Worshiping with a Gift

I came across this quote which I originally found for some research I did on the OT sacrifices a number of years ago and it is a helpful thought.

   The worshiper never comes into the presence of God empty-handed.  The sentiment expressed in the hymn ("nothing in my hand I bring") would find little echo in Leviticus.  A worshiper comes either with his gifts of with God's Gift.

(from Victor Hamilton's Handbook on the Pentateuch, 252.)

Talitha Joy

While we have carefully documented the entrance of our new daughter into our lives in other places, I thought that I should at least place a bit of acknowledgement here.  Talitha continues to grow and be a joyful presence in our lives.  She also continues to challenge us in a variety of ways.  I trust in the future I will be able to say of her as a friend said of God's work in his life through his daughter, "She has been the greatest force for sanctification in my life." 

Talitha Joy - 8 days old

"Have we taken the Great Commission and placed it above the Great Command?" - Ted Travis, speaking on Kingdom Living this past Sunday at PBC

"The Gospel is inherently and irreducibly confrontational." - Mark Dever, The Deliberate Church, pg 55.

meditations on James 2:25 and Matthew 1

Byzantine depiction of Mary and Jesus in the Ayasofia (Hagia Sofia) in Istanbul

As I consider  Rahab the prostitute, an example in Hebrews and James of faith that works, I am awed to see the grace of God.  In the perfect plan of God to rescue sinful men who had rejected Him, He placed four "defiled" women in what we would imagine as a "pure" line of ancestors for his Son Jesus. 

Tamar - the Canaanite woman whose prostitution scheme brought about incest with her unfaithful father-in-law which ended with a pair of twins, one of whom carried the Messiah's line

Rahab - the Canaanite prostitute who not only believed the LORD would give her land to Israel, but also reached out to demonstrate this belief in her treatment of the spies, becoming a mother in Israel

Ruth - the Moabite widow who abandoned her culture and gods to follow and care for her Israelite mother-in-law. God blessed her to be the great-grandmother of King David and ancestor of the Messiah.

the wife of Uriah - a girl who was raped by King David and whose husband, a foreigner, was murdered in the cover-up, yet her second son would become king and another ancestor to Messiah

Each of these women show the grace of God in a sinful world.  They demonstrate His purposes for the nations of sinners and His means of salvation in an array of beauty that Mary, the virgin Jewish mother of Jesus, could not show us by herself. 

*Thanks to Brad for the picture.