Rooted & Unwithered

God’s execution of judgment upon the gods of Egypt was not simply upon an abstraction but upon the actual demons that reveled in such worship. The LORD judged them by exposing them as the frauds, the vanities, that they are. They called themselves divine, masquerading as being sovereign over particular domains of creation, yet Yahweh displayed with each sign that He “is the blessed and only Sovereign” (1 Timothy 6:15).

To read this article as well as other resources for knowing and loving Scripture, visit bcnewton.co

Proverbs 1-9 and Song of Songs certainly can be seen as giving a similar message with emphasis toward boys and girls respectively. Yet rather than seeing Proverbs 31 as a boy-centered conclusion to Proverbs, I believe it provides a significant meeting of those two themes.

To read this article and more resources, visit bcnewton.co

While Exodus does not explicitly give a reason, it certainly comes pretty close to doing so. Consider God’s words to Pharaoh in Exodus 9:16, while warning of the plague of hail: “But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” God could have erased all of Egypt in the blink of an eye. He could have rained fire and sulfur upon them until the whole country was nothing but ash and dust, just as He did to Sodom and Gomorrah. However, God had other plans. Repeatedly, God has said that both Israel and Egypt will come to know that He is the LORD, that He is Yahweh. So, God raised up Pharaoh for the purpose of displaying the power and greatness of His name through the defiant king.

To read this article and other resources, visit bcnewton.co

These six principles that governed how Henry commented upon Scripture should, likewise, govern how we read Scripture.

Read to this article and other resources, visit bcnewton.co

Even if we were to study a book of the Bible one verse at a time, there would still be no way extracting every nugget of truth and wisdom from its pages, so given the pace with which we will be studying Exodus (often moving one chapter or more per week), there will obviously be many items of discussion that we will simply will not have time to dive into on Sunday mornings. I hope to present the most significant and interesting of these in articles called An Exodus Excursus later in the week, which, of course, is exactly what this is.

So, let’s dive into the topic at hand: in Exodus 1, did the Hebrew midwives sin by deceiving Pharaoh?

To read this article and find more resources, visit bcnewton.co

To read this articles and other resources, visit bcnewton.co

A common assumption seems to be that forgiveness of a debt means simply wiping it out of existence altogether as if it never happened at all. Unfortunately, that is not how debt works.

To read this article and other resources, visit bcnewton.co

Grumbling, like all other sins, brings judgment and destruction. Yet the danger with grumbling is that, again, it comes naturally to us all as well as being so easy to excuse and even justify. For example, have you ever began to complain by saying something like "I just need to vent for a minute"? Or maybe you end by saying facetiously, "Sorry for the rant!" What is really being said is, "Grant me moral immunity to grumble for a moment."

To read this article and other resources, visit bcnewton.co

While the culture war continues to rage, I would like to very briefly ask my brothers and sisters in Christ to poke our heads above the fray of headlines and to consider the years ahead and how they might impact our actions today.

To read this article and more resources, visit bcnewton.co

After last reading of the pilgrims’ assault and triumph over Giant Despair and of their coming to the Delectable Mountains and what the Shepherds there revealed to them, we come now to the end of their journey and to the end of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. In these final pages, the company meets two more worthy pilgrims, Mr. Valiant-for-truth and Mr. Steadfast. They also pass through the Enchanted Ground into Beulah Land, where Christiana and many others are summoned to cross the River Death into the Celestial City.

For more resources, visit bcnewton.co