Studies, reading plans and every single day within them, alongside devotionals and articles. Search by title, book of the Bible, passage or topic.
Chapter study
…they pass a vineyard, or beside the great golden vine carved over the temple gate. He reaches for something visible, ordinary, and immediately understood by every Jewish ear in the group, and turns it into the deepest…
Chapter study
…from his fugitive years. Israel at worship. The psalm entered the temple songbook, so it was sung by people who owned no flocks and had never fought a lion, yet needed the same shepherd. The Judean hill country and…
Devotional
Psalm 100:4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, and bless his name. WEB The psalmist does not wait to feel grateful before entering. Thanksgiving is the manner of…
52 Week Journey
…the fact. It is commanded, it is offered as an actual sacrifice at the temple, and Paul tells a suffering church to give thanks in everything before he tells them the outcome. Scripture treats gratitude as an act of the…
Chapter study
…it back, and it does so on a ridge where Israel will later build a temple and offer substitutes for a thousand years. Read the chapter above slowly, twice if you can. Notice how little the narrator explains. Moses tells…
Chapter study
…smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God,' the language of temple offering applied to a financial gift to a missionary. Giving, in Paul's theology, is worship. Then comes verse 19: 'my God shall supply all…
Bible study
…office over me. Israel at worship. The psalm was sung corporately in temple liturgy, meaning generations of ordinary families spoke these words together long before they became a funeral text. David, son of Jesse,…
Dig Deeper
…says I am the true vine. Whether the vine imagery was prompted by the temple decoration, by vineyards on the walk to Gethsemane, or simply by the Old Testament passages is not stated in the text, and reconstructions of…
Dig Deeper
…Ornan the Jebusite. The only other place Scripture uses the name. The temple, where sacrifice was made daily for a thousand years, stands on Moriah. Genesis 22:14 Abraham called the name of that place Yahweh Will…
Dig Deeper
…me. Israel had a national faith, held in feasts and sacrifices and a temple, and David does not set that aside. He simply insists that the God of the whole nation attends to one man in one field. What the title claims…
Reading plan
…you are joining a chorus of very different people, a shepherd king, temple musicians, worship leaders, all praying to the same God in very different seasons. When you cannot find your own words, one of them usually has…
Verse study
…bush in Exodus 3:4, Samuel in the night in 1 Samuel 3:4, Isaiah in the temple in Isaiah 6:8. In each case the word comes first and the instruction comes second. That order is the whole point. Three times on one mountain…
Reading plan
…answer, and by the time the angel finally appears to Zechariah in the temple, he can barely believe the prayer is being answered at all. God's timing does not mean God has forgotten a long held prayer. Luke 1:26-38…
Verse study
…intimacy of knowledge, not equality of position, much as royal courts throughout history distinguished 'friends of the king' as those given special access, without those friends ceasing to be the king's subjects. James…
Verse study
…the house of the LORD was the place of worship, the tent and later the temple, where a person came into God's presence with others. His longing elsewhere is the same: one thing desired, to dwell in the house of the LORD…
Verse study
…to our list, the name stays honest. 2 Chronicles 3:1 Solomon builds the temple on Mount Moriah, the same ridge. Psalm 121:1 I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help. Matthew 6:32 Your heavenly…
Devotional
…these lines with the smoke of Jerusalem still in his clothes. The temple is gone. The walls are down. Nothing in his circumstances has improved between verse 20 and verse 22. What changes is the direction of his…
Verse study
…thanks the Philippians for their sacrificial gift, describing it in temple language as 'an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God.' The promise that follows is Paul's confident conclusion…
Reading plan
…is exactly what he says in John 20:31. By the time John wrote, the temple had fallen and followers of Jesus were being pushed out of the synagogues. That pressure explains the gospel's insistence on who Jesus is:…
Verse study
…sheep in it. How the original audience heard it The psalm entered the temple songbook, so it was sung by farmers, weavers, potters, and mothers, most of whom owned no flocks. They were not being asked to picture…
52 Week Journey
…a cluster of images: a body, a building, a family, a bride, a flock, a temple. Each one corrects a different misunderstanding of what it means to belong to Christ together rather than alone. This week reads across Acts,…
Verse study
…the removal of it. An audience living with raiding parties and rival courts would have caught the audacity immediately. Anyone can feast in safety. This is a feast in front of the people who want you gone. Anointing and…
Devotional
…WEB Jeremiah writes this 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…
Devotional
…will be established forever. WEB David wants to build God a house, a temple. God answers by promising to build David a house, a dynasty, and this house is promised to stand forever, a claim no merely human kingdom has…
Devotional
…shrines Jeroboam I set up centuries earlier as a rival to Jerusalem's temple (1 Kings 12:28-29). Amos confronts the king's priest at the king's sanctuary, at the very center of the religious system he is condemning.…
Devotional
…will be established forever. WEB David wanted to build God a house, a temple. God answers by promising to build David a house instead, a dynasty, and this verse states its permanence: forever, twice in one sentence. The…
Devotional
…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 thirsts for God, not primarily for the situation to…
Devotional
…and prophets, Christ as the chief cornerstone, growing into a holy temple. Is there a person or personality in your church life that has crowded out your focus on Christ himself? Examine one area of church involvement…
Devotional
…where Jesus prepares His disciples for hostility from families, courts, and religious leaders. The command not to fear those who kill the body is not detached comfort; it is spoken directly into a mission where that…
Devotional
…a striking choice given his enormous building projects, including the temple. Whether or not the attribution is original, the content reads naturally as wisdom for a builder who knows that even great labor accomplishes…
Devotional
…the promise of a new covenant, and Ezekiel 37:27 describing the future temple. John gathers this recurring promise and places it at the very end of the Bible's story as its final fulfillment. Exodus 25:8-9 God's…
Devotional
…lowering its standard. What was once confined to priestly vestments and temple furniture will, in that day, characterize the most common objects of everyday life. Holiness does not shrink toward the end of the story; it…
Devotional
…a word for emphasis. Scripture repeats holy twice elsewhere, of the temple and of the Sabbath, but only here and in Revelation 4:8 does anything get called holy three times. The seraphim are not being poetic. They are…
Biblical concept
…world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. When Jesus stands in the temple courts and says I am the light of the world, he is making a claim about himself using an image Scripture had already spent centuries…
Biblical concept
…Father. Priests were the working staff of the tabernacle and later the temple. Aaron's descendants served as priests, and the wider tribe of Levi carried the equipment, guarded the courts and taught the law. They held…
Place in Scripture
The temple was the place God chose for his name to dwell, built by Solomon on the pattern of the tabernacle. Its architecture taught distance and access at once: courts, a holy place, and behind a veil the holy of…
Topic study
…are felt. The Gospels: hope with a face Luke 2:25 Simeon waits in the temple for the consolation of Israel and then holds it in his arms. Centuries of expectation narrow to a single child. Hope stops being a theme and…
Topic study
…prayer of a barren woman 1 Samuel 1:10 Hannah pours out her soul in the temple, so honestly that Eli mistakes her grief for drunkenness. Scripture never asks us to tidy our prayers before we bring them. David: the…
Biblical concept
…opening his mouth. A lamb was killed every morning and evening in the temple, and a lamb was killed by every household at Passover. When John spoke, his hearers had seen more lambs die than most modern readers can…
Biblical concept
…making the same offer again. Ezekiel's vision of water flowing from the temple, growing from a trickle to a river too deep to cross, and Revelation's picture of the river of the water of life running through the city…
Place in Scripture
…is sent to a mountain in Moriah, Moses receives the law on Sinai, the temple is built on a hill in Jerusalem, Jesus teaches, is transfigured, prays and is crucified on rising ground, and the last vision of the city…
Biblical concept
…not even be remembered. The promise is given to a people whose city and temple had every appearance of being finished for good. Ezekiel 36:26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you. 2…
Biblical concept
…great pilgrimage feast, drawing crowds to Jerusalem and lambs to the temple in numbers large enough to fill the city with the sounds and smells of sacrifice. It is into that setting, at that feast, that Jesus sits down…
Word and phrase
…separate steps. 1 Kings 8:47 Solomon's 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.…
Word and phrase
…which is why the two ideas cannot be separated in Romans. The law courts of Israel gave the word its edge. To be righteous was to be in the right when the case was heard, which is the picture behind Paul's language of…
Bible question
…given publicly before his death. John 2:19-21 Jesus says destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up, a prediction John explains referred to the temple of his body. Mark 8:31 Jesus teaches plainly that the…
Bible question
…Christ rather than by finding a technique. The tax collector at the temple Luke 18:9-14 He stood far off, would not lift his eyes, and beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Jesus said this man went…
Bible question
…is God, Deuteronomy 6:4. Their reactions are recorded. The crowd in the temple at Hanukkah John 10:22-39 They asked him to tell them plainly whether he was the Christ, and then heard him say I and the Father are one. He…
Bible question
…in people who met God and were changed by what they saw. Isaiah in the temple Isaiah 6:1-8 He saw the Lord high and lifted up and immediately said he was undone, a man of unclean lips. Nobody had accused him of…
Bible question
…restitution follows the welcome; it does not earn it. Simeon in the temple Luke 2:25-35 An old man waiting for the consolation of Israel was shown the child and took him in his arms. My eyes have seen your salvation, a…
Bible question
…Your prayers are heard because of who carries them The tearing of the temple veil at the crucifixion is a statement about access. The place that only one man could enter once a year is opened, and Hebrews reads that…
Bible question
…hand. I and the Father are one. WEB Jesus makes this claim in the temple at the Feast of Dedication, to a crowd that had just demanded he tell them plainly whether he was the Christ. Read what he actually says about his…
Bible question
…was tied to real and immediate threats: siege, famine, exile, and the courts of kings. Scripture speaks to fear at that level, which is part of why it does not offer reassurance in place of God's own commitment. Isaiah…
Bible question
…contentment is great gain, verse 6. Ephesus was prosperous, home to the temple of Artemis and a considerable trade in silver work, Acts 19:24-27. A church there would include both the poor and the genuinely wealthy,…
Bible question
…Eden's garden where God walked with Adam, through the tabernacle and temple where he dwelt behind a veil, to this, where the veil is gone and God dwells openly among his people. Revelation 21:4 He will wipe away from…
Bible question
…live. Ephesus was a city built around religious performance. The great temple of Diana dominated its skyline and its economy, and its worship, like most ancient religion, was transactional: give the goddess what she…
Bible question
…changes how it is sought. Luke, recording Peter's sermon a crowd in the temple in Jerusalem, shortly after Pentecost the healing of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, Acts 3:1-11 Peter is speaking to people who had,…
Bible question
…and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made with hands and is not served by human hands as though he needed anything. God has no needs we meet. Whatever we bring him is response,…
Bible question
…to God without explanation. 1 Corinthians 3:16 calls believers God's temple because the Spirit dwells in them, and Matthew 28:19 sets his name beside the Father and the Son. He gives new birth John 3:5-8 Jesus told…
Bible question
…merely predicted, and Hebrews 9 explains it against the backdrop of the temple sacrifices every Jewish reader already knew. Isaiah 53:3 He was despised, and rejected by men; a man of suffering, and acquainted with…
The Sunday Study
Verse-by-verse teaching with historical context, and a prayer to close. Nothing else in the email.