In today’s Bible reading*, Paul and Silas come to Phillipi. On the Sabbath, they search out a place where people gathered to worship. Evidently, there wasn’t a synagogue there, but they found some women who had gathered to pray. One of the women was Lydia, a local businesswoman who sold purple goods. We know that…
Well, things finally come to a head in today’s Bible reading*. The Judaizers have raised such a ruckus that the church has its first council, the Jerusalem Council, to codify how the church should handle its first major problem. The problem: Does a new convert to Christianity have to be a good Jew to be…
Preachers are always concerned about how their sermons will be received. We agonize over the Biblical text, wanting so much to be true to what God says. We want our hearers to receive the Word as good soil. (Matthew 13:23) “You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit….
In today’s Bible reading*, we see the religious leaders’ influence over their people. People who had cheered Jesus’ arrival just a few days earlier are now calling for His head today. How does this happen? One cannot overstate the influence of peers and leaders over the decisions we make. In Jesus’ day, the religious leaders…
How do you respond when someone says, “I have good news and I have bad news”? Several times in today’s Bible reading*, Jesus does just that. He talks about the Last Days and His return. In the way He describes things, it would be very easy to be anxious. But that’s not why He tells…
Paul paints a pretty grim picture of fallen mankind in today’s Bible reading*. We saw him paint the same picture a few weeks ago in the beginning few chapters of Romans. But God …. He says we were dead. He says we were alienated from God. He says we lived according to our fleshly desires (that’s all we had!). He…
