Redeemer Lutheran Church, Creston BC

09/08/2026

QUESTION OF THE DAY.
What request did the man of Macedonia make to Paul when he appeared to him in a vision?

09/08/2026

There isn’t your truth or my truth, only His truth that sets you free.

09/08/2026

Let’s say you have two friends, Frank and Art. Frank is a no-nonsense, just-the-facts kind of guy, while Art is more extravagant and colorful in the way he tells stories.

Frank tells it frankly. Art tells it artfully.

If both guys experienced the same event and recounted it to you, both could give you an accurate account, but in very different ways.

Frank and Art are a lot like Hebrew prose and Hebrew poetry. And in Bible in One Year, we see a perfect example in Judges 4 and 5, which we read today.

Judges 4 gives us the prose account of Israel’s victory over Sisera. Judges 5 retells it in poetry.

Compare these examples:

PROSE (4:15): “The LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and all his army.”
POETRY (5:21): “The torrent Kishon swept them away, the ancient torrent. March on, my soul, with might!”

PROSE (4:21): Jael drives a tent peg through Sisera’s temple.
POETRY (5:26): “She sent her hand to the tent peg and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet; she struck Sisera; she crushed his head; she shattered and pierced his temple.”

PROSE (4:21): So Sisera died.
POETRY (5:27): “Between her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still; between her feet he sank, he fell; where he sank, there he fell—dead.”

Why is this helpful for us as students of the Bible?

Because sometimes we fail to recognize that our Hebrew poetry “friend” is not speaking in a straightforward, matter-of-fact, no-frills way. Poetry uses vivid imagery, repetition, metaphor, and hyperbole.

So when reading the Bible, ask: Is this Frank or Art? Is this prose or poetry?

If it is prose, the account will likely be straightforward. If it is poetry, don’t be surprised when the earth trembles, mountains quake, hills dance, stars fight, or rivers clap their hands.

Both prose and poetry speak truth but in their own respective ways. We need ears to hear how their different voices communicate that truth, both inspired by the same Spirit to teach us what God would have us know and believe.
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For much more material like this that helps in reading and studying the Bible, see my free 1517 Academy Course on this topic: https://www.1517.org/courses/reading-interpreting-the-bible

09/08/2026

Abba, Father, teach me to walk in truth by Your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name. Amen.

09/08/2026

09/07/2026

QUESTION OF THE DAY.
In Genesis 28 Jacob has a dream while travelling to where?

09/07/2026

Judges may be one of the most R-rated books of the Bible, but in all this ugliness, there is also beauty, because Christ is part of the message of Judges as well.

How so?

The vocation of being a judge for Israel did not involve wearing a black robe and using a gavel, but donning the garb of a warrior and wielding a sword. Judges were raised up to rescue and redeem Israel from her oppressors.

The Hebrew verb commonly used to describe what they did is יָשַׁע (yasha), “to save” or “deliver.” In fact, yasha is the verbal root behind the name Jesus, meaning “Yahweh saves.”

Every one of these judges was a foreshadowing of Christ, who fights for our salvation that we might be redeemed from the oppression of our enemies.

But Christ is not just foreshadowed in Judges. He actually steps into the narrative visibly and audibly.

Multiple times he appears as the Messenger of the LORD. He speaks to Israel as the one who led them out of Egypt into the Promised Land (Judg. 2:1). He commissions Gideon to lead a small army against Midian (Judg. 6). And he announces the coming birth of Samson (Judg. 13). Christ walked and talked among his people, temporarily assuming a physical form as a hint of his coming incarnation.

Later, when Isaiah describes the coming Son of David, the King of Israel, the Messiah, he says his victory will be “as on the day of Midian” (Isa. 9:4), a reference back to Gideon’s victory. Even Isaiah preached Christ from the book of Judges, modeling for us the same kind of reading, interpretation, and teaching that we still do today.

Yes, Judges can be hard to read. But as we begin it in Bible in One Year, page after page presents us with sketches of our true and redeeming Judge: the one foreshadowed by Gideon and Samson, the one who appeared to his people of old, and the one whose victory was anticipated by theirs.

On the road to Emmaus, Jesus taught his disciples that Moses and all the Prophets spoke of him. Judges is part of that story.

It is a dark book, yes, but a darkness full of the light of Christ.

God bless your study of it these next eight days.