Search Results
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Everything Came True
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Everything Came True
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Everything Came True JOSHUA 20:1- 21:43 Less than three weeks ago I received one of those standard e-mails from a student: she did not think she would be able to finish her coursework by the deadline. Except that it was not the standard e-mail. She had been told that she had a br…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Entertaining Angels Unawares
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Entertaining Angels Unawares
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Entertaining Angels Unawares JUDGES 13:1- 25 Some friends of mine have just become pregnant. I am not accustomed to using that verb in the first-person plural; when I was young, it was only women who got pregnant, but now it is a joint operation. There is a certain appropriatenes…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - God's Flexibility
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - God's Flexibility
by SPCK - John Goldingay
God’s Flexibility NUMBERS 8: 5-9: 14 A woman came to talk to me after church two weeks ago. In the sermon I had described the way the Psalms invite us in prayer to appeal to God’s compassion, grace, and steadfast love, especially when we know we are in the wrong in relation to Go…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - God's Claim on Levi
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - God's Claim on Levi
by SPCK - John Goldingay
God’s Claim on Levi NUMBERS 3: 1-5: 4 Last night I was watching the “Extras” on the DVD of a movie called The Soloist, whose background is Skid Row in Los Angeles, ten minutes away from where I sit. It noted the contribution made by volunteers (of the kind I could be) to the need…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - God Doesn't Go Back on a Promise
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - God Doesn't Go Back on a Promise
by SPCK - John Goldingay
God Doesn’t Go Back on a Promise NUMBERS 22: 1- 23:4 People in traditional societies know there can be a strange power about blessing and cursing. A Nigerian told me about the way in his society people know that their enemies can use curses to cause harm to them, and the traditio…
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - How to be a Dysfunctional Royal Family
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - How to be a Dysfunctional Royal Family
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Be a Dysfunctional Royal family 1 Samuel 17: 55- 18: 16 Queen Elizabeth II declared 1992 her annus horribilis, her “horrible year.” The phrase is a riff on the expression annus mirabilis, “miracle year,” the phrase devised by the poet John Dryden to describe 1666, the year…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Leave the Initiative to the Man
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Leave the Initiative to the Man
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Not to Leave the Initiative to the Man RUTH 3:1-18 I was talking to a young man who had been dating someone for a long time, but she had then ditched him and broken his heart. For a while he had stayed out of relationships. He had gone out with a number of women friends, some…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Get Overextended in Real Estate
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Get Overextended in Real Estate
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Not to Get Overextended in Real Estate RUTH 4:1-10 The end of the first decade of the twenty-first century saw a collapse in housing prices in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere, and an increase in the number of people “walking away” from property they “owned” but coul…
Job for Everyone - How Wickedness Gets Its Reward
Job for Everyone - How Wickedness Gets Its Reward
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Wickedness Gets Its Reward Job 20: 1-29 A pastor in the United States has just published a book that begins by questioning whether people who have not believed in Christ will go to hell. The pastor is someone with his finger on the pulse of U.S. culture, and he has been able …
Exodus and Leviticus - How to Pray for Rebels
Exodus and Leviticus - How to Pray for Rebels
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Pray for Rebels EXODUS 32: 1-29 You could say I came to the United States to avoid the responsibility of leadership. I was the head of a seminary and got paid more than my colleagues because it was my job to lie awake worrying about its future. Metaphorically speaking, on …
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How To Render To Caesar
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How To Render To Caesar
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Not to Render to Caesar 2 Kings 15:1-16:20 A recent graduate of our seminary was telling me on Friday that the seminary faculty is divided between people who avoid saying things that students would disagree with and people who don’t mind saying such things. The logic (she thi…
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - In the Beginning
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - In the Beginning
by SPCK - John Goldingay
In the Beginning Genesis 1: 1 Our son and daughter-in-law were showing us photographs of our two grandchildren. In one of them, the two children were sitting in the back of the car looking very solemn. “I think we had just had the birds-and-the-bees talk,” our son explained. Wher…
Exodus and Leviticus - Knowing and Acknowledging Again
Exodus and Leviticus - Knowing and Acknowledging Again
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Knowing and Acknowledging Again EXODUS 11: 1-10 EXODUS and Leviticus for Everyone 1Yahweh said to Moses, “There is yet one more blow I shall bring on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will send you off from here. When he sends you off, it will be complete. He will finally thro…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Last Chance to take the Torah and The Prophets Seriously
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Last Chance to take the Torah and The Prophets Seriously
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Last Chance to Take the Torah and the Prophets Seriously 2 Kings 22:1-23:24 Being the principal of a seminary occupied the middle ten years of my time as a professor. I had felt no desire to be in that position, but once it became clear that it was the right thing for a time, I r…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Land, Promises and Politics
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Land, Promises and Politics
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Land, Promises and Politics NUMBERS 33:1- 34: 29 I have several friends in Beirut, including a former student who teaches the Bible in a Christian university (actually he is the guy who once threw me into the pool, as I mentioned in connection with Numbers 28–29). He has a hard t…
Exodus and Leviticus - Knowledge and Acknowledgement
Exodus and Leviticus - Knowledge and Acknowledgement
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Knowledge and Acknowledgement EXODUS 9: 1-21 Eventually Pharaoh’s ministers of state see the point and surely risk their lives with the boldness of their confrontation of Pharaoh: “Do you not yet acknowledge that Egypt is lost?” (10:7). Can he not see they are like animals caught…
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Genesis 1:6-19 At the weekend my wife and I like to have lunch by the ocean, and while doing so we watch the surf hurling itself at the beach. No matter how hard giant waves batter the beach, they will never climb the rocks to where we sit, still less t…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Meanwhile in Judah