Search results

If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer them the other, one thing we know is that slapping is more about insulting someone’s honor or dignity, than it is about actually trying to take them out. Nothing has changed, slapping throughout the Bible, Old and New Testaments, it’s always about...

The lesson is simple, but heavy, because truth does not ask permission before it changes you, reality does not adjust itself to comfort you, but once it is seen, it cannot be unseen. The light that breaks the mind is the same light that frees it, understanding is not always gentle, judgment...

What a trip.

Matthew 5:38-42, the law of retaliation, this was actually an ancient law already to Jesus, not just because it was in the Torah, but because it was ancient even in the time of Moses. So most likely, even though the literal reading of the law is you poke out my eye, so I get to poke out your...

This is an eye opener, wow.

Coercion, responding to people and how I relate to people when our wills are cross purposes or we have different visions of reality in some way. What happens when we’re in conflict, how am I going to treat you or you hurt me, how am I going to treat you or you and I hate each other, how I’m...

Wow.

I learned this much.

Matthew 5:33-37, Jesus is addressing a pretty specific issue in Israelite culture, Israelite oath swearing. A vow in the Bible in ancient Israel, this is when people make promises to God, God, if you do this for me, then here’s what I’ll do for you. Vows are between people and God and then...

When we recognize the Messiah’s pre-incarnate presence throughout Israel’s history, the promises weren’t just predictions about a distant future, they were announcements from one already walking among his people, preparing the way for the ultimate revelation of himself in human flesh.

Matthew 5:31-32, these words of Jesus about marriage and divorce and remarriage, they have had a huge huge influence on the course of millions of people’s lives over the last 2,000 years and there is a diversity of views on the implications of what Jesus is saying, there’s a diversity of views...

What’s the greater good, that’s actually more appealing then the mental fantasy underneath this extreme response that Jesus says, which is to deal with it, but just dealing with it, cultivating lust, you have to have some greater vision that is even more fulfilling than the thing that I’m after...

Jesus’ claim that the long story of God’s covenant with Israel is coming to fulfillment, that God’s Heavenly Kingdom that’s touched down here on earth through him and these communities that he’s beginning, that this is what he calls the fulfillment of the Torah and prophets and he calls his...

Gehenna, this is the first appearance of this word in the New Testament, gehenna is the Greek word Jesus uses, it’s consistently translated as hell, but hell is not entirely helpful, because the word hell has had attached to it lots of meanings and associations that have come from later...

I understand what you are saying, no need for the second heaven anymore, because the third heaven will reunite with the earth.

Seraphim are not gentle messengers or silent watchers, they are living fire beings, whose existence is tied directly to the holiness of God. Their role is not to speak to humans, but to stand in the immediate presence of the divine, where purity is absolute and nothing unclean can survive...

But what does it mean to fulfill the will of God that’s revealed in that command, it’s not just to end somebody’s life, it’s about weaning yourself off of this habit that we have to evaluate other people’s worth. This gets very personal very quickly, the ease with which I’ll be more flippant...

Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bridge? Here's a song to wake you up.

What am I mad about, they didn't play this song on the radio enough.

What Jesus said he was going to do was offer teaching about how the Torah is fulfilled and so if you have something that’s fulfilled, you have something that’s real, but also it’s pointing to some greater, more full reality, realized in some way. Jesus used the commands as pointing to some way...