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Showing posts with the label Exodus

The Lost Art of Honoring Your Parents: Deuteronomy 5:16

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 What it does mean to “honor your parents?” In western society, this phrase may feel outdated, antiquated, and irrelevant. As believers in God’s Word, we know the Lord repeatedly admonishes us to honor our father and mother. Yet, our society gives us a different message, making it difficult to decipher how this applies in today’s world. “Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you.” — Exodus 20:12 Deuteronomy 5:16 elaborates upon this in more detail, “Honor your father and your mother, as Yahweh your God has commanded you , so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that Yahweh your God is giving you.”  A Weighty Ask The Hebrew word for honor means, “to give weight to”, or “to consider heavy.” When you add weight to an object, like weights to a barbell, it makes it more difficult to carry but also more important to carry. If you carry a heavy weight incorrectly, it can lead...

God's True Character: Exodus 34:6–7

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 Who is God, or more specifically, Yahweh—God as defined and worshiped in the canon of the Bible? Our instincts may lead us to the New Testament—the revelation of Jesus Christ. But how did the Hebrews (and later the Jews) understand who God was? We hear of the supposed dichotomy between the “God of the Old Testament”—wrathful, punishing, and selective and the “God of the New Testament”—loving, merciful, and inclusive . Yet one of the most important, if not the most important, thesis statements about God’s character in the entire Bible is found in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible/Tanakh). Its the most quoted verse within the Old Testament, Exodus 34:6–7: “Yahweh, Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third an...