As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith.1 Timothy 1:3-4 NASB Instruct– Let’s suppose that you are designated a teacher of others…
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name. Psalm 103:1 NASB Within– What is within you? Maybe you’re not sure how to answer that question. Let’s try it a different way. When you dream, what things happen to you over and over? Do you have dreams about being embarrassed? Lost? Threatened? Or maybe you…
No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. John 1:18 NASB Explained– First, let’s deal with some punctuation. There isn’t any in the Greek text, so we find some English variation when the translators construct the sentence. In the ESV, this reads: “No one…
If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved, then it shall be in the day he wills what he has to his sons, he cannot make the son of the loved the firstborn before the son of…
An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who shames him is like rottenness in his bones. Proverbs 12:4 NASB Rottenness– Why does the Bible seem to focus on the potential damage to the husband’s reputation? Why are there no comparable verses about the harm inflicted on women? For example, the infamous passage in Numbers about a…
So Jacob went in to Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served Laban for another seven years. Genesis 29:30 ESV More than– Why does Jacob love Rachel more than Leah? Leah is devoted to Jacob. Leah gives Jacob many sons so obviously he didn’t maintain sexual distance from her. Leah pleads for his…
And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”Matthew 13:10 NASB Parables– Let’s consider the biblical approach of communication. Why doesn’t the Bible just give us a list of rules or a well-organized theology? Why does it sort of ramble around, throwing in parts of different genres of…
But Joseph had recognized his brothers, although they did not recognize him. Genesis 42:8 NASB Recognized– Moshe Luzzatto points out self-awareness is a function of our interaction with others. We, in fact, owe others for our very existence as psychological selves. According to Luzzatto, this is an infinite debt. After all, it constitutes what we know as life…
The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. Genesis 2:22 NASB Brought– When I wrote Guardian Angel, I thought the title would be The Perfect Enemy. My thinking was this: God brings into the lives of husbands precisely those wives who act as polishing stones, grinding away…
He came to [b]a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and lay down in that place. Genesis 28:11 NASB A certain place– Do you read the footnotes? Or do you think, “Well, those are just references or…
