Sermons on Textual Studies
The Fig Leaf Fashion Show
A couple weeks back we looked at how our view of God changed in Genesis 3. Instead of seeing God as One to relate to and be in communion with, we started seeing him as One to fear and hide from. We lost something else too. Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and the very next thing that changed was the way they perceived themselves . . . they realized they were naked and tried to cover up. Tyler Staton…
The Word Became Flesh
This is the last of three messages that I’m sharing about John’s incredibly beautiful Prologue (John 1:1-18), one of the most enriching descriptions of the Incarnate Son of God to be found anywhere in Scripture. Tomorrow we’ll study the culmination of John’s Christological message: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, . . .” We’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last two weeks discussing what John meant when he described Jesus as “the Word” (i.e.,…
Look at it and Live
If you’re following the church’s Bible reading plan this year, you’ve just begun the book of Numbers, so you’re about to read about a series of rebellions that culminate in an event at Kadesh-Barnea that seems to be the tipping point (the 12 scouts, Israel’s disbelief, etc.). God turns them back toward the wilderness where they’ll spend almost four decades. Our story today falls into this period of time–after the Kadesh rebellion and during the wilderness wandering. It’s short, but…
Jesus and Legion
Mark is a notoriously pithy writer who gets straight to the point and doesn’t mince words. And yet he devotes twenty verses to this interesting encounter between Jesus and a violent, demon-possessed man that ends up with pigs diving into the sea. That makes us think that Mark thinks there’s something important for us to see here. And there is. It’s a story about demon possession, of course, but it’s more than that. It serves as an illustration of how evil…