Matt Postiff's Blog

The following is from my Thanksgiving Eve sermon of November 22, 2023.

There is so much for which to give thanks that you might not know where to begin. Just start somewhere and see where it leads! Write a journal of mercies, or a list of things God has given you. I am going to give thanks to the Lord in this message, not just for or from myself, but from our larger church family and even human family.

Thankful for our children. Any children God has brought into our lives whether nieces and nephews or neighbors or at church. Thankful for every giggle, smile, funny talking, precious moment. Thankful to see them healthy, and grow, and become young adults, and wiser, and discerning. Thankful for their questions that make us grow in our walk with God. Thankful for their challenging us so we can become more like Jesus. Thankful to be put in a place where we can model what God is like to our kids. Thankful for the responsibility of having children because it makes us more responsible…and forces us to trust God more…and stretch ourselves beyond the limits of our self-centeredness.

Thankful for illness that reminds us how blessed we are when well. For wellness.

For work to occupy our time, our bodies, and our minds, allowing us to be productive and help others and offer things to God.

For our church family. For words of encouragement, praise. Even for words of correction to keep us on the straight and narrow and out of sin.

For material things that make our lives easier. Machines to make our work easier. Technology and computers make our communication easier and more enjoyable, and our writing and reading too. Transportation. Large and luxurious homes and apartments. For the good sense to declutter and remove things, as it helps us loosen our grip on the things of this world. And the good sense to pass on things to others or throw them away when we cannot be good stewards of them. For things inherited and given to us that we do not deserve and did not earn.

For money earned, and the ability to earn it. For the opportunities to give, more blessed as they are than the opportunities to receive.

For our aptitudes, knowledge, opportunities to learn. For discernment. For institutes of learning where good knowledge is taught, where religion, morality, and knowledge are elevated.

Thankful for the restraining hand of police, government, laws, parents, and the general civil society that allows us a measure of peace and prosperity. For the work of productivity being on balance more than the work of destructiveness.

For our missionaries, who are willingly away from family on all the holidays to serve the Lord and to serve us. For people who have “addicted” themselves to the work of ministry to that extent.

For the fact that we have peace in our country, and not war. For general prosperity, despite the attempts to run us into the ground with debt.

For God’s care in times of trouble, which our world certainly faces just now in many ways. That God does not leave His children when they suffer, though He may seem silent.

For friends to talk to. To give and receive encouragement.

For things to keep us busy. For work. For good sleep when we get it. The our good tasting food.

For being able to go out and come in. To go outside and do the dreaded yard work! Wait until you cannot do that, and then see if you are thankful for what you used to be able to do.

Thankful for people who labor to make large-scale injustices right--people like Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King, Jr.

For love of spouse. For love of family. For love of church family.

Especially for God’s Son who died to set us free. Hope in the face of death. Heaven. Forgiveness of sin. Hope for a restored creation with good people, good society, good agriculture.

We are thankful for God creating the world and all that it is in it. The beauty of the inanimate creation—sky, sea, mountains, rivers, seas, stars, clouds. And then the plants, trees, vegetable gardens in full fruit, flower gardens in full bloom. And then the animate creation—the way of the beaver, the majesty of a stallion, the intricacy of the hummingbird, or butterfly, the complexity of a human baby, the strength and resourcefulness of a man, the beauty and kindness of a godly woman. All of this created by God. Life itself, something hard to define and its inner workings not understood.

God’s guidance, sustenance, His plan for the world and our future.

Thanks be to God that he revealed Himself to me, an entirely unfitting candidate for His mercy of His self-disclosure which saved me. Thank God that He does not show favoritism toward the rich and powerful but lowers Himself to people of low estate, low station. That God hears our prayers. That there is a coming resurrection of the dead. Thank God for ample evidence that Jesus is the Messiah, and that He arose from the dead, and that He is the one who will judge the living and the dead. Thank God for proof of resurrection in Lazarus and the widow of Nain’s son, and Eutychus, and Jesus Himself.

We give thanks for our thrice-daily (or more) food, but not just the food (Matthew 15:36, Luke 22:17). We give thanks to the Giver of the food, the sanctifier of the food, the one who wisely created the food for our use, enjoyment, health, and strength. We thank God that a much smaller portion of our time is spent getting or paying for food than what many humans have had in centuries past.

Thank God for His word. Thank God for Jesus…and the Holy Spirit.

Thank God that we are not self-sufficient and that He has helped us to understand that, because if we were self-sufficient, we would miss out on the most important Person there is, God Himself, who is the source of all true joy and happiness. Thank God for that.

Thankful to God for God himself—for all of his attributes, all of his power, all of his mercy and grace, all of his provision, all of his wisdom.

For the air we breath, for the breath and heartbeat we just experienced.

Thankful for every step of progress of God’s good news in Christ throughout the world, and in my life, and in your life. Every church that starts, every church that stays faithful, every Bible book that is translated or preserved, every discipleship class taught.

We are thankful for God’s plan, and for our individual sanctification. We are thankful that God is kind and just, punishing evil and rewarding good. He brings conviction, gives warnings, granted us our five senses to experience His world, provided the shining sun, rain and snow in their seasons, waking grace this morning, the rainbow, and many beautiful sunsets and dawns. He allows us to make new friends, have long talks with old ones, the clean feeling of a shower (and running water for the shower!), a freshly pressed shirt, clean bed sheets, unexpected blessings along the way, an enjoyable hobby, a good hug, accomplish a long-sought-after goal, and all of you.

Every good gift is from above, James 1:17. We certainly have enough “material” to abound in thanksgiving toward God (Col. 2:6-7).

Random thought from a pastor to his brothers at arms...and the people who support them.

Ministry is a strange place to be. It's a calling from God that none of us deserve, but most of us are glad to have. It is a place where some people love you more than you deserve; and a place where some people dislike you more than you deserve.

I am glad to be serving the Lord in a vocational ministry capacity. It offers a great venue to glorify the Lord. But it also comes with a weighty responsibility.

Today's question:

I have heard that there is a chronological Bible in a number of versions. I know little about it. What do you think about a chronological Bible vs the "regular" one? I am concerned about the change. Should I be?

And my response:

I don't own a chronological Bible, but I don't have a problem with the idea of a chronological Bible.

What is a chronological Bible? It presents the contents of the Bible in the order in which the events occurred. So, after you read a certain portion of Acts 20, then you would read Romans, because that's when Paul wrote Romans. Or, since Isaiah ministered to such and such Israelite kings, you would place his prophecies during the narrative of those kings in Kings and Chronicles.

Such a Bible can be helpful to put together the Bible's history, which is important for us to understand things properly. After all, we believe in a *historical*, grammatical, literal principle of interpretation. So, we need to get the history right.

The order of books in the Bible is not inspired. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible's order of books is different than the English Bible's order. I don't lose any sleep over that issue, but it is interesting to know that fact and why.

I have a slight concern if a particular chronological Bible splits a book in pieces and rearranges those pieces into various locations. The reason for the concern is that the Holy Spirit superintended the authors to write the books in a certain order. Splitting sections may have an important contextual impact on the study of certain sections.

As long as the chronological Bible is a supplemental tool in your "study tool box," we need not worry about the above concern.

You don't need a special chronological Bible. You can find a chronological reading schedule and just read your regular Bible in a different order than you normally do.

If you have older documents that use the GraecaII non-unicode Greek font, you may be interested in a macro that I wrote. It runs in Word 2010 and newer. It takes all GraecaII characters, including accent marks, and converts them to SBLGreek font. SBLGreek is a free Unicode font. The advantage of this is that the old encoding goes away. Another advantage is that multi-character codes, e.g. letters that have a couple of diacritics on them, are transformed into a single unicode character. This will "future proof" your document so that it will not become unusable in the future due to older fonts becoming unavailable. Any Unicode font with Greek support will be able to show the document properly.

Update 5/10/2018: More labor resulted in a second macro that does the same for the SymbolGreekII ASCII (1-byte) font. It converts to SBLGreek as well. This was tested on the entire book of 1 Timothy and works. There are probably some combinations of letters and accents that don't work, so buyer beware! Let me know if you have any troubles with it and I can give an assist.

The macros are available here: GraecaAndSymbolGreekConversionMacro.txt

Download the macro text file first. You may have to right click the link above and instruct your browser to "Save link as..." Go into your Word document, navigate the menu to Developer | Macros, and create a new macro. You will be in the Visual Basic program at this point. Copy the contents of the macro file in the space where you can type code. Make sure you overwrite any code that is already in place. Save the file. Now you can go back to Developer | Macros, select that macro, and run it. Hopefully it will work. On large documents, it may take a few of minutes.

Before running the macro, be aware of where your cursor is, and what text is selected. If some text is selected, the macro will run only on that text. If the cursor is halfway through the document, it will only convert the text after the cursor. You usually will want to de-select all text, and put the cursor at the beginning (Ctrl-Home).

Macros last revised 9/4/2018.

With this post, I am publishing the annual set of Bible reading schedules that I have prepared for the past nine years.

• Read the New Testament once
• Read the New Testament twice
• Read the New Testament four times
• Read the Old Testament once
• Key chapters for young readers
• Read the book of Acts and New Testament letters in just four and a half months, in chronological order
• Read the Greek New Testament in order from easier to harder Greek.

Some other reading plans might catch your interest:

• Ligonier Bible Reading Plans
• ESV Bible Reading Plans
• Professor Horner's Reading System
• Read the Gospels Every Day

If you would like another schedule that takes you through the entire Bible in the year, and with some chronological ordering in it, check out this schedule from bibleclassmaterial.com. This is from 2017, but it will work for 2018 just about as well.

I have published a new life testimony by Eduard Suderman.

Translated from German in 1981, it was originally written in 1913, when Mr. Suderman was 80 years old. It comes to about 17 typewritten pages, about 7500 words. Eduard Suderman is my great-great grandfather. The translator was Anna Suderman, my grandmother's sister, who was a missionary to India. I believe she served under the Mennonite Brethren there.

I found several notable portions from the autobiography:

• His sensitivity to sin, particularly around and after the time of his salvation at age 40.
• His views of alcohol.
• The fact that church meetings happened on Sundays and Wednesdays.
• His Mennonite heritage .
• His view of the Catholic religion as empty forms and rituals.
• His desire for prayer and real fellowship with like-minded believers.
• The importance of prayer.

I am thankful for a godly heritage that was passed down to my grandmother, and to my father. A home with two Christian parents was a great advantage to me.

With this post, I am publishing the annual set of Bible reading schedules that I have prepared for the past eight years.

• Read the New Testament once
• Read the New Testament twice
• Read the New Testament four times
• Read the Old Testament once
• Key chapters for young readers
• Read the book of Acts and New Testament letters in just four and a half months, in chronological order
• Read the Greek New Testament in order from easier to harder Greek.

If you would like another schedule that takes you through the entire Bible in the year, and with some chronological ordering in it, check out this schedule from bibleclassmaterial.com.

Some other reading plans might catch your interest:

• Ligonier Bible Reading Plans
• ESV Bible Reading Plans
• Professor Horner's Reading System
• Read the Gospels Every Day

A reminder for those whose loved ones have gone to heaven.

Those believers who have died worship the Christ of Christmas in person.

There is no Christmas tree, for Christ Himself is there.

Their gifts are not material things, but rather heaven itself and all its glory.

Their songs are not weakened by human frailty but are strengthened by God.

Their hearts are not sad, but are glad because of the sight of God.

Their memories are purified so that they focus not on the darkness of past earthly life.

Their lives are marked by rest and not anxiety.

Their fellowship is sweet, with all those believers who have died before them and since.

Their dwelling place is perfect, with no lack.

Their hearts are free from the cares of earthly life.

They experience the tender mercy of God every moment. Do not be sad for them!

They remind us that Christmas is one key reason that they are there in heaven now, and why we can hope to go there too.

They await with perfect patience our coming to join them.

They call to us with silent voice to worship as best we can until the Lord deems that it is our time to join them there in Christmas celebration, for all eternity.

Back on March 18, 2016, Dr. Kyle Dunham presented on the matter of holy war in the Rice Lecture series at Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary. This article is not a review but rather a summary of of things that I learned or noted while I listened to Dr. Dunham. Consider it a after-the-fact live blog of the event! These are listed in the order I wrote them down, not in any other order.

1. Motivating factors for God were compassion and deliverance of His people. The deliverance through holy war was a blessing to them.
2. Holy war starts in Exodus.
3. God is active or passive/permissive in holy war, not always the former.
4. God sometimes had holy war against Israel!
5. Justice is another key motivation behind holy war. See Deut. 16.
6. Holy war was used to establish Israel (against Egypt) and to preserve it from bondage or peril.
7. Dr. Dunham takes a dispensational approach to holy war.
8. We can see echoes of holy war in the book of Revelation, including trumpets in both.
9. We have to maintain a connection between holy war and hte land and its consecration.
10. Holy war is a fulfillment of Abrahamic curses on the enemies and blessings on the nation of Israel. Unless, of course, the people of Israel departed from God, and then he turned the instrument of holy war against them!
11. Holiness is another motivating factor behind holy war, and teh resultant moral protection of God's people.
12. The gift of the land to Israel is another motivation behind holy war.
13. The idea of gradual displacement.
14. Key resources include Von Rad 1951, Copan and Flannagan, Qureshi's Answering Jihad.
15. Not about Haman the Agagite. Perhaps he was an Amalekite and maybe he hated Israel for the reason that the Israelites had victory over the Amalekites years earlier.
16. Holy war consisted in judgment against groups that threatened Israel's existence or that were sinful, committing sins such as infanticide. These require a proportional response.
17. Kev difficult texts include Deut 7 and 20:16-17.
18. Genocide charges must be limited to the issue of herem, the so-called ban or devotion to total destruction.
19. Dunham gave a careful definition of herem. He linked idolatry (which is demonic worship) into the idea, with Lev. 27:21. God has a claim on the land.
20. Herem is a purging followed by a reconstruction or re-populating of the land.
21. Herem is 1. capital punishment of many people; 2. conflagration; 3. repopulation; 4. connection to the temple. It is about the land and the nation, it is not racially motivated. We could say that it is religiously motivated in a sense./li>
22. Herem prevented "exchange" from happening between cultures and was a way to implement separation from idolatry.
23. Herem echoes the genesis flood in terms of purification and the mass killing of many sinful people. I noted this seems to echo more the holiness of God than Herem per se.
24. The Canannite people are connected to the curse on Canaan due to sexual perversion (Genesis 9:20-27).
25. Gave a definition of Jihad, and showed a progression of violence, and the distinction with Yahweh War in the Old Testament.
26. Sacred geography in Yahweh wars are for one nation; focused on false gods, not on unbelievers. I believe this would be a slim distinction lost on the world.
27. Yahweh War includes proportional violence, versus no limit in Jihad. God's war is an act of justice proportionate to the crime committed.
28. Islam propagates through Jihad; Holy War protects the people of Israel.
29. Christian Bible preserves life; Islam dose not, and extols the martyr.
30. Just war principles (Grotius and others). Mentioned 7 facts about war. Mentioned O'donovan and Just war theory with parallels to God's War.
31. Israel is preserved for Messiah, and (this is a key addition) God loves Israel so he preserves them until the eschaton too.
32. Dunham diagrams Yahweh Wars with first the infinite transcendence of God, second His holiness, justice, and righteousness, third His truth, faithfulness and veracity, and fourth with His love and compassion. The entries under "second" are motivations, as well as compassion in "fourth." God says that the Canaanites were sinners. As sinners today look more like Canannites, they see those "victims of Yahweh war" as more and more innocent.
33. Yahweh war is tied to Israel, so we don't have to find out how to fit it into the New Testament or the church.
34. I had a question: So is "NT" Yahweh War against the believer's sin our "greater jihad" as in Galatians 5 whereas in the OT is the "lesser jihad"?
35. We take a defensive posture in NT spiritual war (standing our ground against the wiles of the devil, etc.)
36. Resource from David Cook on Jihad.
37. Holy War comes back as Israel comes back into focus in Gods' program in the eschaton. As they receive focus, holy war themes come into more focus, as in during the Tribulation.

First, be reading your Bible very regularly. Second, consider some resources that remind you what to look for. I have written a fairly detailed and, frankly, blunt, guide to finding what I would consider a good church. I call it the A Regular Person's Guide on How to Find a Good Church.

• Some guidelines from Pastor John MacArthur
• An outline by Christian Apologetics Research Ministry
• Nine marks to look for in a church

I read this morning:

And now I ask you...that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments...For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. (2 John 5-7, ESV)

The juxtaposition of three ideas caught my attention: loving one another, keeping His commandments, and "because" many deceivers are out there not acknowledging the coming of Christ. Not only is the presence of deceivers a motivation to emphasize love in the Christian community, but also such deception is far from the kind of obedient love that John says characterizes the true believer.

Love and deception don't go together; love and deception on the doctrine of Christ really don't go together.

Guest post by Missionary Bryan MacPhail-Fausey, originally posted on Facebook.

I've been reflecting on raising my sons and some practical wisdom a middle age man who came to faith in Christ later in life might be able to share with next generation of young Christian men. Some of these are from mistakes I've made and learned the hard way. Some are from watching others do the same. But all of them can be gleaned directly or indirectly from Scripture. I pray you find them helpful. Feel free to share.

1. Truly commit and surrender your life to God. Put every decision and direction in His hands. You won't go wrong.

2. Get knowledge. Get wisdom. Get direction. First and foremost in God and then in your relationship with God to seek your calling – a calling that you are passionate about and to which God is leading. It may be secular or it may be sacred or it may be both. It may take 5, 10, 20 years and it may change in 5, 10, 20 years. But make sure God is leading it.

3. Pride kills. You aren't all that. You don’t know what you don't know. Walk wisely. Ask questions. Think before you speak. If you are angry, think longer and pray. If you are still angry, keep thinking and pray harder. True humility will honor God and benefit you much more than any level of pride.

4. Be content. In Christ your hope and future is secure. Trust in and learn from what God is doing in and through you now. You may not have everything you want, but I'll bet you have everything you need. Is it enough? The truthful answer is yes.

5. Don't go into debt. Period. It’s hard to be flexible to where and when God calls you when you have debt looming over you. "The borrower is servant to the lender" is true. Don't do it. Don't.

6. Give First to God. Spend wisely. Don’t accumulate. There is very little you really need. I understand the pull of "stuff." But you will end up throwing away or Craigslisting the majority of the "stuff" and the money spent will not have aided anyone. And if you have it, you have to maintain it. And that costs as well. It's hard to be flexible to God's call when you have all this "stuff" to deal with and maintain.

7. Travel light. This goes with don't accumulate. This is especially true as you remain single. What you truly need can probably fit in a good backpack. God may call you in an instant to be out the door and moving for His purposes. Be ready.

8. Don't waste your time. You lose valuable time and opportunity when you spend hours playing video games, watching movies, TV, etc. A little diversion from time to time is good. Obsessing is bad. PS – once you invest in the big TV and/or the gaming system, you're sunk. Don't do it. Don't.

9. Let God lead your love life. Honor God. Honor your prospective wife. Honor her parents. Honor your parents. Don't enter into a relationship without the view to marriage. Don’t enter into a relationship without the prospective spouse sharing your faith, values and direction in life.

10. Live close to your church. Live close to where you work. It's hard to be involved in your church and your community and to invite those from work and the community to church when you are a long distance from either. An ideal distance? You can ride a bicycle to church and to work if you needed (or wanted) too.

11. Stay fit physically. Stay fit mentally. Eat good things in moderation. Exercise. Take down time. Yes you can get in shape pretty quickly now, but in 20 years, it's a battle. And...you may need to ride a bike to church. Watch what you put into your mind or let society put into your mind. In addition to your Bible, read good books. Choose your entertainment wisely; once it gets in your mind, it's impossible to get out.

12. Build relationships. Not on Facebook, not on Twitter. Sit down with people. Get to know, care for and love them. Invest in people – especially those in your church – you are part of that body. Get to know those in your community. Get to know those in your place of work. Jesus had compassion on the masses when He saw them; get out from behind the screens and go see them.

Under the heading of how Christian values interact with technology, I thought I would illustrate how Microsoft is pushing its Windows 10 operating system with some underhanded techniques.

I have come to the conclusion that I do not want Windows 10. I like Windows 7 just fine, and I don't have time to introduce more bugs into my desktop or laptop because I am too busy using them for other productive purposes. I don't need to mess up my work tools with more interface experimentation by Microsoft. So, I have edited the appropriate registry keys to turn off the Windows 10 upgrade; I have removed the KB3035583 update that hawks the update; and I hid that update when it reappeared. Yet Microsoft is still pushing the update.

Here's how they do it. After I did everything above, in Windows update, it shows this update:

Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB3035583)

Despite the fact that earlier I hid that update, it has put a check mark beside it and wants to automatically install it. It classes the update is an "Important" update. Strike one.

Then, it describes the update this way: "Install this update to resolve issues in Windows. For a complete listing of the issues that are included in this update, see the associated Microsoft Knowledge Base article for more information." But if you visit the Knowledge Base article, it says, "This update installs the Get Windows 10 app that helps users understand their Windows 10 upgrade options and device readiness." That doesn't sound like something that "resolves issues in Windows." Maybe it would be correct if it advertised the update as "Install this update to create issues in Windows." This is deceitful "bait and switch" advertising. Strike two.

Then, it adds in the optional update section another update that has to do with Windows 10:

Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2952664)

Strike three.

Basically, I want Microsoft to keep its hands off my computer! It doesn't belong to them. More than that, don't deceive when you publish updates. Just tell what they are up front, and don't try to sneak your way into my system. Deceit is not a good way to operate.

Microsoft's entire experiment starting with Windows 8 trying to integrate desktop with touch and make small and large devices operate just the same has been a failure. Take a cue from Apple and have two operating systems: one for small devices and one for large ones. Distinguish them. And don't ruin a good thing with Windows 7. Or perhaps if you are truly interested in upgrading the "under the hood" stuff, give me the option to have a user experience that I like, say with a Windows 7 desktop on top of a Windows 10 base OS. That should be easy enough to provide.

I can hear some of my zealous friends out there saying, "Hey, just dump Microsoft and get a Mac!" That is a temptation... However, I'm more likely to go all Linux.

If you are interested in learning some Hebrew vocabulary, listen in to these audio recordings. The first lesson contains words that occur 1000 or more times in the Hebrew Bible; each successive lesson covers words by groups in decreasing order of frequency of occurrence.

• Lesson 1: 1000+
• Lesson 2: 500-999
• Lesson 3: 400-500
• Lesson 4: 310-399
• Lesson 5: 270-309
• Lesson 6: 220-269
• Lesson 7: 200-219
• Lesson 8: 175-199
• Lesson 9: 160-174
• Lesson 10: 144-159
• Lesson 11: 134-143
• Lesson 12: 121-133
• Lesson 13: 112-120
• Lesson 14: 112-120

Credit for this list is due to Dr. R. Bruce Compton of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary, but its origin before his time I do not know.

With this post, I am publishing the annual set of Bible reading schedules that I have prepared for the past six (now seven) years.

• Read the New Testament once
• Read the New Testament twice
• Read the New Testament four times
• Read the Old Testament once
• Key chapters for young readers
• Read the book of Acts and New Testament letters in just four and a half months, in chronological order

If you would like another schedule that takes you through the entire Bible in the year, and with some chronological ordering in it, check out this schedule from bibleclassmaterial.com.

From the archive: 8 legal-size pages of typewritten notes on the doctrine of theology proper given at the Grace Bible Institute prior to 1981. The topic was Theology proper, the doctrine of God. It is also available as a Word document that is searchable.

This time from the archive: 10 pages of typewritten notes for a pastors seminar in Bucksport Maine, May 10-12, 1976. The topic was premillennialism, post-tribulationism, and pre-tribulationism. This is also available as a Word document that is searchable.

Tri-Lakes Baptist Church in Brighton is offering a marriage retreat for couples. It is September 11-12, Friday and Saturday. Friday the retreat starts at 6:30pm and Saturday it starts again at 9:00am. The speaker will be Jim Newcomer.

Christians often reflect on what they have been saved FROM. We need to also carefully consider what we have been saved TO. The privileges that we obtain, by God's grace through salvation, are amazing. They surpass some of the blessings that saints of old experienced. Those who don't share what we have ought to be jealous because of what we have! Here are three:

1. Friendship with God

Abraham was called the friend of God (James 2:23). "So the LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend" (Exodus 33:11).

Jesus said, "You are My friends, if you do whatever I command you" (John 15:14).

2. Favored Status before God

To Mary, it was said, "Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!" (Luke 1:28).

Of all believers, the Bible says that God has "predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us highly favored in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:5-6, slightly adapted from NKJV to reflect that the same verb is used here as in Luke 1:28).

3. Access to the King and Privilege to Make Petitions

"We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand" (Romans 5:2). "In Him we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him" (Ephesians 3:12). "And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments (1 John 3:22). "Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him" (1 John 5:14-15).

We don't have the same face-to-face access to God that say Moses had, but later on that will change: "And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads" (Revelation 22:3-4).

There are more such blessings. I hope to add to this list soon.

I have written an outline of the book of Acts. Hopefully it will be a help to you. I like the six major sections, but the symmetry of the headings could be improved so that all six focus on the church instead of #4 focusing on Herod and #6 on Paul. It is a work in progress, but it is getting close!

• Acts Outline

I was glad to see that more DBSJ articles are now available online at the Seminary website. The articles include many from the journal from 1996 through 2013. Subscription information can be found there as well if you are interested in receiving the most recent articles and book reviews. The DBSJ articles are also available at the Galaxie Software site.

I had tracked the journal electronically up through volume 15 using Galaxie Software's Theological Journal Library CD, but lost track of it after TJLCD volume 12. Then the TJL transitioned over to Logos and I have not managed to get up-to-date on the journals in Logos 6 because it is not clear to me how to go from where I am to the updated collection.

A new Bible book outline is available on the Book of Leviticus.

Moses penned words of this book at God's direct instruction. It covers the law of offerings, the induction of Aaron and his sons into priestly ministry, various regulations for the priests and the people, annual feasts, redemption of property and people sold in various circumstances, and a strong chapter covering the blessings for obedience to the Law and the curses for disobedience.

Other Bible book outlines are available here.

From Voice of the Martyrs, I share this:

On Wednesday evenings, we just finished studying a series on faith.

We saw unbelief, little faith, imperfect faith, great faith, repentant faith, and self-confident faith.

We learned some ways to remedy imperfect faith, such as thanking God that He has given us the gift of faith in the first place, even if it is not fully formed in us as it should be. We saw that we can seek God's help. We can cultivate a self-examining faith. We can also follow Biblical examples during our trials and obey Biblical commands that have to do with improving our faith.

We also reminded ourselves that no matter how imperfect our faith may be, regardless of our performance or strength of faith, the object of our faith—God—is perfect and great beyond description. Thanks be to God!

Finally, we looked at the case of Mary and Martha regarding the death of their brother Lazarus, recorded in John 11. They said, "If you had been with us, our brother would not have died." And, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Sometimes we have great faith in the abstract. "If" in the past or "sometime in the future." But what about right now in the present? Do you have faith in the Lord? If someone gets sick, we believe in the abstract the Lord can heal them or give them grace to persevere and die well. But what about when "I" am sick "right now"? Do we trust God then? Let us ask God to grant faith in Him that grows strong and does not falter.

For more, view the full set of notes.

One of those things that's been in the back of my mind for a while to do is to write a Bible reading schedule that takes you chronologically through the book of Acts and epistles of Paul. I added in James just for fun, and produced a 4-month, one-chapter-per-day reading schedule. Try it out sometime and let me know what you think.

• Read Acts and Paul's Epistles in Chronological Order