Posts tagged: bible-project

All posts with the tag "bible-project"

20 posts latest post 2025-06-20
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Jun 2025 | 3 posts
What Are The Rewards In Heaven?

What Are The Rewards In Heaven?

Intro I came across an article on the Bible Project on what it means to “store up treasures in Heaven” and it brought some clarity to the meaning of this teaching for me… I’ve been walking with Jesus for around 2 decades now, and he’s taught me a lot about life, love, and grace. I still feel the battle inside myself when faced with a decision where I can act more or less in line with Jesus’ desire and will or I can make a choice that’s about me… Anytime I’m able to choose the path I know is his, then praise the Lord and he’s been faithful to change me more and more into his image and likeness. TLDR - The Treasures # The article goes on to argue that the rewards we are promised in Heaven, the ones we are supposed to “store up”, are the rewards of living like Jesus today. Note The reward becomes greater as our will is forged to align with the Lord. As we grow in holiness, making holy decisions and living a holy life becomes the reward we store up for heaven Reflection The idea that the p…
Reflecting on BP Article on James - Faith and Works

Reflecting on BP Article on James - Faith and Works

Intro This started as one of [[my-thoughts]] and got long enough to warrant putting right in the blog Faith and works is a common point of conversation for Christians who like debating things, and I’m at the point in my life where I’m kind of over the debates and the simplistic thinking…. but this morning I saw this article and wanted to give it a read Article # Article Link - 11 minute read One of the best pieces from the article is: Info James illuminates and clarifies our understanding of faith by bypassing questions about whether one has (or does not have) faith and focusing instead on whether a person’s faith is living or dead. Reflection # This snippet isn’t incredibly profound on its own, but in my experience it hits hard I’ve been in many conversations about faith and works - and as I’ve written about before in A New Perspective on Being God's Child Christians today have a deep desire to put things into neat and simple boxes but this is often a mistake. And in the case of faith…

The Design of Genesis 1-11 pt 1

Genesis 1 # There is a cyclical pattern of Genesis 1-11. Introduction 1:1 may be a summary heading rather than the first “verse”. Chaos # The narrative begins in 1:2, and the start of everything is a “non-created world”, which in the ancient mind we should think about as “non-ordered reality”. תֹּ֫הוּ | to-hu | formless בֹּ֫הוּ | ba-hu | empty, void The first image is that there is “unordered wild and waste (wasteland)” (we typically see this as formless and void). There is also “darkness” and “deep”, which is a dark chaotic ocean - and this is the ANE person’s conception of “nothing”. Westerners think “nothing” means “no atmoic particles, no matter” but the ANE person would’ve thought about creation as unordered chaos. God’s spirit is hovering over the dark, formless, wild, chaotic ocean. Day 1 # Creation starts by separating light from darkness. The darkness is now tamed, it is apart of an ordered cycle. The ordering of the days is now established and is repeated in every subsequent…

The Flood Story - Types and Baptism

The Flood Story and Jesus Jesus brings up the Flood story from Genesis just one time (in the recorded teachings we have). First to set the scene, Jesus and his disciples are visiting the temple, and the disiples are kind of “ooo-ing” and “aaah-ing” when Jesus tells them about about the coming destruction… At one point in Jesus’ description of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, he brings up the Son of Man and Noah… Jesus says that the “coming of the Son of Man” will be like when Noah built the ark, and no one understood until the flood (κατακλυσμός | kataklysmos) came and took them away. In Jesus’ mind the flood narrative gives him imagery and vocabulary to talk about when God allows foreign powers to come and bring judgement… This isn’t an interpretation of the flood narrative, but it clues us into the idea that the Hebrew bible is full of imagery, like a quilt, that follows a (or several) pattern(s). I think sometimes we look at the flood and think God is so bad for taking ou…

The Flood Story - Quilt Analogy

The Flood Story in the Hebrew Bible I’m slowly making my way through some Bible Project classes online because Tim Mackie is a fantastic teacher and BP has done be a great service by opening my eyes to the reality of the Biblical narrative and what it means for my life of faith in Jesus. The second session is filled with great points and 10 minutes in I had to jot this one down… A Quilt as History # Imagine your grandmother’s grandmother made a quilt, and passed it down the family tree. In a sense, that quilt contains history that would pre-date you but would absolutely have meaning to you… However, you might look for meaning that was never intended to be present. The pieces of the quilt have their own history - there will be material that might’ve been part of a dress, or curtains, or bedsheets, or anything else someone in the family tree found interesting and meaningful for the story they are telling with their quilt. The question of what each of the pieces mean on their own, or in w…

How To Survive The Flood

There a lot of flood stories throughout the history of the world, and the Bible is no different in this regard. God warns Noah of a de-creation event, whereby he’ll start over with humanity via Noah and his family. Noah survives the flood by abiding in Yahweh and staying close to the One who loves him. Note this reflection doesn’t address AT ALL if the flood narrative is a “real” historical event, whether it’s a global or local event, or anything like that - regardless of those points the Biblical authors used this type of imagery of chaos waters to communicate themes of judgement and wrath. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount with the 2 houses, calls back to the images of the chaos waters (the winds and the rains). His instruction is that the wise man who built his house on the rock will survive, but the foolish man builds his house on the sand and the winds and the rains destroyed it. Somewhat obviously this is metaphorical for basing your life on wisdom or folly. The wisdom is Jesus’…

The Two Houses

The Two Houses Context # Reflection # From the visual commentary Tim calls out a few things: is supposed to first call us back to earlier in the sermon when Jesus calls his people “the light of the world” and says “a city on a hill [mountain] cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). The hill [ὄρος | oros] means “mountain” and is a hyperlink to OT teaching of God’s people living in the ideal Jerusalem on Mt. Zion. Lots of Hebrew imagery here. The rain and floods are a callback to the Chaos Waters of the OT (and general ANE thinking). It’s a reference to the destructive nature that we humans have unleashed on the world - but the wise man who listens to Jesus lives a life with some amount of protection from those hardships - and ultimate protection from God handing us over to Chaos (destruction).

BP - The Golden Rule

Matthew 7:12 What do I desire that people “do to [me]”? # Help if I need it - I want to live in a world where humans are helpful Listen to me and understand what I say Leave me alone sometimes What is the Torah and Prophets? # I know there’s a lot more to where the texts come from and the varying traditions in Judaism. But I think at a very high level, Jesus is saying that we all know, deep down, how to live in harmony but that it requires sacrifice. He calls us to live sacrificially towards each other, to live in Heaven today, so we can experience the coming reality if our own resurrection

Reflection - Wisdom in Relationships 2

Passage # Reflection # James builds on this with. James is arming us with some specifics from the Sermon on the Mount. We aren’t just to ask for anything that we think is good… wisdom is the good we are to ask for. Tim: Prayer is important because wisdom will flow out of a deep interpersonal relationship with God. Where has God given me wisdom? # Marriage/relationships as Kassia and I have navigated many things (job changes, moving for family, family falling through, unhealthy parent relationships, church hunts, and our own self-development and discovery) He’s given me a lot of professional wisdom - potentially through AuDHD and the exposure he’s brought me through. Through Mark Forstrom, Andrew, Nick Z, etc. I was filled with wisdom on how to be a man in the life of a boy - how to talk with someone immature, let them be and feel heard, but also on how to challenge them to grow (up).