First, I have often wondered why Moses even bothered to take one last opportunity at the end of his life to instruct the Israelites.  After all, for forty years they had been rebellious and stiff-necked. They had repeatedly disobeyed, complained, grumbled, and gone their own way.  Not only that but as he says in verse 21, “The Lord was angry with me because of you and he solemnly swore that I would not cross the Jordan and enter the good land the Lord your God is giving you as you inheritance. I will die in this land; I will not cross the Jordan; but you are about to cross over…

Preface:  This is a shortened lesson to help us think about a class project we are going to do with the rest of the church – a day of service in the community.  For the shortened lesson this morning I want to focus on Galatians 6:10.  “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people.” This comes at the end of a passage where Paul is writing about reaping and sowing – and the natural cycle of cause and effect.  There is no season…

1.  Some of us are getting to the age where we have trouble remembering and an easy time forgetting. I like the stories of Einstein forgetting where he lived. He would get lost in thought and have to call the campus guard to find out where he lived or he would lose his ticket on the train and not know where to get off. That reminded me of an old story.A couple had dinner at another couple’s house, and, after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen.  The two gentlemen were talking, and one said, “Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it…

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go up this mountain in the Abarim Range and see the land I have given the Israelites. After you have seen it, you too will be gathered to your people, as your brother Aaron was, for when the community rebelled at the waters in the Desert of Zin, both of you disobeyed my command to honor me as holy before their eyes.” Moses said to the LORD,“May the LORD, the God who gives breath to all living things, appoint someone over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the LORD’s…

Our assignment for the next several weeks is the book of Numbers. It is called Numbers because the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint called it “Arithmoi” after the lists recorded in the first few chapters.  The Latin Vulgate translation picked up on the Greek title and named the book Numeri from which the English translations derived the title of Numbers for the book. The Hebrew Bible’s title for the book is the one I would have kept.  It is “Bemidbar” which translates “in the desert” and is really more descriptive of the content of the book than simply a book of numbers.  It would be…

The Armor of God One of the downsides of Bible study is we get in the habit of making personal applications for what Paul intended for the Church as a whole.  That’s certainly the case here. Paul is not writing for personal devotions but for the entire Church. If we are not clear on that then we reduce what he is saying to purely individual applications.  We will be a mob of armored up individuals instead of the Body that Paul intends. We will be primarily concerned with our own individual equipment instead of seeing that Paul is describing protection for the whole Body.  So, when he says, “Put on…

We’ve come to the fifth commandment this morning. First, God gives the four commandments that focus on the nature of God and our relationship with him. Now we see the fifth commandment that comes directly after that. What is the nature of our relationship with our family? It’s almost as important as our relationship with God. After the fifth commandment will be the description of our behavior within a broader community or tribe but this relationship – family – is central to our lives and the life of our community. That is why it follows immediately after the first set of commandments. There can be no society without strong families…

There are a few times when it helps to start at the end and read back to the beginning.  Did you know that copy editors are trained to read a page backwards? Otherwise, they get caught in the flow of a thought and their mind skips over the errors and fills in the blanks.  This is a good example of starting at the end and working backwards. Paul writes in verse 32 that “this is a profound mystery” and we could have a few responses to that if we started at the beginning and worked our way to the end. “Well, if all of this is a mystery then why…

Normally, we think of chapters as the beginning of something new – a new stage of life, new development or new thought. There is a break, we turn the page and then start the next chapter.  As you probably know, chapters and verses were not added to the Bible until much later than the original writings. A man named Stephen Langton divided the Bible into chapters in the year 1227. Langton was a professor at the University of Paris at the time and later became the Archbishop of Canterbury. Modern verse division for the New Testament was the work of Robert Stephanus, a French printer. He divided the Greek text…

“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.  They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.  Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.” That’s pretty close to how I hear Republicans and Democrats describe each other today.  There is not much middle ground and it would be pretty easy for any…