Why was the message not popular? Because salvation becomes something we can not earn. Because God does not only choose good people (like us) to heal. Because it reduces the chance to make money out of human need.

Despite reminding us of the signs and clues to God’s power and love in the everyday gifts of food and sunshine Paul’s gospel is not all sunshine. He was no more a prosperity gospel televangelist than Jesus was!

Strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith, they said: “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”

This is encouragement!

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Jesus was a prophet so to understand what he’s doing here we need to remind ourselves how Prophets work. So after a quick recap on prophets we think about what Jesus the prophet is doing when he tells this story.

For more on prophets try these:

• E100-36: 2 Samuel 11:1 – 12:25: David and Bathsheba?
• E100 Week 10: Prophets: three principles to unlock the code
• E100-46: Isaiah 51:1 – 53:12: Reading prophets for pleasure and profit
• E100-47: Jeremiah 1:1 – 3:5: Getting started as a prophet
• E100-50: Malachi 1:1 – 4:6: The book that makes the bridge

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There is an English proverb that’s pretty close to Jesus puzzling saying about why he spoke in parables (Matthew 13:10-15). It helps us to understand what is going on and shows us how the Sower is all about grace (not being a more efficient evangelist) but that grace can only work when the soil is ready – you have to want to be saved!

We’ll also notice how Matthew like Luke (maybe they both copied the same Master?) puts parables together so that they help explain each other. I’ll also suggest that talk of a fire that will burn up the dud fish and the tares makes better sense if we are willing to give over the right to judge to God, and not to think we can know the rules God MUST apply. (See Jonah on that :)

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Ruth is about “redemption”, the need for husband for Ruth and so a baby to continue the “house of Elimelek” and to provide for the two widows, and so it’s about the primary virtue of the OT (and of redeemers) “hesed” faithfulness/love/kindness in covenant relationships.

So Ruth (in the Christian Bible placed between Judges and Samuel) redeems:

• it echoes and redeems the ancestral stories of failure: Judah and Tamar
• it announces and prefigures David (remember David & foreign woman, Bathsheba?) and redeems him
• it stands between the terror and chaos of Judges and presents a world where God’s virtue is revealed in his creatures lives!

An everyday tale of country folk – but crammed with theology and incidentally a crackingly well-told tale with no violence, death or hatred, but which keeps our interest all through :)

I have a few other podcasts on this lovely book.

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Basalt Stele of the god Hadad on a bull with a thunderbolt in hand from Arslan Tash (Tiglath-Pileser III, c.744-727BC

This passage was probably chosen because it contains two famous “Bible stories”, the Golden Calf (in which a priest does what the people want, and becomes so successful that drunkenness, idolatry and other stupidity reigns) and the time Moses got to see God’s backside. But more troublingly it is another passage where God commands and demands killing. I can’t offer easy answers, indeed in one 5 minute podcast what did you expect ;) but I will return to these passages and examine the issue in podcasts outside this E100 series.

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• on one side, a great opportunity to explain Passover, the great festival that celebrates God as liberator, saviour and enimy of powerful oppressors
• on the other, when I read (the Bible or the News…) I tend to sympathise with those who suffer, and while in earlier chapters that’s the Israelites, here I feel the pain of bereaved Egyptian parents – how can the God who we have discovered so far in Genesis commit such a barbarous act?

There is a fascinating discussion between ardent Christians and a pained unbeliever at The Paraclete Forum. I can “see” both sides of this debate, and won’t have time in this podcast to begin to deal properly with the topic :(

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PS: See also an interesting response on ?????: The 10th Plague and the Problem of Evil (Jonathan’s posts are alomost always worth mulling over :)

In Gen 37:12-17 we have a neat example of the way the tellers of the Bible’s stories, putting lots of weight, and in this case not a little theology into few words. This is what makes biblical narratives great story-telling, and also superb theology!

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poisonous toys with dysfunctional families by azrainman

Don’t look for happy families in the tales of the ancestors, matriarchs and patriarchs, of God’s chosen people.  Genesis 27-28 carry the story into the next two generations but present a thoroughly dysfunctional family. Yet Genesis 28 tells also of one of the most dramatic revelations of God and renewal of God’s promises to this chosen people. These chapters present a powerful reminder that humans are full of and ruled by sin, but that God’s grace is not thwarted so easily.

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Rollercoaster, Gröna Lund, Stockholm by m.prinke

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 something greater to come…

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