Studies, reading plans and every single day within them, alongside devotionals and articles. Search by title, book of the Bible, passage or topic.
Bible Memory collection
…hand. Christians rightly take hold of it because the God speaking does not change, not because the exile never happened. Philippians 1:6 He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
Bible Memory verse
…hand. Christians rightly take hold of it because the God speaking does not change, not because the exile never happened. It answers fear with presence rather than explanation, which is how God most often comforts. And its context makes it sturdier than the poster version: the promise held inside…
Bible Memory collection
…firm and secure, reaching into the inner sanctuary where Jesus has gone. Jeremiah 29:11 God tells exiles in Babylon that he knows the plans he has for them, plans for peace and a future and a hope. Psalms 42:11 The psalmist questions his own downcast soul and preaches to it: hope in God, for I will…
Bible Memory verse
God tells exiles in Babylon that he knows the plans he has for them, plans for peace and a future and a hope. Read in context this is stronger than the poster version. It was spoken to people facing seventy years of exile. Jeremiah 29:10 Romans 8:28 Psalms 138:8 Lord, you had plans for your people…
Chapter study
…broken, the blame passed, the pain announced, the ground made hard and the exile from the garden. Genesis 4 opens directly into that world. Genesis 5 traces the line of Seth in a genealogy of births and deaths, and…
Devotional
…our sins, and He remembers that we are dust. Isaiah 40:28-31 Written to exiles who said their way was hid from the Lord. The everlasting God does not faint, and He gives power to the faint. Micah 7:18-19 Who is a God…
Reading plan
…conclude the book reached its present arrangement much later, after the exile. Those are conclusions drawn from the headings and the way the collections are assembled, not dates the book itself gives. Proverbs speaks to…
Devotional
…WEB Jeremiah writes after Judah's covenant unfaithfulness has led to the exile he prophesied. In the middle of that judgment, he announces a covenant that will not be broken the way the Sinai covenant was. The…
Devotional
…some faithful, many not, and the throne itself was interrupted by exile. Read on its own, this promise looks broken by history. Read forward, it is a promise waiting for a king who will not fail. God's promise to David…
Devotional
…temple, reversing the direction of the gift entirely. By the time of the exile, the Davidic throne appeared to have failed in plain historical terms, no king reigning in Jerusalem. Psalm 89:38-49 wrestles openly with…
Devotional
…you shall keep my ordinances, and do them. WEB Ezekiel prophesies to exiles in Babylon, people who have already lost their land, their temple and their king, and describes a change no political restoration could bring:…
Devotional
…and give me the will to turn back today. Amen. Malachi is written after the exile, to a returned but half-hearted community that had rebuilt the temple yet grown careless with worship and marriage and tithing. The book…
52 Week Journey
…son, David waited years between being anointed and being crowned, and the exiles in Babylon waited seventy years for a return most of them would not live to see. This week looks at waiting as the Bible describes it…
Chapter study
…lack anything? David wrote it, and he also wrote psalms about hunger, exile and enemies. Scripture settles what the promise is and what it is not, and the difference protects your faith rather than shrinking it. Psalm…
Dig Deeper
…lack anything? David wrote it, and he also wrote psalms about hunger, exile and enemies. Scripture settles what the promise is and what it is not, and the difference protects your faith rather than shrinking it. Psalm…
Bible study
…century BC, though its wilderness imagery may reflect earlier years of exile from Saul. Psalm 23 sits between Psalm 22, the psalm of the forsaken sufferer quoted by Jesus on the cross, and Psalm 24, the psalm of the…
Reading plan
…for Israel at worship. They were sung in the temple, then carried into exile when the temple was gone, then prayed in ordinary homes. That journey is worth noticing. Words first written for public worship turned out to…
Reading plan
…manger. The promises were first given to a people facing invasion and exile, people who needed something to hold on to when everything visible was being taken away. Later the church read those same promises again in the…
Devotional
…ministered through the final decades of Judah before the Babylonian exile, warning kings who mostly ignored him and watching the very disaster he had said would come eventually arrive. His book of Lamentations,…
Devotional
…writing to believers scattered across Asia Minor, described in 1:1 as exiles, people without settled political standing in the places they live. Into that displaced situation he speaks an identity rooted not in earthly…
Devotional
…to a people about to lose their land, their temple, and their king to exile. In the middle of that loss, God promises not a return to the old arrangement but something new: law written on the heart, not on tablets…
Devotional
…I come and appear before God? WEB This psalm is written by someone in exile, remembering better days, unable to go to the temple, and the ache in it is not for relief from circumstances but for God himself. The soul…
Devotional
…new. Revelation regularly draws on Isaiah's language for the end of exile and sorrow. The preceding verse, Revelation 21:3, grounds the promise in nearness: God himself will be with them, and be their God. The removal…
Devotional
…promise about the reliability of God's speech. Isaiah is writing to exiles who needed reassurance that God's promises of return and restoration were not empty talk, and he grounds that reassurance in the nature of God's…
Devotional
…one who keeps it. This matches Ezekiel 36:26-27, prophesied in similar exile conditions: a new heart, a new spirit, and God's Spirit causing them to walk in His statutes. Hebrews 8:8-12 quotes Jeremiah 31 at length to…
Devotional
…second half of the book, written to comfort a people who would go into exile and needed to know God had not lost track of them. Verse 28 asks whether they have not known or heard that the everlasting God does not faint,…
52 Week Journey
…The prophets call it returning, the same word used for coming home from exile. It assumes you have gone somewhere you should not be, and that the way back is open. This week follows repentance from a prophet's call to a…
Biblical concept
…and the land follows the throne. The failure of the kings is what makes the exile intelligible and what makes the promise urgent. By the end of the Old Testament there is no king on David's throne and the promise of 2…
Place in Scripture
…loose. history Solomon's temple was destroyed in 586 BC, rebuilt after the exile, and greatly enlarged under Herod. That last building is the one standing in the gospels, and it was destroyed in AD 70, which is the…
Biblical concept
…while describing it in terms too large for that event alone. Readers in exile therefore learned to expect both a near fulfilment and a final one. Prophets Joel, Amos, Isaiah and Zephaniah describe it as darkness,…
Word and phrase
…prayer at the dedication of the temple anticipates a day when Israel, exiled for its sin, will repent in the land of their captivity and turn back to God with all their heart. Ezekiel 18:30-32 Repent, and turn from all…
Biblical concept
…Ezekiel is addressed as son of man, marking him as mortal before God. Exile Daniel 7 sees a son of man given dominion, glory and a kingdom that will not pass away. Gospels Jesus uses the title for authority to forgive,…
Biblical concept
…of permanence, which is why losing a kerem in the prophets sounds like exile. Greek ἄμπελος ampelos vine The word Jesus uses of Himself in John 15:1, and the word behind the vine imagery in Revelation's harvest scenes.…
Topic study
…He speaks to it, and he gives it an object. The prophets: hope in exile Lamentations 3:21 Jeremiah writes some of the strongest words about hope while the city is rubble. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.…
Christian Living
…significance. Jeremiah 29:11 God's thoughts of peace, read in its exile setting. Matthew 22:37-39 The two commandments every calling must serve. 1 Corinthians 12:4-7 Different gifts, one Spirit, and a common good.…
Bible question
…And the promise of a seed who would crush the serpent comes before the exile from Eden. The good news is older than the law. The thief on the cross had no time to change anything He could not be baptised, give money,…
Bible question
…Then shall you call upon me, and I will hearken to you. This is said to exiles in Babylon, people who had every reason to assume God had finished with them. The promise of being heard is given at the point of maximum…
Bible question
…I think toward you... thoughts of peace, and not of evil.' Spoken to exiles about a seventy-year captivity, the promise of a good plan did not remove the long, hard wait. Good purpose and present difficulty coexisted.…
Bible question
…context behind any passage, as with Nehemiah 8 and the returned exiles, or 2 Timothy and Paul's final days, changes how a text is rightly applied. Check every teacher, including yourself, against the text Acts 17:11…
Bible question
…phrases lose their force. Isaiah, prophesying to Judah a people facing exile and the collapse of everything settled the comfort section of Isaiah, chapters 40 to 55, spoken to a nation about to lose its land Isaiah…
Bible question
…for I am with you: be not dismayed; for I am your God.' Spoken to exiles facing loss of homeland and community, the promise addresses displacement directly rather than offering a general comfort. Matthew 28:20 'Lo, I am…
Bible question
…then everything done here in Christ has a future. The apostle John, in exile on the island of Patmos Seven churches in Roman Asia Minor, facing pressure to compromise or suffer for their faith Revelation was written to…
Bible question
…roughly seven hundred years before Christ The kingdom of Judah, facing exile, and generations of readers after them who would read this chapter as unexplained prophecy until it was fulfilled Isaiah 53 is the fourth of…
Bible question
…of Scripture. Habakkuk wrote during the final decades before Judah's exile to Babylon, watching violence and injustice go unpunished and asking God directly why he was silent about it. Job's speeches come from a man…
The Sunday Study
Verse-by-verse teaching with historical context, and a prayer to close. Nothing else in the email.