When we read through the Gospels, sometimes we can become confused about some of the things Jesus said. Usually, it’s confusion because we’re missing the cultural context. That’s what we’ll take a look at on Foundations.

The Feast of First Fruits is also separate to the Feast of Passover, but occurs so close to it, that it’s become part of the Passover week celebrations. We’ll learn about this feast, what it represents and how Jesus fulfils all of it.

While the Bible lists the Feast of Unleavened Bread separately from Passover, it occurs as soon as Passover finishes and today, Jews simply consider this feast as part of the Passover week of celebrations. We’ll learn how this particular feast of the Lord also presents Jesus as its fulfilment.

In the program today, we’ll continue to unpack the celebration of the Passover meal. We’ll learn about the third and fourth cups in the celebration and how the meal is concluded.

There are a number of symbolic elements in the Passover meal, and in our program today we’ll learn about The First Cup, the hand washing ceremony and the Maror, the inclusion of the green vegetable that’s so important for this meal.

In our program today as we continue learning about Passover, we’ll learn about some of the particular elements of the meal as Jews celebrate Passover today. We’ll learn about leaven and the lighting of the Passover candles.

In our program today we’ll continue learning about the Feast of Passover, and get some history as to why this feast became so important and significant to God’s people.

The Feast of Passover is the first of the seven mandatory feasts of the Lord that God commanded His people Israel to observe every year. We’ll be learning about this feast over the coming days to learn what the feast entailed and how Jesus our Messiah fulfils every element of the Passover meal.

We know that the Jewish people are known as the Hebrews, but what is a Hebrew? What does that word even mean? That’s what we’ll be looking at today on Foundations.

We???re going to continue our conversation about orphans, and what it meant to be an orphan adopted into a Roman family during the days of the Roman Empire, and what that means for us as believers today.

Paul described those of us who don’t know Christ, especially Gentile’s, as orphans, and that when we come to faith in Christ, we’re adopted in the family of God and therefore, are no longer orphans. What did that mean in the ancient Roman Empire world? That’s what we’ll take a look at on Foundations.

Making vows is serious business as far as the Bible is concerned. Making vows to people is serious and making vows to God is even more serious and we’re going to continue that conversation on Foundations.

There are many ancient Middle Eastern traditions that we don’t know about or understand, and one of them is the tradition of corban???making vows. That’s what we’ll take a look at on Foundations.

Last time we looked at the curious description the Bible has of human beings being like sheep. We also have a God who is described as being our Shepherd. We’ll continue that conversation on Foundations.

Nobody wants to be described as an animal, however, the Bible describes human beings as being like sheep, and with good reason. We tend to behave just like them in so many ways. We also know that sheep desperately need a shepherd to look after them. We have a God who is called the Good Shepherd and that’s what we’ll be learning about on Foundations.

We’re going to continue our conversation on knowing who our King is, and also on how we should approach our King.

There???s quite a bit of confusion about not only knowing who our King is, but how we???re supposed to approach our King. Because the Bible says we can come boldly to the throne of God, does that mean we can come flippantly, or casually? These are questions we???ll be tackling on Foundations.

We???re going to conclude our conversation about the meaning of the name Christ, and why it???s so significant.

On Foundations we’re going to look at the meaning of the name ’Christ’. Too many people, Christ is Jesus’ surname, and nothing could be further from the truth. In Jewish culture, names have meaning and the name Christ, or the Hebrew equivalent, is really significant.

Our Undefinable God - Part 2

Our Undefinable God - Part 1

We’ll be continuing our conversation today about the return of Christ and when this momentous event might take place.

One of the greatest doctrines of the Christian faith is the return of Christ, His second coming. Many have tried to predict when His coming will be, and just as many have failed in their predictions. The Bible says that no one knows the hour or the day, but can we know approximately when He’s coming back? That’s our conversation today on Foundations.

Terrorism came solidly into the west with the attack on 9/11. Terrorism was very prevalent in the ancient world and many critics of the Bible have condemned God as being something of a terrorist. But we’ve been learning about what God’s Word actually says and that’s what our focus is today on Foundations.

Unfortunately, terrorism has become far too much a part of our lives in recent years, for the most part, something we’ve been unused to. But terrorism has been around for millennia and we’ll be looking into the Torah to see what God has to say about it.

While the feast of Purim isn’t a mandatory Feast of the Lord, it’s a very important feast in the Jewish calendar. We’ve been learning about the how’s and why’s, and we’ll continue learning about this feast, but particularly from a Messianic Jewish perspective.

In our program today, we’ll continue the story of Queen Esther of Persia, whose uncle Mordecai became the focus of irrational hatred by evil Haman, who plotted to wipe out entirely, every Jew living in the kingdom of Persia.

The annual holiday of Purim is a celebration and remembrance of another time in Israel’s history when a plot was formed against them to exterminate them. In today’s program we’ll go back in time to ancient Persia, and a young Jewish girl who became queen and who would save her people. Her name was Esther.

Some people read the New Covenant and conclude that Jesus just loved everyone to bits. Others read the Bible and conclude He was incredibly judgmental and harsh. Which of these views is correct? We’ll be looking today on Foundations about whether Jesus was loving or a severe judge.

On Foundations today we’ll wrap up our look at the western industrialised worldview that has wrongly viewed and interpreted the Bible from that vantage point.

We’ve heard the term, ’Clash of Cultures’ many times, and in truth, this clash of cultures can make it very hard for Christians in the west to understand the Bible, which is from the east?the Middle East to be exact and to the Middle Eastern mind, that makes the west a bit weird.

Jewish history and culture is confusing to most in the west, and that’s primarily because an eastern mindset is foreign to us. It’s weird, but in our program today we’ll be looking at a different definition of weird and it’s based on western ideology.

For many Christians, reading the Old Covenant rules and regulations is very confusing, and often times seems like foolishness. Everything however was for good reason, and today we’ll be looking at the prohibition of mixing wool with linen.

An ancient Jewish practice of rabbis was to look for commonalities or connections between passages when a word or phrase was repeated. In this way, they’d be able to connect those words or events, and deepen the meaning and richness of God’s Word, revealing multi-levels of understanding. This process is termed ’stringing pearls’ and that’s what we’ll be looking at on Foundations.

In today’s program, we’ll spend some time in Isaiah 53, a chapter that describes great suffering and sorrow by the person we know as Messiah. Why did He suffer and who did He suffer for?and who was He? That’s what we’ll try to determine today on Foundations.

We finish our time together on Foundations learning about the tassels worn by Jewish men. The symbolism is rich and significant, but now we learn what it means for us who believe in Jesus. Are they for us or not?

On Foundations today we’re continuing our look at the wearing of tassels on the garments of all Jewish men, and in particular the symbolism of authority associated with the hem of a man’s garment. A garment that even Jesus wore.

There are a lot of laws in the Old Covenant that seems strange to the modern, western mind, one of those laws is the requiring of Jewish men to wear tassels on the corners of the garments. In fact, religious Jews wear them to this day. What do they mean? That’s what we’ll begin learning about today on Foundations.

Today Foundations looks at how Jesus used an unclean item in one of His parables, an unclean item He declared priceless.

God often declared certain things to be unclean, and yet, a simple sprinkling of blood or the ashes of a sacrifice could transform the unclean thing into something clean and acceptable. How can that be? That’s the focus on Foundations.

The Apostle Paul taught us to pray without ceasing, a difficult and high calling to be sure. While we might look negatively upon Jewish traditions, they have developed the habit of praying to God in all situations throughout their day, no matter how mundane. It’s a curious thought, but something we can learn from.

Not all customs and traditions are bad, and some of the customs and traditions within Jewish prayer are lovely, rich and full of meaning. That’s what we’ll begin learning about today on Foundations.

Our program today looks at some of the characters God used to achieve His purposes, wondering how on earth He could not only use, but actually choose some of these people who did some really dreadful things. How could God choose such people to be His representatives to the world?

We’re learning about judging on a personal basis, ’measure for measure’, and today we’ll be looking at the situation of Job and his friends and how they misapplied this kind of judging when they observed all the loss and hardships that Job had experienced.

There are different kinds of judging mentioned in the Bible, in Foundations we’re going to look at the issue of judging others, but on a more personal level, at least what this kind of judging should look like.

Women’s Lib has done some good for women, but it’s also done a lot of damage. We’ve been looking at how the Bible views women, specifically Ruth and Rahab, and in this program we’ll be spending more time in the New Covenant to see how the early church and Paul’s letters considered women.

In many cultures throughout history, women have fought for their place and not always successfully. In Foundations we’re going to look at how the Bible viewed women, in particular we’re going to look at the lives of two women, Ruth and Rahab.

Today on Foundations, we’re going to look a Hebrew words and the incredible wisdom and depth that are found in them.

The Western mind often struggles to rightly understand what the Bible is communicating because we don’t understand the cultural nuances of the ancient people it was writing about and to. This often means we impose modern Western culture into an ancient Middle Eastern context and it can really mess up our conclusions. This is the conversation we’re continuing on Foundations today.

One of the biggest challenges for the church in the West, is grasping so much of the Middle Eastern ethnic understanding of the Bible and the cultures in which it was written. That’s what we’ll begin looking at in Foundations today.