Deuteronomy 20 | Psalm 107 | Isaiah 47 | Revelation 17

In Luke 14:15–24, Jesus tells the Parable of the Great Banquet. In the story, a man prepares a great feast and invites many to come. Strangely, when the man’s servant personally delivers the invitations, each person has a different excuse about why he can’t come. One bought a new field (Luke 14:18), another bought five yoke of oxen (Luke 14:19), and a third recently married a new wife (Luke 14:20). Each of them declines the invitation, one after another, and naturally, the host is furious: “For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet” (Luke 14:24).

But when we read Deuteronomy 20, we learn that Jesus wasn’t making those excuses up on the spot as he told the story. In fact, he was listing specific, legitimate excuses that would exempt a man from going to war. If you had a new house (i.e., property, the equivalent of oxen), you were excused (Deut. 19:20). If you had planted a new vineyard (i.e., field), you were excused (Deut. 20:6). And, if you had betrothed a wife but not taken her, you were also excused (Deut. 20:7).

So, what’s the connection between Jesus’ banquet and ancient Israelite warfare? It’s critical to understand that Israel went to war only for one purpose: claiming/defending their inheritance, the Promised Land. They marched into the Promise Land to lay hold to what God had promised them, and they fought off other peoples who tried to take the Promised Land away from them or to subjugate them within the land.

In the New Testament, though, the inheritance of God’s people is no longer a small sliver of land in the Middle East. Instead, the New Testament people of God get a much better inheritance: Christ himself, along with all of creation. Paul writes in Ephesians 1:11, “In him we have obtained an inheritance”; Christ himself is our inheritance. Then, in Romans 8:15–17, Paul explains that by the Spirit of adoption (through whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”) we have been made children of God, “and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” Our inheritance is that we gain Christ himself, and that we inherit the whole world as a fellow heir with Christ.

Now that Jesus has come, the stakes are raised and there are no more excuses. Even the legitimate escape clauses of the law no longer apply here. No one who turns down an offer of Christ will taste God’s banquet. Either we repent from our sins and believe upon Jesus for entering into the eternal banquet or, for whatever underlying reason, we choose something else—even, perhaps, an otherwise good and proper thing to choose—and we miss the feast entirely.

So, the question is this: Do you want to taste God’s banquet or not?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 19 | Psalm 106 | Isaiah 46 | Revelation 16

In Deuteronomy 19, Moses turns his attention to the civil laws that were written to govern daily life in Israel. The three laws in Deuteronomy 19 underscore three important principles for understanding God’s idea of civil justice.

The first law, regarding the cities of refuge, demonstrates the need for fair treatment of the accused. The people who could flee to the cities of refuge were those who had actually done something that caused the death of someone else. The specific example given in Deuteronomy 19:5—an axe head slipping from the handle and killing someone accidentally—does not suggest any kind of malice or even negligence. Instead, the cities of refuge were meant to protect those who kill someone else purely by accident.

But on the other hand, no murderer was allowed to use the cities of refuge to flee from justice (Deut. 19:11–13). If any tried, the elders of the murderer’s home city would forcibly return the murderer to be killed by the one in charge of avenging the blood of the person who had been murdered (Deut. 19:11–12). Justice means both that the innocent should be protected and that the guilty should be punished. To err on either side means to do away with real justice.

Second, Moses warns the people not to move any property boundary landmarks for the purpose of stealing someone else’s land (Deut. 19:14). Beyond the obvious prohibition against stealing, the theological significance of the Promised Land made moving property boundaries a severe crime of infringing upon someone else’s God-given inheritance. The Promised Land was bound up in the covenant promises that Yahweh made to Abram (cf. Gen. 12:7, 15:7–21, 17:8). This was not merely theft but a violation of Yahweh’s covenant itself.

Third, the laws concerning witnesses in Deuteronomy 19:15–21 establish a minimum threshold of witnesses necessary for convicting someone of a crime (Deut. 19:15). More than that, this section of the law prescribes that false witnesses should be punished at the same level as what the punishment would have been if their lies had successfully convicted the innocent person they had accused (Deut. 19:16–21). Moses insists that Israel should punish such false witnesses without pity.

Together, these three laws demonstrate that Yahweh is deeply concerned with the conduct of his people in their day-to-day lives. Many gods of various pagan religions could be appeased with the right blend of sacrifices, prayers, and offerings, allowing the worshipers to continue living the rest of their lives however they chose. Obedience to Yahweh, on the other hand, affects the way we live our entire lives, and not just what we do on Sunday.

In what areas of your day-to-day life might Yahweh’s desire for justice change the way you conduct yourself?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 18 | Psalm 105 | Isaiah 45 | Revelation 15

Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are filled with regulations for the Levitical priests in Israel, and in yesterday’s reading from Deuteronomy 17, Moses laid out the requirements for the kings of Israel. In Deuteronomy 18, Moses gives instruction for the last of the three major Old Testament offices: the prophets. There are two important provisions in this passage that we will look at today.

First, Yahweh gave objective criteria by which Israel could evaluate their prophets: under no circumstances should a prophet ever speak in the name of another god (Deut. 18:20), and prophets who claimed to speak in the name of Yahweh would be judged on the basis of whether or not what they said actually came to pass (Deut. 18:21–22). The punishment for failure at either of these two points was death (Deut. 18:20).

It’s fascinating to see how these requirements are tweaked in the New Testament. There, all prophecy is judged by what the preacher says about Jesus. In order to be accepted, the teaching must confess Jesus Christ’s full deity (1 John 2:18–27), his full humanity (1 John 4:1–6), his absolute lordship (1 Cor. 12:3), and his gospel of free grace (Gal. 1:6–9). Notice that the two criteria for Old Testament prophets have merged into a single criterion in the New Testament: all teaching must proclaim the truth of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Second, we read twice in Deuteronomy 18 that a new prophet will be like Moses (Deut. 18:15, 18). We know that this prophet will be an Israelite, since he will be “raised up from among [Israel’s] brothers” (Deut. 18:18), and we know that this prophet will have (at least) the same level of authority and influence as Moses, speaking directly the words of Yahweh with the authority of Yahweh behind him.

And when we get to the gospels, we find that Jesus made no secret of the fact that he was that prophet. When Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount, he went up on a mountain and taught the law to God’s people, just like Moses had done at Mount Sinai, except that Jesus taught “as one who had authority” (Matt. 7:29)—that is, not as someone who merely passed along the law that he had received from Yahweh, but as the lawgiver himself.

This is what the author of Hebrews meant in the opening lines of his letter: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…” (Heb. 1:1–2). No longer does God reveal himself a little bit at a time, prophet by prophet—in Jesus, God revealed himself fully.

Yahweh has raised up his prophet like Moses—therefore, it is to Jesus we must listen.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 17 | Psalm 104 | Isaiah 44 | Revelation 14

Deuteronomy 17 serves as the standard against which we should judge the kings of Israel and Judah as we read about them in the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. In this passage, we find three details that set up the storylines of what the kings of Israel and Judah will eventually become.

First, it seems it had always been Yahweh’s plan to give Israel a king. When Israel eventually demands a king, they do so by virtually quoting Deuteronomy 17:14, saying to the prophet Samuel, “Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Sam. 8:5). But when that happens, Yahweh recognizes their request as a rejection of his kingship over them (1 Sam. 8:7). So, does Yahweh want for Israel to have a king or not?

In fact, we often spoil God’s good gifts in how we pursue them. God intends to give us something for our good, but we demand it for the wrong reasons, or to the wrong degree, or in the wrong way. Yahweh wanted Israel to have a king, but in their hearts they took that good gift and twisted it in a way they hoped would give them a measure of independence from God, while making themselves respectable in the eyes of the other nations. This was the wrong motivation for seeking a good gift.

Second, the restrictions against acquiring too many horses, wives, and silver and gold almost seem to have been written with Solomon in mind. In fact, Solomon’s great riches and many foreign wives accomplished exactly what Moses warns against here: his heart ended up turning away from Yahweh (1 Kings 11:4), and Solomon even went so far as to build high places and altars for his wives to worship their gods (1 Kings 11:7–8).

Third, there is some question about how well the kings of Israel and Judah kept the requirement that they should make for themselves a copy of the law to read all the days of their lives (Deut. 17:18–20). There were kings who didn’t care at all about God’s law, but we don’t read much about whether even the good kings explicitly obeyed this mandate. The only story we have along these lines is when King Josiah tears his clothes and immediately institutes national reforms after the priests discovered the Book of the Law and read from it to Josiah for the first time in many years (2 Chron. 34:8–33).

As we read the stories of Israel’s kings, it will become clear that not even the greatest kings satisfied these standards. Ultimately, Yahweh would need to send his own king—a king humble enough to divest himself freely of all his wealth to make his people rich, and a king who loved God’s law enough to fulfill every word of it, even to the point of death.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 16 | Psalm 103 | Isaiah 43 | Revelation 13

In Deuteronomy 16, Moses names the three festivals that all Israelite males were expected to attend: Passover, the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), and the Feast of Booths. As we saw in our meditation on Deuteronomy 14, the people who lived too far away to travel to the place where Yahweh chose were granted an exception, but for the most part traveling to the three festivals was a regular part of what it meant to be a part of Yahweh’s covenant people.

Technically, these aren’t the only feasts Israel observed. Back in Leviticus 23, Yahweh commands that Israel also observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:6), the Feast of Firstfruits (Lev. 23:9–14), the Feast of Trumpets (Lev. 23:23–25), and the Day of Atonement (Lev. 23:26–32). These other festivals, however, were all connected to one of the three main festivals.

Through this calendar, Yahweh was structuring both the time and the space of his people. These festivals shaped the passage of time for Israel in a deeper way than even the academic calendar or sports seasons or “the holidays” shape our own lives. They were highly anticipated events filled with worship and sacrifice and singing—the high points of the whole year.

But notice also the insistence that the people should come to “the place that the LORD will choose, to make his name dwell there” (Deut. 16:2; cf. Deut. 16:6, 11, 15, 16)—that is, to establish a permanent tabernacle for his presence there. This isn’t the first chapter in which we have seen a growing emphasis on the place of Yahweh’s choosing. Beginning in Deuteronomy 12, Moses has begun to repeat regularly that Yahweh would eventually make for himself a permanent dwelling place for his name (Deut. 12:11, 14, 18, 21, 26; 14:23, 24, 25; 15:20). The roaming tabernacle was an important first step in establishing God’s presence with his people, but it wasn’t sufficient.

Eventually, Yahweh would set a more permanent temple in Jerusalem and fill the temple with his glory (1 Kings 8:10–11). Still, even Solomon’s temple wasn’t entirely permanent. After Judah fell into greater and greater sin, the prophet Ezekiel saw a vision of Yahweh’s glory departing from the temple (Ezek. 10; 11:14–25), and we never read anything suggesting that Yahweh’s glory ever returned.

Instead, we read in the New Testament about the man who dwelt (lit. “tabernacled”; John 1:14) among us, who claimed that his body was the temple (John 2:19–22). Then, we read that we are God’s temple (1 Cor. 3:16–17), built up as a dwelling place for God’s Spirit (Eph. 2:19–22). Week by week, as we gather together in the name of Jesus on the Lord’s Day, we are the collective dwelling place of God. “Therefore let us celebrate the festival!” (1 Cor. 5:8).

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 15 | Psalm 102 | Isaiah 42 | Revelation 12

Toward the end of yesterday’s meditation on Deuteronomy 14, we talked about how the tithes of Israel were meant to take care of the needy as well as the Levites, who did not have their own inheritance but depended on the tithes of other Israelites for their income. In today’s reading, we get a little clearer picture of the kind of generosity God is teaching his people to live out.

In Deuteronomy 15, Moses establishes a Year of Release in the life of Israel. Every seventh year, Israelites would forgive their fellow Israelites for any outstanding debts they owed. This provision did not apply to foreigners in their midst (Deut. 15:3), but fellow Israelites would have their entire debt cancelled, no matter how large the sum.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean that all loans had a seven-year window for repayment. The seventh year was a fixed calendar for the entire nation, so some loans might be forgiven after a very short time. Moses gave a clear warning to Israel, though, that to ignore the needs of their needy brothers only because the Year of Release was coming was sin (Deut. 15:9). The Year of Release was for the benefit of the poor, not for the profit of the rich.

On the other hand, any slave who wished to stay with his master when the Year of Release came around could choose to do so, receiving a mark on his ear to become his master’s slave for life (Deut. 15:15–17). Although this seems odd to us, slavery in the Bible was very different from the slavery that was practiced in America. In the ancient world, most slaves became slaves because they had gone to work for their masters to pay off debts, not because they were kidnapped and stolen from their homes by slave traders.

But if your slave did wish to go during the Year of Release, you were not to release him empty-handed. Instead, you were commanded to “furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the LORD your God has blessed you, you shall give to him” (Deut. 15:14).

In this way, Moses acknowledges that while “there will never cease to be poor in the land” (Deut. 15:11), at the same time “there will be no poor among you” (Deut. 15:4)—that is, there will be no permanent class of poor people. The desire was always to see those people restored to flourishing.

Seen together, these regulations form a powerful picture of the gospel. The one who possesses all wealth and who holds authority to command the storm to be still nevertheless forgave our debts and even submitted to become a slave for us (Phil. 2:7), pierced through so that we might go free.

Behold the generosity of our God.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 13–14 | Psalms 99, 100, & 101 | Isaiah 41 | Revelation 11

Deuteronomy 14 changes the way that we see our offerings to God. Sadly, we can too easily come to look at the act of bringing our offerings to God as a kind of a tax, where we send off our checks to some impersonal government in a distant land so that they will do whatever they want with it without any regard to what would be best for us, the tax-payers.

But not so with Yahweh. The Israelites were commanded to bring a tithe (10 percent) of everything they grew in their fields annually as an offering to Yahweh in the place that he would choose (Deut. 14:22–23). Obviously, they couldn’t send a check through the mail, and they couldn’t electronically file their tithe, so they were commanded to bring it personally to that place during the festivals.

Now, we read about the festivals and the other sacrifices that were required at those festivals in Leviticus 23 and Numbers 28–29, and we will read more again in Deuteronomy 16. The unique material in Deuteronomy 14, though, is that Moses here makes a provision for the people who lived too far away to bring their sacrifice physically to the festival. For those people, Moses explained that they were supposed to trade their crop for money and then take that money (rather than the animals, grains, and other cumbersome sacrifices) to the place of God’s choosing, where they could spend it on whatever they needed to throw a huge party—anything at all, including rich meats, wine, and strong drinks (Deut. 14:24–26).

That’s right—Yahweh actually commands his people to spend their tithe (under some circumstances) on a big party with plenty of alcohol if they are not able to get their sacrifices to the festival. Does that sound like a greedy God?

But at the same time, we aren’t supposed to think that Yahweh was commanding wild, out-of-control, self-centered partying. Feasting and joy, yes; debauchery, no. The whole point of all of this is that God’s people would “eat there before the LORD your God and rejoice, you and your household” (Deut. 14:26). Yahweh never wanted to grab up the tithes of his people out of greed. Instead, he wants to rejoice in the presence of his people.

And we should not overlook the fact that Yahweh also commanded his people to care for the poor in their midst, including the Levites (who had no property inheritance but depended on the offerings of the other Israelites), sojourners, orphans, and widows in their towns (Deut. 14:27–29).

Deuteronomy 14, then, isn’t teaching us to skip giving to our church and spend our offerings on our own, selfish pleasure; quite the opposite, in fact. Here, we are learning how to give with joy while meeting the needs of those around us.

Why do you give?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 12 | Psalms 97–98 | Isaiah 40 | Revelation 10

Moses reveals in Deuteronomy 12:8–9 that Israel’s informality in their worship would eventually need to change: “You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, for you have not as yet come to the rest and to the inheritance that the LORD your God is giving to you.” Here, Moses is acknowledging that there was chaos in Israel’s worship during the days of their wilderness wanderings, so that it was customary for the Israelites to worship in different places.

In anticipation of the day when Israel would settle into the Promised Land, Moses gives explicit instructions in Deuteronomy 12 that the Israelites should destroy the high places and altars of foreign gods (Deut. 12:1–4) and that the Israelites should under no circumstances inquire into the worship practices of the nations whom Yahweh was driving out of the land (Deut. 12:29–31).

Ultimately, Israel ignored everything Moses said here. Instead, they failed to destroy the high places where the other nations worshiped and they actively inquired into the practices of those nations. The tragedy of Deuteronomy 12:8 is that the phrase of “everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes” becomes the theme of the book of Judges (e.g., Judg. 21:25) to describe how bad things had become in Israel.

But why? From our perspective, it seems crazy that Israel would succumb to worshiping the false gods of other nations after Yahweh had acted powerfully to lead them out of the house of Egypt. Why would Israel forsake their redeemer?

In fact, we struggle with the exact same problem. Israel’s error wasn’t so much that they were legitimately awed by the foreign gods but that they became attracted to the standards of their surrounding cultures. This was the reason Yahweh instructed them to destroy every remnant of the worship of these foreign nations: so that they wouldn’t stumble into false religions—especially the kind that led people to burn their sons and daughters as sacrifices to their gods (Deut. 12:31).

And still today, the church struggles with the same problem—not that we are attracted to ancient near eastern paganism, but that we wrestle with the same desires to make ourselves seem relevant and respectable in the eyes of the world.

We must fight to remember the words of the Apostle John: “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:20–21). That is, keep yourself from anything that would distract you from the one who is true God and eternal life, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 11 | Psalms 95–96 | Isaiah 39 | Revelation 9

By the time of Jesus, the signs and frontlets that Moses wanted to see bound to the eyes and hands of Israelites (Deut. 11:18) had largely become an outward show of hypocrisy. Jesus explicitly condemned the Pharisees for the way they wore their signs and frontlets (in Greek, “phylacteries”) to gain attention, saying, “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long” (Matt. 23:5). The Pharisees no longer used their phylacteries as a tool for keeping the words of the living God front and center in their lives but for showing off their own righteousness to everyone else.

But that doesn’t mean the original intent for the frontlets was bad or poorly conceived. Moses wants desperately to avoid a situation where the Israelites forget the great works that Yahweh has done for them, turning instead to worship the false gods that the nations living in the land of Canaan up to this point have served (Deut. 10:16–17).

Not only did Yahweh bring his people out of the land of Egypt through signs and wonders, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, but he brought them through the Red Sea as they were pursued by Egyptians (Deut. 11:2–4). Even more, Yahweh swallowed up Dathan and Abiram (Deut. 11:6), who challenged Moses’s leadership along with Korah (Num. 16). And now Yahweh is about to lead his people into a land so fertile that they will not need to irrigate it, as they had done in Egypt, but a land flowing with milk and honey that Yahweh himself tends as a master gardener (Deut. 11:8–12).

So, Moses commands the people to remind themselves the story of what Yahweh has done for them again and again. They should bind the story physically to their bodies, teach the story to their children, and write the story on their doorposts and gates (Deut. 11:18–20).

And in this way, God’s people would “therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul” (Deut. 11:18). All of these physical reminders were for the sake of sinking the story deeply into their hearts and souls. Like circumcision, these frontlets, doorpost inscriptions, and gate writings were all physical signs pointing to a deeper spiritual reality, as we talked about in yesterday’s meditation.

Can you be a hypocrite with a phylactery? Absolutely.

But do we need physical reminders to remind us again and again of spiritual realities? Absolutely. This is why Jesus gave us baptism and the Lord’s Supper, as well as membership in local congregations of believers—to remind us again and again of the story.

Have these signs, then, become sources of hypocrisy for you, or do you cherish them as special resources for bringing you repeatedly back into the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection?

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Deuteronomy 10 | Psalm 94 | Isaiah 38 | Revelation 8

When God commanded in Genesis 17 that every male in the household of Abraham be circumcised, he never intended for circumcision to be merely a physical act. Instead, physical circumcision—the cutting away of the flesh—always pointed to a larger, spiritual reality. In Deuteronomy 10, we get our first glimpse of God’s overarching purpose for circumcision.

In this passage, Moses pleads with the Israelites: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn” (Deut. 10:16). Circumcision, Moses explains, gives us a picture of what it looks like when the stubbornness of our hearts is cut away. When our hearts are circumcised, we are able not only to love God with all of our hearts and souls (Deut. 10:12–13) but also to love our neighbor as ourselves—especially our most vulnerable neighbors: the fatherless, the widow, and the sojourner (Deut. 10:18–19).

What’s so fascinating about this story is the fact that Moses was speaking to a group of people who had not been physically circumcised. Deuteronomy is the final sermon Moses gives to Israel before he dies (Deut. 34:1–8). Under Moses’s successor Joshua, the LORD commands that the whole nation be circumcised, since no one who had been born during Israel’s wilderness wanderings had been circumcised (Josh. 5:2–9). In other words, the people listening to Moses’s sermon here were circumcised neither in their flesh nor in their hearts.

Circumcision was a non-negotiable part of being the covenant people of God, as Moses himself had learned when Yahweh approached Moses to put him to death for failing to circumcise his own son (Ex. 4:24–26). But for Moses, physical circumcision was never the chief priority, since circumcision was merely the sign—circumcision was not the ultimate reality that the sign pointed to. So, with his dying words, Moses begged Israel to circumcise their hearts so that they might not stubbornly disobey the LORD any longer.

What, then, does circumcision point toward? In the New Testament, we get a clearer explanation: physical circumcision points to the reality of heart circumcision, which corresponds to the theological idea of regeneration, or new birth in Christ.1 Through the redemption of Christ, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives, God circumcises our hearts by giving us new life through the gospel. So, in Romans 2:25–29, Paul says that the true Jews are those whose circumcision is spiritual, the inward work of the Spirit, and in Colossians 2:11–15, Paul says that we received the circumcision of Christ through burial and resurrection with Christ in baptism.

The larger point behind all this, then, is that while Christianity has outward signs (e.g., baptism, the Lord’s Supper, formal church membership), the non-negotiable feature of Christianity is an inward work of the Holy Spirit. By the mercy of God, therefore, circumcise the foreskin of your heart.

1 James M. Hamilton, Jr., God’s Indwelling Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Old and New Testaments, NACSBT (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2006), 2–3.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.