Tommy Mann

When we hear someone described as being a fugitive it is never a good thing. "He is a fugitive of justice." That means someone is on the run; he has broken the law, and now the cops are trying to find him. We also use that word when someone breaks out of prison and there is a manhunt trying to track him down. To be a fugitive means you have made a series of bad choices, first in breaking the law, and then in attempting to evade the consequences.  But it doesn't have to be a bad word. Several times in the New Testament someone is commanded to become a fugitive. One such example is in 2 Timothy 2:22 where Paul writes, "So flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart."   Like a fugitive, the word is hiding in the text. We don't see it because it is only in the original Greek. The word translated as flee is the Greek word pheuge,  and it gives us our English word fugitive. Rather...

Have you ever worn clothes that were too tight? Sometimes people have a suit they only wear on rare occasions, and when they pull it out of the back of the closet last minute, they discover it doesn't fit like it used to, and they have no choice but to wear it anyway. Or maybe the clothes weren't tight when you put them on, but they became that way over the course of the day. After a big meal, the waistband feels like it shrunk, and you can't wait to get some relief when you change into something else. If you have had to spend time in clothes that are too tight, you understand that good feeling when you can finally put on something more comfortable. After a long day you can slip into your favorite lounge pants and baggy shirt and just let yourself relax. You take a deep breath and hold it in for a moment before finally letting it out. At last you can breathe much easier.  In her book Forgiving What You Can't Forget, Lysa Terkeurst compares that feeling to when we finall...

Have you ever thought about the words you speak being food? That might not be the first mental image you get when you think about your words, but the book of Proverbs makes that comparison.  First, Solomon makes the analogy in a negative way, writing in 26:22, "The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels; they go down into the inner parts of the body." A whisperer is a gossip, someone who has to look over his shoulder before he lowers his voice and passes on what he is about to say. Many people have a craving for gossip that can never be satisfied. And the whispered words taste so good going down--they are truly delicious morsels. The Hebrews phrase literally reads "things greedily devoured;" the gossip is a glutton, feasting on words when he should be pushing away from the table.  I might greedily devour an entire cheesecake, and enjoy each bite in that moment. But after the fact my blood sugar spikes and I can't button my pants. In a similar way, the w...

Critics of Christianity often point to the existence of evil as proof that there cannot be a God. After all, if there is a God, as we say there is, and if that God is good, as He claims to be, then there should not be any evil in the world.  We all know there is evil in the world, so God is either too weak to prevent it, or too cruel to stop it. Such is the claim of the atheist.  But evil is not really a thing. It is comparable to coldness or darkness. Think about it: cold is not a thing. Something is cold when there is an absence of heat. The same is true of darkness, which is only the absence of light. Where no light is present, there is darkness. Evil is like that. It is simply the absence of good. And God made a good world. When He created the universe He called it "very good." In Genesis 1 we see the word good used seven times to describe God's creation. There was no evil because there was no absence of good.  That was all before sin. Two chapters after calling every...

Is the New Testament part of the inspired Bible? While there is far more that can be said then I have room to share here, I think there is an interesting piece of evidence slipped into 1 Timothy 5:8. After Paul said an elder is deserving of his pay from the church, he went on to say: "For the Scripture says, 'You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,' and, 'The laborer deserves his wages.'”  Paul is clearly quoting Scripture. The reference to muzzling an ox comes from Deuteronomy 25. That was part of the old law, and verses like 2 Timothy 3:16 tell us "all Scripture" was breathed out by God. The Jews had collected all the books we call the Old Testament, and they viewed them as inspired writings from God through human authors, and thus incapable of containing errors. But Paul didn't just include Deuteronomy when he wrote "For the Scripture says." The second phrase about the laborer deserving his wages was a quote from Jesus re...

King Solomon had a lot to say about ancient landmarks, and how they should not be moved. This might make us think about people who deface or even topple statues, something that we have seen a rise in of late. But that is not what Solomon had in mind. The landmarks referred to boundary markers that separated one person's property line from another. You might know where your land ends and your neighbor's begins because there is a fence separating your lots, but during the days of the Bible people piled up stones for that purpose. If you wanted to expand your territory, all you had to do was move the stones a little farther onto your neighbor's side. If you wanted more land to farm or more room for cattle to graze, you could deceive your neighbor by moving the stones. This was considered one of the most heinous of offenses, but it happened.   So in Proverbs 23:10-11 Solomon wrote, "Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless, for their Redeemer i...