Whether the promises God made to the patriarchs in Genesis are conditional or unconditional is not merely a curiosity of ancient history, it has powerful and dangerous implications today. This podcast tries to examine what the Bible intends to say on this subject...
We had just recorded the video for the new CareyMedia DVD, that year it used conversations between small groups of staff, one I was involved in was about worship. So, here I want to suggest that Leviticus (esp. Lev 19:1-2) and Isaiah 6 can help us come back to the heart of worship (as the [&hellip...
I once made a silly offer: “Give me a random Old Testament passage, and I’ll show you how the 5 step process works!” So they offered me 2 Kings 10, the lovely story of the seventy heads offered to Jehu in baskets. (Read it yourself if you don’t believe me.) My goal was to show [&hellip...
The psalm in Jonah 2:2-9 (2:3-10 in Hebrew) is a fine example of a thanksgiving psalm, and everything in its expression and theology would sound fine in the book of Psalms. However, on Jonah’s lips after we have heard the narrative of chapter one, it takes a different flavour. Read in its place in the [&hellip...
Spotting the exaggerations and humour in the book can help us understand, but it also acts as a warning!...
It’s easy to preach lies from the book of Job. It won’t be as obvious as preaching Atheism from Psalms (see Ps 10:4; 14:1; 53:1). All you have to do is take a passage from the speeches by his friends. Of course God tells us at the end of the book that they “have not spoken what [&hellip...
These two chapters, as well as some (now several millennia later) boring stuff about wells, contain some of the heights and depths of human experience. A birth to a childless couple, well well after normal childbearing years, and nasty vindictive selfishness. But also an outrageous demand from God, blind obedience and a few hints of [&hellip...
Judges is one Bible book where it has been common to recognise humour. Ehud killing the fat and oppressive king Eglon in the toilet has been a popular example, though I’ll pretty much leave the scatology to David and others who appreciate it 😉 I’d rather focus on gender. In Judges relationships between men and [&hellip...
As a counterbalance to Jonah I’ll take Psalm 69. I’m considering it as typifying many Bible passages where people pray imprecation on evil people (usually their own enemies, but sometimes the enemies of others). Something deep in us wants to believe that God is just. Such prayers appeal to this...
In this short series (of two podcasts) I’ll describe two things I think I know, two stakes in the ground when I come to think about the topic of “universalism” that has been much discussed (and even more an excuse for slanging matches) recently around the Bible-focused blogs. Let’s start by admitting there are many [&hellip...
