Letters From Home

Paul says there is no condemnation. Most of us live as if there is. Today we ask what voice we are still listening to, and whether it is the Spirit of adoption. In this letter - The difference between conviction and condemnation - The accuser in Revelation 12:10 - Paul's courtroom in verses 31-34 - The cost in verse 17 — if indeed we suffer with Him - Suffering as included in the adoption, not exc...

Romans 8 has no characters and no narrative. The story is the structure. From no condemnation to no separation, with the Spirit of adoption crying Abba in us. In this letter - Katakrima (G2631) — the legal verdict of condemnation - The flesh and the Spirit (vv. 5-13) - Huiothesia (G5206) — adoption as a son, the Roman legal concept - Abba — the Aramaic word Jesus prayed in Gethsemane - The three g...

Paul wrote thirteen letters. Romans is the longest and most carefully built. Romans 8 is the apex. And he wrote it from the other side of twenty-five years of beatings, shipwrecks, and prisons. In this letter - Paul's background — Saul the Pharisee, the Damascus road - Paul's missionary career - Romans written from Corinth, late 50s AD - The Roman audience and why Paul was writing to them - The st...

One of the most beloved chapters in the Bible. Paul at his theological and pastoral peak. Begins with no condemnation . Ends with nothing can separate us . Today we read the spine. In this letter - A reading of the key sections of Romans 8 (NKJV) - The therefore at verse 1 and what it points back to - The Spirit of adoption and Abba - The Spirit's groans and our prayers - All things work together...

The Hebrew word that runs through Ruth twenty-one times is the same word the New Testament reaches for when it describes what Christ has done. Goel. Kinsman-redeemer. In this letter - Goel (H1350) — kinsman-redeemer - The four qualifications of a goel under the law - The threshing floor as the heart of the book - Boaz at the city gate as the pattern of Christ on the cross - The genealogy in Ruth 4...

Three women on a dirt road. Each had to choose. Most of us would have done what Orpah did. The book is asking which one we will be. In this letter - Why Orpah is not the villain - Ruth's choice as the costly one - Hesed given and received throughout the book - Loyalty as small, generations-shaping work - The outsider angle — God's family tree full of outsiders - The honest question about your own...

A foreign widow gleans in the field of a kinsman. A midnight scene on a threshing floor. A redemption at the city gate. A baby in the arms of a grandmother who had renamed herself Bitter. In this letter - Walking the four chapters of Ruth - Davaq (H1692) — Ruth's clinging, the same Hebrew word as Genesis 2:24 - Bethlehem as house of bread , the irony of the famine - The gleaning law (Lev 19:9-10,...

Tradition says Samuel wrote it. The text doesn't name an author. But someone decided a Moabite widow's story needed to be preserved — and the genealogy at the end shows you why. In this letter - The mystery of authorship — Samuel and the Talmudic tradition - The period of the judges as historical setting - Why Moabites were forbidden from the assembly of the Lord (Deut 23:3) - Ruth in the Hebrew K...

A short book about a foreign widow. Three deaths. A dirt road. A vow no one expected. Where you go, I will go. And the family line of Christ grew out of it. In this letter - Setting the book of Ruth — four chapters, the period of the judges - A slow read of Ruth 1 (NKJV) - The setup — famine in Bethlehem, the move to Moab, the three deaths - The dirt road and the kiss goodbye - The famous vow — En...

One Greek verb in verse 14 ties the whole prologue back to a tent in the wilderness. The Word became flesh and pitched a tent. Today we hear the whole letter. In this letter - Logos — the Greek and Hebrew heritage of the Word - The full walk-through of the prologue - Verse 14 as the hinge - Skēnoō — to pitch a tent, to tabernacle (G4637) - The Hebrew shakhan and Shekinah — the dwelling presence of...

Most of us have reduced Jesus to an idea. The prologue insists on the body. The Word became flesh — what difference does that make to how we live? In this letter - The temptation to keep Jesus a concept - Why the body is what makes Him present - John's old-man witness — we beheld His glory - The world that did not know Him, and His own who did not receive Him - Where in our lives we are still keep...

The eternal Word who made the cosmos pitched a tent in our streets. Eighteen verses that walk from cosmic geometry to a body you could have touched. In this letter - The three statements of verse 1 — was, was with God, was God - Greek pros — face-to-face relationship - The grammar question of the Word was God - The double heritage of Logos — Greek philosophy and Hebrew utterance - Katalambanō — co...

John was a fisherman from Galilee. By the time he wrote his Gospel, he was the last apostle alive. And he decided to tell the story one more time. In this letter - John the apostle — son of Zebedee, the beloved disciple - John at the foot of the cross, given care of Mary - When and where John wrote — Ephesus, late first century - Why John wrote a fourth Gospel after Matthew, Mark, and Luke - The G...

The most cosmic passage in the New Testament. It starts before the world existed and lands in a manger. Eighteen verses that walk from eternity to flesh. In this letter - How John opens his Gospel differently than Matthew, Mark, and Luke - Why in the beginning echoes Genesis 1 - A slow read of John 1:1-18 (NKJV) - Verse 14 as the hinge — the Word became flesh and dwelt among us - The light-and-dar...

God gives Moses His name at the bush. Four letters in Hebrew. The name His people have carried for three thousand years. Today we sit with the I AM . In this letter - The opening claim — Exodus 3 is the encounter that started everything - Moses's first objection — Who am I? — and God's answer (the question is wrong) - Moses's second question — What is His name? — and God's answer (the question get...

God shows up in burning bushes. The question is whether we turn aside. Most of us are too busy to notice. In this letter - What a burning bush looks like in modern life — interruption, disruption, the thing in your path - Why the voice waited for Moses to turn, and what that means for us - The three verbs of divine awareness as comfort for the unheard - I have seen, I have heard, I know — for ever...

The bush burns and is not consumed. The voice says Moses's name twice. The verbs change everything — I have seen, I have heard, I know. In this letter - Walking through the encounter slow - The Hebrew seneh (H5572) — the thorny bramble bush - The Angel of the Lord, and the question of pre-incarnation Christ - Moses's choice to turn aside, and why the voice waited - Hineni (H2009) — Here I am, full...

Moses had three lives. One ended at forty. The next ended at eighty. The third was about to start in a wilderness he had stopped expecting anything from. In this letter - The traditional Mosaic authorship of the Torah - Moses the prince of Egypt — the basket in the reeds, Pharaoh's house - The killing of the Egyptian and the flight to Midian - Moses the fugitive — forty years tending Jethro's shee...

A fugitive shepherd on the back of the desert. A bush that burns and is not consumed. A voice that says his name twice. The day Moses's real life began. In this letter - Setting the scene — Moses at eighty, tending Jethro's flock in Midian - A slow read of Exodus 3:1-8 (NKJV) - The bush — seneh , the scraggly bramble - Why God put the strange thing in Moses's path and then waited - The doubled nam...

The compassion of the father in Luke 15 is not polite. It is gut-level. Visceral. Bowels-deep. One Greek word changes how you read the whole chapter. Today we hear the whole letter. In this letter - The opening claim — Luke 15 is one chapter, three parables, one answer - The party as the point of all three parables - The Greek splanchnizomai (G4697) — gut-level compassion - Where else this word sh...

The parable does not end at the party. There is a second son. He stayed. He worked. He kept the rules. And he is also lost. Most of us are him. In this letter - The older brother's complaint, line by line - This son of yours — the language of disowning - The father's three sentences in response — Son, you are always with me. All that I have is yours. He is your brother. - The two ways to be lost —...

A son who effectively wished his father dead. A father who ran through the village to embrace him. A homecoming you've heard a hundred times — slowed down so you can see what the original hearers saw. In this letter - Why asking for the inheritance early was unthinkable in the ancient Near East - The Greek diaskorpizō (G1287) — to scatter, squander - The pigs and what they meant to a Jewish hearer...

Luke was a doctor. A Greek. The only Gentile writer in the New Testament, and the only Gospel writer who gives us the full trilogy of lost-and-found parables. In this letter - Luke the man — physician, Gentile, companion of Paul (Col 4:14, 2 Tim 4:11, Phlm 24) - The literary care of Luke's Gospel — preface, eyewitnesses, an orderly account - Theophilus and Luke's intended audience - Luke's particu...

The most famous chapter Jesus ever told in story form. But not one parable — three. The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. Told together, escalating, in answer to one accusation. In this letter - The setup — Luke 15:1-2 and the Pharisees' complaint - Why sharing a table meant family in the ancient world - A slow read of all three parables (lost sheep, lost coin, opening of the lost son) - Th...

One Hebrew verb at the end of Psalm 23 changes everything. Goodness and lovingkindness do not follow you. They pursue you. Today we hear the whole letter. In this letter - The opening claim — Psalm 23 is about life, not death - The three movements of the psalm — pastoral, valley, banquet - Nephesh (the deep word for soul) and what restoration means - Tsalmaveth and walking through the valley, not...