Okay. Let’s zoom out for a few minutes and remember where we are in Luke’s bigger story. Jesus was born. Then, when he came of age — about 30 years old — he was anointed king by John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament prophets. Then Jesus went to war against the enemy […]
God makes a deal with Adam: you keep gardening, and I will live with you forever. Adam screws up his part of the deal. But then God makes a strange promise: one day, Eve will have a son who will redeem everything. God makes a deal with Noah: you build me a boat, and I […]
So last week we ended on a major cliffhanger: the people of Israel have re-chosen God, but they are not certain at all that God will re-choose them. Here is a brief review of how we got to this point: Some time ago, after they arrived at the foot of Mount Sinai, God signed a […]
Isaac inherits a land of peace and safety from his father Abraham…but unfortunately, it cannot last. Like Abraham before him, Isaac moves southward, and begins to fill the wilderness with life and true worship — only to be driven out by the local king. Has something gone wrong with God’s plan? Isaac’s family self-destructs. The […]
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, the raw materials he was going to use to shape the earth into a house where he could live with his creation. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, the light of his spoken Word. And through his Word God separated […]
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters — That is how Moses began the book of Genesis: with the earth lying formless and empty, […]
So when we last saw Jacob, he was in trouble. His sons had just violated a very important covenant with one of the local nations, completely destroying Jacob’s honour and reputation. And this is a big problem, for a couple of reasons: First, Jacob has inherited a job from his father Isaac and his grandfather […]
In the Old Testament, about two hundred years after King David, the Book of Chronicles tells us that one of David’s descendants was crowned king in Jerusalem. His name was Uzziah, and he was just sixteen years old when he began his rule. And he was one of the good kings! — at first. The […]
Well, here we are, in a season of rest between crises. The Covid pandemic is over, the Ukraine situation has not yet turned into World War III, and so, you know: things right now are actually pretty good — especially compared with last year at this time. And maybe they are pretty good compared to […]
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. In other words, he created a space filled with all the raw materials necessary for the construction project he had in mind. Then, over the next six days, we see God take those raw materials and shape some of them into an orderly structure, a […]
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth — That is the very first sentence in the bible. But then, in the very second sentence, we discover that the universe is formless and empty, with darkness over the surface of the deep. Ancient people imagined that the universe at its beginning was like […]
All right: we are now deep into a section of Exodus that is known as The Book of the Covenant. During this section, the people of Israel are waiting at the foot of Mount Sinai, looking up to to the mountaintop where all they can see is a thick darkness: black storm-clouds with a glow […]
A young church, planted in a deceptive and divisive culture, is poisoned by a deceptive and divisive false teaching that claims to be true Christianity. What is the antidote? Having laid a gospel foundation for the churches in Crete, Paul tells Titus how to set up pillars on that foundation: elders who are Christ-like, not […]
In the beginning, the Book of Genesis tells us, God created the heavens and the earth. And 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 these sentences were Moses the writer’s snapshot of the early unformed universe: a […]
