Chad Bird is a Scholar in Residence at 1517. He has served as a pastor, professor, and guest lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew. He holds master’s degrees from Concordia Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College. He has contributed articles to Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Modern Reformation, The Federalist, Lutheran Forum, and other journals and websites. He is also the author of several books, including Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul, Your God Is Too Glorious
Jesus uses a lot of violent language at the end of Mark 9:38-50. Millstones hung around people’s necks who are cast into the sea. Eyes gouged out and hands chopped off. People salted with fire. What’s up with all this? What does it mean? Using Proverbs, Leviticus, Isaiah, and some intertestamental literature, Chad Bird leads us into the Jewish thought…
What Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 28, atop a mountain, is a reaffirmation and clarification of what God told Adam and Eve from Mount Eden in Genesis 1.
Our leaders, our pastors, our priests, our teachers, all have feet of clay, just as leaders in Israel did. We do not put our faith in them, even in the ones—perhaps *especially* the ones—in whom we are inclined to have great expectations. They preach the Messiah but are not the Messiah.
The world doesn’t need dads who are more stressed than they already are. It needs fathers who care for their families, not in heroic ways, but in common, everyday ways.
