Building on the Foundation

There are few biblical characters more ignored than Joseph, the father of Jesus. He is generally viewed as an aside, simply the somewhat unnecessary husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and after all, Jesus could have been born and raised without Joseph around at all. Mary was genuinely the first and only woman to exist who seemingly really didn’t need no man.  However, Joseph is far more than just an aside; in fact, he is as important to the birth of Jesus as Mary herself. Of course, the role of a father in a child’s life is irreplaceable, but more than that, with Joseph, his bloodline was irreplaceable, and I believe he was especially selected by God for the lineage of Jesus the Anointed.  You see, Scripture never traces a lineage through a woman, and you won't find any place where it explicitly identifies Mary’s lineage. Was she of the House of David? We aren’t told explicitly, but her cousin Elizabeth is said to be of the daughters of Aaron (Luke 1:5).  That’s the on...

Marriage is many things, but unlike the way it is practiced today, it is not a legal contract between two parties that can be nullified on a whim simply by filing the right piece of paperwork. In fact, marriage as practiced in the Bible really has no paperwork at all.  If you’re a Christian, you’ve probably heard it said many times that marriage is a covenant and perhaps assumed that covenant is simply the Biblical word for an agreement or a contract of some type.  A covenant is a little more than that, however, when you consider that, for a covenant you are putting something forward to guarantee the fulfillment of the contract.  You have to put up collateral, and the collateral of a covenant is your own life.   In a covenant, one party offers the covenant, and they can either offer terms with the covenant, or, as God did with Abraham, the offering party can leave all of the requirements on their own end to perform.  The accepting party either agrees to the...

  When He appeared before Pontius Pilate for judgment, Jesus Christ had a revealing exchange. Questioned by Pilate about whether He was a king, “Jesus answered, ‘You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.’ Pilate said to Him, ‘What is truth?’” (John 18:37-38). Indeed, what is truth? We live in a world so filled with lies that it can be hard to know. At times, it seems as if almost everything you hear is a lie. Politicians lie, scientists lie, doctors lie, the news media lie, “influencers” lie, and many people you interact with will simply parrot whatever lies they’ve been brainwashed into believing. Worse still, many lies seem to be mixed with an element of truth. A few elements of the narrative can often be verified as fact, causing people to believe the rest. God spoke of ancient Israel, shortly before sending her into captivity, ...