It is the holiness of God that defines His character, and all of His other characteristics. This holiness is what sets Him apart from His creation and what makes Him completely unique from anything and everything else. It is this understanding that He is transcendent or set apart from His creation that we must keep in view as we explore all the other attributes that make God who He is; it is literally the starting point for or understanding of His person.  While all of the attributes of God are woven together so that none can be taken without all of them falling apart, it is His holiness that bonds them together. This is the reason that when given that view of angels around the throne in Isaiah 6, they are crying that He is "holy, holy, holy". It is the holiness of God that manifests itself in the actions that He takes in the world such as His mercy, righteousness, and judgment. If the holiness of God is what He is, then we could say that the love of God is who He is. It is...

If you have ever read through the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, you have probably found it somewhat depressing. After all, when the author starts out of the gate telling you that everything is meaningless you can’t help but calling the local Party City to order balloons for the pity-party that is getting ready to ensue.   Life Is Meaningless? According to Ecclesiastes everything in life and even human existence itself is “vanity’ . The Hebrew word used here is ‘Hebel’ has  been treated in many of the major translations as vain / vanity and by a few others as meaningless or pointless. The concept of  Hebel  can be explained by the analogy of making it one’s life purpose to building a sandcastle on the beach. That would be pretty dumb, right? But, in a sense, that is exactly what the author and many of us do. Maybe not literally, but we consume our life’s with temporary things that have no eternal significance. While the ...

As we look at Jeremiah as a whole we see a number of different narratives that play out, and a number of different sins that are to be judged, but the over arching theme of the book is a theme of judgement.  If we were to look for somewhere to find this theme in all of its glory, we need look no farther that chapter 7. It is here that we can find every hope that the people of Judah had dashed to pieces like a piece of china on a tile floor. It is chapter 7 that really sets the tone for the entire book when Jeremiah gives not a ‘feel-good’ sermon, but a sermon of coming judgement. One of the main issues that Judah had against them could almost be considered was a problem that would haunt the Pharisees in the gospels. They thought that their religion was enough even without the fruits of religion. It is the same religion that the New Testament writer of James, would call worthless. (James 1:26)   Judah had even got steps beyond this treating the Temple as some type of ‘good...

Isaiah 12 is a short but fitting conclusion to the section pointing to Israel’s choice between trusting God or trusting Assyria. This chapter comes directly before the second section of the book’s first unit, where we see several judgments towards various nations. 1 Even before the judgements begin to come, we see a promise and anticipation of the song that the remnant will sing with joy over their salvation. (Isaiah 12:4) Even amid coming judgement, Isaiah gives a song of praise, pointing us to a God that will comfort and is worthy of trust. It is interesting to note that the references to ‘that day’ prior to this text are days that bring fear because of not trusting in God (cf. 2:20; 3:18; 4:1; 7:18, 20-21, 23) , but chapter 12 brings us a day of hope. A hope that is found only when the focus has been turned back to Him for help, and not looking for it in other places or other people. This hope is ultimately in the coming Messiah which brings us circling back to the beginning to...

No matter what way you slice it, our definition of success is different than God’s definition of success. The problem that we run into with success, as with many other areas, is that we seem to lay our definitions over God’s Word. As churches, we often turn to different gimmicks to get some type of visible results, while the scriptures are clear that God will and is building His church. (Matthew 16:18) As individuals, we are constantly seeking steps into a so called ‘victorious’ Christian life, and quickly forget how Christ measures success in this life. CS Lewis emphasized this when he said, “It is not [our] business to succeed.” 1 This increasingly true with those that would proclaim that we can live a “victorious Christian life” over sin and become what is deemed a Spirit-filled Christian. While the fact of the matter is that this concept is not only foreign to scripture but has disastrous effects on the lives of believers. This mindset will inevitably lead to one of two desti...

I don’t know how many grew up in the same way that I did but being typical boys me and my brothers would take sticks to about any plants that we could find in the forest behind our house. Obviously, this was the responsibility of an 8 and 10-year-old, right? Thankfully, Jesus is not like 10-year-old me, but even more thankfully He is not like many in the churches of our day. While likely with genuine intentions, many take it upon themselves to root out the problems that they perceive in the church. If they see weakness, we need to get it out post haste, right? Well not necessarily. Jesus gives us a parable about the wheat and the tares to help illustrate something that we need to understand. (Matthew 13:24-30) In this parable we find a group of eager servants that have discovered that the enemy has sown tares, or weeds, in with the wheat. These servants run to the master and are willing and ready to go pull up these weeds from the field, but the master gives them what may seem like...

The apologetic and rhetorical function of Luke 24 can is summed up by the understanding that, “Luke's use of the Old Testament is best summed up as a prophetic and Christological use—all of the Scriptures point to Jesus and must be fulfilled by him”. [1] This prophetic and Christological explanation of the scripture that this couple of disciples knew was the whole point of Jesus conversation with them on the Road to Emmaus. It is said that beginning with Moses, or the Torah and following the paths through the prophets He interpreted the scriptures to them those things that were about him. (Luke 24:27) Ultimately, we can see this same apologetic theme played out again and again in the book of Acts, Luke sequel to his gospel. Peter walks through the scripture of the Old Testament showing Christ (Acts 2:14-41), Stephen does the same before the Pharisees (Acts 6), and Philip will preach Christ from Isaiah to the Ethiopian Eunuch. These accounts of Jesus throughout the Jewish scri...

Ms. Clara walks into her emptied closet, her ‘war room’ has been made ready for the battle to begin. If you have seen the movie War Room, you will likely remember this scene. It depicts a ‘prayer warrior’ and often will bring someone to our mind that we know personally. We all have that person that we think of that seemingly know how to really “Get a hold of God”. They have their list of answered prayers as proof of their accomplishments. However, if we are completely honest, looking at our own lives our batting average in the ‘prayer closet’ doesn't seem so hot, so anytime we feel that we need prayer, we must shop around for the right person to pray for us. The danger with this thought process is it will often cause us to give up praying ourselves in lieu of someone who can do it right. The problem is that this is completely foreign to the Scripture.   “Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the ...

If we are going to understand discipleship in Mark, we must first understand what it means to be a disciple. The first time we find disciple (mathētḗs) ion Mark, is in chapter two. The word here means a learner or a pupil of someone.  It is said that in early Jewish writings the description of a disciple, or learner, was one who would  “cover himself in the dust of [the rabbi’s] feet”.  This basically meaning that one would follow the words and actions of their teacher so closely that the dust stirred up by them would cover their follower. So, what was it that Jesus did? The first teachings that we find from Jesus is that of the good news of the gospel. Jesus begins His ministry on earth by preaching that we should repent and believe the gospel. (Mark 1:15) This proclamation is the lesson that we should take if we are to be disciples of Christ. The first instance of the twelve going out, this is exactly what they are commanded. (Mark 6:12) Even later in the book of Acts t...

To be honest, I was surprised at the frequency of the word “immediately” in the book of Mark. It is interesting how many times it comes up when you are looking for it, especially in the first chapter. Craig Blomberg mentions in his book Jesus and the Gospels , that the word “immediately” (Gk. euthus) is used forty-two times in the book of Mark and that, “at times [it is] virtually equivalent to little more than “the next important thing I want to tell you is…”   (Blomberg p. 142) The word in Mark gives us a view of Christ as God’s Servant, and at other times “immediately” gives us the view of how He served. We see no delay, no reluctance in the mission to be about “His Father's business”. (Luke 2:49) The “immediateness” of the ministry of Christ in Mark lines up with the prophecy that Isaiah gave about the Servant of God when he said that the servant would set “His face like a flint” to the task. (Isaiah 50:7) The first instance that we find the word in the book of Mark is re...

You better check yo self before you wreck yo self – Ice Cube (1993)   Not that long ago a conversation with a friend that brought these song lyrics up as an explanation for a section of scripture in the book of Psalms.   “Be still and know that I am God.” — Psalm 46:10   This in one of the very well known (as well as misapplied) sections of scripture. Very often, this verse of scripture is used as a source of encouragement of hope. It is likely that a walk-through Hobby Lobby will spot this phrase or verse somewhere. But unfortunately, it is another verse that have been pulled as Voddie Baucham has said, “kicking and screaming out of its context”. It often tends to find itself shoved onto church signs, bulletins, and social media posts If we are going to take the Word of God as an actual word from God, we must read the bible how it is written. “Be still” is not an encouragement to Christians, it is an intense warning to the nations, to ...

I ’m not going to lie. I hated English class. Being home-schooled  by a grammar Nazi pretty much instilled this disdain  in me from an early age. I mean really, who cares about verb-tense, or prepositional phrases? Well, all this changed around 10 th grade for me. I began to gain an appreciation for the things I had been taught and the way I had been taught them. English became enjoyable (except diagramming , ugh) to study and understand. Grammatically speaking every sentence should have a noun and a verb. For example, the word Christian is a noun. A Christian is a person who follows Jesus. Follow is a verb. Jesus used verbs all the time. Verbs like love, come, rest, learn, hear, etc. But somewhere along the line, we tried to make Christian an adjective instead of being about verbs. “There is no such thing a Christian Democrat” “I love Christian comedy!” “There is no such thing as Christian *Insert Noun*” These are all phases that we have heard at some point, ...

“SIX INCHES!” This was the standard rule for members of the opposite sex through most of my childhood and into my teenage years. Touching was prohibited, which left even a handshake or high five with a girl seem oddly inappropriate. The basis for this was from a passage of scripture in 1 Corinthians chapter seven, and as far as verses that were to be memorized, it ranked right up there with John 3:16. This verse reads, “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.  Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:1,2) The reasoning that was given for this statement was that since committing fornication requires touching, Paul is saying that the best way to avoid fornication is unmarried people to keep from touching each other. But the question that a study of the text, in context, brings is, “Did Paul really say that it is good for a man not to touch a w...