I’m pretty sure the imagery of the hymn How Firm a Foundation primarily draws from Isaiah 40–48. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the second verse, which is a paraphrase of Isaiah 41:10. Since the hymn was written in 1787, perhaps the best way to see this parallel is to compare the second verse to the King James Version of Isaiah 41:10.
Continue reading “The Right Hand of Our Firm Foundation”Category: Bible: Commentary, Intertextuality, Exposition
Isaiah’s Wonderful Counselor
Handel’s Messiah made memorable a number of Old Testament prophecies of the coming of Christ, including the coming of a righteous king as a child born unto the people of God in Isaiah 9:6. In this wonderful prophecy the coming king is named in four pairs of titles: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. All these are wonderful affirmations of the divinity of Christ! But the first of these is easily misunderstood. This post is about what Isaiah means by describing the coming king as a wonderful counselor.
Continue reading “Isaiah’s Wonderful Counselor”Moses Didn’t Need a Leadership Lesson from Jethro
As some of you remember, I’ve been blogging through lessons I learn while reading and studying the Pentateuch in Hebrew. For the ministry for people affected by developmental disabilities at my church, we adapt our children’s ministry curriculum that works through the whole Bible in three years. I try to blog about things I find in passages outside of these lessons or little nuggets that the lessons don’t cover. However, there are a lot of those, so while I’ve only written through the life of Abraham, we’ve now taught up through the passage of the Israelites through the sea of reeds. Although I have much to write to you concerning Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and Pharaoh, for now I’m going to skip ahead to where I am in Generations of Grace.
Continue ReadingA Patch of Promised Land
At this point my ongoing series of blog posts on Genesis has definitely developed a sub-series on Abraham in Genesis. We started by identifying the story of Abraham as really that of Terah’s family, with Abraham as protagonist, a story that would bring hope into a declining world. We continued by noting that both instances of Abraham’s lies about Sarah had to do with God demonstrating fulfillment of his covenant to Abraham. In particular, we are assured of God giving Abraham the promised seed (Isaac) and we see examples of God blessing those who bless Abraham and cursing those who curse him. Last week we saw that Abraham’s name was made great through a military conquest as God allowed him to deliver Lot from captivity. Indeed, Melchizedek comes out and begins to illustrate how all the nations of the world may be blessed through Abraham: later allusions to Melchizedek remind us that the coming savior from Abraham is a priest like Melchizedek. We’ll fast-forward over the birth of Isaac and his near sacrifice by his father. At this point we now land at the end of Genesis 22 after a restatement of the promise to Abraham. One promise of God has not been fulfilled in anyway: the land promise.
Continue ReadingAbraham and Lot: It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know
Connections are powerful things in this world. Connections bring jobs, internships, and other opportunities. Connections introduce us to new groups of friends, new career paths, new ideas, and new experiences. The power of connections is why networking is such an emphasis in the professional world, why certain fraternities remain popular in college, and why alumni networks are maintained. Connections help improve our lives.
In the spiritual world, too, “connections” have certain value. When God answers prayers of intercession, it’s almost like a “connection” has resulted in God’s blessing. For example, before his conversion, St. Augustine’s debauched lifestyle pained his mother Monica. After decades of Monica’s prayers, God answered, and through Augustine’s “connection,” God miraculously saved Augustine and called him to his service. God delights in answering the prayers of his children. Sometimes those prayers are for other people; so God delights to bless people for the sake of other people.
Continue ReadingSome Thoughts on the Definition of Biblical Theology
In recent years biblical theology has become increasingly popular in Christian circles. That is not to say that “the truths of the Bible” or “biblical doctrines” were unpopular and are now becoming popular, or that there has been any particular revival in the church, but rather that a certain way of doing theology is becoming more popular in pulpits, in the Christian blogosphere, and in the academy. Perhaps because of its recent growth into the limelight, many people seem confused about the definition of biblical theology, and this confusion muddies theological discussion. The cause of this is a tendency to define biblical theology in terms of its results and findings instead of its methods.
Continue ReadingWhy Did Abraham Lie about Sarah Twice?
When I was growing up, my family liked to watch some of the old B Westerns. These movies–usually from the thirties and forties, starring John Wayne or Gene Autry or Roy Rodgers or others, were simple in both production and plot. Special effects were minimal. Good always trumped evil. Tropes abounded. Sometimes these movies even borrowed their plots from other B Westerns.
Once, we watched a Gene Autry movie in which a couple women from the east moved near Gene’s ranch and started herding sheep, which Gene was afraid were going to destroy the range. So he and his friends put goop on the sheep to convince the women that the sheep had hoof and mouth disease. Later, we watched a Roy Rogers movie in which a couple women from the east moved near Roy’s ranch and started herding sheep, which Roy was afraid were going to destroy their range. So what do you think they did? Roy and his friends put goop on the sheep to convince the women that the sheep had hoof and mouth disease!
Continue ReadingWhen the Young Perish and the Old Linger
Were you to ask “average” Christians to describe the storyline of Genesis, what would they come up with? Perhaps it would emphasize the “beginnings” aspect of the book. I took a very scientific survey of the standard evangelical understanding of Genesis by asking an unnamed one of my sisters who took all the Bible classes at The Master’s University to tell me about Genesis. She depicted it as something like this:
Continue ReadingHow the Tower of Babel Builds the Storyline of Genesis
Bible skeptics or critics often point to alleged inconsistencies in the biblical accounts of history to try to discredit the Bible’s truthfulness and authority. An example of such an alleged inconsistency is the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. Here is the problem: Genesis 11:1 says “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.” However, the earlier passage Genesis 10:5 states, “From these the coastland peoples spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans in their nations.” (Emphasis added.) How did the whole earth have one language after the different peoples scattered out with their own languages? Continue reading “How the Tower of Babel Builds the Storyline of Genesis”
Noah and God’s Rest in Hebrews 4
A neglected aspect of the story of Noah is his birth. When Noah was born, his father “called his name Noah (rest), saying ‘this one will console us over our work and the pain of our hands from the ground which Yahweh cursed.’ ” (Gen 5:29) This clear allusion back to the curse of Genesis 3 expresses and exasperated hope for fulfillment to the promise of Genesis 3:15–that God would send the seed of the woman to finally crush the serpent’s head and reverse the curse. Lamech expressed hope that Noah, whose name means rest, would finally bring about rest from the curse God put on the ground. Now while in the story of Noah and the ark we do not see Noah become this savior, and in fact at the end of chapter 9 of Genesis we see him disqualified form being this savior, the idea of God’s rest must somehow be connected with Noah. This is for a couple reasons: his name, and his salvation by God. But then, why does the author of Hebrews ignore the story of Noah in writing his exhortation to enter God’s rest in Hebrews 4?
Citizens & Sons 