Theological Term of the Week

exile, the
The time in Israel’s history when the Jews were taken into captivity, first the northern tribes to Assyria and later Judah to Babylon. 

• From scripture:

In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. (2 Kings 17:6-8 ESV).

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Linked Together: Fathers

Two Tributes
to very different fathers.

• Tom Ascol tells his father’s story: “In many ways the family in which I grew up would be considered by modern psychologists as ‘dysfunctional.’ Most of the difficulties that we had stemmed from my father and the demons that he fought his whole life. Like every other father who has ever lived, Dad was a mixture of blessing and curse. The latter was easier to see for the first three decades of my life. By God’s grace, the former has become increasingly apparent over the last half of my journey.” 
• Wendy Alsup writes about her father, a dad whose character pointed to the heavenly Father: “I hope that my words about my dad will be an encouragement to all of us, whether you had a dad like this or not, because the best characteristics of my dad are the ones that are true for all of us of our heavenly Father.”

Mothers, Too?
Does Ephesians 6:4,

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

include mothers, too? (Bill Mounce)

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Bonus link: Last week I linked to Kevin DeYoung’s T4G sermon on scripture, Never Spoke a Man Like This Before: Inerrancy, Evangelism and Christ’s Unbreakable Bible. Now I’ve found the longer version, an 11 sermon series on the doctrine of Scripture preached at University Reformed Church in 2012.

Heidelberg Catechism

Question 40. Why was it necessary for Christ to humble himself even “unto death”?

Answer: Because with respect to the justice and truth of God, (a) satisfaction for our sins could be made no other way than by the death of the Son of God. (b)

(Click through to see scriptural proofs.)

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