- Andrew Wilson recaps a series of debates with Steve Chalke on Scripture, the Old Testament, the atonement, and sexuality. “Reading through the Jesus lens, for Steve, involves reading a difficult text–say, one about picking up sticks on the Sabbath, or destroying the Canaanites, or Yahweh pouring out his anger–figuring that Jesus could never have condoned it, and then concluding that the text represents a primitive, emerging, limited picture of God, as opposed to the inclusive, wrath-free God we find in Jesus. Not so much a Jesus lens, then, as a Jesus tea-strainer: not a piece of glass that influences your reading of the text while still leaving the text intact, but a fine mesh that only allows through the most palatable elements, while meticulously screening out the bitter bits to be dumped unceremoniously on the saucer.”
- Matthew Bassford draws from two historical examples to emphasize the importance of “putting in all your men” when it comes to spiritual warfare.
- “Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury!” (Isa 10:5). Ferrell Jenkins helps us visualize the reference.
- Roger Shouse points out some practical takeaways from Job’s friends, men who did some great things and made some enormous blunders.
- Is your church inward-focused or outward-focused? Wes McAdams suggests, “this is a false dichotomy and that both inward-focused and outward-focused churches are wrong. The biblical alternative to these two focuses is to be an upward-focused church.”
This photo, taken on February 19th by NASA’s Aqua satellite, shows what the Great Lakes look like when over 80% of their surface is covered in ice.
