 2 of Genesis, Moses told us about how God planted a garden in the east, in the land of Eden, a safe space walled off from the untamed wilderness outside. And he told us about how God placed Adam there to work it and take care of it: it was Adam’s […]
This is now the third sermons in our Bible Overview series. Three more to go after this, and we will have travelled through the entire bible! That hardly seems possible. But, once we realize that the bible is actually one huge story made up of six repeating smaller story cycles, the big picture begins to […]