Way back at the beginning, Moses tells us, God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden, into the wilderness east of Eden. And over the years, many people have thought, “Hey, if the God of the bible is supposed to be so loving, why didn’t he just let them stay? Sure, they had rebelled […]

In the end the glory of the Lord leaves one mountain to take up residence upon another; but even this is just the beginning. Moses calls the people to shape the pieces of the tabernacle and then assemble it — according to a ritual more ancient than mankind. The Lord finally gives Moses his answer, […]

All right: even though we are in the middle of the Book of Exodus, last week we began our sermon in the garden of Eden.  Because by this point in Exodus, we have realized that God is actually teaching Moses how to copy the original patterns of the original creation. We have realized that the […]

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 beginning, God created a man and placed him in a garden. And because God wanted a son, not a robot, he gave that man freedom to choose obedience or disobedience. But scripture tells us that a serpent entered the garden and tested the man’s relationship with God. He said to the man, “If […]

Four young men are sent to university and offered power at the very centre of the empire. Will they be able to resist? A philosophical crisis puts Daniel and his friends on the chopping block. Daniel saves lives by interpreting the king’s nightmare — oh, and also reveals God’s plan for the rest of history […]

An apostle in exile receives the first of many visions, and begins writing the book that we now call Revelation, or “The Apocalypse”. Jesus tells John to write seven introductory letters to seven churches, letting them know that if they want to understand the visions that follow, they are going to have to ask for […]

Three thousand five hundred years ago, Moses led God’s people out of slavery in Egypt, an event known as the Exodus. Moses wrote this about that night, the night of the Exodus; he says, “That night was a night of watching by the LORD, to bring his people out of the land of Egypt; and […]

If we were to go back to the oldest parts of our bible, to the Book of Exodus, we would see that it opens with the description of a nation living in brutal slavery under the rule of the ancient Egyptian empire.  Now, unfortunately for the Egyptians, this particular nation was descended from a man […]

In the beginning, scripture tells us, God created the heavens and the earth — that is, he created the unformed raw materials he was going to use for the rest of his creation project.  Then, as we discussed briefly last week, he spoke and created a house-like structure: the surface of the earth was like […]

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the first chapter of the bible tells us how he brought the earth into proper order, day by day, and piece by piece, to serve as a temple, a holy place where he could descend and live with his children: human beings that he […]

So the sun rises on Judgement Day. Before sunset, it will all be over: the Messiah — God’s anointed king, the Son of David — will have arrived in Jerusalem, he will be seated on his throne, and the Judgement of the world will begin. This is how Daniel the prophet describes the scene: “A […]

So today we come to the end of the Song of Songs. We have followed this young couple’s relationship from its beginnings in the countryside, to their marriage in the city where their relationship was severely tested and almost destroyed. It survived only because the man and the woman both decided to trust in the […]

So, we are going to jump right back into our story here: We are still in the garden of Eden. At the serpent’s suggestion, the man and the woman tried to make themselves more like God by eating the fruit of knowledge. God arrived, conducted a brief trial, and then Judgement Day began. He cursed […]