“sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master it”. Genesis 4:7 Crouching – Genesis chapter 4 is the story of Cain and Abel. It is a story that we have probably known since childhood God knows that emotional situations can become the seedbed for sinful acts. He…
“for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart”. I Sam 16:7 Heart – This is only a part of verse 7, but a very important part. Even more interestingly, the translation from the New American Standard (above) is not exactly what the…
“The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light”. Rom 13:12 Cast off – In the English language, we have only two “voices” (a grammatical term) – active or passive. But in Greek, there is a…
“The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness”. Psalm 103:8 Lovingkindness – This is a very important word in the Old Testament. The Hebrew is hesed. We saw it once before on January 24. Now we will look at more of its meaning. For centuries, this word was translated as…
“For He will give His angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways”. Psalm 91:11 Guard – This word (shamar) in all its forms is used more than 400 times in the Old Testament. Its basic meaning is to watch over with great care. It is used to describe actions of the…
“And the Lord Jehovah will help me. On account of this I was not ashamed”. Isaiah 50:7 Help – In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word azar is used principally of military assistance. There are numerous passages where the word is used in the context of a real military battle, for example, when Egypt and…
“predestinating us to adoption through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will”. Eph 1:5 Adoption – Not used often in the New Testament, this word is as old as the second century BC. It is huiothesia. In Greek times, adoption was used to bring a son into the family for…
“even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, for us to be holy and without blemish before Him in love,” Ephesians 1:4 Without blemish – In Greek, negative word constructions are sometimes made up of two combined parts. It is something like our English “un-” as in “unfit” or “ungrateful”. …
“Jehovah your God is mighty in your midst; He will save. He will rejoice over you with joy; He is silent in His love”. Zephaniah 3:17 Rejoice – This verse at the end of one of the more obscure Old Testament prophetic books gives us some wonderful and unusual pictures about God’s love for us. …
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow-citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household,” Ephesians 2:19 Fellow-citizens – This word is sumpolitai. You can see the combination of sum and polites – literally “together with a citizen”. It is also translated “fellow-workers”. That is important because it does…
