Biblical Studies

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1.       The Cosmos Keeps Preaching: Kevin Hartnett shares about his faith after forty years of discoveries at NASA. He begins, “Have you ever landed great seats at a concert, show, or sporting event — seats right down front, near the center of the action? That’s very much how I think about my position as an employee at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center over the past forty years (now retired), a career spent assisting in the development and testing of satellite control centers and directing the operation of various scientific missions.”

2.       Sex and Christ Crucified: Excellent post by Ed Welch, making Paul’s insights to the church at Corinth clear. He says, “Notice how we can find a belief, somewhere in our souls, that we are independent agents, free to make our own decisions. This belief can be aroused when we hear that we “are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:14). But be careful. Even people who don’t follow Jesus would say that freedom has its limits. Some choices are good for us and some are not.”

3.       Guarding Cherished Resentments: Steve Cornell warns, “Resentment often comes with a blinding effect. It can be hard to recognize how anger and bitterness double our loss and send extended effects of the evil done against us to others.”

4.       The Unexpected Beauty of Babel: This is a fun one by AW Workman. It’s similar to a post I wrote here (but I think even better). He says, “Yet Babel was not only an act of judgment. It was also an act of creation. Creation through judgment. Apparently, when God acted, dozens of languages burst into existence instantly and then began to live and move and have stories and descendants of their own.”

5.       Two Types of Airport People: Pretty funny.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations
  1. Every Day’s a Bad Day: How Ecclesiastes Taught Me to Enjoy Life: Carolyn Mahaney wants us to see Ecclesiastes in a new light, “Ecclesiastes has shown me the secret of enjoying life, even in the midst of trouble. It has rescued me from disillusionment when labors I thought were fruitful appeared to be for naught. When friends have turned their backs, Ecclesiastes has helped me guard against bitterness. It has cured me of setting my hope on a particular outcome, and protected me from becoming bewildered and disheartened by bad news.”

  2. Hannah’s Funeral: Oh my, get your tissues out for this touching piece by Seth Lewis about their daughter they lost during pregnancy 16 years ago.

  3. What Things? D. Eaton considers Jesus’s casual two word response on the road to Emmaus and invites us to consider their spiritual power for us, “It is only because Jesus can ask, “what things?” without further suffering that we can look at our sin and ask, “what debt?” without being thrown into an anxious or guilty state. In Jesus, we have no reason to re-experience the threat of wrath that once hung over us.”

  4. Not a Dinosaur: Mitch Leventhal makes a convincing case that Leviathan in Job is Satan, not a dinosaur. “Job cannot subdue the Evil One. Satan is untamable by man, like a multi-headed sea beast in the waters of chaos. But God can overcome Leviathan. According to Jim Hamilton, ‘the whole book is bracketed by Yahweh’s enticing Satan to do his bidding at the beginning, and by his putting a hook in Leviathan’s nose at the end.’ Yahweh rules over the deep. Evil will not have the last word.”

  5. More Than Jumper Cable Christianity: JA Medders explains, “We use jumper cables when our car’s battery is depleted, dead, and in need of a jumpfrom another battery to get going. We connect jumper cables to another car, get some juice, and then go about our day and way. I fear far too many of us approach “abiding” in Christ this way.”

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations
  1. 7 Lessons I’ve Carried From ‘Narnia’: Kaitlin Miller begins with this lesson, “Grief is Great: In The Magician’s Nephew, Digory, in deep despair over his mother’s illness, is shocked when the great Lion bends down with such great shining tears that Digory felt the Lion may have been even more sorrowful.”

  2. Can You Share the Gospel with Sexual Sinners Without Sounding Like a Bigot? Alen Shlemon shares, “Part of the reason for expecting people to get upset by your convictions on sexual matters is that people closely connect their identity with their sexuality.”

  3. The Many Odd Uses and Abuses of Matthew 18: Keith Evans explains what Jesus’s important passage on confronting the sins of your brother means and doesn’t mean. For instance, “Jesus addresses public persons publicly. Recall his scathing condemnation of Herod (Luke 13:32), or his many public “woes” (i.e. “curses”) pronounced upon the pharisees (cf. Matt 23:13-39). We can almost hear the modern Christian retort: ‘Yes, Jesus, but did you confront all of them privately first?!’”

  4. When Self-Care Becomes Self-Absorption: Trevin Wax helps provide some perspective here on where generations can swing too far in either direction. He begins, “I saw a funny video recently that joked about the generational shift in how we view practices of self-care and therapy. In the old days: ‘You’re in therapy? What’s wrong with you?’ Today: ‘You’re not in therapy? What’s wrong with you?’”

  5. Painters who aren’t parents vs. painters who actually have kids: Ha!

Why Would God Make People Suffer Forever?

Why Would God Make People Suffer Forever?

What is hell? Throughout the years, many Christians have responded that hell can be summed up in three words: eternal conscious torment. But how could it possibly be fair for God to make people suffer eternally for a finite number of sins?

It’s a good question and a hard one at that. I’ve wrestled with the doctrine of hell for a number of years. While believing that hell exists, I’ve wondered if the classic historic teaching on hell might have misstated scripture’s teaching. While I’ve come to believe that hell is eternal conscious torment, I’m sympathetic to those who struggle with the doctrine and who see other possibilities.

Why Does Jesus Talk About Hell?

Why Does Jesus Talk About Hell?

What was Jesus’ personality like? If our culture were to create Jesus’ personae, it might look like Mr. Rogers’s personality: gentle, unassuming, two-dimensionally meek and mild. In short, a sweet pushover of a man. There is truth in our culture’s depicture. When sharing the nature of his heart, Jesus says that he is “gentle and lowly” (Mt 11:29) So he is. He is patient and merciful. He is kind and caring.

Good News, Ladies! You’re Sons!

Good News, Ladies! You’re Sons!

Here is an oddity: women are never referred to as “daughters of God” in the Bible. Kind of strange, especially given how often people use that phrase. “Daughter of God” nets over 1,000 books on Amazon. In the Bible, however, the seemingly clumsy term “sons of God” is used for men and women alike.

An Honorable Ambition

An Honorable Ambition

Should we desire to lead? Paul shared with Timothy, “To aspire to leadership is an honorable ambition” (1 Tim. 3:1). And yet, Jeremiah tells us, “Should you then seek great things for yourself? Seek them not” (Jer. 45:5). Should we run toward or away from leadership, then?

Shining Idols: Uncovering Them

Shining Idols: Uncovering Them

What are the idols of your heart? What are the ways in which you have allowed your heart which is intended to worship God, to worship the golden calves that surround us? Where else have you placed your hope?

If you’re unsure of the answer to that question, perhaps one of these questions might help diagnose your heart. What keeps me up when I’m trying to sleep? What do I fear? What do I think about? What do I daydream about? What gets me most excited in life? What do I give myself to? What do I use my time for?

Shining Idols: A Rejected Covenant

Shining Idols: A Rejected Covenant

Is it possible idolatry might still be alive and well in us today?

I am currently in India, a land of a million gods. The first time I traveled to India, I was startled by how many altars and temples filled the land. Gods are layered upon gods: family gods, regional gods, and gods of healing and fertility. Devout Hindus, in search of hope, pour out their time and resources to god after god in hoping that one of these gods might be able to solve their health problems or financial woes.

This is the human condition, not a quirk of Indian culture. We want something tangible to place our hope in, and we want objects to worship.

Shining Idols: What They Demand

Shining Idols: What They Demand

Are you an idolater? I already lost you, didn’t I? Most wouldn’t raise their hand to affirm their idolatry.  

Idolatry doesn’t preach well to us 21st-century Westerners. A couple of years ago, I had someone leave the church after I preached on idolatry. “You preached for most of your sermon on the Old Testament, the law against Idolatry, and how might we be guilty of idolatry today,” she reflected. She said that the sermon didn’t connect with her and didn’t offer “spiritual encouragement.”

Oh, friends, the dangers we face when we think that biblical passages on idolatry don’t apply to us!