Bible, theology, culture, etc.
A traveller walking through the desert suddenly finds himself encountering a raging beast. In a panic, the traveller leaps into a nearby dried-up well to hide. He hangs onto a small bush that grows out of the crevice till the coast is clear. He is safe, for now. But, to his horror, the man hears … Continue reading Leo Tolstoy: A Modern Ecclesiastes
https://youtu.be/6ATYFdo3npo So, here we are, on the cusp of a New Year. We can look back over the last year and kind of evaluate how it went. Did you spend 2023 how you hoped you would? If not, then now is the time to look ahead to the next year. What do you want 2024 … Continue reading Christ Above All (1 Cor 8:6)
https://youtu.be/LOu-u5m00VU “The days are long, but the years are short.” These are words all parents of young children hear. Usually, it is given by someone older and wiser when the young parent is looking particularly haggard and road weary. The child tries to flush their shoe down the toilet or stick a crayon up their … Continue reading Living Like It’s the End (1 Cor 7:25-31)
https://youtu.be/8Voll-QTS5g How many times a day do you blink? 100? 500? A thousand? You blink 14,000 times a day, so much that your eyes are shut for 23 minutes every day. Yet, you don’t even think about it, even though if you stopped blinking you would irreparably damage your eyeball in short order. Our body … Continue reading God, the Body, and Sex (1 Cor 6:12-20)
Our church has been going through the book of 1 Corinthians for some time now and we are just rounding the corner on 1 Corinthians 12, leading us into a lengthy discussion of spiritual gifts (charismata). Anyone who reads these passages (and other similar ones in the NT) are left with many questions. Should we expect … Continue reading The Best Arguments for Continuationism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5kQ3X-TwjE&list=PLozY2MQXfssrW9AY-qSKNSTrPvIMHZkVs&index=11&t=5s When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do … Continue reading Why Not Rather Suffer Wrong? (1 Cor 6:1-8)
1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is complex for many reasons. One of the most bedeviling difficulties for interpreters is discerning what Paul precisely means by “covering” in this section. Generally, there are two possible interpretations, each with serious merit. I will be preaching a sermon on this passage soon, but have found a number of complex issues … Continue reading What Is the “Head Covering” of 1 Cor 11?
https://youtu.be/WG7Lic7kTns Ireland for a long time was the most thoroughly Christianized nations in Europe, retaining a much higher percentage of practicing Christians than any other European country. The authority of the Catholic church in particular was staggering, so much so that many assumed that to be Irish was to be Catholic. Yet, today, Ireland is … Continue reading Ought You Not Rather to Mourn? (1 Cor 5:1-8)
https://youtu.be/Q6Eoq_zYNlE Vincent Van Gogh, the renown Dutch painter, was one of the most prolific artists of all time. In only a short nine years of painting, Vincent created 860 oil paintings and 1,240 sketches, watercolors, and prints over his life, on top of his 900 letters he wrote. He averaged nearly a hundred paintings a … Continue reading Humble Confidence (1 Cor 3:18-4:5)
As Moses is writing the Exodus narrative down, he is doing so with a certain purpose: a theological purpose. Remember: Israel had been in the land of Egypt for 430 years before the Exodus event. That is long enough to have the culture of Egypt seep into the Hebrews. Further, when the Israelites leave, we are told … Continue reading Purging Egypt Out of Israel
Marc Sims 