The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
Come
Isaiah is a book of prophecy that primarily targets the people of Israel. But chapters fifty-three through sixty-one diverge into the prophetic advent of salvation free to all who believe in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ on the cross. One part of that prophecy uses the imperative voice of command as God calls everyone to Come (Isa. 55:1), Listen Diligently (vs. 2b), Hear (vs.3), and Seek Him (vs. 6).
In Isaiah 55:1, God gives an invitation to the needy,…..
The Potter, Part 2
The biblical allegory of the potter and the clay appears numerous times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Last week we explored most of the Old Testament incidents in which faithless Israel is warned of the coming judgement in the form of the Babylonian captivity (Isa. 41:25), explanation of Israel’s required repentance and recognition of absolute dependence and faith in God’s hand of mercy with no other recourse or control over individual lives…..
The Potter, Part 1
I once took a pottery class at our local community college where I learned about hand-thrown, wheel-thrown, and tooling techniques for work with clay. I also employed several glazing and firing techniques during my class. While I didn’t have to create the clay myself, I did do some clay amendment to recycle my badly made pots. It involved a lot of time under water followed by extensive kneading of the clay to reestablish cohesive and plastic…..
A Template for Prayer
Parts of David’s prayer of thanksgiving in 1 Chronicles. 16:8-36 for the return of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem are woven into several of the Psalms (with minor variations in Psalm 47, 48, 96, 105, and 106). Its antiquity, Old Testament placement, and focus on Israel’s history does not rule out its use in our own prayers. In five parts it gives us a contemporary template, readily adaptable to inform our worship today:
Exhortation…..
Holy Spirit Calling
Friends of mine celebrated their fifty-eighth wedding anniversary this week. They have been missionaries their entire life together. They served in France for a number of years working with a variety of evangelistic efforts alongside local churches, including literature distribution, special evangelistic events, and a Christian Coffee House. After that, they lived in the United States and worked as administrative personnel for a global missionary organization for more than a decade. Then they spent some years in…..
Old and New Testament Parallels
Jeremiah 29:11-13 was a message to the Children of Israel, but it carries over to us, as well, to the New Testament Church: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall you call upon me, and you shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And you shall seek me and…..
God’s Individual Direction
Genesis 46 records the journey of Jacob to Egypt after he learned that Joseph, his son whom he had not seen in more than twenty years, was not only alive but also second in command to Pharoah. On his way to Egypt, Jacob stopped at Beersheba. Since it was on the ancient trade route that passed through Canaan at the time, anyone traveling south from Canaan would have arrived at some point in Beersheba. It was natural…..
Through the Lens of God’s Sovereignty
For some time now, my husband and I have been praying for, among others, three friends who are in the middle of cancer treatments and another who is moving farther and farther into dementia. God has called us to be always rejoicing, praying, and thanking God for everything (1 Thess. 5:16-18), all three of which do not come naturally. They require the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. We humans tend to impatience…..
Leah
What do Isaac, Joseph, and Leah have in common? They are Old Testament types of Christ. We don’t usually consider Leah to be part of this list, but if you think about it, her life represented Christ’s earthly journey in three ways: she was unattractive, rejected, and yet chosen.
First, Leah was unattractive. Jacob’s trek to Padan-Aram with a dual purpose, to both flee his angry brother’s threats of murder and to marry a wife who was not a…..
Trust and Obey
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee because he trusts in thee. Trust in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength” (Is. 26:3-4).
These verses state a reverse continuum that is the very basis of our salvation in Jesus Christ. It starts with God’s everlasting strength, more than enough reason to believe and trust God for the salvation offered through our Lord Jesus Christ. In its…..