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Showing posts from July, 2019

JEWELRY AS A BLESSING

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I was amazed to find that jewelry is a good thing—a beautiful blessing given by God. The holy, saintly women of the Bible enjoyed it. Christian women can enjoy it today. Here is a summary of a few representative texts that show what the Bible really says about beauty and adornment. Abraham sent jewelery to Rebekah : Genesis 24:47-48 47 Then I asked her, ‘Whose daughter are you?’ She said, ‘The daughter of Bethuel, Nahor’s son, whom Milcah bore to him.’ So I put the ring on her nose and the bracelets on her arms. 48 Then I bowed my head and worshiped the LORD and blessed the LORD, the God of my master Abraham, who had led me by the right way to take the daughter of my master’s kinsman for his son. Joseph wore jewelry: God blessed Joseph greatly because of his faithfulness.  In this passage below, we find Joseph accepting jewelry as a gift from Pharaoh.  If God forbade jewelry, it would seem to follow that Joseph would have rejected this gift because Joseph was faithf...

BREAKING DOWN OUR PREJUDICES

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Peter was staying at Joppa on the Mediterranean coast. It was the city where the prophet Jonah had fled to board a ship to Tarshish. He was trying to run from the Lord’s command to go and preach at Ninevah, the capital city of Israel’s arch-enemy, Assyria. About 30 miles north of Joppa and some 65 miles northwest of Jerusalem, was the Roman provincial capital, Caesarea, where the governor lived. Under his authority were some 3,000 troops, including the Italian cohort. Serving with this unit was Cornelius, a centurion who commanded 100 soldiers. The Jews despised the Roman occupation of Palestine; they hoped that Messiah would come and deliver them from the Roman oppression. And so the stage is set: you have a Gentile Roman soldier, representing the despised occupation of Israel, residing in the main city of the Roman occupation. Thirty miles south you have a Jewish apostle, temporarily residing at the spot where Jonah had taken off in disobedience to his commission to preach to I...