The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me. Psalm 18:20 NASB According to – I don’t know many who could have written these words: The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness; According to the cleanness of my hands He has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord,…
Do not fret because of evildoers, be not envious toward wrongdoers. For they will wither quickly like the grass and fade like the green herb. Psalm 37:1-2 NASB Wither quickly – Stop! Before you read my homily on Psalm 37:1-2, read the entire psalm. It will only take a minute or so. I’ll wait. Ready? What was your…
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 2 Timothy 3:16 NASB Profitable – When Paul writes that the Tanakh is profitable, what does he mean? Before we take a run at this question, we should probably remind ourselves of a few obvious things: (1) in this…
“Speak this word to them: ‘Let my eyes overflow with tears night and day without ceasing; for the Virgin Daughter, my people, has suffered a grievous wound, a crushing blow.’” Jeremiah 14:17 NIV Without ceasing – Theology has a deep, intrinsic problem. The Bible doesn’t have this problem because the Bible isn’t theology. Theology is the…
Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Exodus 14:30 NASB Saved – A language without vowels is a language in a state of constant interpretation. Every time it is read, vowels must be inserted. That means every act of reading is a personal…
I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. Revelation 21:22 NASB No temple – As you know, I rarely write about verses from John’s apocalyptic vision. The reason is simple: Apocalyptic literature is filled with ambiguous images, symbolic words, and suggestions. This is intentional since apocalyptic literature is not predictive…
Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and take for yourselves lambs according to your families, and slay the Passover lamb. Exodus 12:21 NASB Go and take for yourselves – You probably didn’t know this, but translators of the Hebrew text into English make decisions about which rabbi they will follow. That’s…
So the last shall be first, and the first last. Matthew 20:16 NASB Billboard Advertising – Iron Gate Some things look better when they age. Some things just become garbage. At the beginning, it’s hard to tell. But give it time and the differences become obvious. That’s like us. Hard to tell what life will…
And He continued by questioning them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered and said to Him, “You are the Christ.” Mark 8:29 NASB Who – Most of us realize that virtually all the followers of Yeshua in the early part of the first century were Jewish. That means Jews thought Yeshua was the Messiah long…
“One shall not sell a thing to a Gentile,” The Babylonian Talmud, Regulations Regarding Transfer on Shabbat Gentile – We have often noticed that paradigms determine interpretation. Investigation is governed by what we expect to find. It is never neutral. Even in hard science, the theory defines the category of discovery, and as the history…
