Grains of Sand

Exodus 28, 29 is a tedious read There are some passages in the Old Testament which many of us avoid simply because they seem totally foreign and totally irrelevant. You might be able to make an argument for that except for one “small” detail—God made sure that the information was recorded for us as part of His infallible Word, as part of the “ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness , so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work ” (2 Timothy 3:16, 17, emphasis mine). Exodus 28, 29 (in case you really don’t feel you can manage the perseverance to read it yourself) is all about the special clothing the high priest and the other priests were to wear in the performance of their duties, and the ritual surrounding their consecration as priests in the service of the Lord. “Special” hardly seems to sufficiently describe these garments. Exodus 29:29 says: “ Aaron’s sacred garments… ” or as the ESV pu...

Google Images Tom Harpur, in his article in the local paper this morning, was lamenting the inevitability of things going back to the normal murder and mayhem now that this Christmas season is already becoming a distant memory. He wondered why this “essentially spiritual message of a glorious and universal myth...” has been relegated to the trash can of the human mind. Duh! If it’s a myth, Tom, why believe it? Why give it credence? Why live by its message? Perhaps this strange contradiction is the heart of the message God delivered to John for the church in Sardis, found in Revelation 3:1-6. God says: “ I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die ” (3:1, 2). The first gift of Christmas was a return to “ first love ” (Revelation 2:4), as though there had been something there that had gotten lost in the shuffle of life. Here it seems that hypocrisy is the issue—pretending to be what one never was. The...