“The Lord is my shepherd” Psalm 23:1 Shepherd – One of the most ancient words in the Bible is this Hebrew word, ro’eh. It is an extremely important word because it tells us something about the role of the leader that we absolutely must know. Since 2300 BC this word has described what a leader…
“but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works; that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me,” John 10:38 Know and Understand – Greek is very precise about time and action. When a Greek sentence wishes to convey two different temporal circumstances in the same phrase,…
“but if I do them, though you do not believe Me, believe the works; that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me,” John 10:38 Works – Yesterday we discovered that the Hebrew word abad has the sense of both work and worship. In the divinely ordered world, what we do as…
“and there was no man to cultivate the ground” Genesis 2:5 Cultivate – You probably knew that work is divinely ordained. God didn’t create the world in order to have a pristine paradise of perfect precision. Paradise wasn’t lost when Man arrived. It was completed. Long before sin, Man had work to do. God intended…
“For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life?” Ecclesiastes 6:12 Futile – Life is too short and you only get one shot at it. You rarely get the chance to start all over. You never get to undo the mistakes you made. Learning…
“Then I said to myself, “As is the fate of the fool, it will also befall me. Why then have I been extremely wise?” So I said to myself, “This too is vanity.” Ecclesiastes 2:15 Vanity – Hebel, the same word used to talk about the futility of basing our existence on what we do,…
“All is vanity” Ecclesiastes 1:2 Vanity – The Bible is the most realistic book about life that has ever been written. In this verse, it tells us that sometime during your earthly sojourn, you will arrive at the zero sum. That’s when you add up all the things that consume our attention, demand our energy,…
“And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout,” Luke 2:25 Devout – What do you think about Simeon? The Bible calls him “righteous and devout”. Does this describe you? What pictures come to mind? Take the word “devout”. Do you see images of long hours…
“He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives . . . to set free those who are downtrodden” Luke 4:18 quoting Isaiah 61:2 Release . . Set Free – The imagery of forgiveness rises to priority position in the mission of Jesus. “Release” and “set free” are both instances of aphesis, our word…
“for this is My blood of the covenant, which is to be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew 26:28 Forgiveness – What does forgiveness look like? That’s not the same question as what it means. We are inclined to use a lot of theologically correct language when we talk about…
