Over the last few weeks I've been leading my Bible study group through the book of Leviticus. Let's get real - many Christians either never read or avoid this book like the plague. However, we've found it a great inspiration. While many of the rules seem ludicrous in today's day and age, readers that focus only on the rules are missing the point of the book - that we are called to keep ourselves holy, or set aside, for God.

Rather than work through each of the 27 chapters one at a time, we broke the book up into five studies. Clicking on each title will open or download a PDF of the study for your own use.

Study 1 - Chapters 1 to 7: Rules for Sacrifices
Study 2 - Chapters 8 to 10: Role of the priests

Study 3 - Chapters 11 to 15: What is Clean and Unclean
Study 4 - Chapter 16: The Day of Atonement
Study 5 - Chapters 17 to 27: Rules about Conduct

With this behind us, we'll be studying Hebrews next.

A few weeks ago I lead a short, two session study of the Apostle's Creed for my Bible study group. The study was based on the premise that for someone to take the trouble to write a creed that it must have been in response to something.

The first part of the study summarises some of the historical, theological and social pressures faced by Christians with the second session a review of the Apostle's Creed. Session two's focus is on looking for what the creed says in response to the context in which it was written.

My preferred study style is to take the text being studied, it's historical context and then discuss this with the rest of the group.

I hope it's of value to some of you.

The Apostle's Creed Part 1
The Apostle's Creed Part 2

My Bible study group has spent the last few weeks looking at the book of Esther. It's a fascinating story about how a young Jewish girl becomes the queen of Babylon in what amounts to a beauty contest. Without delving into all the details and recounting every element of the studies and discussion I wanted to take a quick look at one of the tangents we discussed this morning - the fate of the Amalekites.

In the book ot Exodus, chapter 17 tells us that:

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands."

So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. 11 As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. 12 When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. 13 So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

Several hundred years later, we learn a little more about the Amalekites and, in particular, their King Agag. From 1 Samuel 15:

When Saul attacked the Amalekites all the way from Havilah to Shur, to the east of Egypt. He took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and all his people he totally destroyed with the sword. But Saul and the army spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and lambs—everything that was good. These they were unwilling to destroy completely, but everything that was despised and weak they totally destroyed.

Deuteronomy 20 describes the rules of warfare and tells the Hebrews that they are to "annihilate them" and to not let anything that breathes remain alive". It's very strong stuff. However, we know that Saul spares King Agag.

In the story of Esther, the main protagonist is a guy called Haman. Haman has a vendetta gainst the Jews and, as it turns out, is a direct descendent of King Agag (see Esther 9: 24). It's taken over 1000 years for the ultimate destruction of the Amalekites to complete as it's through the intervention of God in the story of Esther that the last of Amalekites, Haman and his ten sons, are destroyed.

All of this tells me that I have a long way to go in my study of the Bible. It's pretty incredible to find threads like this and, in my view, lends support to the veracity of the Bible as a historically accurate text. But that's an argument for another day.

Some months ago, I posted some thoughts on Christian funerals. In that I said

I can't help but to think how the purpose and love of Christ would be source of comfort and how the Holy Spirit, if we let it work through us, would be a source of peace for people.

Well, on the 5th of December 2008, my father died suddenly. My father and I were very close. As I've grown up (a process that;s still going on) I've come to respect and understand my father more every single day. His loss has hit me in ways that I never expected. While he's always close to the top of my thoughts, I find that it's little things that get to me the most. Like when the kids received their school reports or I got my university results.

However, at some of those low moments I get great strength and reassurance in prayer. My dad was a Christian and I know that his belief in the risen Lord Jesus Christ means that he has gone to heaven and that I'll see him again when I die.

 death • heaven

Yeah - so I've been off the air for a while. I'll explain why in a subsequent post. For the first time ever, I actually stood up at the lectern at my church and preached. It was the Christmas Eve family service and I chose the rather tricky passage of Hebrews 1:1-4.

For those that are interested here's a copy of my sermon notes. A recording will be at this page in the next few days as well.

 Christmas • Hebrews

Yesterday, I penned a story for my weekly column on Hydrapinion on eBooks.

Why eBooks suddenly matter (to me): I've never really understood the whole eBook thing. I've tried - really, I have. I've also given audio books a go and quite like the idea of the convenience they offer. Studying requires that I read a wide variety of different references in addition to my lecture notes. This has lead me, for the first time, to establishing an electronic reference library so that I can carry my reference books with me.

By sheer coincidence, Drew Turney, who's standing in for Stephen Withers on the Mac column, also wrote a story on eBooks that's worth a look.

 eBooks

For the most part, Google's ads do a reasonable job of matching ads to content. Put simply, Google looks at a web page, works out what the page is about by looking at the placement and recurrence of words and then delivers ads that are in context. However, while researching the theological issues of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 I got the following.

You can get a full-sized (280kb) version of the image by clicking.

Google has taken the main subject, Christianity, and I think the word "seminal" on the right side next to the book's cover-page and come up with a link to an ad for Christian Masturbation (under the main text on the page.

 Google ads

At Ridley this week we looked at the letter to the Hebrews. It was a very challenging study but one particular verse has had my brain doing cartwheels as I try to work out its purpose.

From the NRSV:

For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.

It's like the author is saying that Christians who fall away from their faith have no chance of returning to God. In other words, the door opens only once. If this literal interpretation is correct then it has extreme ramifications.

On the other hand, is the author saying that when we turn away from God, no matter how subtly, that we are placing God and Jesus' saving sacrifice secondarily and treating God contemptuously.

The really trick element of this text, in my view, is "For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened...". Is is really impossible to be restored to repentance? I pray that the literal interpretation of this is incorrect as, through our fallen, sinful nature, we all put God aside at some time. On occasion, this is subtle but at other times it's more extreme.

Brown, in his commentary "The Message of Hebrews"[Affiliate Link] suggests that the ones who have "fallen away" are those that have completely rejected Christ. Brown says:

Some believers, who made an apparently excellent beginning in their Christian lives, are now not merely chronic invalids or spiritual casualties, but have become fierce opponents of the Christian gospel.

.

In other words, this is a response to apostasy, not just the daily (or even more frequent!) straying of faithful but fallen human beings.

Hopefully my thoughts and reading on this important segment of scripture is helpful to others grappling with the meaning of this text.

 apostasy • Hebrews

Over at Hydrapinion today, I pose the question - what handheld would you want at the end of the world?

Sure, it's a little unusual as blog topics go but I thought it would be a fun thing to explore

 Armageddon • Handhelds

Just following on from my post on Logos for Mac, it's worth mentioning another application that those into biblical scholarship might be interested in.

The Sword Project has the following mission:

Its purpose is to create cross-platform open-source tools, covered by the GNU General Public License, that allow programmers and Bible societies to write new Bible software more quickly and easily. Its secondary purpose is to amass a library of Bibles and other Scripture-related texts that can be used by all SWORD Project-based software.

I've used the Mac and Linux versions. The Mac version is my main Bible for preparing studies and searching for key texts. It'd be nice to have a version that works with Logos but coming at the perfect price (free) and with a wealth of different public domain resources including Bible translations, dictionaries and commentaries it's definitely worth a look.

 Bible • Sword Project