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God’s work is messy business. Perhaps this messiness is part of the appeal of the royal succession narratives in the opening chapters of 2 Samuel. The story reaches a crucial point with the initial establishment (...)

Like Psalm 46, last week’s psalm, Psalm 24 is related to Jerusalem (see Psalm 46, Reformation Sunday). Its content, structure, and movement strongly suggest that it was used in ancient times by worshipers as they (...)

Notes (and hymns) for a six-part preaching series on the Psalms1 This worship and preaching series on the psalms is meant to move through the psalms in a manner that reflects both how the Psalter (...)

As always, preaching for a festival of the church brings competing goods: Do we preach the text or preach the day? I will always want to err on the side of preaching the text, though (...)

Luke goes to great lengths to characterize Jesus’ death as a continuation of his ministry. Maintaining continuity between Jesus’ ministry and his death provides one key marker of healthy theology. Jesus announced the reign of (...)

Introduction: The Context of Joseph’s Story The story of Joseph (Genesis 37, 39-50) is one of the longest sustained narratives in the Old Testament, and is the longest in the Book of Genesis. This week’s (...)

On the last Sunday in Advent, we end where we began: with lament. Psalm 80 offers a profound description of suffering, particularly the suffering of God’s apparent absence. This Psalm expresses our longing for God’s (...)

The good news of Psalm 46 is essentially the same as that of last week’s psalm (see Psalm 91:9-16, Twenty first Sunday after Pentecost) — that is, God is “with us.” This message is reinforced (...)

Hebrews 7:23-28 occurs in the middle of a larger argument about Jesus being a heavenly high priest. This is one of the central ideas of Hebrews, and it is a unique contribution in the New (...)

Although it is not entirely unique in the Psalter, the most striking thing about Psalm 91 is that it ends with a divine speech in verses 14-16. Usually when God speaks in the Psalms, it (...)