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Early in his narrative we read that Abram “called upon the name of the Lord” (Gen. 12:8, 13:4). The repetition of this activity brings to mind Proverbs 18:10: The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe. In a sense, Abram is an example of living according to this proverb. Let me draw out four details that will help you and me also live out this proverb. Faithfulness. What is the significance of the name of the Lord? The small caps indicates to us that a specific Hebrew word is used: Yahweh. This name is tied to God’s self-revelation to Moses in the burning bush. In Exodus 3:14 God declares that his name is “I am who I am.” The name “Yahweh” is a cognate of the verb “to be” used in Exodus. This unique name for God emphasizes his unchanging, unfailing nature. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. When applied to his promises, the implication is that God will never forsake his promises, nor his people. God is faithful. When Abram calls upon the name of the Lord, he is appealing to God’s faithful character that is the bedrock foundation for his life. Abram, and his faith, is like shifting sand. ... Keep Reading

The promises made to Abram in Genesis 12:1-3 are foundational promises for the outworking of redemption. God promises to make Abram a great nation and give him the land of Canaan. These two promises establish Israel as God’s representative people during the Old Testament. God preserves this nation, even when the people rebel, as the channel through which the promised Messiah will come. The nation and land are not ultimate promises but serve the ultimate promise that comes in verse 3, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Paul quotes this promise in Galatians 3:8, asserting that its fulfilment is found in the gift of justification by faith made available to all people. The nation and land served as the conduit through which Jesus came to provide atonement for the sins of the world. Sandwiched between the promises of nation and land and the promise of blessing all the families of earth is the promise found in verse 2, “I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” Some commentators interpret this promise as the same one as the one at the end of verse 3: All the families of the earth will be blessed in Abram. But there is a distinction between the two promises. In verse 2, God says Abram will be a blessing. In verse 3, God says others will be blessed in Abram. Verse 2 says there is a direct link from Abram to the blessing. Verse 3 says Abram’s family line will produce the ultimate blessing for the world, fulfilled in Jesus. ... Keep Reading

I grew up going to church as a child. Much like Oak Hills, the children were dismissed in the middle of the service in order to attend children’s church. We sang songs, heard a Bible story, and did some sort of craft. I have fond memories of the time. But there was one song that confused me as a child, Father Abraham. Perhaps you recall the lyrics: Father Abraham had many sons, Many sons had Father Abraham. And I am one of them And so are you. So, let’s just praise the Lord! Right arm! (Left arm; Right foot; left foot…) I had so many questions as a child singing this song. Who was Abraham? How could I be his son (I knew who my dad was)? Why are the women and girls singing this; they cannot be sons? Why should we praise God for this news? And what are we doing with our arms and legs? ... Keep Reading

The last two weeks at Oak Hills we have heard about the multiplication and rebellion of the nations from Genesis 10 and 11. Genesis 10 is typically called the “Table of Nations” as it outlines 70 nations that descended from Noah and his sons after the flood and spread across the face of the earth. As the text repeatedly states, the people “spread in their lands, each with his own language, by their clans, in their nations” (10:5). Genesis 11 tells the story of the Tower of Babel. This explains the dispersion of the nations that occurs in Genesis 10. The story also reveals what author Christopher Watkin calls the “Babel Instinct,” which he says is ever present among humanity. I want to draw out some practical implications from Genesis 10 and 11 that help us think about “the nations” in our world today. The Nations are Not Geo-Political Entities. There are 195 geo-political nations in the world today. When the Bible speaks about “nations,” however, it is not using 21st Century geo-political defined nations. In biblical terms, nations refer to people groups with distinct languages. Take Cameroon in West Africa as an example. Up until the 1800s there was no such thing as the nation Cameroon. In the region there were (still are) up to 250 distinct tribal/ethnic groups with their own languages or dialects. Through European colonization in the 1800s, the region came under the rule of Germany. After World War 1, the region was taken away from Germany and split between Britian and France. This created the division between the English-speaking states and the French-speaking states, which, by the way, still causes conflict today, even sparking a civil-war-like crisis in the last decade. The region gained independence in the 1960s and became known as the geo-political nation of Cameroon. All this goes to show that we should not impose 21st century geo-political ideas of nations on the Bible. ... Keep Reading

In our study of Genesis on Sunday mornings we come to the Towel of Babel this week. A sentence from Derek Kidner’s commentary has caught my attention as I prepare for Sunday. He wrote, “The elements of the story are timelessly characteristic of the spirit of the world” (Kidner, 118). The ancient story of Babel is “timeless.” It gives us a peak into “the spirit of the world” that is still with us today. What does Kidner mean? What do we learn about “the spirit of the world” from the Towel of Babel? First, it is important to understand the word “world.” The Bible writers use this word with different meanings or connotations. When John writes “God so loved the world” (John 3:16) and Jesus is “the propitiation…for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2), he is speaking about all the diversity of people. God loves all people from every ethnic group. God has given his son as the atonement for sin for all ethnic groups. There is a different meaning to the word “world” in verses like John 15:19 where Jesus says, “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you,” and 1 John 2:15, where the apostle writes, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” In these verses “world” is not speaking about ethnic diversity, but a system of rebellion against God. The “world” is an anti-God state of mind that is prevalent in every human heart apart from Christ. ... Keep Reading

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Philippians 2:3-11 As a member of the Men’s ministry leadership team, I want to see my brothers grow to maturity in Christ. How can I stir up my brothers and sisters to love and good works? (Heb 11:24-25) How can I pray about this as part of the men’s ministry? As part of the larger church body? At Oak Hills, as the visible body of Christ, how can the men grow in fellowship? Why must we grow in fellowship? How may this year’s men’s ministry impact the Oak Hills congregation—men, women and children? How can we reach the lost for God’s Kingdom?... Keep Reading

C.S. Lewis writes in The Problem of Pain, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” This is a creative way to simply say, God speaks to us in our pain. This does not mean we ought to throw ourselves into pain; pain is inevitable in this world subjected to the futility of the curse on sin. Our response in pain ought to be to listen. What is God saying to us in our pain? David wrote Psalm 62 out of an experience with pain. He writes in verses 3-4, “How long will all of you attack a man to batter him, like a leaning wall, a tottering fence? They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.” In this situation, David’s pain was the result of the hurtful words and actions of a group of people. We don’t know the specific situation, but we do know that David was attacked by others throughout his life. We all know the pain of personal attacks. Such pain can consume our minds and hearts, leading us to be distracted and melancholy, if not worse. In Psalm 62, however, David does not wallow in his pain and misery. He listens to God in the midst of the pain. The psalm is a journal entry of the lessons David learns from the pain he experienced. Let me catalog the lessons. ... Keep Reading

“…I stood on the island’s ocean shore and saw what there was to see: a pile of colorless stripes. Through binoculars I could see a bigger pile of colorless stripes. It seemed reasonable to call the colorless stripe overhead ‘sky,’ and reasonable to call the colorless stripe at my feet ‘ice,’ for I could see where it began. I could distinguish, that is, my shoes, and the black gravel shore, and the nearby frozen ice the wind had smashed ashore. It was this mess of ice—ice breccia, pressure ridges, and standing floes, ice sheets upright, tilted, frozen together and jammed—which extended out to the horizon. No matter how hard I blinked, I could not put a name to any of the other stripes. Which was the horizon? Was I seeing land, or water, or their reflections in low clouds? Was I seeing the famous ‘water sky,’ the ‘frost smoke,’ or the ‘ice blink’?” It’s probably just the recent cold snap that’s bringing this to mind as I composed this. But this passage from Annie Dillard’s “An Expedition to the Pole” has stuck with me ever since first reading it some fifteen or twenty years ago. The description of her disorientation on her trip to the Pole above the Arctic Circle is evocative of our own feelings of not being entirely sure where we stand sometimes. In her account, it was physical disorientation brought about by her surroundings at the time. But this sense of disorientation can occur to us in other ways.... Keep Reading

At the end of every year I find myself shocked at how fast the year has gone by. As we come to the end of another year, some of you may find yourselves ending this year drastically different than how you imagined. For some this has been a year of unexpected joys and for others a year of unexpected disappointments and sorrows. Wherever we may find ourselves at the end of the year, the Lord reminds us to turn our eyes upon him for he alone is our portion, hope, and life. As we ramp up for a new year, we are all in deep need of God’s wisdom and grace. I’d like to share a few reflections from Psalm 90. Our Refuge (v. 1-2) Moses begins Psalm 90 with the reality of where our true refuge is found. Many of us will tire as we continually seek to find a refuge in this life. We will seek it in our jobs, relationships, money, success, etc. Psalm 90 reminds us that amidst the changing moments and seasons of our lives, the Lord alone is our true, stable, and secure refuge. He alone is a faithful refuge from generation to generation (v. 1) and he is more firmly established, rooted, and unshakable than even the mountains (v. 2). The Lord is our everlasting refuge and we find our truest and fullest rest in him. ... Keep Reading

Every Advent season I listen to Handel’s Messiah several times through. Most of the time I just have it playing in the background while I am studying, preparing for a sermon, or working on email. Occasionally the lyrics or music catch my attention, and I focus on the Messiah. Several pieces are well-loved, like the Chorus singing Isaiah 9:6, “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace,” And, of course, the Hallelujah Chorus, “Hallelujah: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah!” ... Keep Reading