Psalm 31:7, ‘I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have known the distress of my soul…’ /// This Psalm is written from the depths of affliction. Though v.8 presents YHWH’s salvation in the past tense, it is a past tense of David’s faith, not yet […]
Isaiah 51:3, ‘…YHWH comforts Zion; He comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her deserts like the garden of YHWH; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.’ On the cross, our Lord and God enters into, bears, and—indeed—becomes the ‘waste places’ of His Bride’s
Proverbs 25:11, ‘A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.’ A classical understanding of ‘the Beautiful,’ recognized ‘Beauty’ as that which appears when diverse parts harmoniously agree with one another, revealing a new whole within the concert of their unity. The idea of ‘fitness’ in Proverbs 25:11 seems to
Job 19:25-26, ‘For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the dust. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.’ With these words, it is as though the the skeletal hand of Job’s faith, livened by the breath of the
Hebrews 2:8-9, ‘we do not yet see everything in subjection to Him. But we see Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.’ Notice the
Hebrews 11:19, ‘…[Abraham] considered that God was able to raise [Isaac] from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.’ See the place that resurrection plays in Abraham’s faith. In this passage, resurrection is the unexpected—yet necessary—conclusion that arises from the equation of God’s Promises + Death. The Genesis 22 command
John 1:23, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” as the prophet Isaiah said.’ John the Baptist’s citation of Isaiah 40 is significant since, in the context of Isaiah, the one whose way is prepared is YHWH Himself. John implies, then, that he is
2 Corinthians 1:5, ‘For just as the sufferings of Christ abound for [or ‘unto’, ‘εἰς’] us, so through Christ also abounds our comfort.’ Because the one and indivisible Jesus Christ is irreducibly the Crucified and Risen One, in Him, suffering and comfort are “hypostatically” (i.e., rooted in personhood) united. Just as there is no Crucified
The Paschal Trilogy – Part I/III – Good Friday Leviticus 17:11, ‘…the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls…’ When YHWH spoke these words to Moses, the primary referent was the animal sacrifices that God provided to deal
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Exodus 33:20, ‘…you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.’ Isaiah 50:6, ‘I hide not my face from disgrace and spitting.’ No human being can see the face of God and live. This is the reason that YHWH hides Moses in the cleft of the rock on Sinai when He
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Numbers 23:8, 20, ‘How can I curse whom God has not cursed? How can I denounce whom YHWH has not denounced?…He has blessed, and I cannot revoke it.’ When Balaam was summoned to curse God’s chosen people, he responds by saying that he could not curse those whom God had blessed. These were the people
Matthew 10:1, ‘And He called to Him His twelve disciples and gave them authority…’ Matthew 10:16, ‘Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves…’ Summary Thoughts: To wield the authority of the Lamb who slays the Dragon through His death is to walk as sheep in the midst of wolves,
Numbers 6:24-26, YHWH bless you and keep you; YHWH make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; YHWH lift up His face upon you and give you peace. In this blessing, for God’s face to shine upon His people is presented as the supreme blessing they can receive. However, in Ex.
The seed that fell ‘among thorns.’ As in the other pictures, the ‘seed’ (which is the ‘word of the Kingdom’, 13:18) is represented as the Crucified and Risen Jesus. He is the True Word who—being the perfect declaration of who God is—embraces, embodies & fulfills every word of God. In this picture, the resurrection illumined
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2 Corinthians 5:21, ‘For our sake, [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that IN HIM we might become the righteousness of God.’ The union of Christ and His Bride lies at the heart of the Gospel. We see that here in this text. Why is Christ ‘made sin’? Because He
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Psalm 42:11, “Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.” How do we know that ‘we shall again praise Him’? How do we know that this darkness is going to lift? That we will rise again from this pit? That the hopelessness that has devoured days, months, years of
Luke 15:24, ‘For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ This statement unites a number of concepts from ch. 15 and links them in mutually illuminating relationships. Already in the first two parables, we’ve learned that lost=unrepentant sin, and found=repentance. But now, at the climax of the
2 Corinthians 4:17-18, ‘This light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.’ The sufferings of this age—which are the sufferings of Christ on our behalf—are working eternal glory for those
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Psalm 27 Rather than a specific verse, this image attempts to visually exegete some of the central movements of the 27th Psalm. So, perhaps the best way to explain it is to walk through the elements of the image in the order that they appear in the Psalm. David begins by confessing that YHWH
Psalm 119:130, ‘The unfolding of your word gives light, it imparts understanding to the simple.’ Psalm 119:135, ‘Make your face shine upon your servant, and teach me your statutes.’ The unfolding of YHWH’s word gives light; the opening up of His words imparts a radiance perceptible to mind and heart, a light that imparts understanding
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