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Humans, by the ways that they do what they’re doing in the world, their existence is as a pointer, to bear witness to the Creator. The image of God isn’t separate from glorifying God, but the point of an image is to point to a reality of what it represents. Humans are meant to reflect something...

Exodus 34:6, loyal love, it translates the Hebrew word “khesed,” which is hard to translate into any language, because it combines the ideas of love, generosity and enduring commitment, all into one. Khesed describes an act of promise-keeping loyalty, that is, motivated by deep personal care...

In the book of Proverbs, we meet the brilliant teacher, she’s smart about everything, work, relationships, sex, spirituality. She has incredible insights, things we wouldn’t see on our own. She would be the perfect friend to have around, when we need really specific advice. What makes her so...

Paul’s core conviction is that fundamental change happens to us, when our very sense of who we are is completely revolutionized behavior, follows our sense of identity. Don’t live like the Gentiles, because we are something new, we are all new kinds of humans now. Ephesians 4:17-32. This is...

The story of the Bible begins with God creating a beautiful world and then sharing it with all of his creatures. God appoints Adam and Eve to rule the world on his behalf. God gives them access to his wisdom and life, but then tells them that there’s one tree they can’t eat from, because it will...

John 1:1-18, John is claiming, that to really understand who Jesus is, we need to start way, way back in the beginning and what was God doing is the beginning? God was speaking his creative word into the darkness. Words like, let there be light, let the dry land appear, let plants grow. Picture...

If we read the New Testament, we will noice that the most common title people use to describe Jesus is “the Christ,” that is “the Messiah,” but surprisingly, Jesus almost never used that word to describe himself. Instead, Jesus called himself “the Son of Man.” The Son of Man, what does that...

Being around Christians, we’ve probably heard of the idea of having a personal relationship with God, which could mean different things in the Bible. Having God as a friend or your father or maybe your teacher. But there’s one particular way that the Bible talks about this relationship that we...

Look at the language use to describe the Name in Isaiah 30:27. Behold, the Name of the Lord comes from afar. Looks like we’re getting language that makes the Name sound like a person. In blazing wrath with a heavy burden, his lips. The Name has lips? This language is speaking about the Name as...

We are going to see a character known as wisdom and the character is spoken of in female terms. Proverbs 8:22-31 and in chapter 8, wisdom is speaking at the beginning of the chapter, and in verse 22 The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old…then I was...

Jesus offers eternal life, but what does Jesus mean by eternal life? Jesus adopted this phrase from the Hebrew Scriptures. In English, it’s translated “eternal life” or sometimes “everlasting life,” but the phrase translated from Hebrew is “life unto the age.” The Hebrew word for age is “olam”...

She believes that there is an invisible creative force in the universe, that can guide people and how they should live, we can’t see it, just like we can’t see the gravity, but it affects everything that we do. What’s this force? In Hebrew, it’s called “chokma” and it’s usually gets translated...

There’s a story in the Bible about a garden, where God and humans live together and the biblical authors want us to see this garden as a type of temple. The top is the most sacred place, the Holy of Holies, where God’s presence is most intense and that’s where we find the tree of life. What’s...

In the Bible, we learn that every human is a image of God, a sacred being who represents the Creator and is worthy of respect. In this way of seeing the world, sin is a failure to love God and others by not treating them with the honor they deserve. We can see this idea in the famous code of...

Faith is both thinking and responding to good reason that something is changing, it’s actually living in light of that reality and as we do so, it puts us in touch with the substance or the reality of the thing that we’re hoping for. We experience this reality of that biblical faith, it begins...

Exodus 34:6, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, overflowing with loyal love and faithfulness, this last characteristic of God is the Hebrew word “emet” which can be translated as “faithfulness” or even “truth,” it’s related to another word “amen” which is an untranslated Hebrew...

Acts chapter 28:16-20, Paul is in the middle of his court trial, and it is not going well, out of this very dark situation, Paul appeals to Timothy, who is still on assignment in Ephesus, he asked Timothy to come be with him in prison so Paul can pass on to him the church planting mission he...

Philemon was a well-to-do Roman citizen from Colossae, who met Paul during his mission in Ephesus, and he became a follower of Jesus. Then later, when Paul’s co-worker Epaphras started a Jesus community in Colossae, Philemon became a leader of a church that met in his house. Now Philemon, like...

During one of Paul’s many imprisonments for announcing Jesus as the risen Lord, he wrote to a group of people that he had never met, who made up a church community that he did not start. The church in Colossae was started by a co-worker of Paul’s, named Epaphras, who was actually from that city...

Acts 16:12, Philippi was a Roman colony in ancient Macedonia, it was full of retired soldiers, and it was known for its patriotic nationalism. Paul faced resistance, when he was announcing Jesus as the true King of the world, and after Paul moved on from there, those who became followers of...