A Successful Priest and Failure as a Father Eli is a priest. He serves the Lord for forty years. When Eli grows older, his two boys, Hophni and Phinehas, take over the daily priestly duties for him, as prescribed by Moses. While we can assume Eli is a good priest, his boys are not. Scripture […]
Korah’s Rebellion Korah (3) is the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi. He leads a rebellion against Aaron, Moses . . . and God. It’s called Korah’s rebellion. The descendants of Levi are set apart from the rest of the Israelites for a special role. They are to work in the tabernacle and […]
The Two Surviving Sons of Aaron God strikes down Nadab and Abihu for their disobedience. Without any heirs, this means that all the priestly duties now fall to their brothers, Eleazar and Ithamar. Though all four brothers should have served God together, the work now goes to the two remaining sons of Aaron. As a […]
The mysterious character of Melchizedek shows up only once in the book of Genesis. There he meets and blesses Abraham after the patriarch defeats Lot’s captors and liberates his nephew, the rest of the town, and their possessions. Abraham gives Melchizedek a tenth of the plunder. Yet this seemingly straightforward story also intrigues. First, Melchizedek […]
As Followers of Jesus, We Are All Priests The priesthood of believers says that as followers of Jesus we are all priests—every one of us. It’s time we start acting like it. Let’s discover what this means. Though the Bible never mentions the phrase priesthood of believers, we find the idea of us all being […]
Stop Paying Clergy and Ministry Staff to Do What We’re Supposed to Do Ourselves In part one of Embrace a Fresh Perspective about Church we looked at adopting a new, biblically enlightened view on the role that a church building should play for our spiritual community. Now we’ll continue that theme by looking at church […]
Discover the Revolutionary Way Jesus Fulfills the Old Testament When we consider that Jesus came to fulfill the law of Moses and the writings of the prophets, what’s important to understand is that we must see these passages in their proper perspective, informing our perspectives about church today. This doesn’t mean to ignore what was […]
Moses Presents a Model for Connecting with God When God gives Moses the Law, he sets three key expectations for worship, along with a lengthy set of mind-numbing details to guide the practices he wants his people to follow. God addresses this throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These three main elements relate to the […]
A few months ago, we went to church on Saturday morning. Now we head off for a Saturday evening mass. Consider these four discussion questions about Church #50: 1. The worship leader directs us to “page one in the white book,” but what we find doesn’t match what they say. We’re confused and can’t follow […]
A Thought-Provoking Look at Faith, Persecution, and Navigating Right and Wrong Reviewed by Peter DeHaan The movie Silence is a fictional account of two Jesuit priests from Portugal who seek permission to travel to Japan in 1639. They desire to investigate what happened to their mentor. His written communication had stopped, and a rumor circulated […]