While we’re still on hiatus from studying Moses, I thought it might be helpful to reflect upon the importance of trusting God as we prepare to embark on a new calendar year. Scripture speaks of trust in many ways but I want to focus on the image of a tree …
A few months ago, in the midst of one of the seemingly endless Covid cycles we keep finding ourselves in, I read something by someone (I can’t remember who) who spoke about having Covid–of–the–Soul. She spoke of the anxiety and exhaustion she felt not just due to worrying about Covid …
As we heard read for us earlier during the lighting of this week’s Advent candle, the focus of the fourth Sunday in Advent is Mary, Jesus’ mother, who while a virgin miraculously conceived and gave birth to Jesus, eternal God who took on human flesh in order that we might …
I imagine that many of the Old Testament prophets—and New Testament apostles—and those who have both literally and metaphorically left behind their fishing nets to follow Jesus Christ[1]—have felt, at one time or another, like Cassandra, the prophetess of Greek mythology. Cassandra received the gift of prophecy by the god …
I’m a firm believer that anticipating a special event can be as pleasurable as the event itself—or, at the very least, that anticipating such an event is part and parcel of the pleasure to be found in it once it finally arrives. Whatever it is that we may be looking …
This morning’s sermon will be the last on Moses until after the new year as next Sunday we transition to Advent and join in looking forward to the day that our gracious Christ, God’s Messiah, eternal Son of the Father, came to earth in the form a babe in a …
It took not one plague—nor two—nor three—nor six—nor even eight but ten plagues[1] before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, at last complied with the LORD’s command and allowed the enslaved Israelites go and worship him. But this allowance was fraught with danger given Pharaoh’s double-minded nature. Therefore, rather than adhering to …
We noted last week that beginning with the fourth plague, the swarm of flies, it’s likely that the Israelites were spared being subject to the remaining plagues:[1] With the tenth and final plague as well, the death of the firstborn, the people of the LORD would be spared. However, this …
One of the voyages taken by the Dawn Treader, a sailing ship in the third tale of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia children’s series, takes its crew to a Dark Island. Initially those on board thought that the island was “a great dark mountain rising out of the sea.” But …
Whereas the purpose of the hailstorm plague we considered last week was for the benefit of Pharaoh’s faith, so that he and the other Egyptians might know that there was no one on earth like the LORD and that his name might be proclaimed in all the earth,[1] the purpose …
