Ponder Anew Podcast

"Hear O Israel, the LORD your God is one."  

Boom!

These are the most important words Moses says in the Bible, if not the most important words in the whole Old Testament.

As we continue reading through #TheBibleInAYear, we look at the book of Deuteronomy.  We will focus specifically on the words of Moses in chapter 6, which will allow us to resolve:  what to do about Sunday school, whether Judaism is a religion of grace and the origins of monotheism.  

We continue working through #TheBibleInAYear, looking at the book of Numbers.  This book isn't about numbers though, it is about the wilderness!  Crazy, big and wild -- both God and life!

Some come aboard for some adventure.  We will look at Numbers 22, sometimes referred to as "Balaam's talking Ass."

We continue working through the #BibleInAYear.   This week we focus on Leviticus, probably one of the harder books of the Bible to read.  Fear not, we will get through this book together -- and discover it still speaks to us! 

To get us into Leviticus, we look at some of the laws laid out in chapter 19.  Some of these are inspiring still today.  Others seem to come from a far, far away galaxy.  What do we make of this?

Note #1:  I realize this podcast is a bit closer to 25 instead of 22-23 minutes, but it takes a bit to frame Leviticus in a way that makes sense to us today!

Note #2:  If I were to do a truly extended uncut version, I would go into how Jesus' death on the cross relates to the sacrifices in Leviticus.  For another podcast!

We continue with our reading of the Bible in one year by looking at Exodus.  The focus story is the call of Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3).

The first part of the podcast is about "exodus" - the liberation of the ancient Israelites.  This is the theme, but we need to make sure we don't hear it with only 21st century Western ears! 

The second part of the podcast is about "names", literally, as you will discover, the other name for Exodus.

I admit I cut out a final five or so minutes, reflecting on the implications of our behavior on God's name.  If you are interested, let me know!

With this podcast, we launch our reading through of the Bible.  We will start in the garden of Eden, reminded of how God intends for the world to work.

In 2025, we will look at a different book of the Bible each week, focusing on one story that embodies the whole of that book.

Also, for those who struggle with the "historicity" of Adam and Eve, the second half of the podcast is for you.

We wrap up our Advent warm-up with a look at Matthew's Gospel.  The writer Matthew has lots of Old Testament connections.  A reminder that the stories in the Bible draw on each other.  They reinforce but also reinterpret each other.  Hopefully this stitching together gives us permission to see how the stories of Scripture stitch together with our lives.

May this be your *final* 2024 encouragement to walk through the Old Testament in 2025 as a way to better understand the words and actions of Jesus.

Miracles of miracles!

What do we do with the miracles in the Bible?  For many in modern (Western) culture miracles don't quite make sense given how we understand how the universe works.

This is the third in our Advent 2024 season of the Ponder Anew Podcast.  We are looking at the Christmas story to tackle some of the questions and even struggles people have when it comes to reading Scripture.

We continue our Advent 2025 series.  We are looking at the Christmas story to prime the pump on reading through the Bible in 2025.

This week we consider the fact that the Gospel stories have different accounts of the same story.  How do we handle the fact that the Bible itself presents different versions of the same story?  To answer this, we need to look at how the New Testament came to be.

In 2025, we are going to work through the whole Old Testament together, taking one book each week.

To get us ready for that, we need to address a few "How to read the Bible" matters.  In the last weeks of 2024 (the weeks of Advent!), we will look at the Christmas stories in Scripture as a way to take up some of these questions about how to approach Bible reading.  This week we take up the question -- is the Bible history or myth?  To settle this question, we will look at Luke 2:1-7... "In those days..."

If Jesus is the ransom (Mark 10:45), then who got paid off?  Pastor Rob looks at another Greek word this week, λυτρον, one that leads to quite a mystery (mystery is also a Greek word, but not the focus of this week!)