For the Love of God

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6:5 NASB Might – “If love is real, one should be able to express deep, intimate feelings, unafraid of being judged, ridiculed, or mocked; one is able to take off masks and be…

Big, Not Many

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
In the city of our God, His holy mountain. Psalm 48:1 (English Bible) NASB Great – Sometimes we just absolutely must know the subtle differences in Hebrew in order to comprehend the deeper message of the text. That is the case here. If I asked you what…

Melanchthon Lives

“The whole law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”  Matthew 22:40  (R. T. France) Whole – How much of the Torah hangs on the two weightier commandments “love God” and “love your neighbor”?  Holos – all of it!  Agreed?  Now think about what this means.  If Yeshua is correct, then every one of…

Seventy-seven Times

 Then Manasseh knew that the LORD was God.  2 Chronicles 33:13  NASB Knew – How many times will you commit the same offense before God turns His back? How terrible must your sins be before God will not forgive?  Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai suggested that God might have ordained the terrible sins of David and…

The Shema (5)

And you shall love YHWH your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.  Deuteronomy 6:5 Heart/ Soul/ Might – If we are commanded to love God with all (kol) we’ve got, obviously that command affects the entire body of behaviors.  Rather than allow us to fumble around…