The wise men gave Jesus the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Each of these three gifts correspond to aspects of Jesus’s identity and redemptive mission in the world. The gold is symbolic of Jesus’s royalty. Jesus wasn’t the King of an earthly empire, but the King of the cosmos. Read more…
Psalm 15 is a temple entrance liturgy. It begins with the twofold question, “O, Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill?” This is an important question. In other words, the psalmist is asking, “What kind of person is saved?” Put another way still, Read more…
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. — Matthew 1:1 It’s not by accident that Matthew’s Gospel is the first of four in the New Testament. This is by design. The book of Matthew—as the first book of the New Testament—is intended Read more…
The words you utter can defile you (i.e., keep you out of the presence of God). People who take holiness seriously must take sin seriously. This means that we must have clear definitions of what sin is and what sin isn’t. If sin keeps us from the redeeming presence of Read more…
True freedom is not the ability to freely pursue happiness as we each define it. Freedom is the ability to break free from the crooked, perverse, self-centered human nature and live entirely for God.
On Palm Sunday we read about how the people shouted “Hosannah!” while Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. This proclamation is directly from Psalm 118 and means “save us!” This cry for rescue is the perfect introduction to Holy Week. Holy Week is the week in which we turn Read more…
Today we celebrate Palm Sunday, which is the last Sunday before Holy Week and Easter Sunday. Palm Sunday commemorates when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and the people celebrated and praised him as their long-awaited Messiah. In their act of celebration they waved palm branches along the streets Read more…
Another passage under consideration as we prepare for Holy Week is Matthew 27:46, which records Jesus saying while on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Not a few preachers and other interpreters of the Bible have concluded that because this is the moment in which Read more…
One of the passages that comes into focus as we approach Holy Week is Isaiah 52:13–53:12. This is the poem of the suffering servant which foretold Jesus’ substitutionary death. One of the things that often gets overlooked in the passage is the complete obedience of the servant. Rightfully so, the Read more…
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized Read more…