Paschal Trilogy – 2024: Good Friday Micah 7:19, ‘He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot.’ Micah draws his prophecy to a close with a vision of the eschatological redemption by which YHWH will definitively manifest His identity to the cosmos such that the nations will cover their mouths in […]
Good Friday 2024 – Micah 7:19 Read More »
John 20:16, “Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’” Mary stands weeping outside Jesus’ empty tomb…She weeps over the loss of her beloved Lord, but more than this, in weeping over Christ’s death—in which all the pain, grief, sin, death, and damnation of the redeemed creation are borne—she weeps for all the sufferings of the world. In
Isaiah 53:5, ‘He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds, we are healed.’ See how substitution is expressed in the very structure of Isaiah’s words, like lashes falling on the Lord’s back, we hear the repeated refrain ‘He…for
1 Thessalonians 5:8, ‘But we belong to the day, we should be vigilant, having put on the breastplate of faith and of love, and the helmet of the hope of salvation’ Consider, specifically, what it means to have the ‘hope of salvation’ as our helmet (περικεφαλαίαν, literally, that which is ‘around the head’). A helmet
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Isaiah 49:3-4, ‘And He said to me, “You are my Servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” But I said, “I have labored in vain and have spent my strength for nothing and vanity…”’ Here we see a glimpse into the human soul of Jesus as He hangs on the cross….This is the moment
Isaiah 41:17-20, ‘When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none…I YHWH will not forsake them….I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. I will put in the wilderness the cedar…I will set in the desert the cypress…that they may see and know…that the hand
Proverbs 25:11, ‘A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.’ A classical understanding of ‘the Beautiful,’ recognized ‘Beauty’ as that which appears when diverse parts harmoniously agree with one another, revealing a new whole within the concert of their unity. The idea of ‘fitness’ in Proverbs 25:11 seems to
Isaiah 26:19, ‘Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust! For your dew is like the dew of *morning,* and the earth will bring forth her dead. Today’s picture was created at the request of a friend, Izzie Thom (with whom I worked on the most
Luke 24:50, ‘And, lifting up His hands, He blessed them.’ These are the same hands that Jesus displayed to His disciples in v.39, the hands bearing the wounds of His crucifixion, which is to say, wounds that bear witness to the disciples’ sin and the condemnation due that sin. More than this, in those
Hebrews 3:7-8, ‘Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion…’ Why does the author of Hebrews cite Ps.95 (and so allude to Exodus 17) in this context? How does this situation apply to his readers? It would seem that the parallel to the ‘voice’ of Ps.95 / Ex.17
1 John 3:5, ‘…He appeared in order to take away sins…’ Jesus appeared—the Word was made flesh—in order to take away sins. But what does it mean that He takes away sins? Certainly He bears them in Himself as the representative head of redeemed humanity (2 Cor.5:21); certainly He secures their forgiveness through the sacrifice
Isaiah 1:9, ‘If YHWH of Hosts had not left to us a survivor (or, in the Greek OT, ‘seed’), we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah.’ Ultimately, the judgment humanity has to face is not an attack of Assyrians or an exile to Babylon (the judgments Israel faced when Isaiah wrote the
Psalm 42:11, “Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.” How do we know that ‘we shall again praise Him’? How do we know that this darkness is going to lift? That we will rise again from this pit? That the hopelessness that has devoured days, months, years of
Luke 8:26, ‘Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes…’ This is the first of two visual exegeses that will be considering Jesus’ interactions with the demoniac in the region of Gerasenes. In this first post and picture, I just wanted to highlight the descent of Jesus as Living Hope into the darkness and
Psalm 65:3-4, “When iniquities prevail against me, you atone [ἱλάσκομαι/כָּפַר] for our transgressions. Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple!” Notice the transition into verse 4, “Blessed is the one…” We move almost
Mark 10:49, “Take heart, rise, He is calling you.” A quick study shows that the Greek words translated “take heart,” appear in the NT only in relation to Jesus, specifically in instances where Jesus enters in to and meets someone in the midst of their darkness, fear, or suffering (Matt.9:2,22; 14:27, Mk.10:49, Acts 23:11).
Mark 5:21-43 Notice the way that Jesus penetrates into the heart of hopelessness in the story of Jarius’ daughter. At first, Jarius comes to Jesus and asks for help because his daughter is dying, and Jesus agrees to go, v.24. When they draw near to the house, they find out Jarius’ daughter has died
Mark 6:56, “…they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored Him that they might touch even the fringe of His garment. And as many as touched it were made well.” So too, as many as reach by grace from the grave of sin to touch by faith even the fringe of the garment of
Mark 2:11, “I say to you, rise, take up your bed, and go to your home.” Jesus does not say to the paralytic, “you are healed of your paralysis,” or “I take away your disability,” rather, He COMMANDS the man to do what is—for him in his disabled state—impossible (ie, “rise, take up your
Jeremiah 4:30, “O desolate one, what do you mean that you dress in scarlet, that you adorn yourself with ornaments of gold, that you enlarge your eyes with paint? In vain do you beautify yourself.” Isaiah 60:9, “…the Holy One of Israel…He has made you beautiful.” Like painting makeup on a corpse, any and
Jeremiah 4:30 + Isaiah 60:9 Read More »
