A WHOLE MAN

Recommended Reading: Chapters 6- Conclusion (~48 pages) Key Quotes: Chapter 6  "The burden of Isaiah 58 prevades the ministry of Jesus -- and more and more it should prevade out ministry as well…If your fasting leaves you self-indulgent in other areas, harsh toward your employees, irritable and contentious, then your fasting is not acceptable to God….Hypocrisy is a terrible blight on the worship of God." (121;123) "Most of our life is a gorging of one artificially inflamed appetite after another. Any alteration of this pattern for the sake of ministry is a "fast"--and one that would please God more than a hundred skipped lunches with a view to more pizza at supper." (127) Chapter 7  "There is a hunger for God that goes beyond the desire for private experience. It longs for the public display of his glory in the world. It longs for the great dishonors against our God to be set right." (142) "God rules the hearts of kings and emperors…Th...

3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.  Jude 3  The letter of Jude finds its name from its author, Jude. Very little is known about Jude, but we do know that he was the brother of James (1:1). If this is the same James as the author of the epistle of James, then this would make Jude the brother to Jesus. It would also reveal his humility in not invoking the privilege of having been the brother to Jesus Christ, but instead identifies himself as the slave of Jesus (The Greek word used in 1:1, is not diakonos meaning servant, but duolos meaning slave) which intimates Jesus Lordship over him. If this is the brother of Jesus writing this letter, then it would have been the literary contemporary to Peter and a possible explanation for why Second Peter echoes much of Jude. Jude evidently had wanted to write to the “call...

7 And Shimei said as he cursed, “Get out, get out, you man of blood, you worthless man!  2 Samuel 16:7  Generally, when we hear a sermon about David he is described as being a man after God’s own heart. But in today’s Old Testament reading, we read a very different description of David; a “worthless man” (2 Sam 16:7). Just for context, in today’s passage we read of David’s retreat out of Jerusalem, away from his son Absalom who is seeking to kill him. And during this retreat we read of a very interesting story of a broken David, who allows stones to be hurled at him from a Benjaminite, Shimei, while passing through Bahurim. It is a very short story, but it is very peculiar and rich in significance. Shimei, apparently, believed that his defiant actions against the king were divinely ordained. While stoning David, he declares that this is by the hand of God and is punishment on him for the blood of Saul, his relative. He is upset about David and everything that he believ...

Recommended Reading: Chapters 4-5 (~32 pages) Key Quotes: Chapter 4 "Do you love the Lord's appearing? Then you will bend every effort to take the gospel into all the world. It troubles me in the light of the clear teaching of God's Word…that we take it so lightly. - George Ladd" (78) "The almost universal absence of regular fasting for the Lord's return is a witness to our satisfaction with the presence of the world and the absence of the Lord." (80) Chapter 5 "how hasty we are to judge from God's mercy in the life of a fasting saint that this particular pattern of piety is the key to vital spiritual life! " (94) "We will measure all by the Scriptures. We will not be swept away by the 'successes' or 'blessings' that accompany any particular pattern of spiritual discipline. We will realize that God is sovereign in dispensing his mercies" (96) "The course of history has been turned by many other factor...

16 And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. 2 Samuel 7:16 As we continue through our Bible in a Year plan, we have begun the book of Second Samuel in our Old Testament reading. You can think of Second Samuel as though it were the next movie in the series because you will see that it continues where we left off in First Samuel. You will recall that we were left at a cliffhanger moment, Saul had just fallen in the war with the Philistines and David was just returning from a battle of his own to recapture his family, livestock, and possessions from the Amalekites. We are left with a series of questions at the end of the first book such as, will the nation of Israel survive without a king and without a prophet (Samuel had died as well)? Will David return home to Israel instead of dwelling with the Philistines? What will David do after he hears that Saul has died? Second Samuel answers all of these questions and, m...

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. 2 Peter 2:1 Unlike First Peter, which specifically calls out the churches of Northern Asia Minor, Second Peter does not contain any explicit reference to its recipients. However, we can infer that because this is Peter’s second letter, the recipients would be the same as those who had received the first letter. And we can be sure that this is Peter’s second letter to the group because he tells us that in the first verse of chapter 3. We also know that the recipients are believers who possess authentic faith (1:1). And while the first letter addressed matters of Christian suffering, the focus of Second Peter is on false teachers and the false teachings they bring. With a change of theme then comes a change in tone. Peter now writes with greater confront...

Recommended Reading: Chapters 1-3 (45 pages) Key Quotes:  Chapter 1 "In this world there is an ache inside every Christian that Jesus is not here as fully and intimately and as powerfully and as gloriously as we want him to be. We hunger for so much more. That is why we fast." (40) "The new fasting, the Christian fasting, is a hunger for all the fullness of God (Ephesians 4:19), aroused by the aroma of Jesus' love and by the taste if God's goodness in the gospel of Christ (1 Peter 2:2-3)" (43) "His gifts leave a hunger for him beyond themselves, and fasting from his gifts puts that hunger to the test." (46) Chapter 2 "What are we slaves to? What are we most hungry for -- food or God? Fasting is God's testing ground-- and healing ground." (57) "Therefore the fight of faith and the battle to behold the glory of the Lord day by day is fought not only by feeding the soul on truth, but fasting, to put our appetites to...

19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.  1 Peter 4:19  The letter of 1 Peter was written by Peter in Rome and addressed to the believers who were dispersed throughout northern Asia Minor (1:1). The four Roman provinces are thought to have been the travel route that the letter bearer pass through in what is now modern-day Turkey. If so, then this letter would also have likely passed through many other churches including Galatia, Caesarea in Cappadocia, Iconium, Antioch, Nicea, and Chalcedon, which would have been very convenient for the messenger to hop on a ship to return back to Rome. If so, then this letter is would have been written for all Christians, Gentile and Jewish, who were facing intense persecution. Peter himself was no stranger to persecution and the main purpose for his letter is to exhort his readers to maintain trust and obedience to God in the midst of their suffering. If...

Jonathan once again swore to David in his love for him, because he loved him as he loved himself.  1 Samuel 20:17  The series of events which follow David’s anointing by Samuel as Israel’s next king are not exactly what we would expect. In just the two chapters that follow his anointing in chapter 16, we see David in multiple battles with the Philistines starting with the giant Goliath (1 Sam 17), he has a clash with his own brother (1 Sam 17:28), and direct/indirect attempts on his life by Saul a total of seven times; one of those occasions, he evades Saul’s murder attempt by having a dummy placed in his bed. And even after the many failed attempts, we read in chapter 20 that Saul is still seeking to kill David. In contrast to Saul’s envy, disloyalty, and unwillingness to submit to God, Jonathan, Saul’s son, displays humility, loyalty, and covenant faithfulness. In this chapter, Jonathan evidently believed that the covenant that Saul had made in 19:6 was still in eff...

This week we begin our next book. If you have not yet purchased your copy, go ahead and grab the FREE PDF here while you wait for it to arrive. Recommended Reading: Foreword, Preface, and Introduction (15 pages) Key Quotes: Foreword/Preface: "This is not a book of legalism. It’s not a book of technique. It does not contain a twelve-step plan…it’s a book more about our hearts than our stomachs." (pg. 11) "’Desires for other things’ – there’s the enemy. And the only weapon that will triumph is a deeper hunger for God.” (13) “What is at stake here is not just the good of our souls, but also the glory of God.” (14) Introduction “The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies, but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth.” (18) “If you don’t feel strong desires for the manifestation of the glory of God, it is not because you have drunk deeply and are satisfied. It is because you...

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.  James 1:2-4  This morning I did my morning Bible study. I did laundry around noon. I wanted to exercise today, but instead I chose to read a book. I like playing with my dog in the mornings and evenings. If you found it difficult to follow the logical flow of the previous statements, don’t worry. Even I found it difficult to find any sort of connection between those statements other than they were describing activities that occurred in my day. The epistle, or letter, of James at times might feel like that; difficult to follow James’ logic as he quickly pivots from one topic to the next. In a limited sense, it might be better viewed as a sermon, rather than a letter, for various reasons. For instance, it contains no direct ...

And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.  1 Samuel 8:7  Just as Ezra and Nehemiah were originally a single book, so too First and Second Samuel were originally combined in the Hebrew Bible. It is for this reason that these two books retain the name of the prophet Samuel who was the principle character of the books. Although Samuel is nowhere to be found in Second Samuel and his death is recorded in First Samuel 15 and 28, Samuel played a pivotal role in the book as he was the person who anointed both Saul and David for kingship. First Samuel can be neatly divided into two major sections, the ministry of Samuel (1-12) and the kingship of Saul (13-31) as it documents the life of Israel's last judge and first king. The book opens by introducing us to the Samuel's parents, Elkanah and Hannah, who are unable to get pregnant but are eventually b...

This week we will complete "What Happened in the Garden". If you have not already ordered teh next book, may I encourage you to quickly do so. We begin "A Hunger For God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer" next week. If you ever have any questions or suggestions for books, movies or topic discussions, please send me an e-mail at overflowblog@outlook.com. Recommended Reading: Chapters 12- Conclusion (Pages 273-302) Total page count excluding chapter bibliographies: ~25 pages Key Quotes: Chapter 12: "Christian students desire more than just training for a career and a life of self-promotion… They want to be equipped for a life of enduring commitment to Christ and instructed to think like Christ, value like Christ, and serve as Christ has called them to serve in the home, church, academy, community, and marketplace." (280) "People often think that education is the solution to the world's problems. But we know better, and that is why Genesis...