Empfehlungen basierend auf "Ezra and Nehemiah"

The Bible tells us that Jesus was called a lot of names by people. Many of the religious leaders of the day were jealous of his success and wanted to discredit him in the eyes of the public, so they said all sorts of crazy things about him. They whispered that he was an illegitimate child. They accused him of being demon-possessed. They denounced him to the Roman authorities as a rioter and a threat of public peace. In this five-session video Bible study (DVD/digital videos sold separately), pastor and author Rich Wilkerson, Jr. reveals how one of their nicknames for Jesus was true: “Here is a . . . friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). In the religious leaders’ minds this was one of the greatest indictments imaginable, but for Jesus it was a sign of success because it was the very definition of his mission. Today, Jesus still calls us “friends,” not because of who we are or what we have done but because of who he is. While he was on earth, he knew that people needed to feel as if they belonged before they would want to behave. Rich shows that by following his example, we can have the same clear conviction and compassion for the lost that Jesus did. When we embrace the truth that we all need Jesus equally, and when we trust him to bring transformation in people’s hearts, we will walk as Jesus walked, experiencing the glory of God in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. The Friend of Sinners Study Guide includes video discussion questions, Bible exploration, and personal study and reflection materials for in-between sessions. Sessions include: Missed Message Weight Shift Lost and Found Comfortably Uncomfortable How to Be Great Designed for use with the Friend of Sinners Video Study (sold separately).

Do you find it more difficult to think of Jesus Christ as a human, like you, than to think of him as God? You may believe in God, and you may believe Jesus is God, but many Christians find it difficult to think of him as a real person--fully human as he was fully divine. Award-winning author Max Lucado reveals in this video Bible study (DVD/streaming video sold separately) that in order to really know God and understand the Gospel, it's essential that we take a closer look at Jesus' humanity. The concept of Jesus' human and heavenly nature is difficult to wrap our minds around. He's the God who formed the universe and, at the same time, knows your personal struggles...because he went through the same things. For thirty-three years, Jesus felt everything you have ever felt. Weakness. Weariness. Sadness. Rejection. His feet got tired. His head ached. He was tempted and his strength was tested. The purpose of this study is simple: by journeying through these six lessons with a small group, you will get to know Jesus—and, therefore, God—like you never have before. And by learning more about the person Jesus was and is, we come to understand more clearly the people we were created to be. The Jesus Study Guide includes: Video teaching notes Group discussion questions and activities Bible exploration and prayers Weekly personal study and reflection materials. Get ready to study who Jesus was while he walked this earth and what that means for your life today. In doing this, you will get to know God, his purpose for you, and his love for you like you never have before. *Designed for use with the Jesus: The God Who Knows Your Name Video Study, available on DVD or streaming video, sold separately.

Ancient Jewish sacrifice has long been misunderstood. Some find in sacrifice the key to the mysterious and violent origins of human culture. Others see these cultic rituals as merely the fossilized vestiges of primitive superstition. Some believe that ancient Jewish sacrifice was doomed from the start, destined to be replaced by the Christian eucharist. Others think that the temple was fated to be superseded by the synagogue. In Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple Jonathan Klawans demonstrates that these supersessionist ideologies have prevented scholars from recognizing the Jerusalem temple as a powerful source of meaning and symbolism to the ancient Jews who worshiped there. Klawans exposes and counters such ideologies by reviewing the theoretical literature on sacrifice and taking a fresh look at a broad range of evidence concerning ancient Jewish attitudes toward the temple and its sacrificial cult. The first step toward reaching a more balanced view is to integrate the study of sacrifice with the study of purity-a ritual structure that has commonly been understood as symbolic by scholars and laypeople alike. The second step is to rehabilitate sacrificial metaphors, with the understanding that these metaphors are windows into the ways sacrifice was understood by ancient Jews. By taking these steps-and by removing contemporary religious and cultural biases-Klawans allows us to better understand what sacrifice meant to the early communities who practiced it. Armed with this new understanding, Klawans reevaluates the ideas about the temple articulated in a wide array of ancient sources, including Josephus, Philo, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament, and Rabbinic literature. Klawans mines these sources with an eye toward illuminating the symbolic meanings of sacrifice for ancient Jews. Along the way, he reconsiders the ostensible rejection of the cult by the biblical prophets, the Qumran sect, and Jesus. While these figures may have seen the temple in their time as tainted or even defiled, Klawans argues, they too-like practically all ancient Jews-believed in the cult, accepted its symbolic significance, and hoped for its ultimate efficacy.

The bestselling and prize-winning Israeli author Meir Shalev describes the many "firsts" of the Bible – the first love and the first death, to the first laugh and the first dream – providing a fresh, secular and surprising look at the stories we think we know.The first kiss in the Bible is not a kiss of love. The first love in the Bible is not the love of a man and a woman. The first hatred in the Bible is the hatred of a man toward his wife. The first laugh in the Bible is also the last. In Beginnings, Meir Shalev reintroduces us to the heroes and heroines of the Old Testament, exploring these and many more of the Bible’s unexpected "firsts." Combining penetrating wit, deep empathy, and impressive knowledge of the Bible, he probes each episode to uncover nuances and implications that a lesser writer would overlook, and his nontraditional, nonreligious interpretations of the famous stories of the Bible take them beyond platitudes and assumptions to the love, fear, tragedy, and inspiration at their heart. Literary, inquisitive, and honest, Shalev makes these stories come alive in all their complicated beauty, and though these stories are ancient, their resonance remains intensely contemporary.

These days many evangelicals are exploring the more sacramental, liturgical, and historically-conscious church traditions, including Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. This hunger for historical rootedness is a welcome phenomenon--but unfortunately, many assume that this need can only be met outside of Protestant contexts.In What it Means to Be Protestant, Gavin Ortlund draws from both his scholarly work in church history and his personal experience in ecumenical engagement to offer a powerful defense of the Protestant tradition. Retrieving classical Protestant texts and arguments, he exposes how many of the contemporary objections leveled against Protestants are rooted in caricature. Ultimately, he shows that historic Protestantism offers the best pathway to catholicity and historical rootedness for Christians today.In his characteristically charitable and irenic style, Ortlund demonstrates that the 16th century Reformation represented a genuine renewal of the gospel. This does not entail that Protestantism is without faults. But because it is built upon the principle of semper reformanda (always reforming), Protestantism is capable of reforming itself according to Scripture as the ultimate authority. This scholarly and yet accessible book breaks new ground in ecumenical theology and will be a staple text in the field for many years to come.

In 1987, an IRA bomb buried Gordon Wilson and his twenty-year-old daughter beneath five feet of rubble. Gordon alone survived. And forgave. He said of the bombers, " I have lost my daughter, but I bear no grudge . . . I shall pray, tonight and every night, that God will forgive them." His words caught the media's ears -- and out of one man's grief, the world got a glimpse of grace. Grace is the church's great distinctive. It's the one thing the world cannot duplicate, and the one thing it craves above all else -- for only grace can bring hope and transformation to a jaded world. In What's So Amazing About Grace? award-winning author Philip Yancey explores grace at street level. If grace is God's love for the undeserving, he asks, then what does it look like in action? And if Christians are its sole dispensers, then how are we doing at lavishing grace on a world that knows far more of cruelty and unforgiveness than it does of mercy? Yancey sets grace in the midst of life's stark images, tests its mettle against horrific "ungrace." Can grace survive in the midst of such atrocities as the Nazi holocaust? Can it triumph over the brutality of the Ku Klux Klan? Should any grace at all be shown to the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, who killed and cannibalized seventeen young men? Grace does not excuse sin, says Yancey, but it treasures the sinner. True grace is shocking, scandalous. It shakes our conventions with its insistence on getting close to sinners and touching them with mercy and hope. It forgives the unfaithful spouse, the racist, the child abuser. It loves today's AIDS-ridden addict as much as the tax collector of Jesus' day. In his most personal and provocative book ever, Yancey offers compelling, true portraits of grace's life-changing power. He searches for its presence in his own life and in the church. He asks, How can Christians contend graciously with moral issues that threaten all they hold dear? And he challenges us to become living answers to a world that desperately wants to know, What's So Amazing About Grace?

You know the story of the Bible, but do you know what it means? This kids’ edition of Believe teaches you the core beliefs, practices, and characteristics of Jesus-followers so that you can understand how to live out God’s story in your own life today. As you walk through the three big categories—beliefs, practices, and virtues—you’ll begin a journey that will take you closer to the heart of Jesus and deeper into the words of Scripture. You’ll learn what the Bible has to say about everything from the nature of God and the identity of Jesus, to prayer, worship, and the fruit of the Spirit. Each big category is divided into ten topics to give you an up-close look at the important things God wants you to know. From bestselling author and pastor Randy Frazee, the Believe: Kids’ Edition will take you on a step-by-step tour through the Bible and show you how to think, act, and be more like Jesus.

A new commentary for today's world, The Story of God Bible Commentary explains and illuminates each passage of Scripture in light of the Bible's grand story. The first commentary series to do so, SGBC offers a clear and compelling exposition of biblical texts, guiding everyday readers in how to creatively and faithfully live out the Bible in their own contexts. Its story-centric approach is ideal for pastors, students, Sunday school teachers, and laypeople alike. Each volume employs three main, easy-to-use sections designed to help readers live out God's story: LISTEN to the Story: Includes complete NIV text with references to other texts at work in each passage, encouraging the reader to hear it within the Bible's grand story. EXPLAIN the Story: Explores and illuminates each text as embedded in its canonical and historical setting. LIVE the Story: Reflects on how each text can be lived today and includes contemporary stories and illustrations to aid preachers, teachers, and students.   —Ephesians— Like all of Paul's letters, Ephesians is centered in the gospel and its implications. It tells the story of what God has done in Christ and spells out the ethical implications of this story. But the letter to the Ephesians is unique among Paul's letters in many ways, including in how it tells of the story of God, beginning "before the creation of the world" and ending in eternity. Edited by Scot McKnight and Tremper Longman III, and written by a number of top-notch theologians, The Story of God Bible Commentary series will bring relevant, balanced, and clear-minded theological insight to any biblical education or ministry.

Enlarged print edition now available! Making use of his scholar's understanding, yet writing in an approachable and anecdotal style, Tom Wright manages to unravel the great complexity of the extraordinary Gospel of John. He describes it as "one of the great books in the literature of the world; and part of its greatness is the way it reveals its secrets not just to a high-flown leaning but to those who come to it with humility and hope." Wright's stimulating comments are combined with his own fresh and inviting translation of the Bible text.Tom Wright has undertaken a tremendous task: to provide guides to all the books of the New Testament, and to include in them his own translation of the entire text. Each short passage is followed by a highly readable discussion with background information, useful explanations and suggestions, and thoughts as to how the text can be relevant to our lives today. A glossary is included at the back of the book. The series is suitable for group study, personal study, or daily devotions.

- Continuation of a conservative commentary series in harmony with Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions - Provides new insights for those who study and proclaim God's Word - Three sections offer literal translations, analysis of the original language, and exposition of the theology, centered in Jesus Christ.