Exploring My Strange Bible

The book of Daniel is a story about a group of Israelites who have been exiled from Babylon, and the whole point is to explore what it means to be God’s people when you’re a minority. This book is about the struggle to maintain faithfulness and the struggle to maintain hope. What does it mean to be people who maintain hope and a way of life that says that Jesus is the king of the world? Welcome to...

I did this teaching a couple of years ago about Daniel Chapter 3. It is a famous story in the Old Testament about the three guys who get thrown into this Babylonian furnace because they won’t worship an idol of the kingdom of Babylon as if it is God. Because most people are introduced to this story as a children’s story, they miss out on the extremely adult themes in this chapter. This is not a ch...

This first message explores chapter 2 of Daniel. Daniel is a weird book that has a misconception that it is only about ends of timelines. In fact, there is a lot of hope in Daniel too. This episode addresses a story that develops themes from page 1 of Genesis. Get ready for surprises! Let’s dive in… Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection...

In today’s teaching we explore the second to last chapter in Hebrews Chapter 12. It brings to a close the theological and pastoral challenge that the pastor has been offering the early Christian. He compares and contracts an experience that the Israelites had as they all camped out at the foot of Mount Sinai after escaping out of slavery in Egypt. He wants to show that our experience of approachin...

In this teaching we camp out in chapter 11, which is a re-telling of the first 3/4 of the Bible. It highlights all of the characters who had moment of bold and courageous fate. It is one of the few chapters that specifically has the issue of fate and trust at it’s main theme. We let the pastor of this letter define what biblical faith is, and what it means to have that kind of trust and faith in J...

The second half of Hebrews Chapter 10 is one of the stiffest and most challenging warnings that the pastor who wrote the letter gave to this early Christian community. Why doe the author get so intense? Why does this pastor really want the people in this early church community to examine their very motives for following Jesus? What’s up with these challenges? Why is there risk involved in the adve...

This section is about showing that Jesus is the human embodiment of the priesthood from the Old Testament. Why should we care about Jesus of Nazareth now in the 21st century? The pastor who wrote this letter is convinced that that matters a lot. In fact, the very meaning of Jesus’ life and the resurrection affects your ability to see that he is your priest. Learn more in this episode. Hosted by Si...

This section is based off of Chapter 6 of the Letters to the Hebrews. It's the pastor's meditation on the nature of God’s covenant promises. What does it mean for people to live as if God really meant what he said when he made his covenant promises to bless all of the nations through Abraham? Why is this such a big deal? Why do promises that God made to somebody thousands of years ago matter to us...

In this episode, we dive into Hebrews Chapter 4. In the chapter, the pastor urges these followers of Jesus to remember a whole bunch of themes and stories from all over the Old Testament. He is going to recall the stories of Israel’s wilderness wanderings. They were on the way to the promised land, and he links the life that God wanted to give his people with the theme of Sabbath rest. The pastor...

This teaching comes from Hebrews chapter 2 and it is exploring the portrait of Jesus as God becomes human that the anonymous pastor goes into. What is it that human story of Jesus reveals about the glory and power of God? We explore this on today’s episode. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a letter that doesn’t actually behave like a letter. There is no proper introduction. So what this first letter does is orient us towards the question “what is the letter to the Hebrews?”. It is kind of like an early Christian sermon, but kind of like a letter too. We talk about what we know (and don’t know) about this letter in this lecture. We also talk about what it means to be the divi...

In this last episode, we are going to look at a phrase that appears in one of the four gospel accounts about Jesus. It’s a phrase that Jesus uses called “being born again” or “born of the spirit”. The phrase comes from Jesus and a conversation that he had with Nicodemus (John Chapter 3), and what Jesus means and what Nicodemus means by this phrase are two different things. We’ll learn more about w...

In this episode we are going to look at the way that the spirit’s presence in the Bible story is often connected to a physical building… the temple or the sacred space of God. It’s a major theme uniting the hebrew scriptures and a theme that New Testament authors use to talk about who Jesus is. Then, the theme continues on into the Book of Axe and the letters to the apostles in the New Testament....

In this episode we explore the story of the baptism of Jesus. This story is very powerful and there are many many biblical themes colliding here. This story communicates the love of the father as a gift to the son before the son has done anything at all. This wasn’t just something that Jesus experienced, it was something that he invited his followers to experience as well. Hosted by Simplecast, an...

In this message we are going to look at something very personal, very serious... it is the motif of how God’s spirit is particularly present in moments of human pain and suffering. There is something about suffering and pain that brings the whole human experience to this really acute pinpoint type of moment where we are participating in something very deep and very spiritual. We are going to look...

The longest part of the series is about God’s spirit… what does that even mean? In this teaching called the spirit and the fruit, we are looking at God’s personal creative presence as the one who creates and generates growth and life. What does it mean for the spirit to be at work? We’ll address this in this episode. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information abo...

If someone didn’t really grow up in a tradition that emphasized the spirit of God, then these are kind of abstract and difficult things for people to incorporate into their thinking and life experience. This is going to explore different facets of the biblical portrayal of the person in work of the spirit. This first teaching is mostly hanging out on page one of the bible and then following the th...

In this episode we’re exploring the story of Jesus. We’re going to explore the version from the Gospel of Mark. Jesus fundamentally redefines his understanding of God by his acts of forgiveness and healing. How does forgiveness reveal something fundamental about God’s heartbeat? We address this question and more in this episode. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for inf...

This teaching is more like story time rather than a lecture. I wanted to try to capture the story that is driving the fist three quarters of the Bible. I begin on page one of the Old Testament and narrate the story as different people contribute with scriptures. The goal of this was to help us rebuild our portrait of God by grounding it in the actual biblical story. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWiz...

This teaching is about character and the role of God as a judge of human behavior (specifically human’s moral behavior). What does it mean to say that “God brings to bear his justice on our behavior and evaluates it according to justice”? Is that bad news or good news? We explore Exodus 34 to learn what it means for God to be a judge. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com f...

This first teaching explores the word “God” both in English and in the Bible. I discuss the divine name of God revealed through Moses to the people Israel. If you’re going to get to know someone, you have to start with their name. We explore what God’s name means in this episode. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal...

This teaching is based on the last chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Paul talks about how the good news about Jesus should influence the day to day relationships in the home. He talks about parents and children, and then he addresses slavery. How does slavery get re-examined and reshaped in the good news about Jesus? If the slave owner and the slave are both followers of Jesus, does that...

This teaching explores how Paul challenges the Christians to explore God’s spirit. The whole debate about God’s spirit and how he expresses God’s powers is very controversial conversations. However, the Apostle Paul actually intended the exact opposite - he wanted the spirit to be something that united Christians. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about...

This teaching comes from chapter 4. It is where Paul shifts, specifically from focusing on practical out-workings in day to day life of the grand vision of the good news about Jesus that he explored in the first half of his letter. In the first half of the letter, he shares this grand vision of Jesus as the redeemer and resurrected king of a new humanity that’s made up of every kind of person ethn...

It was important to Paul that Jesus' followers were a diverse group of people across many ethnicities. In this teaching, we explore Paul’s vision for diversity and bridging relationships among people who are different but unified under Christianity. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.