This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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It is important to see how the LORD does NOT answer the questions Job and his friends have been wrestling with.
This food, already purchased and freely given in our pericope, is a foretaste of the feast to come as well; the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom which has no end.
The well-known Sunday School story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is far from a simple account of three brave and faithful Israelites. It’s a mini-story with a mega-story tucked inside it—a story that links it (backward) to Exodus and (forward) to the Gospels.
To dwell with a Holy God in their camp, Israel lead holy lives. Anything standing in the way of and threatening this holy relationship must be avoided or eliminated.
If you do not know who your God is, you will not know what your idols are.
The message is clear and assuring—the Word of God does what it says it will do!
The people gathered in Jerusalem that day were making a bold statement of faith. They believed Jesus was the New David.
The kingdom I seek is the lower-case realm ruled over by the almighty upper-case Me.
As a prophet, Jeremiah only speaks the LORD’s words. Obviously, this is the difference between a true and false prophet.
Jeremiah trusts the LORD to be faithful. He knows the LORD must answer, even though he is not certain how He will answer.
In worship there is always the movement up which brings one closer to the holiness. The higher up you go, the closer to the presence of God and the closer to holiness.
We discover in the book that all of history is unfolding according to a plan, but the plan is hidden from our typical ways of seeing.