Bulletin Articles

1 Kings 8:22-30, 41-43 When I think of the first Christians—recent converts from Judaism—going back and reading their Scriptures (the Old Testament) after believing in Christ, I think how they must have been astounded to see how their God had been at work throughout all his time with them, pointing them to the watershed moment in Christ. I have no doubt that they would be sitting in the synagogue (now the assembly for the church), listening to the Scriptures, when suddenly they received a jolt in their gut. “WOW! Can you believe how that mentions the Christ, and how God brought that to fulfillment in Jesus? I never knew that was there before or I never knew that it meant that. Now that I see it though, I’m amazed and astounded. How did I not see that before? Praise God for his wisdom and his forethought!” If we would be diligent in reading the Old Testament, I am sure that we would encounter moments just like that, just like the one that we see in this passage about Solomon’s de...

Deuteronomy 4:1-9 When we were children, our parents probably gave us a lot of rules. Many of us probably did not like those rules, sometimes we may not have understood why there were those rules, and we may have thought that they were arbitrary. That is the nature of things when you are a child because you do not have the perspective to understand the bigger picture. The trouble with what I have described is that it can form in us a sense that most rules are arbitrary. The lawmakers and God just make rules to make rules. This passage in Deuteronomy should quickly put that notion to rest. Moses tells the Israelites a couple of reasons for the Law which he is about to recite to them again. First, they are “that you may live and go in and take possession of the land” (4:1). In some way, these are rules to preserve and prolong life, and rules that will aid them in their conquest. Second, they are what the Israelites “should do…in the land” (4:5). In some ways, these are rules for ...