Showing titles in Commentaries

Fifteen-hundred years ago, St. Benedict established a system of ora et labora prayer and work that monastics still follow today. Central to this prayerful integration of body and spirit is psalmody, or chanting the psalms. On Singing the Psalms, Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault shows how the psalms can awaken rich spiritual and psychological insights accessible to you today, whatever your level of vocal skill or theological understanding.

Author Jennifer Rothschild has a story for you. It's about an unlikely couple, an unusual courtship, a beautiful wedding, and an illicit affair. Despite this situation, the marriage did not fail. It flourished. Here is the story of Hosea's love for Gomer - a woman who might have disappeared into her transgressions if not for the love of her husband. It's a beautiful illustration of the story of God and Israel.

Through Daniel’s visions and experiences as an exile in Babylon, the Book of Daniel gives us a clearer understanding of history than any other part of the Bible. Daniel also makes it clear that God is in control of all human events that have unfolded or will occur in later times. At the same time, he shows us how to live for God in ungodly times - like our own. In this new addition to James Montgomery Boice’s popular commentary series, pastors, Bible students, and laypersons will find analysis of Daniel’s illuminating insights into history.

After Fee published his magisterial God's Empowering Presence, he was asked to write a more accessible volume that would articulate Paul's priorities for experiencing the life of the Spirit in the church. Fee's bestselling introduction to Paul and the Spirit, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God, went on to sell over 70,000 copies. This book by one of the greatest evangelical and Pentecostal New Testament interpreters of our time argues that the presence of the Spirit is, for Paul and for us, the crucial matter for the Christian life.

The Gospel of Matthew reveals that Christ is God incarnated to be the king-savior who came to establish the kingdom of the heavens by saving his people from sin through his death and resurrection.

In Typology—Understanding the Bible's Promise-Shaped Patterns, author James M. Hamilton Jr. shows that the similarities we find in the Bible are based on genuine historical correspondence and demonstrates how we recognize them in the repetition of words and phrases, the parallels between patterns of events, and key thematic equivalences. When understood in light of God's promises, these historical correspondences spotlight further repetitions that snowball on one another to build escalating significance.

The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human.

A metaphysical interpretation of the New Testament, which teaches oneness as the only truth, and surrender (or letting go) as the practice that leads to spiritual enlightenment. NTI stresses the importance of willingness, acceptance, gratitude, mind-watching, and trust on the path of enlightenment while teaching the listener to let go of unworthiness, fear, guilt, and false (or separation-based) thinking. NTI has been described as a love letter and as a loving approach to letting go of the ego. NTI teaches us how to experience the oneness of God here and now.

In The Bible’s Cutting Room Floor, acclaimed author and translator Dr. Joel M. Hoffman gives us the stories and other texts that didn’t make it into the Bible even though they offer penetrating insight into the Bible and its teachings. The Book of Genesis tells us about Adam and Eve’s time in the Garden of Eden, but not their saga after they get kicked out or the lessons they have for us about good and evil.

Acts is a book of action. But whose actions does it follow? The most obvious answer is the Apostles’. The book’s full name is the Acts of the Apostles, for it recounts their efforts to take the gospel to the nations. Yet we can also think of it as the Acts of the Holy Spirit. Poured out like a mighty rushing wind (Acts 2:2), the Spirit empowered the Apostles’ witness and opened hearts to believe. In this volume, Dr. R.C. Sproul offers an in-depth study on the Spirit’s work through these Christians and in the growth and spread of the early church.

Under close examination, the Book of Joshua seems to be a precursor to the book of Revelation: another Yehoshua, as Commander-in-Chief, will dispossess the Planet Earth of its usurpers - first sending in two witnesses, then with a series of judgments of sevens, finally defeating the kings with signs in the sun and moon while the kings of the Earth all hide in caves. What does the name "Joshua" mean?

Combining research from Asian scholars with his many years of experience living and working in East Asia, Brad directs our attention to Paul's letter to the Romans. He argues that some traditional East Asian cultural values are closer to those of the first-century biblical world than common Western cultural values. In addition, he adds his voice to the scholarship engaging the values of honor and shame in particular and their influence on biblical interpretation.

Reading Reading the Old Testament can seem like exploring an old, mysterious mansion, packed with of all sorts of strange rooms. What does this odd and ancient world have to do with us, who are modern followers of Jesus? As it turns out, everything! Every chapter in the Old Testament, in a variety of ways, tells the story that culminates in Jesus the Messiah. What Christians today call the Old Testament is what Jesus and the earliest believers simply called the Scriptures.

Leading New Testament scholar Robert M. Price has taken umbrage at the cavalier manner in which Rev. Lee Strobel has misrepresented the field of Bible scholarship in his book The Case for Christ. Price exposes and refutes Strobel's arguments chapter-by-chapter. In doing so, he has occasion to wipe out the entire field of Christian apologetics as summarized by Strobel. This book is a must-read for anyone bewildered by the various books published by Rev. Strobel.

In 2019, Peter Kreeft published Socrates' Children, a four-volume series on the 100 greatest philosophers of all time, spanning from ancient Greece to contemporary Germany. But he made a terrible mistake: He somehow left out women, and with this, he overlooked the greatest mind of them all. This book is a one-of-a-kind study on Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus. If Jesus Christ is wisdom incarnate, and if Mary loved Him more than anyone else ever did, then it holds that Mary is the greatest philosopher, the greatest wisdom-lover.

The history of the Christian church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith. Once the core of the Reformation, the church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine. Theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of, and dedication to the great doctrine of justification and then provides an exegesis of the key Scripture texts on this theme.

Four Portraits, One Jesus is a thorough yet accessible introduction to these documents and their subject, the life and person of Jesus. Like different artists rendering the same subject using different styles and points of view, the Gospels paint four highly distinctive portraits of the same remarkable Jesus.

Paul's letter to the Ephesians is a well-loved book of the Bible that teaches some of the most important lessons of faith: who you are in Christ, how you are to live as His follower, and how to gain victory in the spiritual battles you face. In this study tool, Joyce Meyer takes a close look at the meaning of those beloved verses, identifying key truths and incorporating room for personal reflection. Joyce's first-ever biblical commentary series provides eye-opening teachings that will help you develop a stronger relationship with God.

In How to Read the Bible, Harvard professor James Kugel leads the listener chapter by chapter through the "quiet revolution" of recent biblical scholarship, showing time and again how radically the interpretations of today''s researchers differ from what people have always thought.

In this landmark book of interfaith dialogue, the Dalai Lama provides an extraordinary Buddhist perspective on the teachings of Jesus, commenting on well-known passages from the four Christian Gospels including the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the mustard seed, the Resurrection, and others. Drawing parallels between Jesus and the Buddha - and the rich traditions from which they hail - His Holiness delivers a profound affirmation of the sacred in all religions.