The New Man in Christ

Before we start I want to mention that the books of the Bible are not in chronological order. For instance Esra, Esther, and  Nehemiah come before Psalms yet David wrote the Psalms hundreds of years before those three books were written and took place. Esra picks up where 2 Chronicles stops. Commentary for the REV “Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia.” Ezra 1:1 -3a is almost identical to the last two verses of 2 Chronicles. From a chronological point of view, Ezra takes over where Chronicles stops. This first year of Cyrus refers to his first year reigning over Babylon, which he conquered in 538 BC, not his first year reigning in Persia (559 BC). Babylon was captured in October, 539 BC ( Dan. 5:30-31 ), but Cyrus did not get there and start to reign over Babylon until March of 538 BC. Quite a lot is known about Cyrus from the Persian records. Also, “Cyrus” is an actual name, not a title, whereas in other parts of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, the “names” Darius,

1 Let brotherly love continue. 2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. 3 Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. 4Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. In verse 1 we have the very definition of the Greek word philadelphia. It means Brotherly love we are to let it continue. Of course we are to have agape love but God also wants us to have that bond of a strong friendship with each other. The crew here shares that bond of friendship. Michael and Dana just got back from a trip where he stopped and meet with Don Culp and John Tudor. I haven’t seen Don Culp in person in a long time but we have known each other for over 40 years in fact he was at my wedding. We all share a friendship that will last forever. Hospitality was commanded by God back in the book of Genesis in fact that w

1 Therefore, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us also run with endurance the race that is set before us, You need to understand some things about The games in the Roman world. The Olympic Games as well as some of the other major games. The runners who ran in the races would run in the nude. They would lay aside anything that would slow them down. No excess weight. Nothing to slow them down.  The sin that entangles them is a difficult word to translate. That is why the various translation differ. This is also the only place this word occurs in the word of God. It is The Greek is euperistatos . It reminds me of Romans 12:2 where it speaks about falling for the scheme's of this world. We as athletes of the spirit can’t get entangled into the things of this world. We are to follow the examples given to us in the word that great cloud of witnesses. 2 fixing our eye