'Bible' Tagged Posts
SERVANTS OF CHRIST
“Did you hear the one about the minister, the priest and the rabbi…?” Chances are, so have most pastors. Preacher jokes are as plentiful as lawyer jokes. That’s OK. Some of them are truly funny. Pastors need to take the word of God seriously, but not so much themselves. What preachers see from their side of the pulpit can be comical too. Ask people to picture the perfect pastor and they might tell you he’s 30 years old and…
PLEASANT PLACES
You may recall that at the end of The Small Catechism, Martin Luther tacked on what he called “The Table of Duties.” For husbands and wives, parents and children, pastors and parishioners, labor and management he set down the Bible passages that apply to each, concluding: “Let each his lesson learn with care and all the household well shall fare.” Escaping from a church that exalted holy orders and man-made works, Luther emphasized the sacredness of each Christian’s…
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF MORNING
“It was the best of times and it was the worst of times,” is the way Charles Dickens began his novel, Tale Of Two Cities. Paul would have said the same about his times. In our epistle lesson from Romans 13, he says: “The night is almost over, and the day is drawing near.” The times are dark with judgment…like the night. The times are bright with promise…like the day. We would have to say the same about our own…
CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS
“Cast your bread on the surface of the waters,” wrote King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 11. It has a beautiful ring to it. But what does it mean? Tossing a loaf of bread into the Mississippi would seem an odd and pointless thing to do! Solomon is actually talking about an act of commerce or trade, of shipping “bread,” that is, grain, over the waters to distant lands. The Bible tells us that Solomon had a fleet of trading ships. Once…
OUR SUBSTITUTE
Our old teachers spoke often about “the vicarious atonement.” We got it, because they explained it. Churchy words such as, “justification” (to declare not guilty), or “redemption” (to be ransomed by the blood of Christ when we were held hostage by sin, death and hell), or “reconciliation” (that God made friends of us when we were His declared enemies) – these and countless other rich Bible words do not need to be dummied down to a vanilla vocabulary. They…
“THIEVES AND ROBBERS”
On November 18th, 1978, in the jungle commune of Jonestown, Guyana, South America, more than 900 people drank cyanide-laced purple Flavoraid served up from a common pot. More than 270 were children. The babies were given the poison with little syringes. Folks who resisted or tried to run were gunned down. Their cult leader, Jim Jones, finally dispatched himself with a bullet to the head. In March of 1997, Marshall Applewhite played out a similar scene in Rancho…
WHERE WILL IT ALL END?
In these troubling times, as in many times past, we may find ourselves wondering: “Where will it all end?” St. Paul famously said this: “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, for those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28 EHV). It is doubtful that you and I would believe these words if God Himself had not caused them to be written down in the Bible. As the years…
“IF YOU CANNOT PREACH LIKE PAUL…”
The familiar old mission hymn, “Hark! The Voice of Jesus Crying,” recognizes that not every Christian is called into the public ministry of preaching and teaching the word of God. That is more than OK. How could the gospel go forth to the work-a-day world without “the priesthood of all believers” telling others what they have heard from pulpits and classrooms? The hymn says: “If you cannot preach like Paul, you can tell the love of Jesus; you can say…
WATERS IN THE WILDERNESS
The prophet Isaiah pictured the gospel comfort of the coming Savior this way: “Waters will flow in the wilderness, and streams in the wasteland.” It was a picture God’s Old Testament people could appreciate. Delivered from bondage in Egypt, they had marched forth through the wilderness toward the land of promise. On their journey to the Horeb mountain range, the hills got higher. The valleys got deeper. The rocks got bigger. The water got scarcer. The children of Israel…
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE WISE MEN
Isaiah foretold it. “Nations will walk to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn” (Isaiah 60:1-3 EHV). The first example of this, as we edge toward the Epiphany season, is found not in the Gospel of Luke from which our Christmas themes are taken this year. Rather, it is in the Gospel of Matthew that we learn about the Wise Men. The Wise Men arrive in Jerusalem asking: “Where is He who has been born King of…
IT’S ADVENT! EAT UP!
Advent is a season of preparation as we remember Christ’s first coming in lowliness and look forward to His second coming in glory. The preparation may take the form of reading a chapter or two in the Bible each day, perhaps the opening chapters of each of the four Gospels. But in the hurry and pressure of the season, we might see it as one more time-bandit on our to-do list. It can all become something we are doing…
TURN OUR HEARTS, O LORD!
Calling to mind the prophecy of Malachi, the angel Gabriel tells old Zechariah that his son, John the Baptist, will go before the Savior to “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, to turn the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous” (Luke 1:17). Where this does not happen, said the prophet Malachi, then there is nothing left but “complete destruction” for those unprepared for the coming of Christ (Malachi 4:6). So just what does this mean? By…