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A Message Delivered on Christmas Eve, 2014 When you read the gospels it is evident that the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke aren’t the same. That’s because Matthew and Luke aren’t interested in telling what happened, but what it means. Matthew says everything he wants to say with Magi, and Luke says...
It is back around 732 B.C.E. and Ahaz is king of Judah. He’s just a young man in his early twenties, but he was surrounded by some older advisors, among them the prophet Isaiah. Assyria is a rising power and is threatening the nations of the eastern Mediterranean coast. The kings of Syria and Israel, who...
“‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’” God is with us. After a few hundred years, the Israelites of the first century had to be wondering. It was a period of defeat, exile, occupation, and extreme brutality, made...
The birth narrative in Matthew is found in the first chapter, but it doesn’t begin with the story of Joseph and Mary. We begin there; we like to skip the boring parts and get right to the interesting parts. Matthew actually begins the birth narrative with a genealogy, but who reads those? You can’t...
There’s a story in the 11th chapter of Genesis that tells how humans tried to go where God was. It’s actually the culmination of a series of stories in which humans try to take for themselves prerogatives that belong only to God. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve wanted to decide for themselves what is...
In which gospel does the innkeeper tell Mary and Joseph that he has no rooms available for them? Trick question; Luke simply writes that Jesus was laid in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. No innkeeper is ever mentioned. But what if there wasn’t even an inn? Kenneth E. Bailey, in Jesus...
Impossible
Christmas Faith
Letting “Emmanuel” Be Enough
Kings and Harlots: A Genealogy of the Incarnation
Heaven and Earth, Towers and Mangers
No Inn, But Plenty of Room for Jesus
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I am a lifelong student of the Bible, and have been a pastor for over twenty-five years. My desire through this blog is to help people see things in the intersection of Scripture and real life that they might have missed. The careless handling of the Bible is causing a lot of problems in our churches and our culture--and is literally turning people away from the church, and, sometimes, God. I hope to treat Scripture with the respect it deserves, and, even if you don't agree with what I say, give you some insight.
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