The Blue Collar Scholar

Most people want to imagine God as a Mr. Rogers-type, friendly deity. And as we all learned in Vacation Bible School, Jesus is your friend. However, He is also a righteous Judge. And our understanding of God is incomplete if we don't have a rigorous theology that includes understanding God as Judge. But our great Judge is fair, mercy, thorough, and consistent as Judge. In this sermon, we explore the idea of God as Judge, and hopefully we will see that God as our righteous Judge is a good thing.

Our Sunday School series on marriage comes to an end with several topics that don't warrant their whole lesson: homosexuality, polygamy, and premarital sex. The episode closes with a brief survey of what a healthy marriage looks like, scripturally-speaking.

Diversity is a wonderful thing. But not every incarnation of diversity is inherently good. In the last episode, we saw that interracial marriage is not only ok, but it is occasionally lauded in the Bible as wonderful. But what about interfaith marriage. Most liberals (and I am not using that as a particularly bad term) that I know would laud interfaith marriage as an excellent example of tolerance and diversity. However, Scripture does not support the idea. Those who belong to Christ have a different purpose and a different destiny from those who do not call on the name of Christ. This does NOT mean that Christians are good, and non-Christians are bad. There are plenty of deplorable believers and also remarkable non-believers. That is, ultimately, irrelevant. Interfaith marriage is prohibited because both persons have different goals and destinies. ... However, many people find themselves in such marriages. What are we supposed to do in such situations? Well, give this episode a listen and we will find out.

My wonderful wife and I are part of an interracial marriage. I am proud of that fact. But does the Bible support the institution of interracial marriage? Many Christians have believed that the Bible prohibits these kinds of relationships. Spoiler alert: They are wrong. In this episode, we examine the Biblical texts involving interracial marriage. In short, if a man and a woman love Christ and they love each other, their racial and ethnic background does not at all prevent the relationship.

This episode expands on the previous episode and explores what the Bible says about divorce and remarriage.

Divorce is not ideal. It can even be described as an evil. That does NOT mean that those who have been touched by divorce are evil, defiled, unredeemable, yada, yada, yada. This episode begins to survey the Biblical texts on divorce, talking about what divorce is, what it is not, when it is allowable, etc.

This episode starts a new Sunday School series about marriage. This series was done via Facebook Live in the summer of 2020 while we were in lockdown.

This episode concludes our Sunday School series on the controversial topic of the End Times. This lesson talks about the Millennial Kingdom, Judgment Day, and New Heavens & New Earth. Soli Deo Gloria!

In this episode, we talk about some of the chapters of Revelation that appear to be out of chronological order. Then we look at the 3rd set of 7 judgments called the Vials of God's Wrath. Following that, this episode discusses the physical return of Christ, Armageddon, the Millennial Kingdom, the Final Rebellion of Satan, and Judgment Day.

The middle chapters of the Book of Revelation mirror the early chapters of Exodus, showing an active God who uses a series of judgements to achieve His aims. These chapters describe events that ought to be interpreted literally, as well as events that ought to be interpreted figuratively. This Sunday School lessons quickly surveys the first 14 of the judgements in the Book of Revelation, which the text refers to as seven seals and seven trumpets.