Job teaches us an important lesson in today’s Bible reading.* If you remember from our first day of reading this book, Satan approached God and obtained permission to afflict Job. But Job says in 19:21b that God has afflicted him. So who was it? Was it Satan or was it God? Why would Job even…
In today’s Bible reading* Job asks the question (Job 9:2) that was asked by the Reformers, “How can a person be justified before God?” In fact, the question lit the match that started the Reformation in the early Sixteenth Century. Martin Luther read Habakkuk 2:4, Romans 1:17, and Galatians 3:11, “The righteous shall live by…
Abraham offers his only son in today’s Bible reading*. Yes, you read that correctly: “his only son”. But didn’t Abraham have a son by Sarah’s servant Hagar? Yes, he did. Ishmael was born fourteen years before Isaac. So why does Moses refer to Isaac as Abraham’s “only” son? Elsewhere we’re told that Isaac was Abraham’s…
In today’s Bible reading*, we read that God cut a covenant with Abram. In the Old Testament days, when two people made an agreement, they would slaughter an animal, cut the animal in two pieces and walk together between the two pieces agreeing that if either broke the covenant, the covenant-breaker would suffer the fate…
In today’s Bible reading*, Abram follows God’s call to leave his home in Haran, at the border of modern-day Syria and Turkey. He went and down through modern-day Lebanon, Israel, across to Egypt, and back up into Israel, settling in Hebron. The trip from Haran to Canaan was about 400 miles. On foot. And Abram…