Today let us turn our attention to the Magi, or Wise Men. A couple points before we do that: We don’t know that there were three Wise Men. We know they gave three gifts (gold, frankincense and myrrh) but the Bible nowhere mentions how many men there were. There may have been three, or only…
Category: Bible characters
Saul: Decline of a king
One of the presenters at a conference I attended was recently in India. Walking along the street he saw a huge sign that had a picture of a man on it, and the words ‘a sad demise’. He asked his colleagues about it: ‘This poster, “a sad demise”… What’s that about?’ They said, ‘A great…
David and Goliath
They say that familiarity breeds contempt. If that is true, then we face an obstacle this morning. In our walk through 1st Samuel we come today to what is without a doubt the best known story of the Old Testament: the story of David, the shepherd boy, facing off against the Philistine giant, Goliath. It…
Abraham
My child. ‘Yes, Lord’. I want you to take your child, whom you love, and go to the mountains and sacrifice him for me. So, the next morning you and your child pack up and drive to the mountains. The trip takes three days. You are cherishing these last moments, but your child has no…
Advent : Zechariah
The old man climbed the steps from the courtyard and entered the doors of the temple. There was a barely perceptible stoop to his shoulders as he advanced the sixty feet across the floor of the room, the Holy Place, passing by the seven-fold candlestick on his right, and the table of showbread on his…
Noah
Imagine a world filled with violence. You do not have to think very hard, do you? On a global scale there have been wars (this nation against that nation, this racial group against that racial group). We see famine, genocide, the sex trade and the persecution of Christians. On a smaller scale we see armed…