Biblical Literacy Podcast

Mark interviewed Professor Bruce Hindmarsh, the professor of spiritual theology at Regent College in Vancouver, and Professor Dennis Danielson from Stanford University, who is one of the world’s leading Milton scholars. Mark posed a variety of questions: Personal love story and marriage advice. Their wives’ best traits. How their relationship with Christ began, and life experiences that grew their...

Mark continued in his series: The Greatness of God: Examining God's CV. How do we merge God is love, God hates sin, and God is just? Sin incurs God’s wrath, a distortion of the truth of God’s nature, and He can’t live with sin. The answer is His substitionary atonement through Jesus Christ taking on our sin and paying the price. Listen to Mark explain the meaning of substitionary atonement

Mark continued with lesson 3 in The Greatness of God - Examine God's CV. He continues to discuss the question "Who is God?" and the traits we will find on God's CV. We know God is all-loving, but he is also a God who loves and hates, and we need to understand how these intersect. In Luke 6:27-36, God hopes we will enact love, and love with our enemies. Listen as Mark continues more of God's traits...

Mark continued with lesson 2 in The Greatness of God—Examine God’s CV.  Who is God? The answer is in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Part of God’s CV is His love. The Greek uses two types of love to show God’s persona as recorded in the New Testament: Phileo, someone or something we have affection for. Our God is all-loving. The second type of love is Agape, a love that is interested in our...

Lesson Title: Chapter 1, Introducing God’s CV Join us as Mark Lanier introduces his new series, The Greatness of God:  Examining God's CV.  Mark kick's off this illuminating new series that carefully examines God's Curriculum vitae (CV) or resume, like a lawyer might examine a witness. C.V.’s are a modern cultural invention, but that examine one’s qualifications and interests.  One wishes the Bibl...

Mark hosts Dr. Peter Williams from Cambridge who, leads Tyndale House, place of scholarly study and ministry - TyndaleHouse.com. Peter has a passion for language and explains how enlightening it is to study the Bible in multiple languages. Peter also shares about his family, William Tyndale whom Tyndale House is named, and a project he’s directing for Museum of the Bible in D.C. He concludes in ta...

Mark taught devotions from the Life of Jesus about advent—Jesus is Coming. Are you ready? John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus - Luke 1:17. He's coming. The future has purposes, the past has meaning. Although God's ways can sometimes be perplexing - Luke 1:25-30, focus on watching for God’s hand in our lives - Luke 1:46-49. We are to be patient and trust in the outcome. Listen to Mark’s ins...

Mark shares the differences of calendars and how we celebrate Advent of the church calendar, the four Sundays preceding Christmas. We learn how Advent looks forward to the arrival of Jesus in three ways: 1) His arrival in Bethlehem, 2) HIs arrival in our heart, and 3) His coming again. Learn more how the first candle of Advent reflects prophecy. Mark then expands on John 1 and Luke 1 encouraging u...

Mark continued the series, Devotions from the Life of Jesus #16 with a focus on Jesus’s interaction with women. Much of the misinterpretation of how Jesus and other New Testament writers considered women is due to cultural barriers of ancient times vs. today. Jesus came to make a difference for all men and women. In Luke 10:38-42, we read about Mary and Martha. Jesus gave women a place in the clas...

Mark taught #15 in the series: Devotions from the Life of Jesus. Today’s devotions are themed around what Jesus said about worship. Mark explained the word “worship” comes from the Anglo-Saxon words meaning to “ascribe worth.” He expanded on these facets of worship: 1) Gratitude: Luke 17:11-19 teaches us that gratitude to God is worship and praise. 2) God-centered: Matthew 2:1-8 shows us true wors...

Devotions from the life of Jesus #14. Mark continued with his series showing how Jesus dealt with the interruptions or detours of life. Matthew 19:10 shows us that Jesus had time for children, the future of His kingdom. The disciples’ problem was not seeing an opportunity to practice Jesus' teachings. Luke 10:25 shows us who is our neighbor when life happenings disrupt our day, energies, money, an...

Mark continued Devotionals from the Life of Jesus #13 with a focus on Jesus teaching about the Holy Spirit. Jesus spoke of the Holy Spirit in one setting in John 14-16. Mark also looks at passages both before and after those teachings to see how Jesus' teaching of the Holy Spirit occurred.

Mark continued with his series: Devotionals from the Life of Jesus #12. This week focused on the sayings of Jesus from Revelation, as spoken to John on the Island of Patmos. The first topic is what Jesus had to say about fear in Revelation 1:17-19. What do you fear? Jesus is fighting for us and to help us overcome our fears. The second topic dealt with: Who is Jesus? Revelation 22:13 tells us Jesu...

Mark shares how we can see ourselves in six of the stories of Jesus. Journey to: 1) Bethlehem - Our world is not at peace ...but we can have peace with God, 2) Capernaum - We are unclean, but we still need Jesus, 3) Caesarea Philippi - How does 1+1+1 = 1? , 4) Sea of Galilee - During the fears of life we need Jesus’s hand of help, 5) Gerasenes - Jesus touches us while we are a “Man of the Tombs”,...

Mark continued with #10 of  Devotions from the Life of Jesus. Today’s lesson focused on the sometimes confusing "say-what” sayings from Jesus; those sayings that deal with us in various circumstances. 1. When we are off track: Mark 12:26-27. When we aren’t authentic: Matthew 12:33-34. When we should stop complaining: Matthew 11:16-19. And when Jesus was humorous: Matthew 16:24, Matthew 21:31, Luke...

The story of the woman at the well in John chapter 4, gives Mark a chance to understand Jesus' interaction with the woman and his instructions to her. He gives devotionals for everyday living from the the interactions with the woman. She represents each of us and our sins and how much God cares for us.

This week Mark shared 6 of his personal favorite devotions from his book Torah for Living Daily Prayers, Wisdom, and Guidance. Numbers 14:39 - To whom do you listen? Recognize the strength of council from those who faithfully follow God. Listen to God or to those who are faithful to God. Exodus 39:22-24 - God is in the details. Our detailed God has not forgotten about us. Genesis 38:7 - Nobody foo...

In Part 8 of the Devotionals in the Life of Christ series, Mark examines the phrase, "Jesus is Lord".  As Christians the idea of Jesus being Lord is one of the earliest sayings of the Church.  Join Mark as he takes a closer look at the vocabulary being used so as to better understand certain bible passages and the concepts behind them.

Mark continues Devotions from the Life of Jesus #7. Today’s lesson placed us on the prayer road, specifically what Jesus said about prayer. The first passage was from Mark 1:35 Mark points out that Jesus spoke on His own authority. In a second devotion, we learn how Jesus modeled quiet time with the Father. After a busy day, Jesus rose early and went to a desolate place to pray. In Luke 7:40, we f...

Mark continues Devotionals from the Life of Christ using the Sermon on the Mount as a roadmap for living. Mark showed various stops based on the Scripture from Matthew 6. The first stop focuses on Jesus’ teachings about the Head and Heart, specifically the problem of the wandering heart. Where our heart is lies our treasure. The next stop on the road map was Jesus’ warning about what we see and th...

This week Mark continues with Part 5 of Devotionals from the Life of Christ in the Book of John. In John 1:4-5, we're told that in Christ there is life, and that life is a light for all mankind. Listen as Mark discusses that the natural structure of light is to shine, and overcome darkness. When we have darkness in box or a closed room, it can't stay that way once it encounters light. We are encou...

Mark continues with Part 4 of Devotionals fromcthe Life of Christ. Mark discusses the message of "truth as it appears in the gospels; specifically in the Book of John, where it appears twenty-five times. Truth, originally in the Hebrew, means "faithfulness", and as it was translated into the Greek it became "truth", also meaning "upright or "not false". We see that Jesus is the faithfulness, the p...