May 8 2014
What it means to be blessed
Psalm 1:1-6, Matthew 5:3-12
Why do we say ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes? Apparently it comes from the time of the Bubonic Plague in 590 AD. Sneezing was the first sign that you had the killer disease and Pope Gregory ordered that the sick stand in lines to receive a blessing in the hope that they would be healed. But here we are hundreds of years later still saying ‘bless you’ and there is no plague! We bless the sneezing person as a matter of tradition. But it isn’t the only time the word ‘blessed’ is used in such a frivolous way. In some church circles now days when someone says, ‘Hi how are you’ the response is a traditional ‘I am blessed brother.’ Usually the person says it without even thinking what they’ve said. So I want to address this question today: What does it mean to ‘be blessed’ – what does the Bible say about it? More
May 16 2014
Isaiah’s Messianic Prophecies
People love prophecy; even those who are not religious like to discuss predictions of the future. But it gets much more interesting when the predictions come true. At times it may be coincidence, and at other times the predictions can be weirdly accurate. But when we get to Jesus and the way in which he fulfilled Old Testament prophecy we get to a level of prediction that can only be described as ridiculously accurate.
In this post I focus on the prophecies of the Messiah (the Christ) found in the book of Isaiah. But to do this justice we need to put ourselves in the shoes of someone reading the book before Jesus walked the earth. We must read as one who had no knowledge of him. Doing this helps us to understand why there was such a big expectation of a Messiah in the first place.
In case you have never read through Isaiah, let me just say this; at first glance Isaiah is just a book containing many prophetic warnings given to various kings and nations, but between these warnings emerges prophecy of a mystery person. More