In Depth:  Bible

the four soils

Graeme Shanks

This is the first of a mini-series of articles looking at the four soils in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13v1-23).

There’s a humorous little cartoon that does the rounds in Scotland every summer. Picture the scene: a Scottish man is reading out a Shakespeare sonnet to his beloved. Behind them is a window that reveals the lashing rain outside. "How dare you compare me to a summer's day!" she angrily growls to him. Hashtag summer in Scotland.

Alistair Chalmers

Ask a group of Christians what comes to mind when they hear the word worship, and many will immediately think of music. We speak of a “worship service”, a “worship leader”, or “a time of worship”, often referring specifically to congregational singing. Singing is undoubtedly a precious and Biblical part of Christian worship. Yet if worship is reduced to music, we risk shrinking a rich Biblical reality into a single activity.

The Bible presents worship as something far bigger, deeper, and more comprehensive than a style of music or a particular experience on a Sunday morning.

meditating on 1 Peter

Tim Vasby-Burnie

I wonder how long the Apostle Peter had been meditating on Psalm 34 before he started writing the Epistle of 1 Peter …

"For,

Daniel McIlhiney

Last week, Jews around the world sat down to what is called a Pesach Seder. It is a meal that we have at Passover that invites every generation of Jews into the story of God’s redemption of our people from Egypt.

We sat and told the story of our redemption as though we were there. We ate bitter herbs dipped in salt water to remind us of the bitter tears we experienced in slavery. We wept as we ate the pungent fresh horseradish and savoured the sweetness of the Charoset that reminds us that even the darkest moments are sweetened by the promise of redemption. We drank and we feasted, and we celebrated our freedom as we have done for thousands of years.

Pooyan Mehrshahi

There are verses in Scripture that shine most brightly at midnight. Job 13v15 is one of them: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” (Job 13v15)

These are not the words of a man enjoying health, prosperity, and applause. They come from a broken father who has buried his children, a ruined businessman who has lost his wealth, and a suffering servant whose body is covered in sores. Job is sitting in ashes. His friends misunderstand him. Heaven seems silent. Providence is dark.

Jonty Allcock

The Bank of England has deep underground vaults. They store gold bars that have an estimated worth of £200 billion. Squirrels store nuts. Humans store gold.

These are much the same. We stockpile what we consider to be of greatest value and discard what we consider to be worthless.

Jake Owen

In a former church building overshadowed by a shopping centre, a small media organisation is producing Christian content which is going viral across social media.

Go Chatter Studios is animating Biblical stories - from the prophet Jonah’s reluctant journey to Nineveh to Christ’s raising of his friend Lazarus from the dead - using the much-loved construction toy, LEGO.

Mitch Chase

The book of Psalms has five smaller books. They’re not equal in length, but the ending of each book is marked by various climactic statements.

Book I is from Psalms one to 41, Book II is from Psalms 42 to 72, Book III is from Psalms 73 to 89, Book IV is from Psalms 90 to 106, and Book V is from Psalms 107 to 150.

Paul Jackson

I was inspired by Jordan Brown’s round-up of Bible apps (see en article here) and wanted to make a further, more specific, contribution to the debate in terms of Logos and Blue Letter Bible.

As a middle-aged Christian, I have been using Bible software since the days of CD-ROMs! Bible software has helped me craft numerous Bible studies and sermons.

Mitch Chase

Near the end of Book Three in Psalms (which is from Pss. 73–89), things grow dark. In fact, when you enter Psalm 88, you feel like you’re in a room so dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your face.

Suffering can feel like that. Some trials feel so overwhelming, so disorienting, that the language of Psalm 88 fits them. The psalmist embodies the agonies and despair that a believer can experience in a fallen world. Don’t let anyone tell you that a real believer would never feel overwhelmed and despondent. Psalm 88 would beg to differ!

James Cary

I’m a professional writer (believe it or not) but was one of the few in my school year who did not choose English to study at A-Level.

Back then, reading fiction felt like hard work to me. For my GCSE, I had to read Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. It’s a classic. But it’s long, sad and contains an awful lot of dense and wistful description of the Dorset and Somerset countryside. I now live on the border of Somerset and Dorset – in the heart of Hardy’s Wessex. I love Wessex. It’s where I live. I enjoy seeing the hedgerows, oak trees and starling formations. I am still not hungry for lengthy verbal descriptions of all of the above.

Mitch Chase

The Gospel writers boldly associate Jesus’ birth with David’s name. And they do this in order for us to learn about Jesus’ birth as a fulfilment of ancient promises.

In 2 Samuel 7v12–13, God had promised David that a future son—the seed or offspring of David—would rule forever on the throne.

Tim Chester

Nunc Dimittis, in the New Testament is "a brief hymn of praise sung by the aged Simeon, who had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah."

"Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

meditating on 1 Peter

Tim Vasby-Burnie

We should follow Jesus Christ in such a way that our lives cause people to talk about us, and in such a way that our lives silence that talk.

Peter assumes that the church, built on the foundation that is Jesus Christ – rejected by man but chosen by God - will be a people who are often rejected by those around us.

Stephen Moore

It is a remarkable thing about the book of Genesis that it tells universal history by means of particulars – the small details.

"And before he had finished speaking, out came Rebekah – who had been borne to Bethuel son of Milcah the wife of Nahor the brother of Abraham – and her water jar was upon her shoulder. Now the young woman was very beautiful, a virgin whom no man had known. And she went down to the well and filled her water jar and came up. Then the servant ran to meet her and said, ‘Let me gulp a little water from your water jar’, and she said ‘Drink, my lord’ then hastily brought her water jar down onto her hand and gave him a drink. And when she had finished giving him a drink she said, ‘For your camels too I will draw water until they’ve finished drinking" (Genesis 24v15-19).

Mitch Chase

A few years ago, I remember a young man—a professing Christian for a long time, I might add—saying without any qualification to me, “I don’t really like the Psalms.” And he had no interest in seeing why that might be a problem.

Now, if you claimed that other books were more impactful for you than the Psalms, that would be one thing. Or if you noted that the poetry of the Psalms was challenging and you were trying to grow in your understanding of it, that would be another thing. Or if you said that you were new to the Bible and you didn’t really grasp what was going on in the Psalms or why they mattered, even that would be acceptable.

meditating on 1 Peter

Tim Vasby-Burnie

What does the good life look like? What sort of good life can turn the heart of unbelievers towards God?

We are “foreigners and exiles” in this world – what sort of life shows that we belong to the age to come, the kingdom of Jesus? In this dark world, what can we do to shine the wonderful light of mercy we have discovered in Christ?

On 30 June 1513, the young king, Henry VIII, arrived in Calais determined to reassert his title as "King of England and France."

His army, together with the flamboyant and hugely expensive royal paraphernalia that accompanied it, spent three months achieving little before returning home to a plague-ridden England, with measles for the King and a miscarriage for Queen Catherine.

Dave Burke

We sing about it: ‘Be still for the presence of the Lord…’ We read about it: ‘Be still and know that I am God…’ But we are never still!

The Bible often speaks of ‘stillness’, and the things related to it, such as meditating and waiting on God. But Christians, especially evangelical Christians, cannot abide stillness. We like noise and activity, with a side-order of mild chaos. We don’t do stillness.

Robin Barfield

What is your ideal Bible study? It may be one where your young people give you all the correct answers, quietly nodding as you dispense wisdom, and you get through all the questions you had prepared. I want to suggest that this may be the worst possible study!

Over the last few months, we have been considering the dynamic that the Bible gives us of God encountering our young people. When we open Scripture with them, it is worship! It is not a textual exercise like a high school study of Shakespeare. But that is what we so often make them.

lessons from Jude

Tom Forryan

It was the first Sunday of the year and we were visiting a large church in our town. After the service an enthusiastic young man came up and told me, 'The Lord has shown me you are in full-time Christian ministry.'

(How did the Lord do that? Was it a miracle? Was it because I sat at the front with a big Bible open in front of me?) Then he said, 'I have a word from the Lord for you: you will go to the next level this year!' I can’t honestly say that prediction was false – presumably I did indeed go to the next level in something that year, even if it was only my favourite computer game – but it didn’t trouble me. Why not? Because I believe in the sufficiency of Scripture.