You also played the harlot with the Egyptians, your [a]lustful neighbors, and multiplied your harlotry to make Me angry. Ezekiel 16:26 NASB Lustful – The prophets do not mince words. Their messages arrive with explicit, often offensive language. The reason is simple: if you want to rivet the audience’s attention, you need provocative language. And the prophets…
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Matthew 5:8 NIV In heart – Eve Levavi Feinstein’s remark about purity in the Bible raises some important questions: “. . . the Hebrew word for purity is used almost exclusively to refer to that which is associated with God and his service: ….
Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law…
Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots, and 12,000 horsemen. 1 Kings 4:26 NASB 40,000 – Like a few others comparative passages between the books of Kings and the books of Chronicles, this verse has a parallel. 2 Chronicles 9:25 says almost the same thing. But rather than 40,000, it reads 4,000. It’s…
He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity, he who rejects unjust gain and shakes his hands so that they hold no bribe; he who stops his ears from hearing about bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking upon evil; Isaiah 33:15 NASB Speaks with sincerity – Sometimes a translation, even if correct, is so loaded with…
And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant— these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Isaiah 56:6-7a NIV All – Each one…
Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to his edification. Romans 15:2 NASB 1977 Please – The wonderful thing about paradigms is that they help you make sense of the world. In fact, if you start discovering anomalies in your world—things that just don’t add up–paradigms offer useful solutions. You can claim…
to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, Ephesians 3:6 NASB Fellow heirs and fellow members – Put aside, for a moment, the great theological themes of Paul. You know, those doctrines like justification by faith, election, righteousness, predestination, and…
One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” Luke 11:1 NIV Teach us – The disciples were Jewish, through and through. They had been praying in the synagogue and in their homes since they were…
For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. 1 Thessalonians 2:13 NASB Accepted – This verse raises several important questions: 1) Why did…
