Tag: New journeys

Digging in Deeper: Romans 1:1-4

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“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God  —  which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures —  concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh and was appointed to be the powerful Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When I was getting my degree in chemistry, I was the weird kid in the department. This wasn’t because of personality (I was generally right at home in that sense as all chemistry majors are a little weird). It was because I was the one kid in the department who hated lab work. I vastly preferred classwork. I wanted all the theory and didn’t care two cents about the practice. My brain didn’t process information that way. Oh, I faked my way through it just fine, but I never really understood what I was doing. That included when I had to write lab report abstracts. Those were the introduction paragraphs for experiment write-ups. You had to pack a ton of information into a tiny word count. If you’ve been following this blog for long, you know that brevity isn’t really one of my strengths. It wasn’t really the apostle Paul’s strength either, but he could still pack a ton of information into a few words. His introductory statement for his letter to the believers in Rome is a great example. Let’s explore part of it as we begin a whole new journey in this new year.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 1:6-10

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“Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation eventually died. But the Israelites were fruitful, increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them. A new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. He said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are. Come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Today will be the first step in a new journey I have been looking forward to starting for quite some time now. For the next few months, we are going to be working through the narrative of Exodus. Exodus plays a powerful role in terms of creating a context in which Jesus eventually makes sense. It is a reminder that although history doesn’t repeat itself, as God writes His great symphony across the ages, He does sometimes develop in more detail themes He first introduced earlier on in His masterwork. Through the Exodus, God took the next major step forward in terms of revealing Himself to us so that we could be in a relationship with Him. As we journey through this together, we may not cover every single detail, but we are going to be as thorough as we can. Let’s start here near the beginning as Israel finds itself becoming an actual nation (thus fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham) through a process of suffering.

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