Growing In Grace

One of my favorite verses is Romans 1:16 - "For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,..." The Apostle Paul wrote this just after the introduction to his letter to the Roman believers in which he gave them a brief summary of the gospel saying, "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ," (Romans 1:1-6 ESV). For Paul the gospel was not merely something that was to be shared with a non bel...

In the ancient world temples were believed to be places where the gods resided on the earth. People would then go to the temple to meet with their god and often times to offer up sacrifices and to worship. In the Bible the Jewish Temple of the Old Testament has a very similar purpose to the Israelites of that day. In this post I want to trace a very, very brief sketch of the history or theology of the temple beginning with the first place where man met with God and tracing it to the fulfillment. In the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve experienced a special meeting with God. Genesis says they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden and later it says that it was the presence of God that they hid themselves from. The point is that in the Garden the first man and women met with God, so that we might even call the Garden the prototype of the Temple. There in the Garden man met with God in a special way, but after the fall man was cast out of the Garden and was removed from that i...