Thy Strong Word from KFUO Radio

Be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. The man who hears the word but does not do it is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror, walks away, and immediately forgets what he looked like. Pure religion before God is this: visit orphans and widows in their affliction and keep yourself unstained from the world. James has no interest in a faith that never reaches your hands.  The Rev. R...

James shuts down one of the oldest excuses in the book: "God is testing me." God cannot be tempted with evil and He tempts no one. Each person is lured and enticed by his own desire, and desire gives birth to sin, and sin brings forth death. Every good gift comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James draws the line between what God sends and...

James opens with a greeting that sounds like a contradiction: count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds. The testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and steadfastness finishes its work so that you may be complete, lacking in nothing. If you lack wisdom, ask God, who gives generously. But ask in faith, because the doubter is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.  The Rev...

Luther called it an “epistle of straw,” but then preached from it for the rest of his life as the Word of God. In this series, host Pastor Phil Booe and guest pastors walk verse by verse through the Letter of James, written by the brother of our Lord, the leading pastor of the Jerusalem church, and a man who thought Jesus had lost His mind until the resurrection proved otherwise. James writes to s...

Think about the trash you took out this week. If someone dug through a year of your discards, what would they learn about you, about your priorities, about your faith? On this special Free-Text First Friday, the Rev. Mark Duerr gives us a brief, but fascinating tour of the ancient world's favissa pits, the holy trash dumps where sacred objects were ritually buried after use. From the execration ta...

The prophet Habakkuk does what most of us only do in private: he argues with God. Why do the wicked prosper? Why does violence go unchecked? God's answer is stranger than the question: He's raising up the Chaldeans, a “nasty” nation hell bent on destruction. The book moves from complaint to cosmic courtroom to a beautiful temple hymn, ending with a confession of faith that holds nothing back. "Tho...

The Preacher closes the book with an elegy for the human body that reads like a poem about a house falling apart. The grinders cease because they are few, the doors on the street are shut, the almond tree blossoms white, and the grasshopper drags himself along. Before the silver cord is snapped and the golden bowl is broken, remember your Creator. Qoheleth's final verdict holds everything together...

Qoheleth’s shares his God-given wisdom that we cannot control outcomes, predict disaster, or know which of our efforts will bear fruit. He focuses us on generosity and persistence: scatter your resources broadly, work from morning to evening, and stop waiting for perfect conditions that will never come. Enjoy your life, yes, but not as though you are unaccountable. God sees all of it. The days of...

One dead fly ruins the perfumer's oil, and a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. Qoheleth shifts into proverb mode and catalogs the ways fools wreck what the wise build: the fool walks down the road and everyone can tell, rulers put idiots in high places while the competent sit low, and the fool multiplies words about a future he cannot predict. But the Preacher also warns the wise man: even...

The living know one thing the dead do not: that they will die. Qoheleth delivers this as good news, strange as that sounds, because the living still have time to eat, drink, enjoy their wives, and do their work with energy. The dead know nothing, earn nothing, and are forgotten. But the clock is ticking for everyone, and time and chance ambush the swift, the wise, and the strong without warning. F...

Qoheleth notices something that keeps theologians and barroom philosophers equally busy: the wicked prosper, the righteous suffer, and the sentence against an evil deed is almost never executed on time. That delay, he says, seems like a cosmic travesty. Human hearts read slow justice as no justice at all and fill the gap with more evil. What can be done? Obey the king, fear God, eat your bread, an...

The Preacher goes looking for a righteous person on earth and comes back empty-handed. Be righteous, he says, but not so righteous you destroy yourself with your own piety. Be wise, but know that wisdom has a wall you cannot climb over. One man in a thousand might pass muster; among women Qoheleth found none, a line that has scandalized readers for centuries and says more about fallen humanity tha...

Qoheleth gives advice that no lifestyle brand will ever print on a candle: go to the funeral, skip the party. The house of mourning beats the house of feasting because death is where wisdom actually lives. He dismantles the prosperity calculus, insisting that nobody can straighten what God has made crooked and nobody knows what tomorrow holds. Sorrow, rebuke, and patience all outrank laughter, fla...

The Preacher watches the money pile up and asks the obvious question nobody wants to hear: what exactly did it get you? Riches hoarded bring anxiety, riches lost leave nothing to pass on, and the man who has everything still can't stop wanting more. Qoheleth traces the grotesque math of greed: the more you earn, the more mouths show up to eat it, and the only dividend is watching other people spen...

Qoheleth walks into the temple and tells everyone to stop talking. Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know they are doing evil. A dream comes with much business, and a fool's voice with many words. If you make a vow to God, pay it; better not to vow at all than to vow and not pay. Do not let your mouth lead...

Qoheleth looks at the place of justice and finds wickedness there. He looks at the place of righteousness and finds wickedness there too. The oppressed weep and have no comforter; their oppressors hold all the power, and there is no comforter. He says it twice, and the repetition is the point. The dead are better off than the living, and better than both is the one who has never been born and neve...

For everything there is a season: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up. The poem is so famous it became a pop song, which is ironic given that Qoheleth's point is how little control you have over any of it. God has made everything beautiful in its time and set eternity in the human heart, yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. What is,...

The Preacher turns from his experiments to face the one fact that wrecks every human résumé: the wise man and the fool end up in the same hole. Qoheleth hates life for a minute because all his toil will be handed over to someone who did not work for it, and who may turn out to be a fool. Then he pivots. Eat, drink, and find enjoyment in your toil, because even that comes from the hand of God. To t...

The Preacher sets up the grandest controlled experiment in history: what if you had unlimited resources and tried every possible avenue to meaning? Wisdom, pleasure, laughter, wine, building projects, slaves, herds, silver, gold, concubines. Solomon held nothing back, and his conclusion is devastating. All of it was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun...

The Preacher (Qoheleth) takes the stage and delivers his verdict before the book even gets going: everything is vapor. Generations rise and fall, the sun runs its circuit, the rivers pour into a sea that never fills, and the eye and ear are never satisfied. Whatever has been is what will be, and there is nothing new under the sun. Qoheleth sets the terms for everything that follows in Ecclesiastes...

What does a man gain from all his toil under the sun? Solomon asked that question three thousand years ago, and it still cuts. Ecclesiastes is the Bible's most unflinching book about work, wealth, wisdom, and the ache nothing in this life can fill. It is also one of the most pastoral, because the Preacher tells the truth about death, time, and meaning without leaving the reader in despair. Pastor...

"Let them marry whom they think best, only they must marry within the clan of the tribe of their father." The Book of Numbers closes with a practical question about inheritance and tribal identity. When the daughters of Zelophehad prepare to marry, their inheritance could pass to another tribe. In this final chapter, we see that God cares about the details of His people's lives and the preservatio...

"The cities shall be for you a refuge from the avenger." God commands Israel to establish forty-eight cities for the Levites, including six cities of refuge where those who have accidentally killed another may flee. In this chapter, we encounter a profound picture of the Gospel. The manslayer must remain in the city of refuge until the death of the high priest, after which he may return home free....

"This is the land that shall fall to you for an inheritance." Before Israel sets foot in Canaan, God defines its precise boundaries. Every border is established by divine decree, and leaders are appointed to oversee the distribution. In this chapter, we see that God's gifts are not vague promises but concrete realities with defined limits. The Promised Land was real geography for real people, just...

"We will not return to our homes until each of the people of Israel has gained his inheritance." The tribes of Reuben and Gad see the lush pastureland east of the Jordan and request to settle there. Moses fears a repeat of the faithless spies, but these tribes promise to lead Israel into battle before returning to their chosen territory. In this chapter, we learn that receiving God's blessings doe...