A Prayer to Prepare for Easter
This is a guest post from my good friend and colleague Dr. Randy Millwood, Church Services Consultant for the Maryland/Delaware Baptist Convention, FBC Frederick member, and best Real-Beard Santa Claus in the world. He wrote it as an email to the ministers of BCMD for Maundy Thursday, but it speaks to our situation on this Holy Weekend and so I offer it to you, with the necessary alterations, to help you in your preparation for Resurrection Day. In the Christian calendar, the Thursday of Holy Week is...
A Maundy Thursday Prayer (Psalm 88)
Despair is difficult when the Resurrection hovers nearby. For two millennia the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection have been told and retold, celebrated and feted. Everyone knows how the story ends. It doesn’t end with “It is finished.” Rather, with “”Why do you look for the living among the dead? He isn’t here, but has been raised.” It’s difficult, therefore, to read the Passion–the betrayal, the arrest, the beating, the mocking, the...
The Relevant Temptation
The other day our son Austin asked Pam and me if we had ever gone through anything like the COVID-19 pandemic before. The answer, of course, was no. These are unprecedented times. People are fearful, anxious. Angry. Some are complacent. Some are in denial. We are isolating ourselves from each other. If ever we needed a word from God, it is now. As one who weekly speaks to people about God, on behalf of God, and maybe, every once in awhile, delivers a word from God, I feel the weight of that need to hear...
You Don’t Learn Wisdom From a Book Like Proverbs
Let’s talk about the Book of Proverbs. Hey, wait, where are you going? Get back here! Sheesh, hear me out for a second. I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but hang on, I’m gonna bring on the excitement in a minute. Well, no, probably not, but hang with me for a second anyway. The Book of Proverbs has been called “God’s Instruction Book for Life,” which sounds awesome. Not content with that pithy title, another person said, “Proverbs is actually a book of instructions on how to live a life pleasing...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Mar 23, 2016 | 0 comments
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” “Learn war.” That’s an interesting phrase. Seems we have, all of us. When I was little I just assumed that we would always be at war. By the time I was old enough to be aware of what was going on we were in Vietnam. When we lived in...
The Cross as the Response ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Mar 20, 2016 | 0 comments
This is the second in a three-part series, “The Genius of Three.” The first message is “Three Crosses.” Larry L. Eubanks, First Baptist Church, Frederick, Maryland, March 20, 2016 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. So Joseph took the body and...
Three Days
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Mar 20, 2016 | 0 comments
I never really like it when someone tells me, “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news.” Usually the good news is not as good as the bad news is bad. While I like my bad news tempered with good news, I like my good news untempered and untainted by anything bad. I like it when people come to me and say, “I’ve got good news.” Period. At first glance, when Jesus came proclaiming the good news of the...
Why The Darkness of Holy W...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Mar 13, 2016 | 0 comments
The key to understanding the 8th Beatitude—”Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”—is to work backwards. What does it mean to be called “sons of God”? As much as I agree with inclusive language translations, this is one instance when translators need to keep to the strict translation of the Greek, “sons of God” rather than “children of God” as in the King James, NIV and NRSV....
What Does It Mean to Be A ...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Mar 13, 2016 | 0 comments
This is the 1st in the message series, “The Genius of Three” Larry L. Eubanks, FBC Frederick, March 13, 2016 So we’re starting a new series called “The Genius of Three.” Let me start out by telling you what this series is not trying to do. There’s a movement that has always been a part of religion that thinks that there is a numerical code hidden in the pages of the Bible, forming the foundation of hidden...
Three Crosses
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Mar 9, 2016 | 0 comments
We are told that we have five senses through which we perceive the world—sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. I’m going to argue that there is a sixth sense, but I don’t mean ESP or anything like that. I’m talking about cognitive sense—thinking. Einstein derived the theory of special relativity and the famous formula E=mc2 by thinking. He imagined a person flying in space at the speed of light (ala...
Change Your Mind, Change Y...
Posted by Larry Eubanks on Mar 7, 2016 | 0 comments
I once had a conversation with a friend who told me, quite seriously, that the first humans had photographic memories, had an endless supply of energy, required little to no sleep, and lived for centuries. It was only after the Fall that our memories started to fade, our energy lagged, we started needing eight hours of sleep, and our lifespans shrank to around a hundred years. On the outside I gave him a...
“Pure in Heart&rdquo...
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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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