SeekLife

The Bible has very little to say about the holiday that is known as Yom Teruah. In Judaism this day has become known as New Years Day. How is it that this day that is spoken of very little in the Bible became known as the Head of the Year?

The first festival of the Fall that is listed in Leviticus 23, is a day that is only described by what you do on the day. Make a Teruah. There is no explanation for why or how, simply a command to do. So what does this holiday mean? What ideals are being memorialized on this day?

The Armor of God is a description of various qualities that are important for the Christian to have in order to be protected from our spiritual enemy. What each piece stands for and how to use them are questions that are debated, and figuring this out is of vital importance to our spiritual well being.

Contranyms are fascinating words. They mean a thing, but also mean the exact opposite of their original meaning. Well, in the book of Leviticus, the word sin acts as a contranym and understanding this can help us to better understand the role of Jesus as He became sin for us.

The opening of Genesis tells us of the role of humanity in the world. Adam was tasked to serve the garden and to guard it, but Adam fails. Fast forward several thousand years and in an interesting piece of dialogue we find Jesus speaking of fulfilling the role that Adam had been given.

The Bible speaks of many things as gifts that we are given by God, and when we get a gift we tend to think that the gift is for us. For our own good or benefit. But when we examine scripture, and the purpose of gifts, we discover that there is a broader purpose for the gifts that God gives us that goes far beyond ourselves.

Romans 11 speaks of gentiles being grafted into the tree of Israel. When we read this it is often thought that this process began with Jesus. That this was a new process, allowing gentiles to become part of Israel. But when we examine the Bible further, we find that it is a process that occurred long before Jesus.

It seems like you can't turn around these days without someone declaring that there is some new technology that is the Mark of the Beast that is spoken of in the book of Revelation. But if we turn back to the Torah we find that the idea of a mark on the hand and head is not something that is to come. It is something that exists now.

In Genesis 9 we read an odd little story of Noah getting drunk and passing out naked in his tent. What happens after this has been the subject of some debate for a very long time. The Western world wants to know, what happened in the tent. When we enter into this debate, however, we fall victim to the very thing that the story was intended to warn against.

The Bible was not written to modern people. The Bible wasn't written to Westerners. The Bible was not written to us, even though it was written for us. The value system of the authors and audience of the Bible was not the same as ours, so why do we impose our values back on the Bible? Instead we should attempt to become familiar with their values in order to better understand the Bible.

The phrase "works of the law" has been traditionally understood to mean attempting to keep the Torah under human effort, and other arguments about justification through faith vs. justification through works get imported into this argument. But since 1994 and the publication of the Dead Sea Scroll designated 4QMMT, this interpretation needs to be rethought.

In the Patron Client relationship there was often a third party involved. A party that acted as the middle man between the client who was in need and the Patron who had what the client needed. This go-between was called the broker and it was his job to facilitate the relationship and make introductions and it was his duty to intervene in the case of a dispute. As we continue to explore the patron client relationship and the gift of grace, we find that there are certain people who take up this role throughout the Bible.

The prophet Haggai describes a situation that Judah faced after they returned from captivity in Babylon. The people were spending all of their time working to survive and were barely making it. And it is Haggai's message that provides a revelation of why it is that they cannot seem to get ahead. They were so focused on their own houses that they had ignored the house of God. And this message was not just for the people in the day of Haggai. It is a message that we can stand to hear today.

In 2 Kings 2 we read a story that seems both brutal and strange. Elisha is mocked by some kids while on the road and in return he curses the kids and calls bears down on them! What is going on in this story? In this episode of the Blurb, we look at the importance of recognizing the range of meaning that is possible with Hebrew words, and when we see this we can find that this story is not what it first seems.

Ephesians says that we are saved by grace through faith. But what is grace? Similar to the word faith, this word is packed with a lot of ancient near east cultural norms that simply do not translate into our modern world. When we can learn what these words meant to the authors and immediate audience, we find a depth of definition that goes far beyond simply unearned favor.

Faith is often understood as assenting to a series of facts without proof. While this is one of many definitions of faith, it is not the only, and when it comes to saving faith, this definition falls flat. There is instead a definition of faith that has dropped out of the modern vernacular, and it is this definition that is the primary meaning of faith in the Bible.

When it comes to declaring your allegiance to an entity or ideal, there is often a pledge associated with the allegiance. So the question that naturally arises when we discover that faith is synonymous with allegiance is, is there a pledge of allegiance that is found in the Bible, and the answer is yes.

In Deuteronomy we read that the heavens and earth are called as witnesses to the covenant that God had just made with Israel. We often see this as simply symbolic or metaphorical, but if this is all it is, it is a symbol that the Bible leverages from one end to the other.

The Book of Deuteronomy is often presented as simply a series of sermons. This is technically true, but there is much more to the story. The ancient world featured a form of relationship that was forged between kings. This relationship was entered into through a Suzerain - Vassal treaty. And Deuteronomy conforms to this form of treaty.

In Jesus final week, He was posed a series of questions that were designed to trap Him. One of the more famous was a question about paying taxes to Caesar. We often look at this exchange and understand it simply as saying to pay taxes, but when we examine this exchange closely we discover that there is much more going on in His response.

The concept of Sabbath is usually understood as taking a day off. Catching a nap, watching something, just relaxing in general. But the Bible speaks of resting in another way. A way that is much more than simply a day off.

The gospel is the message that we are supposed to preach according to the Bible, but what is the content of the gospel message? Is it simply the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, or is there more?

Repentance is extremely important to the life of the believer. But just how does one go about repentance? Before describing the process, however, we need to understand the definition of repentance.

Repentance is something that we hear a lot about in religious circles, but just how important is repentance anyway?

1 Timothy 5 tells us to not be hasty in laying hands on others. This is often understood as meaning that we should be hesitant to pray for others as the idiom of "laying hands" is often used in connection to prayer. But when we examine the context of this verse we discover that the context of the passage does not support this understanding of the idiom. So what does it mean?