Jesus Christ is the Ark of the New Covenant. He is our place of atonement, our mercy seat. He puts a lid on the righteousness that might otherwise condemn us by offering his very self in our stead on the cross.
Because the biblical story unfolds in real places among real people, archaeology helps us understand the world in which God's saving work took place and, in turn, enriches our reading of Scripture.
The Reformers did not return to the sources because they believed the old was better than the new, nor because antiquity possesses authority simply by virtue of its age. They returned to the sources to recover the language and words that were actually written and spoken, especially those by great teachers and, most importantly, God Himself.

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Jesus is thus not only the fulfillment of the Scriptures of Israel; He is their fullness. He fills them with words, people, actions, and institutions that testify of Him.
Here is the truth: we have gained more in Jesus than we lost in Adam. We lost human perfection in the first man's fall. We gained perfect flesh-and-blood unity with God in his Son's incarnation.
When the angel told Mary she had become a mother, she replied simply, ''Let it be to me according to your word.'' Therein is a grateful acknowledgment that the Creator had formed life in her womb.
This past weekend I was celebrating my dear friend’s wedding the way I always celebrate: by working it out on the dance floor. I love to dance, though I am fairly certain now that dancing does not love me back.
Indeed, our Lord pronounced no beatitude upon the man who is loved by his wife and cherished by his children, but He does say, "Blessed are you when men cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me," (Mt 5:11).
I was full of pain and empty of speech, babbling like a baby who knows he hurts but can’t explain where or why or what he needs to assuage the anguish. Here was the sheer helplessness of being unable to communicate with God in this moment of deepest desperation.
I don’t need to watch a blood-soaked story on CNN or visit someone of death row to familiarize myself with the beast of depravity crouched within the human heart. I just need to look in the mirror, to stare deeply into the eyes that are a window to a soul that has journeyed down dark paths whose only illumination comes from the fires of hell.
I lack the wisdom, and the experience, to counsel those who have been hurt so deeply. There is no pain like the pain of being mistreated by those who, above all others, you expect to love you unconditionally.
She against whom I preached, in her unexpected response actually “preached” to me three truths I have never forgotten.
What kind of fool does what David did? What kind of fool ignores the riches spilling out of his pockets to steal the only penny a poor man has?
What I will tell you is that, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite what you think and feel and imagine, God is indeed in that dark place. You don’t know it, but he’s licking your wounds, too. And he’s keeping the deeper, blacker darkness at bay.
For since it was not enough that the Lord of heaven and earth hung on your every word, his Word was made flesh and prayed among us, a priest in the order of Melchizedek, “offering up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save Him from death,” (Heb 5:7).