Photo by Aaditya Arora on Pexels.com The past two Sundays during our church's annual mission festival, I have not preached but sat under the preaching of two guest preachers, one from East Africa and another from South Asia. I understand that some churches have let go of something like an annual missions conference, but I …
“Worship that Centers in the Lord” – a message from 1 Corinthians 11
This past weekend at Eastbrook, we continued our preaching series entitled "God's Grace for an Imperfect Church: 1 Corinthians." In this message from 1 Corinthians 11, I explored Paul's discussion of worship around two topics: head coverings and the Lord's Supper. Intertwined with those topics, I explored what it means to read the Bible well …
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Hosea’s family: biography, allegory, parable, or something else?
One of the key interpretive issues in the book of Hosea is whether the account of Hosea's family – his marriage to Gomer and three children – in chapters 1 and 3 is based in true events from the prophet's life or whether it is a prophetic parable or allegory with a teaching purpose yet …
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Did That Mean That?: Facing Apparent Contradictions in Scripture
There are times in our reading of Scripture when we encounter apparent contradictions. This happened to me the other day when I began reading Paul's letter to the Galatian church. In Galatians 1:10, Paul writes: For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were …
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Reading Parables Without Missing the Point
I want to offer a word of caution as we read parables. We need to think about how we are approaching these stories so that we’re not expecting them to be something they’re not. Let me use a parable of sorts to explain what I mean. Suppose that Kelly and I were going to watch …
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Matthew Erickson 