Tommy Mann

  The birth of Jesus is a story of paradox, where the incarnation demonstrates the humiliation of the greatest person in history. This is where Jesus “humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8).”  The God from eternity past was born. In that moment Immanuel became an infant. The Creator was crying. The Savior was swaddled. The Messiah was in a manger. The Healer was helpless. The Divine was dependent.  The God from eternity past was born. The Omnipotent One who spoke the universe into existence would not say His first word for another year. He would nurse from the breast of a woman He made. Pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus our Emanuel.    Jesus was exactly what the world needed. If the world needed a soldier, God would have sent a five-star general.  If the world needed a monarch, God would have sent a dynastic king. If the world needed a fighter, God would have sent a heavyweight champion.  If...

In the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel we are introduced to three important people. They each have a great story, but their names tell an even better story. The three people are John the Baptist, and his parents Zechariah and Elizabeth. All three of their names appear together in one verse: “But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John (v.13).”     Zechariah (or Zacharias in some translations) means “Yahweh has remembered;” Elizabeth means “God has promised;” John, or Yochanan in their language, means “Yahweh is gracious.”    Their names tell a great story because they come on the scene at the end of the Silent Era, the 400 year span where God did not speak through angels or prophets. The last time an angel was sent with a message from God was to a minor prophet named Zechariah, and now, 500 years later, God sent Gabriel to speak to another Zechari...

  In Luke 15 Jesus gave three parables that had essentially the same meaning. They are the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (commonly called the prodigal son). In those parables someone lost something of value, and the parable shows the joy of the person finding what was lost.   In the first parable one sheep wandered off, and the shepherd left his 99 other sheep to find the one. In the second parable a lady lost one of the ten coins that made up her dowry. In the third parable a father watched as one of his two sons left home for a far country.    Think about those percentages. The father lost fifty percent of his sons, and he was broken. The housewife lost ten percent of her coins, and she turned the house upside down. The shepherd lost just one percent of his sheep, and he risked his life to find it. He could have said, “Oh well; I’ve got 99 more. What’s one lamb?”    That is not the attitude of the shepherd; neither was it that...

  In Exodus 32 we read the familiar story of Aaron making a golden calf for the people to worship because Moses was taking too long receiving the Ten Commandments. Do you remember what he used to make the golden calf? He asked for the earrings to be donated to the cause, so these Israelites essentially worshipped the very jewelry they were wearing just the day before.       In verses 3-4 we read: “So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf.”   I think it is ridiculous that they worshipped a golden calf, but I wonder what the calf thought of the whole thing.    “Take off your jewelry,” Aaron said, “And bring me all you have.” He took all the peoples’ earrings  And made a golden calf.   I wonder what that calf would think —hypothetically,  As it watched the people that day Bowing down on ...

  Have you ever wondered what the big deal with sin is? As Christians we often speak about God’s amazing grace and His willingness to forgive sins. If all we have to do is confess our sins and He forgives us, what’s the big deal?     That is similar to the question Paul posed to the Romans: “Should we go on sinning so that grace may abound?” But he answered it this way: “By no means! How can we who have died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1)   We need to understand that sin is a big deal because the consequences of sin are a big deal. I think Cornelius Plantinga was on to something when he theorized that the essence of sin is the disruption of shalom. You might know that word as the Hebrew word for peace, or as a typical Jewish greeting. Just as we say “Good morning” and “Good evening,” Jews greet each other with “Shalom.”   It means so much more than peace. Plantinga defined it as a “universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight.” Wishing someone shalom is...

  Do you remember how much fun it was to play hide and seek when we were kids? It was especially great when I knew I had the best hiding place. There were times I was completely hidden from my friends, and I could hear them asking, “Where is he?” Those were the words that let me know I was going to win. Now that I am grown I don’t play much hide and seek. Adults don’t typically look for hiding places, although sometimes we might wish we could hide away. But there is a hiding place we all need. Psalm 119:114 says, “You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word.”   This psalm is similar to one of David, which contains the line, “For He will hide me in His shelter in the day of trouble; He will conceal me under the cover of His tent (27:5).”   Why would this writer need a hiding place? He was neither a child nor playing with his children. He needed a hiding place because of the people who bookend this verse. Psalm 119:113 mentions the doubleminded, and v.115 spe...

There is a great example of the provisions of God in Exodus 15. Shortly after the Hebrews crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, they began to complain because their canteens were empty and the people were parched. Their mouths were as dry as the desert they were traversing. And then they saw it—a river of water that could quench their thirst.   But there was a problem. They couldn’t stomach the water because it had a bitter taste. Verse 23 says, “When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah.”   Marah is the Hebrew word for bitter. This place was probably not named Marah at the time, but was so dubbed by the disappointed Hebrews. They started to turn on Moses, blaming him for all their problems. But the Lord directed Moses to a certain log and told him to cast it into the water. Once he did, Marah lost its bitterness, and the people were able to drink until they were satisfied.    That was a temporar...

I recently heard a story about a lost high school ring. A man was using a metal detector in Barbados when he stumbled upon a piece of jewelry that he could tell had been there for a while. The ring was old, and the odds of ever tracking down its owner were miniscule, so most people would have headed to the nearest pawn shop to make a few bucks. But not this man.   Because the ring had the name of the school and the graduation year, he looked up the school and reached out to them. They were able to comb through their records and eventually conclude who it once belonged to.     It turns out the ring had been missing for fifty years. And the owner? They found him and mailed the ring, which arrived the day before his 83 rd  birthday. When I heard that story on the news it occurred to me that if he lost the ring fifty years earlier, and he was 83, then he was about 33 when he lost it.    You know who wears a high school ring in their 30’s? People who really...

This time of year people have a desire to be scared. They will dress up in scary costumes, go to haunted houses, and watch movies that keep them on the edge of their seat. While I have never had much of an appetite for such things, many enjoyed being afraid.       The Bible tells us a little fear can be a good thing.  The author of Hebrews wrote in 4:1, “Therefore, while the promise of entering His rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.”   The rest he spoke of referred to their ancestors resting in the Promised Land. Unfortunately for that first generation, they failed to enter that rest when they turned on God (and Moses); when they weren’t complaining, they were doubting. They finally decided they didn’t want to go into the Promised Land because they didn’t believe God would give them victory.    They failed to enter their rest, but the author warned of missing another, and better, kind of rest—ete...

  On the night of the Tenth Plague in Egypt God told Moses He was going to pass through the land and strike down all the firstborn, but He would spare each household where the blood of a spotless lamb was applied to the outside of the door.   Exodus 12:23 says, “For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when He sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.”   God was clear. He was going to pass through, but for some He would pass over.    That is not just an old story, but serves as a model of what is going to happen in the future. God has promised to return, and when the Lord comes again He will come in judgment. John the Baptist said His winnowing fork will be in His hand (Luke 3:17). Jesus said He would separate the wheat from the chaff (Matthew 13:24-30); in another passage He said He would divide the sheep from the goats (Matthew ...

Many Christians say they don’t pray or read their Bible because they don’t have the time. Maybe there is something else they know they should do—like volunteering—that they can’t find the time for.    Wouldn’t it be great if we could find more time? Time isn’t a needle hiding in a haystack though; it is staring us right in the face every time we look at a clock. Like most people, I wish there were more hours in a day, but we have to learn to work with the 24 hours we have been given.   In the 1979 book  The Mighty Micro,  a prediction was made that by the year 2000, people would enjoy a 20-hour work week, and retire by age 50. Thanks to advances in technology there just wouldn’t be that much actual work to do. We are almost a quarter of a century past the year 2000, and people seem busier than ever.    There are so many things vying for our time, fighting to get their hands on some of our 24 hours, that if we do not prioritize, we will find our time ha...

  The devil is no fan of God’s Word, and he doesn’t want you to be one either. I believe he knows Scripture. He has been around for a long time, and he has probably read it from cover to cover. There is no way he is ignorant of the Bible. I believe he knows what it says, and he hates it.     He also knows that the more you read it and understand it, the better off you will be. Since the devil hates God yet can’t beat Him, he wants to hurt God by leading people to reject God. He does that by attacking the Bible.    Think about it: he was the first to question the Bible when he said to Eve, “Did God  really  say…?” (Genesis 3:1) He was the first to deny the Bible when he told her, “You will not surely die.” (Genesis 3:4)  And he was the first to take the Bible out of context when he told Jesus, “Throw yourself down, for He will command His angels concerning you, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”...

People need to communicate. Whether verbally or nonverbally, humans are in constant communication with one another, so if we are bad at it, we can ruin relationships. Some people are poor communicators for a variety of reasons, but if that is you, fear not. Dr. Gary Collins, in his book   Christian Counseling,   wrote, “Communication is a learned interaction. That which is not good can be made better.”     I want to share a few quick communication killers, things we might do that turn people off and hurt our relationship. Dishonesty is a big one. Colossians 3:9 says, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices.” The unsaved person may lie, but those of us who are in Christ should not.    Interrupting someone who is talking is another communication killer. Interruption says, “What I want to say is more important than what you are saying. In fact, I’m more important than you.” Respect someone enough to listen inten...

  Angels are mentioned throughout Scripture, and they are described in a variety of ways. Some are mentioned by name (Michael and Gabriel), and some are referred to in groups (living creatures, sons of God). But there are two specific types of angels mentioned in the Bible, cherubim and seraphim.     Cherubim are found far more frequently. In fact, the word seraphim is only found once. Isaiah 6:1-3 contains this vision from the prophet:   In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”    “Seraphim” in Hebrew means “burning (or fiery) ones.” Many people have taken this to mean the angels themselves have a burning or glowing...

Jesus famously told His disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).” Jesus demonstrated that His disciples were truly His friends when He laid down His life for them by going to the cross.       Last week I wrote about friendship with Jesus, looking at the Lord’s words in John 15:14. But what is a friend? How do we define it? The dictionary explains a friend as being “a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard,” but I would rather focus on the original language.   The Greek word that is translated as friend is  philos.  You may well have heard a sermon about the different kinds of love in the New Testament, where the pastor calls us to  agape  love, that self-sacrificing love that is a decision, not a feeling. One of the other Greek words for love is  phileo,  which comes from the same word translated here as friend.    This describes ...

Author Elbert Hubbard once said, “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” That is something we appreciate about our true friends, but there is no one that knows all about us more than Jesus. We would not expect Jesus to want to be our friend considering all He knows about us, right?     That’s part of what makes this verse so amazing. In John 15:14 Jesus said these words to His disciples: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”   You are my friends. The God of the universe spoke those words to mortal men. The Omniscient One saw every sinful act and deed of these men, and still called them friend. By extension, this promise of friendship applies to all of us today who are disciples of Christ.    This is the opposite of what we would expect, but God loves the world so much that He sent His only Son into the world to bring salvation, and also to offer friendship.    Sadly, many people reject this offer of friendship wi...

  A few months after Bob broke off his engagement to Sally, he received this letter from her out of the blue:   My dearest Bob. I have not been myself since you called off the wedding. I miss you terribly. I have been unable to sleep, I have no appetite, and no desire to do anything at all. I cannot control my emotions. Each day a million little reminders of you cause me to burst into tears and cry uncontrollably. If you would only take me back, I will be the happiest girl in the world. Please know that I love you so!    P.s. Congratulations on winning the 107 million dollar Powerball.     Sally might not have had the purest motive for wanting to reconcile with Bob, but that should be the goal of any believers who are in conflict. In Matthew 5:23-24 Jesus said, “So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother,...

Let’s be honest: the idea of a devil can seem childish, like believing in the tooth fairy. Is there actually a devil, or is that just an invention of religious people to explain away things they don’t like? In Rob Bell’s book   What is the Bible?  He makes the case that the Jews developed the concept of a devil while they were exiled in Babylon—quite late in their history—as a way of coping with a God that would allow bad things to happen.     They blamed the devil to let God off the hook.    Pointing out that the first mention of Satan is in 1 Chronicles 21, written after the exile, Bell states: “The idea of Satan didn't emerge until the exile, until the Hebrews had experienced extraordinary evil and oppression and had found themselves in a foreign land miles from home in the midst of great alienation and suffering…You can see how the idea of an opposing, evil, destructive, force/spirit/god/goddess emerged as people became more sophisticated in their think...

  Do we know that we are saved now, or do we only hope we are? I frequently hear people say they hope they will go to heaven one day, but I know I am going.     But some like to point out that the New Testament uses the word hope in association with our salvation; Titus 3:7, for example, speaks of “the hope of eternal life.” It is important that we understand what hope means.   When believers speak of hope we are not using it as a verb (“I sure hope so!”). We are using it as a noun. Hope is not something we do, it is something we have. Hope is an intangible object we possess in our spirit, something in the future that we are so sure of now that it is thought of as a done deal.   Charles Spurgeon once said, “Unbelief begins weeping for the funeral before the man is dead; why should not faith commence piping before the dance of victory begins?”    Hope is like faith. For the child of God, the dance of victory has not yet begun, but that doesn’t mean we c...

  One of Jesus’ disciples gave us a great reason to show love. 1 Peter 4:8 says, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”   I have always liked that phrase, “Love covers a multitude of sins.” The Greek word means to hide or conceal something. But better than a dictionary definition is the graphic image another disciple gave us in his gospel. Describing the event where Jesus calmed the storm with just His words, Matthew 8:24 says, “And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but He was asleep.”   Matthew described the boat as being swamped by the storm.  Swamped  is the same Greek word translated as  covers  by Peter. The storm that threatened to claim the lives of the disciples violently covered their fishing boat. This was an aggressive covering.   Our love should have that same type of aggression. Greek scholar Kenneth Wuest wrote of this verb, “...

  A married man was out somewhere he never should have been, with a woman he never should have been with. He wife was back at the house worried about him because he never came home, and he was not responding to her calls or texts.     Desperate for information, she sent a text message to her husband’s five closest friends, asking them the same question: Frank hasn’t come home yet. Is he with you?”   By the time Frank made it home that night, his wife had received five text messages, each providing a different alibi for their friend. Whatever Frank was doing, she knew he wasn’t in five places at once.    We can applaud loyalty, and we all want friends that will go to bat for us, but it is possible to be too loyal. The five friends who thought they were helping their buddy out actually sealed his fate. If they had been honest, the wife would still learn the truth, but they wouldn’t have been exposed as liars.    When we lie to help a friend, we aren...

  Is pride ever a good thing? What if pride is used to bring about good?   In the classic novel  Pride and Prejudice,  Jane Austen crafts this dialogue between the heroine Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Wickham:   Wickham: “It is wonderful…for almost all [Darcy’s] actions may be traced to pride; and pride has often been his best friend. It has connected him nearer with virtue than any other feeling…”   Elizabeth: “Can such abominable pride as his, have ever done him good?”   Wickham: “Yes. It has often led him to be liberal and generous—to give his money freely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants, and relieve the poor.”   In the book Mr. Wickham wrongly led Elizabeth to believe Mr. Darcy was a man of great pride. Darcy’s generosity was supposedly based only on his desire for people to know how wealthy he was.    How much charity is done from a place of pride? Are you the kind of person who makes a large donation, not for the cause, ...

  The dictionary defines the word refuge as a “shelter or place of protection from danger, trouble, etc.”       The author of Hebrews said, “we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us (6:18).” What does he mean when he says we have fled for refuge?    He is talking about running to Jesus, as the next verses make clear: “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever…”   The word refuge speaks of a shelter, but it has a much richer meaning than that. This actually looks back to the cities of refuge described in Numbers 35. When the Israelites settled the Promised Land, they were told to create six such cities as shelters for people. These were cities where people could go if they accidentally took a life. Under their law, a relative of a slain...

As long as there have been people there have been disagreements. Think about it: the first guy ever born killed his own brother.   So as Christians we should seek to get along, but the deck is stacked against us. Our own selfishness and pride get in the way, pushing us to want our needs met above anyone else’s. There is an unfortunate book titled  War in the Pews  that chronicles some fights among church members. The book details the story of a feud that developed because of a covered dish; one sister made her congealed salad with Cool Whip, which so offended another sister who preferred a different whipping cream.    One church split over whether to position the piano on the left or right side of the pulpit, another split over whether to serve the Lord’s Supper from the front of the sanctuary to the back or from back to front.   These things ought not to be! But they are nothing new. That is why when Jesus prayed with His disciples on the night He was arre...

  The author of Hebrews might have made a mistake. In chapter 11 we read this praise of Sarah: “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”   By faith? Since when was Sarah a hero of the faith? Her very name in this great faith chapter is surprising enough, but to credit her miraculous delivery of Isaac to her faith seems downright wrong. Don’t you remember when Sarah laughed at God?    Genesis 18:10-12 records the event. “The LORD said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?”    In the next verses the Lord asked Sarah why she laughed, and she denied laughing, but ...

God famously called Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3. There the Lord told Moses that he had a special assignment—to go to Egypt’s Pharoah and demand the release of the Hebrew slaves.     After describing the Hebrews’ plight to Moses, God declared, “and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…(v.8).”    God had come down to deliver them. That was great news! God was going to show up and fix everything.    But then just two verses later God seems to have changed His mind, saying, “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt (v.10).”   So which is it? Was God coming down to deliver His people, or was God sending Moses to deliver His people?    The two are not mutually exclusive. It was not either/or, but both. God was coming down to equip Moses for the job. Over ...

Enoch is one of the most intriguing figures in history because he is one of only two people to never die. To add to that, there isn’t much of an explanation as to how he left earth. Briefly mentioned in the Bible’s first genealogy, we simply read, “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him (Genesis 5:24).”     We get a few more details in the Hall of Faith, where in Hebrews 11:5 we see, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.”   To be translated means to be “carried across,” as if God carried Enoch from this world to Paradise. All we know of Enoch is that he walked with God and he pleased God by faith. What does it mean to please God? I looked up the Greek word used in Hebrews 11:5 in three different Bible dictionaries, and there was no entry.    So I consulted six different commentaries on the book of Hebrews, and ...