After Jesus had finished His prayer, He took His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane (v. 1). This is located on the western slope of the Mount of Olives and across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem. In a garden, the first Adam brought sin and death to mankind; but Jesus, the last Adam …
Physical healing and spiritual healing are intertwined. The one leads to the other as the blind man moves from darkness to light, first physically and then spiritually. At the physical level his sight was restored. On the spiritual level he came to faith in Christ. The narrative in this chapter is …
Joab knew that David couldn’t stop thinking about his son Absalom (v. 1). Because of this, he sent someone to bring a woman from Tekoa to him and he asked her to put on funeral clothes and not use any makeup (v. 2). He told her to go to the king and pretend that she was m …
God warns His people that they are not to forget Him after they get into the land and experience His blessing (v. 12). He would bless them with children and grandchildren and increase their numbers greatly. He would also increase their crops and livestock so they would not only have …
The ideal life for an Old Testament Jew was to own his own land and be able to sit under his own fig tree and enjoy it with his family (I Kings 4:25). Hebrew law gave sons alone the right to inherit. The eldest son received two-thirds of the inheritance and the other sons divided …
This passage has to do with God’s Judgments against Edom – (vv. 7-22). The Edomites come next to receive their judgment from God. These people had descended from Jacob’s elder brother Esau, whom God had bypassed for the blessing, giving it to Jacob (Gen. 25:19-34). Th …
This entire chapter is a prayer composed of two sections. The first part is a call for God to remember their condition (vv. 1-18). This also includes a confession of sin. After this is a call for God to restore Judah (vv. 19-22). In context this is a call to restore both the land …
This section forms Jesus’ most prophetic message of the coming of the end of the world (or the present age) which is often referred to as His Olivet Discourse. After Jesus left his discussion with the religious leaders he returned to Bethany by way of the Mount of Olives where He could look …
Paul finally arrived in Jerusalem and went before the church leaders to give a missionary report of what God had done in his journeys (vv. 17-19). They listened very politely but when he was finished, they told him they had a local situation that perhaps he could help them settle …
Leprosy is a big item in this chapter. Concerning this plague we may observe that it is considered more of an uncleanness than of a disease and therefore was not so much a problem for physicians as it was for the priests. It was a plague inflicted by the hand of God and did not c …