Think about how many things you "just know" because you've heard them presented as true multiple times in your life. After 30 years of listening to sermons, I have a massive list of biblical nuggets that I have heard multiple preachers teach. The vast majority of them are true or at least based upon reasonable inferences from multiple scriptures (in the mouth of two or three witnesses – 2 Corinthians 13:1). Every so often, someone will repeat something that they've heard and haven't confirmed. This is something that particularly bothers me, because the Word of God is truth and doesn't need us, even accidentally or without malice, passing on incorrect teachings. I like the principle that former U.S. president Ronald Reagan used: "trust, but verify". It behooves those of us who preach and teach to take this principle to heart, so that we do no harm to our listeners theological condition.

This came up for me today as I sat in my favourite coffee shop researching for my commentary on the book of the acts of the apostles, or just "Acts" to its friends. I'm still early in the process - working on chapter three and verse eight: the lame man at the gate Beautiful has been healed and enters the temple. I have heard multiple preachers claim that because of his physical condition the lame and the broken could not enter the temple, so this would have been his first time being able to enter the temple. This sounds so reasonable when backed up with scriptures like Leviticus 21:18. My preaching style, and especially my writing style, is that I back up my statements with scripture. Yes, I have been told before that I use too much scripture, but that person went off of the theological rails and sadly is now not doing well, so I'll stick to using "too much" scripture. I went looking for scripture to properly clarify the point and that's when it got interesting.

The Lord has always held called men and women of God to a higher standard than the regular believers. (Obligatory media reference – "with great power, comes great responsibility".) When the Lord established the priesthood to care for and run the tabernacle (and subsequent temple) processes, he added a requirement (Leviticus 21:16-21) that no priest could be lame or broken and still serve in the tabernacle. They were not denied entry, nor were they excluded from the provision that all Levites received from the offerings, but they were ineligible to serve as priests in the temple making offerings to the Lord. These instructions do not apply to non-priests in any way, so we cannot use them to back any assertion that the lame man was not allowed into the temple.

It's the long Thanksgiving weekend over here in the United States of America. A time to come together with family and friends and be thankful. This is my favorite holiday on the calendar. Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas and Easter, but to me they're holidays where we are thankful for a specific thing. Christmas is a time to celebrate and be thankful for the coming of Jesus our Messiah. Easter is where we celebrate and are thankful for the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. For me, Thanksgiving is where we are thankful for everything all at once. (As an IT person I can't help but think of this as thankfulness at scale ... this may have something to do with why IT people generally don't have many friends!)

I try to be thankful everyday for the blessings, guidance and protection that I receive from the Lord. Every night, with our youngest one, our prayers include giving thanks for the good things that day. Even if it turns out to be be one thing, I'm going to thank the Lord for it. My personal prayers, include being thankful for my salvation, my family and friends.

I am thankful for my family, my lovely wife, my delightful children and some good, close friends. I'm thankful for my brothers and sisters in Christ, the church that I attend and my pastor. I especially appreciate my pastor. As a former pastor, I know what he and his wife have to go through. I am thankful for the skills and talents that the Lord has given me and that I am able to use them for his kingdom. I am thankful for the connections that I have in my community. There are so many people that I am happy to see when I am around and about town.

I have a favourite apostle. There, I've admitted it and it feels like such a weight off of my chest. I don’t even know if I'm allowed to have a favourite. I've never heard anyone else ever speaking about having a favourite apostle. It's kind of a guilty pleasure, not unlike the fact that I liked listening to Abba back when I was a metalhead. Certainly not something you talk about in polite company.

My favorite apostle is Peter, or to use his full name Simon Peter. The first reason why he's my favourite should be fairly obvious if you know me. I am also called Simon Peter. Those of us with cool names have to stick together. A shared name is not the worst similarity to draw two people together, but there is another, more important reason: he inspires me.

Peter is an interesting fellow. I'm not going to go into a detailed character study here, but I do have a few observations. A casual examination of Peter's life and his time spent with Jesus shows us that he's a goofball ... certainly a lovable one, but still a goofball. That initial examination can leave you wondering why Jesus wasted his time on him. Nothing about the Peter we see in the gospels said cool headed leadership. He had some goofy ideas, said some goofy things, denied Jesus three times and had to be corrected hard on a couple of occasions. Knowing this about Peter, I find him comforting. He was absolutely not perfect, but the Lord continued to love him and work with him to guide him through his imperfections and out the other side as a powerful apostle with, yes, actual leadership skills. As an also not perfect kinda guy, I appreciate the continuing and guiding love of Jesus as I work my way through my life and called ministries.

Back in the day, people of status would have a calling card that they would leave at a place they visited if the person they sought was unavailable or absent. The card would have their name and appropriate contact information on it so that the person would know who had visited and how to reach them. The closest thing we have in these modern times would be a business card. Hold this thought until the end of this post.

Why do prophecies exist? That's easy. They exist so that we can recognise when the Lord fulfills each of his promises. The Lord loves humanity and he desires to lead us to our full potential and salvation. This explains why he didn't nuke us from space (because that's the only way to be sure). Rather, after Adam and Eve fell from grace, he activated a plan that he had from before he even made the universe (Revelation 13:8).

The first Messianic reference is generally agreed to be Genesis 3:15 (almost a miracle itself ... do you how hard it is to get theologians to agree on anything?). A descendant of Eve (Jesus) will defeat the serpent (the Devil / Lucifer). The Lord has been firm on his plan and telling us how it was going to turn out for as long as we humans have been on this planet of ours. I'm not going to list them all here, but there are many prophecies of the Messiah and almost every aspect of his arrival, ministry and death. Actually, both of his arrivals and ministries. This makes it very important to recognise when a prophecy speaks of his first or his second arrival. Getting these mixed up can cause serious errors in your theology, but that's best left to discus another day.

There are many references to the Promised Land in the scriptures. The Promised Land was an area that the Lord promised to Abraham (Genesis 12:1,7) and all of his descendants. The land area included in the promise was larger than modern Israel. It was composed of both modern Israel and an amount of the surrounding land (Joshua 1:3-4).

The scriptures tell us much about the Promised Land and the story of the chosen people of God, the Hebrews (more commonly known now as the children of Israel or Israelites). Much of the Old Testament covers the accounts of the Hebrews being selected by God as his people, led to the Promised Land and their adventures taking it and keeping it from their hostile neighbors.

What there is not, is any direct explanation of why the Lord selected the area that he did for the Promised Land. After all, the Lord could have selected anywhere for the Hebrews to live. Why did he select semi-arid desert scrub-land when there was highly fertile land in either Egypt or the valley of Mesopotamia? The scriptures do give us the answer, but we have to dig a little.