Good morning. Grace and peace to you.
Today’s Kindle deals include a few solid choices from Crossway. Also be sure to check some of the books that I listed over the weekend.
(Yesterday on the blog: We All Have To Do With God)

Kenneth Berding provides a useful example of how not to apply the Bible. And, of course, he tells us how we should apply it as well.

This is just a simple roundup of 30 people mentioned in the New Testament who have been confirmed by the historical record.

I do not understand the Taylor Swift phenomenon! David Robertson offers some thoughts on it in relation to Swift’s tour arriving in Australia. “In the rejection of God, a culture tends to lose its mind and look for other saviours. If you doubt that, then just consider that in the past week, I have read about Taylor saving the Australian economy through Taylornomics, women in China and the planet – as well as getting Biden re-elected!”

Barbara explains one way in which we can all subtly live as if the prosperity gospel is true. “Most of us realize the ‘prosperity gospel’ is wrong—the belief that if you obey God, especially in giving big offerings to their evangelists, you’ll be blessed with health, wealth, and prosperity. But we unwittingly buy into a version of the same thought.”

Jason DeRouchie offers 10 reasons that the Old Testament matters to Christians. “To understand the Old Testament fully, we must start reading it as believers in the resurrected Jesus, with God having awakened our spiritual senses to perceive and hear rightly.”

Charlie Carter considers life and death, new cars and old cars, and a few other matters here.

Just as a tower is straight only to the degree to which it matches the builder’s perfect line, our lives are right only to the degree to which they match God’s perfect law. 

I have to tell you that heaven, earth and hell are after your immortal spirit. Earth to cheat it. Hell to destroy it. Heaven to redeem it.
—De Witt Talmage

This week the blog is sponsored by Zondervan Reflective.
This excerpt from The NIV Application Commentary on the Bible: One-Volume Edition explains the original meaning of Paul’s words in Romans 8:31-39 and shows how his message can apply to our lives today. We begin with words from the Apostle Paul:
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[a]
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[b] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39, New International Version)
Original Meaning
The Work of God for Us in Christ (8:31–34). Paul here launches into a new direction with a question. “These things” (v. 31) refers to the many reasons for our confidence that Paul has rehearsed in chapters 5–8. All those reasons can be neatly summed up in one statement: God is “for us” (v. 31). Who, then, Paul rightly asks, can be “against us?” Of course, we know many people and things still oppose us. But Paul’s point is that with God on our side, none of this opposition ultimately matters.
Christ not only defends us but loves us and enters into relationship with us, and nothing will ever separate us from that love.Share
Verse 32 reinforces Paul’s point. God’s being “for us” is seen climactically in his giving of his beloved Son. If he has done that, we can be certain he will also give us “all things”—or, to put it in the terms of verse 31, nothing can ultimately oppose us.
“Bring [a] charge” (v. 33) is the first of several judicial terms. Again, Paul’s point is not that nothing will ever try to prosecute us in the court of God’s justice. But the prosecution will be unsuccessful, for God has chosen us to be his and has justified us already. Paul alludes at this point to Isaiah 50:8–9.
Verse 34 provides more evidence for the same point. No one can successfully condemn us because Christ has died for us and has been raised to life to be our intercessor before the Father. With such a defense attorney, it is no wonder the prosecution loses its case!
The Love of God for Us in Christ (8:35–39). The question at the beginning of verse 35 sets the tone for verses 35–39 by introducing Christ’s love into the picture. Christ not only defends us but loves us and enters into relationship with us, and nothing will ever separate us from that love. To make sure we get the point, Paul specifies some threats at the end of verse 35. As a comparison with 2 Corinthians 11:26–27 and 12:10 reveals, Paul himself has gone through most of these. He has learned by experience that they cannot disrupt his relationship with Christ.
The quotation of Psalm 44:22 in verse 36 is a bit of a detour in the logic of Paul’s argument. But the detour reveals two of his key concerns: to remind us that suffering is a natural and expected part of the Christian life, and to root the experiences of Christians in the experience of God’s old-covenant people.
With verse 37, Paul returns to the main line of his teaching in verse 35. In all the varied difficulties of life, we are “more than conquerors.” Paul concludes his celebration of God’s love for us in Christ with his own personal testimony: “I am convinced . . .” (vv. 38–39). There is nothing in all the world—whether we are dead or alive, whether they are things we now face or things we will face in the future, whether they are above us or below us—that can separate us from the “love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39). As the chapter began with “no condemnation” (8:1), so it ends with the bookends of “no separation” (8:35, 39).
Application. Paul’s emphatic assertion that no spiritual being can separate us from Christ is needed in the church today. We need to recognize and proclaim that God in Christ has won a victory over the “powers and authorities” (Col 2:15) and that they have no power to keep us from inheriting the salvation God has promised to all who love him. Nothing on earth can separate us from God’s love for us in Christ, and neither can anything in heaven.
Read more like this in the The NIV Application Commentary on the Bible, a masterful blend of content written by today’s top academics in a way that is compelling and easy to understand for anyone–no formal training or seminary degree required. Now on sale!

Every coin has a head behind a tail, every die a 6 behind a 1, every stamp a sticker behind a face. And in much the same way, every technology has a virtue behind a vice, a benefit behind a drawback, something beneficial behind something sorely detrimental. The television that supplies important news also promotes vile entertainment, the engine that provides propulsion also produces pollution, the nuclear fission that powers a city also risks destroying that city. Such is life and tech in a world marred by sin.

And in just that way, social media can be used for such good and such ill. It can display human beings at their best and worst, their most gracious and most condescending, their most humble and most prideful. The greater part of the blame lies not with the technology itself, but with those who use it, for social media does little more than display who we really are and repeat what we really believe. It is our hearts and minds turned outward in snippets of text, bursts of video, carefully filtered photographs.
Yet we should be careful not to overly-simplify, for social media has been deliberately designed to take advantage of our weaknesses more than our strengths, to reward pride more than humility. It fosters quick skimming more than deep reading, impulsiveness more than thoughtfulness, indignation more than wisdom. Solomon asks, “Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” But Facebook prompts every user at every moment, “What’s on your mind?” Solomon warns that “when words are many, transgression is not lacking”, but Twitter suggests at all times and in all occasions, “Tweet your reply.” He says, “The wise will inherit honor,” but on most social media platforms it is the boastful and combatant, the ungracious and lascivious who are seen and heard, who are honored and followed. The one who rules his spirit may be better than he who takes a city, but vice so easily becomes virtue on platforms that reward outrage more than self-control, harshness more than kindness, arrogance more than meekness.
Twitter and Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, a host of lesser and still-to-be-invented technologies—each provides an ideal mechanism for platform-building and self-aggrandizement, for promoting self while disparaging others, for displaying all manner of haughtiness and every kind of foolishness. But though we so easily see the drawbacks of these new technologies, they do still have many benefits. None are so far beyond redemption that they cannot be used in ways that will bless others and glorify God. Behind all the vices are many genuine virtues, for through social media we can say words that dry crying eyes, we can share quotes that raise drooping hands, we can upload videos that strengthen weakened knees. We can graciously engage with the lost and the hurting, we can gently challenge the straying and the wayward, we can carefully shore up the uncertain and the untrained. We can be present and active in these forums where people are taught, where ideas are discussed, where the great concerns of our age are debated. We can be where the people of this world gather so we can speak God’s truth with our mouths while displaying God’s love in our lives.
However, if we want to be humble through social media we will need to be humble before social media. We will need to be aware of its embedded ideologies, aware of the many ways in which it rewards what God despises, aware of its many temptations to promote folly ahead of wisdom. We will need to approach it cautiously, prayerfully, and ever-so-humbly.
There is no time in human history in which it has been easy to display humility and no time in which it has been difficult to display pride. The challenge of social media is new only in the speed through which we can display such folly and only in the extent of the damage we can do through it. Social media has not created pride, but only created new avenues to express it. Yet the God who opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble certainly delights to grant us the humility we lack so we can be light when surrounded by darkness, so we can redeem what has been broken, so we can take advantage of every opportunity to profess the great truths of our great God.

This article was originally published in the January 2022 edition of Tabletalk magazine.