Epiphany: Joining the Dance

6 January 2026

I love Epiphany. Christmastide is a celebration of the Divine Word becoming flesh, with all that entails. But in those first couple years, only a few people knew, all of them Jews: Mary and Joseph, of course, Elizabeth and Zacharias, Simeon and Anna, some shepherds. That’s pretty much it. At Epiphany, we celebrate the good news going to the Gentiles, to the astrologers, to the world beyond the “known world” of the Roman Empire. 

1400 years before Jesus was born, Balaam (another Gentile prophet) gave a prophetic word: “A star will rise out of Jacob.” In 586 B.C., the people and treasures of Israel, including their scriptures, were carried away to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. There Daniel and the three Hebrew children—vocal devotees of the God of Israel—became leaders among the Magi, a leadership that survived the fall of Babylon and the rise of the Persian empire. About a hundred years after that, a Hebrew girl named Hadassa became Esther, the queen of Persia, once again bringing the Jews to official attention. And nearly 500 years later, a star appeared in the East, bringing the Magi to Bethlehem, and here we are: the Divine Word became flesh. Blasphemy to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks, and sedition to the Romans, but it happened all the same.

The very fact that such a thing is even possible demonstrates the central promise of Christianity: that we human beings, just as we are, can partake of the divine nature, just as it is, without any fudging, equivocation, or dismal compromises. Any and all of the resources of heaven—whatever you might need to face the natural and supernatural challenges of your life—will fit into a human being.

We know this, because it has already happened. And when Jesus proved it possible, He also invited you to join Him in the dance. Want in? Ask, and it will be given to you, like the Man said.

If you’ve enjoyed these reflections on Hebrews over the past 12 days, you might want to hear the Hebrews Overview that concludes my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Twelfth Day of Christmas: Every Beggar’s Hand an Altar

5 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 13

If we really can go into the throne room of heaven, what do we do there? Up until now, the whole book has focused on one activity: ask for help! Writing to people who are tired, worn out, and struggling to endure very trying circumstances, the author focuses on that first. But there’s more. 

Before we get to that, we’re given some very practical reminders about what endurance looks like: brotherly love and hospitality, especially toward strangers and imprisoned brothers, taking good care of your marriage, placing high value on contentment, trusting God to protect us, minding our spiritual leaders. And lastly, don’t get preoccupied with weird arguments about food purity. 

That seems an odd way to finish that section, but it leads right into a discussion of eating from the altar. See, not everything that happened on the altar was a sacrifice for sin; there were also peace offerings that were a meal you ate with God. It was an important part of fellowship with God under the old covenant. As followers of Jesus the superior Priest of a superior covenant, we have superior means of fellowship; those who are still serving the obsolete earthly tabernacle have no right to what we can now do. What is that?

To understand the answer, we go back to the sin offering: the bodies of the sin offering animals were burned outside the camp. Jesus therefore suffered outside the city; we go outside the city to Him, rejected as He was rejected, knowing that we have no continuing city on earth, and seeking the heavenly Jerusalem. Through Jesus—our High Priest who entered God’s sanctuary as our Forerunner—”let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name. But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” There’s no longer a pin on the map locating the spot where heaven meets earth in some particular building. You are the pin on the map. You have the authority to call heaven down, wherever you happen to be standing. How do you do it? Some elaborate ritual? Nope. Every praise and thanksgiving to God is a fellowship offering, and heaven meets you, right where you’re standing, to receive it. Every beggar’s hand is an altar when you share with him in Jesus’ name. Every good deed you do, no matter how slight, is a sacrifice that God receives in His throne room, which meets you wherever you’re doing it. 

This God-given ability—dare I call it a magical power?— does not depend on unique clothing, specially formulated oils and incense, specific furniture or buildings or elaborate rituals of any kind. God doesn’t have any problem with those things; He used them all at one time. But those were the trappings of an earthly city, and we are the ambassadors of a better—a heavenly—city, wielding a more powerful magic. Let’s be about it.

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out the Hebrews 13 episode of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Eleventh Day of Christmas: On Sapphire Pavement

4 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 12

Hebrews 12 starts with a claim that we’re surrounded by the witnesses of Hebrews 11. We tend to think of them as above us in heaven, not all around us. Ever wonder why “surrounded”? That question gets answered, but first there’s some instructions: put aside everything that interferes with your endurance. Look to Jesus to fend off discouragement. Know that present difficulties are like the wind sprints a coach makes you run—it’s training. Accept the training. Pursue peace, look out for each other, watch out for bitterness. 

And then we get the answer: we are surrounded by witnesses because we “have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire [Sinai]…But you have come to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.” Notice: “you have come,” not “will come.” This is not a promise that we’ll be in heaven one day; it’s a claim that we’ve already been there. What could that possibly mean?

This is what Jesus bought us in the Incarnation. God became man; lived as one of us lived and died as the last sacrifice for sin, was raised and ascended to heaven as our Forerunner, where He sits today at God’s right hand in the Holy of Holies of the heavenly tabernacle. Earthbound and embodied as we are, the Incarnate Christ brings us with Him. When we draw near to God seeking help, where are we? 

In the heavenly tabernacle, that’s where. In the throne room of God Himself; we go there whenever we draw near for help. We go there whenever we make our offerings (we’ll get to that tomorrow). When we do these things—even something as simple as calling out to God for help with a screaming toddler—the roof opens up, the walls evaporate, and we are standing in front of God’s throne, surrounded by the entire company of heaven, the angels, and all the saints who have gone before us. That’s where we really are. If we can’t see it, well, we walk by faith, not by sight. 

This is what the Incarnation bought us: you, in this body, embedded in this life, can stand on the sapphire pavement before God Himself in heaven—boldly, let us not forget—and ask for help. And you can expect to get it, because your High Priest is sympathetic. So ask.

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out the Hebrews 12 episode of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Tenth Day of Christmas: Still No More Sacrifice!

3 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 10:19-11:40

Since there is no more sacrifice for sin, since Jesus put paid to all of that forever, what’s stopping us from going into the Holy of Holies, the very presence of God? Nothing, that’s what! So now we draw near boldly, trusting His faithfulness to His promise. Part of that life is making a point to be with God’s people so that we can encourage one another. 

At the time and place this was written (Jerusalem, c. A.D. 60), that was bold advice. The Hebrew church was greatly persecuted, and publicly associating with Christians would bring the persecution down on your head, too. It would have been much easier to go back to the Temple service, and forget about the whole Jesus thing. After all, God built the Temple, too, right? We can just serve God by offering sacrifices there, and life will be so much easier. 

Nope. There’s no more sacrifice for sin, remember? Jesus finished it. If you turn your back on Jesus to go back to that, (1) the sacrifices don’t help, because that magic doesn’t work anymore, and (2) you face God’s judgment for rejecting His Son. Again, remember the time and place: Jesus promised the destruction of the Temple before that generation was over. Clock’s ticking. Now anybody who’d just ignored Moses’ Law on a serious matter would be stoned to death—not the most humane way to go, maybe, but pretty quick. If you knowingly, willfully disregarded this warning and went back to the Temple, then you got caught up in the Jewish revolt of A.D. 68. The Christians fled the city; they knew the revolt was doomed. The Temple believers stayed to fight—a slow death by starvation in the siege at best, and a crucifixion when the city fell at worst. Titus lined the roads in Judaea with crosses: days of constant torture eventually ending in death by thirst or asphyxia, whichever came first. 

How terrible would it be to have endured decades of persecution as a Christian only to give up at the last minute just in time to catch that judgment? So the writer urges them to keep trusting God and remain faithful, and sets before them a series of examples. Some of them trusted God and triumphed in this life; others trusted God and “wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, benign destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy.” What they all have in common is that God is allowing them to wait to receive His final consolation, because He is giving us a chance to join them. So follow the Man Jesus, who lived His life trusting God. 

If you’d like to hear more about this passage, check out my Hebrews podcast episodes on The Fourth Warning Passage and The Hall of Faith with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Ninth Day of Christmas: Sit Down; There’s No More Sacrifice

2 January 2026

Reading: Hebrews 9:1-10:18

As we saw yesterday, the second half of Hebrews’ main point (8:1-2) is that Jesus ministers in the heavenly tabernacle, the reality that Moses copied in Israel’s tabernacle. Even the earthly copy had a whole set of furniture and services, Hebrews says, but “of these things we cannot now speak in detail.” (That’s an invitation if there ever was one! If you want to read more, the description starts in Exodus 25. Notice that among all that furniture, there’s nowhere to sit. The work is never done!)

Once the furnishings were consecrated, then the sacrifices began in earnest. There’s a whole litany of services, pre-eminent among them the annual Day of Atonement sacrifice. No one ever entered the Holiest Place in the tabernacle, except on this day, when the High Priest would go in to present the blood of the sacrifice and cover the nation’s sins for the year. In that very service, the Holy Spirit showed the planned obsolescence of the Levitical order: the sins were only covered (not taken away) and only for a year. Next year, you had to do it all again…. 

…until Christ—”pleased as Man with men to dwell”—came into the heavenly tabernacle. He too bore the blood of a sacrifice, not of bulls and goats, but of a sinless man. Administering a superior priesthood in a better sanctuary, He offered the final sacrifice: His own innocent blood. The innocent man died for guilty mankind’s sin, and that’s the end of the matter. The stain is gone, the debt settled. And then Jesus sat down at God’s right hand, until His enemies are made His footstool (Psalm 110 again!). Remember how I said there’s nowhere to sit in the tabernacle? That’s not quite true. There is the Mercy Seat—the top of the Ark of the Covenant, between the cherubim, where God Himself sits. “Come and sit at My right hand” indeed! 

Jesus sits, as no priest did before him, because He fully and finally settled the matter. Fulfilling Jeremiah’s New Covenant promise, God says, “Their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more.” When that happens, when Jesus puts paid to all the sin forever, there is no more sacrifice for sin. There’s nothing you must do—or can do—to expiate your sins and failings. It’s all been done. It’s over. That’s the best possible news.

If you’d like to hear more about this section of Hebrews, check out Episode Ten and Episode Eleven of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Sixth Day of Christmas: Anchored Souls

30 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 6

Hebrews is written to encourage people not to give up, and we all need that from time to time, don’t we? For the original readers in their time and place, giving up meant conceding that the respectable people were right to murder Jesus. High stakes, right? “If you’re gonna do that,” the author says, “then nothing I say is going to make you repent, so I’m just gonna move on to talking about other things.” He’s right; after they’ve experienced all the goodness that God gives in Jesus, if they’re gonna go back to “Give us Barabbas!”—what do you say to somebody like that? But they’ve come so far already; he’s confident of better things from them.  

These people don’t lack experience of God. The same way they are seeking to be partakers with Jesus, they are already partakers of the Holy Spirit; the same way Jesus “tasted death” for them, they have “tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.” They have what they need; they just need to be diligent. Keep encouraging each other daily. Keep going to Jesus for help. All it takes is faith and patience—the same faith and patience Jesus showed, and helps us show—to inherit the promises. 

What promises? It doesn’t really say yet, but we’ve had some sneak peeks. Jesus has anointed companions; He unashamedly calls us brothers; He partook in all our weakness and temptation, won the victory, and has ascended to God’s right hand as our High Priest. Where do you reckon His companions end up? 

God promised Jesus this priesthood, and confirmed it with an oath (see Psalm 110, and we’ll come back to that). In every storm, we can anchor our souls to that promise: Jesus enters behind the veil into the very throne room of God, and He enters as our Forerunner…which means we are coming along with Him. Because He became one of us and attained to the very presence of God, we—His little brothers and sisters, the children God has given Him—now have access to the very presence of God. How’s that work? Stay tuned.

If you’d like to hear more detail about this passage, see Episode Seven and Episode Eight of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Fifth Day of Christmas: Every Second Counts

29 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 4:14-5:14

As we saw yesterday, holding fast to our confidence in God is not a solo effort; we need to be exchanging daily encouragement with our brothers and sisters. But that’s not the only place we should be seeking help; we also have Jesus Himself as our High Priest. Like any other High Priest, He was appointed by God from among the people. He has compassion on us who are “ignorant and going astray” because He was one of us. He was tempted in every direction just as we are, with one crucial difference: He didn’t ever give in.

Because He was one of us, God could appoint Jesus as our “priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (more about him later). Following the duties of that office Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears” to the Father – think Garden of Gethsemane, here. The Father heard Him, and was able to save Him from death. But He didn’t, and because He didn’t, Jesus “became the author of eternal salvation to those who obey Him.”

I’ve often heard this passage preached in a completely unsympathetic way: “Jesus endured every temptation without sin—what’s wrong with you, ya wimp?!!!” But that’s not how Hebrews presents it. Hebrews acknowledges our weaknesses, assures us that Jesus sympathizes, and orders us to “come boldly to the throne of grace” to get the help we need. You know what “come boldly” looks like? It’s how you go into the E.R. with chest pains or an arterial bleed. You don’t wait demurely in line; you stagger right up to the desk, interrupt everything, and loudly announce your problem, because every second counts. That’s how you come to Jesus. He knows that every second counts, and He stands ready to help. 

If you’d like to hear more on this passage, check out my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Fourth Day of Christmas: Encourage Each Other’s Hearts

28 December 2025

Reading: Hebrews 3:1-4:13

Hebrews 3 begins with a direct address: it’s speaking to “holy brethren,” to “partakers of the heavenly calling.” Because we belong to Jesus, He is not ashamed to call us His brothers and sisters. He has made us holy, because He was faithful to His calling, as Moses was faithful in his time. If Christ Himself has faithfully made you holy, you’re stuck in the people of God. The question now is whether you will be faithful with what He has given you—and the danger of failure here is very real. After all, the people who followed Moses didn’t turn into not-Israel when they failed…but they did fail, and they all died in the wilderness because they didn’t trust God. 

If we were retelling their story, we would point to the rebellion at Kadesh Barnea, when God told them to go up into the promised land and they refused, as the climax of the story. Hebrews locates the failure much earlier, at Massah, where that generation complained against God and went “astray in their hearts.” And so Hebrews challenges us to attend to our hearts, and that’s not a job anybody should tackle without help. 

Hard-heartedness doesn’t have to happen intentionally; it sneaks up on you. And so we should be diligent together, “encouraging one another daily.” To be a “partaker with Christ,” one of His companions who fully exhibit His victory in this life—to succeed where the Exodus generation failed, in other words—we need to remain confident to the very end. That confidence is more fragile than we like to think. So let’s not allow a day to go by where we don’t encourage each other, and Christmastide is a great time for it. The Son was faithful, so that we could partake in the divine nature. Remind someone of that today! We all need it.

For a longer discussion of this passage, see Episode 4 and Episode 5 of my podcast with Chris Morrison at Gulfside Ministries.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Preach the Word!

26 August 2025

Do we preach in church? No.

But isn’t that what Paul tells Timothy to do? “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season….” No. The word translated “preach” there is kerusso. It means public announcement, not private commentary to an in-group. (Check the lexicon; do the word study in Scripture; expand the word study to the secular literature – all the evidence points the same way, as I’ve argued elsewhere.) It’s not something you do with an in-group in a home; it’s something you do in the marketplace at the top of your lungs for anybody in earshot. That’s just what the word means throughout the literature (notwithstanding our English misappropriation of it).

2 Timothy 4:2 is not an exception to the general usage of kerusso. Absent a compelling contextual reason to read the Sunday meeting into the passage — and it isn’t there — Timothy would have heard the word in its ordinary sense. The only reason we don’t hear it that way is because we’re imposing our usage of “preach” on the passage. Public proclamation was a mainstay of Paul’s ministry, and it’s not exactly a surprise that he charges Timothy to carry on this aspect of his work. The inclusio with “do the work of an evangelist” in v. 5 clinches it, if we needed additional evidence of its public-facing meaning.

Should we thunder the Word from the pulpit? Absolutely. Arguably, that falls under the biblical headings of teaching and prophecy, but in any case there’s not much exegetical case for calling it “preaching.”

But let’s look more closely at the context here. In chapter 1, Paul addresses Timothy’s qualifications and his inner life/personal prerequisites for ministry. He continues that theme in 2:1-13, challenging Timothy to endure hardship for the sake of God’s chosen people. 2:14 forward specifically addresses the way Timothy should minister to those people within the church community, and then (3:1ff) begins to address the hazardous people Timothy will face in that endeavor. Beginning in 3:10, Paul returns his focus to Timothy, contrasting him to the people in 3:1-9 and challenging him to continue in what he’s been taught, knowing that the God-breathed Scriptures themselves will fully equip him.

4:1 begins Paul’s final charge to Timothy, and here he begins with a command that specifically means public announcement and concludes in v.5 with “do the work of an evangelist.” As with his instructions for Timothy’s conduct within the church in 2:14-3:17, Paul leads off with the command (2:14//4:1-2), follows with a warning that it’s likely to be ill-received (3:1-9//4:3-4), and returns to Timothy with “But you…” (3:10ff//4:5). He follows the same pattern of instruction as when he was talking about Timothy’s ministry within the church, but this time, he’s talking about how Timothy faces the world.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

A Fuller Fulfillment

11 February 2025

When we talk about “fulfilled prophecy,” what we usually mean is a straightforward prediction along the lines of Micah 5:2, which says that Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Matthew shows how the prophecy was fulfilled. But that’s not the only thing that “fulfilled” can mean.

“Fulfill” has a fuller sense (if you’ll pardon the expression) than just the Micah 5:2 predictive prophecy meaning. In the Hosea 11//Matthew 2 usage, the original sense in Hosea is critical to Matthew’s meaning. Knowing that Israel is God’s son is necessary to understanding the points that Matthew is making: first, that Jesus is Israel (in exactly what sense is a question Matthew will spend the whole book exploring), and second, that the land of Israel has become spiritual Egypt.

Don’t miss that latter point. Matthew invokes “out of Egypt I called My Son” not when Jesus leaves literal Egypt, but when Jesus flees Judea. Judea is the “Egypt” Jesus is fleeing, and Herod is the baby-boy-slaughtering “Pharaoh.” John the Baptist will later reinforce this same point by calling repentant Israelites to come out into the desert to pass through water, a new Exodus forming a new people of God (Jesus joins the new people of God “to fulfill all righteousness”). John the evangelist will much later make the point explicit in Revelation 11:8.

We don’t want to read something into the text that isn’t there, but neither do we want to miss something that is there—and the NT shows us repeatedly that there’s a LOT more there than one might think at first glance. From Jesus Himself proving the resurrection by exegeting a verb tense in Genesis (Matt. 22:32) to the fulfillments of the first few chapters of Matthew to the dizzying displays of Hebrews, the NT shows us a way of reading the OT that we perhaps wouldn’t have come up with on our own, but that’s ok. God is revealing it to us in the way He handles His own revelation.

In conservative circles, we have gotten our hermeneutics from the Book of Nature (mostly as read by E. D. Hirsch), which is very useful as far as it goes. But if that’s all we have, then our hermeneutic will force us to condemn the Holy Spirit’s exegesis of His own work. There has to be something wrong with that picture. What is it? Easy: the Book of Nature isn’t all we have. The Book of Scripture also has something to teach us about how to read.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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