So far in the book of Hosea, the first three chapters gave us Hosea's marriage to Gomer, which represented Yahweh's covenant with Israel. Chapter 2 gave us God's plan for Israel in a nutshell: He would severely discipline her but ultimately bring her back to Himself. Chapter 3 gave us a picture of that predicted …
Continue reading My People Are Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge | Hosea 4
Every education has a telos, whether it is explicitly stated or not. The point of our first study was to establish what is the telos of education according to Scripture. We then ended by distinguishing between education and schooling, which served as our bridge into today's topic, which shifts from the great governing idea into …
Continue reading The Tenets of Education: Paideia According to Scripture
In Hosea 1, God gave the prophet Hosea the assignment to marry a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom. This was to be a sign, a kind of living parable, of Israel's whoring after other gods. Hosea takes Gomer to be his wife and has three children: Jezreel, No Mercy, and Not My …
Alice asked the Cheshire Cat, who was sitting in a tree, "What road do I take?" The cat asked, "Where do you want to go?" "I don't know," Alice answered. "Then," said the cat, "it doesn't really matter, does it?" Without a destination in mind, choosing a path is rather pointless. After all, the point …
Continue reading The Telos of Education: One Thing Is Necessary
Discipline is an act of love. The author of Hebrews notes that all discipline is painful at first, "but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." Indeed, whenever God disciplines us, we ought to be encouraged that He is treating us like sons. The opposite of …
My eyes long for your promise;I ask, “When will you comfort me?”For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke,yet I have not forgotten your statutes Psalm 119:82-83 ESV The psalmist began this stanza with a desire for salvation: "My soul longs for your salvation; I hope in your word." Given the context of …
Continue reading When Will You Comfort Me? | Psalm 119:82-83
"The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself" (1689 Baptist Confession, I.9). Scripture illuminates Scripture, and one portion of the Bible must be interpreted through other portions. The full sense of Scripture is not manifold but one, just as Author Himself is one. I always have that principle in mind as I …
Counted, centered, guarded, assigned, cleansed, consecrated, blessed, spoken, purified, and equipped. Over the course of these first chapters of Numbers, God has been doing all of these things to prepare His people for leaving Sinai. And, now, Israel actually marches out. Israel spent nearly a year at the base of the mountain of God. For …
Here is an extended quote from G. Campbell Morgan's teaching on Luke 8:19-39, concerning Jesus calming the storm on the sea. The next thing that we observe is the concern of the disciples. They did everything they could before they woke him, and do not forget that they were not novices. They knew how to …
Going on a journey requires planning and preparation. Since Exodus 19, the people of Israel have been camped at the base of Mount Sinai, and these opening chapters of Numbers have been about Yahweh preparing His people to leave and enter the Promised Land. Chapters 1-7 moved from broad to specific, focusing first on the …
Continue reading Equipped: The Passover, the Cloud, & the Trumpets | Numbers 9:1-10:10
B. C. Newton 