In Matthew 9, Jesus decided to eat at a party with some less-than-respectable people, the friends of Matthew, who had become his disciple. An implication of this is that Christians should not restrict our meals and friendships to other Christians; we need to be prepared to spend time with people who are not believers. I …
It is Christmas. Again. There are some that love tradition, doing the same things in the same ways every year. Even if you don’t love this kind of thing, you cannot avoid it. The supermarkets are full of the same music, the decorations are dusted off and put up, and various meals are organised for …
Demons can probably get a better score on a theology test compared to most Christians. That’s a scary thought, isn’t it? We see it in Matthew 8. When Jesus comes across a man afflicted by demons, the demons know who Jesus is, they recognise his authority over them, and they know what his mission is …
As we read the Old Testament, we see many descriptions of idolatry. Idolatry is when you worship something instead of God. The most common idols the Old Testament people of God worshipped were the gods of the Canaanites, Baal and Asherah, and the gods of surrounding nations like the stars from Babylon and Persia. We …
Idolatry is a major theme in the Bible. To worship an idol means to have something other than the true God as the most important thing to you. We see warnings against it at the start of the 10 commandments in Exodus 20, we see Isaiah mocking the whole idea in Isaiah 44, and we …
In the ancient world, pagan worship meant lots of sacrifices to your favourite god. If you were going on a sea journey, you would pray and sacrifice to the god of the sea, and in return, you would hope that he would keep you safe. If you wanted a baby, you would pray to the …
In a recent sermon on Isaiah 33, the main point was that we should not put all our reliance on earthly solutions to earthly problems. Judah was facing a military problem, and they sought a military solution by calling on Egypt to help them. What they did not do is pray, seek the prophet, or …
King David, the greatest of the Old Testament kings, is a figure who confuses many. After all, he was deeply flawed. Here is a man who is called the one after God’s own heart (1 Sam 13:14), the king with whom God made a covenant (2 Sam 7), who was promised a descendant who would …
In the last blog post, we looked at the issue of the “missing verses” in the modern translations of the Bible compared to the King James Version. There are, however, two longer sections that need some explanation. They are the ending to Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:9-20) and the episode of the woman caught in adultery …
Observant Bible readers sometimes notice that the verses in some passages skip a number. For example, in most modern translations, the text goes directly from Matthew 17:20 to 17:22. There is no verse 21. This can also be noticed in places like John 5:4 and Acts 8:37. In each case, there is a footnote that …