Job is one of the most read stories in all the world even to this day. You know the story. Job is a very godly man whom God himself speaks highly of. God permits Satan to ravage Job’s life. Once wealthy, he becomes impoverished. He loses everything. Once blessed with ten children, all ten are…
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Joseph and his brothers marry and have children and their children have children until they become a great nation: Israel. So great have their numbers become in Egypt that the king of Egypt enslaves them in forced labor enforced by brutality and oppression. God sees the injustice his people have to endure and has compassion…
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Remember Joseph and the technicolor dream coat? Joseph was betrayed by his own brothers and sold as a slave in a foreign land. Years later Joseph finds himself sitting at the King of Egypt’s right hand; second in command of that great nation with incredible power to wield as he sees fit. On a seemingly…
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Later in Abraham’s life, after a decades long battle with infertility, God blessed Abraham and his wife Sarah with a son, Isaac. God tested Abraham’s loyalty by instructing Abraham to sacrifice his only son on an altar. Just as Abraham was about to plunge the dagger into the soft flesh of his boy, God stopped…
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Picture yourself sitting in your living room one day. God comes to you and speaks to you audibly and says, “Brian, pack up a few things and leave the Fox Cities. I’m sending you to a country you know nothing about. Its culture, language, food, and people will all be foreign to you. I want…
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The Old Testament ultimately points forward to Jesus Christ. Learning to read the Bible this way is incredibly heart-warming and it stirs me to worship Christ all the more. Let’s take a look at another Old Testament story: Noah and the flood. Do you remember why God sent a flood in the first place? “The Lord saw…
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The Bible is not a series of disconnected stories. It is a single, unified story ultimately about Jesus Christ. In Luke 24, after Jesus’ resurrection, he appears to his disciples and teaches them about this truth. He says to them, “Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the…
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In Joshua 1:7-9, God instructs Joshua, the new leader of the people of Israel, twice to “be strong and courageous.” They were about to cross the Jordan River and take possession of the land God had promised Abraham centuries earlier. In the middle of this bookend to “be strong and courageous” is the exhortation to…
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A quick fix. Take a pill to lose weight, lower cholesterol, and calm our nerves. We love a quick fix. Sometimes I think we read the Bible looking for a quick fix. “Just read this passage, apply what it says, and you’ll be fine.” I want to make a bold proposal in this little blog…
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