In the Text

A Good Start

Nahash besieges Jabesh, the Spirit rushes on Saul, and the new king wins and then shows mercy to the men who doubted him. Samuel's farewell and the thunder at harvest leave Israel with a warning and a promise: do not turn aside, for the LORD will not forsake his people.

Read nowSep 30, 2026

Latest across everything16

The newest thing from every channel, most recent first.

New to you12

In the Text

A Good Start

Sep 30, 2026

In the Text

God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle

Sep 27, 2026

In the Text

Give Us a King

Sep 23, 2026

In the Text

Everything Happens for a Reason

Sep 20, 2026

Sermon

The Father at the Door

Sep 6, 2026

Opening a two week series on Luke 15, Austin Duncan walks through the story of the younger son who takes his inheritance and leaves for a far country. The sermon traces four movements: grace gives, hunger turns, grace runs, and grace refuses, showing that the father's welcome begins before the son's speech is ever finished. It closes with the invitation to come home without a rehearsed speech or perfect motives.Read

Sermon

The Father in the Far Country

Aug 30, 2026

Sermon

The God Who Sends

Jul 12, 2026

Sermon

The Family Resemblance

May 31, 2026

Austin Duncan takes up the charge that the New Testament is antisemitic and answers it by pressing the Jewishness of the documents themselves. Jesus, Matthew, John, Peter, and Paul were Jews; the letters lean on Exodus, the priesthood, and the twelve tribes; early worship came straight from the synagogue. Read that way, the harsh words function as family argument in the tradition of Isaiah and Jeremiah, not outsider attack. Romans 9 to 11 anchors the case, where Paul denies God has rejected Israel and grieves for his own people. The teaching then handles specific texts: John's "the Jews" as often shorthand for the Jerusalem authorities, Matthew 27:25 as a moment of local responsibility rather than a hereditary curse, and Matthew 23 as internal prophetic rebuke. It also notes Nostra Aetate and wider church statements repudiating collective guilt.Read

Word for Word

Is the New Testament Anti-Semitic?

Mar 11, 2026

The question of who picked the New Testament books is answered by walking through the actual historical record. Rather than a council choosing favorites, the evidence shows a community recognizing writings that already carried their own weight. Paul directed that his letters be circulated and read publicly, and Peter placed them alongside "the other Scriptures." Ignatius, Polycarp, and Justin Martyr show the Gospels and Pauline letters functioning as Scripture by the early second century, and the Muratorian Fragment gives a list close to ours by A.D. 170. Marcion's attempt to impose a canon by personal authority was rejected. Origen and Eusebius narrow the disputed edges, and Athanasius, Hippo, and Carthage confirm what churches already held. Authority, not authoritarianism.Read

Word for Word

Is the New Testament Canon Authoritative or Authoritarian?

Mar 5, 2026

Written in the days after strikes on Iran and the reported death of Khamenei, this teaching refuses both sides of a false choice. Yes, the regime is evil: it arms terror groups, brutalizes its own people, and Christians need not pretend otherwise. But calling evil what it is and celebrating death are not the same thing, and gloating over destruction footage is sin. From there the piece walks through four texts. 1 Timothy 2 calls for prayer for all rulers, not just the ones we like, with specific prayer points for leaders, civilians, children, and Middle Eastern believers. Psalm 46 confronts the doomscrolling liturgy. Matthew 5 pushes love of enemy into concrete neighbor care. Romans 12 separates justice from vengeance. It closes with practical guardrails on posting, sharing footage, and generalizing about whole peoples.Read

Forum & Pulpit

War with Iran: Prayer Without Propaganda

Mar 3, 2026

Counting from Friday evening to Sunday morning yields two nights, not three, and Jesus staked His credibility on that prediction. Austin Duncan works the problem by asking how first century Jews actually counted time. Any part of a day counted as a whole day, days ran sunset to sunset, and "three days and three nights" functioned as a Hebrew idiom rather than a stopwatch measurement. Esther, Genesis 42, 1 Samuel 30, 1 Kings 12, and Hosea 6 all equate "three days" with "on the third day." The Gospels use five different phrases for the same event, and the burial timeline fits Friday, Saturday, Sunday as three calendar days. The wider lesson: read Scripture on its own cultural terms.Read

Word for Word

Was Jesus Really in the Grave for Three Days and Three Nights?

Feb 26, 2026

Most recent12

In the Text

A Good Start

Sep 30, 2026

In the Text

God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle

Sep 27, 2026

In the Text

Give Us a King

Sep 23, 2026

In the Text

Everything Happens for a Reason

Sep 20, 2026

Sermon

The Father at the Door

Sep 6, 2026

Opening a two week series on Luke 15, Austin Duncan walks through the story of the younger son who takes his inheritance and leaves for a far country. The sermon traces four movements: grace gives, hunger turns, grace runs, and grace refuses, showing that the father's welcome begins before the son's speech is ever finished. It closes with the invitation to come home without a rehearsed speech or perfect motives.Read

Sermon

The Father in the Far Country

Aug 30, 2026

Sermon

The God Who Sends

Jul 12, 2026

Sermon

The Family Resemblance

May 31, 2026

Austin Duncan takes up the charge that the New Testament is antisemitic and answers it by pressing the Jewishness of the documents themselves. Jesus, Matthew, John, Peter, and Paul were Jews; the letters lean on Exodus, the priesthood, and the twelve tribes; early worship came straight from the synagogue. Read that way, the harsh words function as family argument in the tradition of Isaiah and Jeremiah, not outsider attack. Romans 9 to 11 anchors the case, where Paul denies God has rejected Israel and grieves for his own people. The teaching then handles specific texts: John's "the Jews" as often shorthand for the Jerusalem authorities, Matthew 27:25 as a moment of local responsibility rather than a hereditary curse, and Matthew 23 as internal prophetic rebuke. It also notes Nostra Aetate and wider church statements repudiating collective guilt.Read

Word for Word

Is the New Testament Anti-Semitic?

Mar 11, 2026

The question of who picked the New Testament books is answered by walking through the actual historical record. Rather than a council choosing favorites, the evidence shows a community recognizing writings that already carried their own weight. Paul directed that his letters be circulated and read publicly, and Peter placed them alongside "the other Scriptures." Ignatius, Polycarp, and Justin Martyr show the Gospels and Pauline letters functioning as Scripture by the early second century, and the Muratorian Fragment gives a list close to ours by A.D. 170. Marcion's attempt to impose a canon by personal authority was rejected. Origen and Eusebius narrow the disputed edges, and Athanasius, Hippo, and Carthage confirm what churches already held. Authority, not authoritarianism.Read

Word for Word

Is the New Testament Canon Authoritative or Authoritarian?

Mar 5, 2026

Written in the days after strikes on Iran and the reported death of Khamenei, this teaching refuses both sides of a false choice. Yes, the regime is evil: it arms terror groups, brutalizes its own people, and Christians need not pretend otherwise. But calling evil what it is and celebrating death are not the same thing, and gloating over destruction footage is sin. From there the piece walks through four texts. 1 Timothy 2 calls for prayer for all rulers, not just the ones we like, with specific prayer points for leaders, civilians, children, and Middle Eastern believers. Psalm 46 confronts the doomscrolling liturgy. Matthew 5 pushes love of enemy into concrete neighbor care. Romans 12 separates justice from vengeance. It closes with practical guardrails on posting, sharing footage, and generalizing about whole peoples.Read

Forum & Pulpit

War with Iran: Prayer Without Propaganda

Mar 3, 2026

Counting from Friday evening to Sunday morning yields two nights, not three, and Jesus staked His credibility on that prediction. Austin Duncan works the problem by asking how first century Jews actually counted time. Any part of a day counted as a whole day, days ran sunset to sunset, and "three days and three nights" functioned as a Hebrew idiom rather than a stopwatch measurement. Esther, Genesis 42, 1 Samuel 30, 1 Kings 12, and Hosea 6 all equate "three days" with "on the third day." The Gospels use five different phrases for the same event, and the burial timeline fits Friday, Saturday, Sunday as three calendar days. The wider lesson: read Scripture on its own cultural terms.Read

Word for Word

Was Jesus Really in the Grave for Three Days and Three Nights?

Feb 26, 2026

Further back4

Matthew traces Jesus through Solomon in forty-one names arranged in three sets of fourteen; Luke runs backward through Nathan across seventy-six names to Adam and to God. Duncan first makes the reader feel the problem, including the sharpest detail: Joseph's father is Jacob in Matthew and Heli in Luke. He then argues the trouble lies in modern assumptions rather than the texts, walking through the conventions that governed ancient genealogies. They were legal and theological instruments, not exhaustive biological records; adoption and levirate marriage placed men in more than one line; skipped generations were normal, as Matthew's omission of three kings shows; numbers carried symbolic weight, with fourteen encoding David's name. The transcript breaks off partway through the principle that "son of" need not mean biological son.Read

Word for Word

Do the Genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke Contradict One Another?

Feb 19, 2026

Revelation never says "as it is written," yet Ezekiel supplies not only its images but its plot: throne vision, prophetic commissioning, judgment on the unfaithful city, cosmic war, restoration, new temple-city. The study sets out ten parallels for examination, including the eaten scroll, the sealing of the faithful, the harlot city, Gog and Magog, the dry bones, the measuring rod, and the New Jerusalem, and argues that John's reuse follows five consistent moves: universalization, Christological reinterpretation, eschatological intensification, temple dissolution, and structural preservation. Groundwork comes first. Ezekiel is placed as proto-apocalyptic, and Qumran texts such as the Sabbath Songs, the New Jerusalem text, the War Scroll, and Pseudo-Ezekiel show the imagery already reinterpreted before John. The text breaks off while introducing the Beale and Moyise debate over how freely John handles his source.Read

Exegetica

Apocalyptic Imagery in Ezekiel and Revelation: Shared Symbolism and Divergent Meanings

Feb 6, 2026

God has always intended to dwell with his people, and the temple motif traces how that dwelling was established, lost, and progressively restored. The study lays out a ten-movement canonical arc from Eden to the New Jerusalem, then works carefully through the opening stages. Eden is presented as the first sanctuary: Adam serves and guards as a priest, cherubim mark the boundary of holiness, gold and precious stones and the tree-shaped lampstand reappear in later sanctuaries, and Genesis 2 geography implies three zones of graduated holiness. Walton's cosmic temple reading of Genesis 1 and Ancient Near Eastern sacred mountain traditions are weighed. Genesis 1:28 becomes a mandate to extend sacred space. The tabernacle then appears as a portable Eden and miniature cosmos, with the sh-k-n root grounding later Shekinah language.Read

Exegetica

The Temple Motif from Genesis to Revelation: Sacred Space, Divine Presence, and Eschatological Hope

Jan 2, 2026

Written in the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk's shooting, this piece refuses to let political sympathies soften the verdict on violence: harming anyone to advance a cause is sin, because killer and victim alike bear God's image. The first Christian response is lament and intercession, not a hot take, with specific prayers named for the widow and children, witnesses, first responders, investigators, and even the shooter's repentance. From there come practical guardrails: verify before sharing and correct publicly when wrong, resist doxxing and mob pressure while praying for courts to do their work, refuse to post while emotionally escalated, test whether you would speak the same way about someone of the other party, and commit to checking on the hurting a month and a year later.Read

Forum & Pulpit

Charlie Kirk Assassination: Responding to Tragedy with Biblical Wisdom

Sep 10, 2025