Hidden Gems: Some Bible Verses “Speak” to You
September 24, 2025
INTIMACY: “One Flesh Marriage” & the Song of Solomon Hidden Gems & Gold Nuggets (Part 2)
September 24, 2025Hidden Gems: Some Bible Verses “Speak” to You
September 24, 2025INTIMACY: “One Flesh Marriage” & the Song of Solomon Hidden Gems & Gold Nuggets (Part 2)
September 24, 2025Hidden Gems & Gold Nuggets (Part 2)
1 Kings 16:34 – “In his days, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundation with Abiram his firstborn, and with his youngest son Segub he set up its gates, according to the Word of the Lord, which He had spoken through Joshua the son of Nun.” [Waaaaaahhh! Eureka! This verse leaped out at me like a tiger from hiding! Why would such a seemingly inconsequential verse hit me like a ton of bricks? You see, the year was 1972-73 and I was finishing law school at the University of Texas in Austin. I had been plodding on through the five Books of Moses .. on through Joshua, Judges, and Ruth .. on through 1 Samuel & 2 Samuel .. and here I was reading about the loooooong succession of wicked kings in the Northern Kingdom of Israel at the time of Elijah the prophet. But when I read this verse, it “struck a bell,” as I recalled reading (perhaps several weeks and about 200 pages of text earlier) this verse from Joshua 6:26 (NKJV) – “Then Joshua charged them at that time, saying, ‘Cursed be the man before the Lord who rises up and builds this city Jericho! He shall lay its foundation with his firstborn, and with his youngest he shall set up its gates.’” Clearly, God was speaking through Joshua as a prophet and also through the very different authors of the Books of Joshua and First Kings. I realized at that time (at age about 30) that the entire Bible was the Word of God, albeit “written” or “transcribed” by men. Curiously, modern scholars are not really certain about the “authorship” of any of the sixty-six Books of the Bible; but to me, it was certain that God was the Author, despite any mistakes made by the humans through whom He worked. Furthermore, first-time readers might imagine that Hiel of Bethel began the labors with the assistance of his firstborn and took so many years to complete the project that Segub helped him set up the gates. But no! Because Hiel was cursed by God through Joshua, the deep meaning here is that the boys were living sacrifices and died when their father began and ended his labors of rebuilding Jericho!]
2 Timothy 3:16 – “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God …” [This verse confirms what I have just written above. The word Paul uses here for “inspiration” is actually God’s “breath” and this word is used in no other place in the entire Bible. Many fundamentalist Christians proclaim, “The Bible is the inerrant Word of God and I believe every word from Genesis to Revelation!” Indeed, I met a man at ROMA Pizza in Bungoma who brings Bibles as gifts to Kenyans; and he remarked, “Only King James,” though many modern scholars find both errors and biases in the King James translation (which, together with the poems and dramas of Shakespeare, forms the foundation for modern English). But when I speak at churches, prisons, and schools about God, Jesus, and the Bible, I tell them the truth: “God didn’t speak any of the words in the KJV, the NKJV, the RSV, the NIV, the NET or in any of your Swahili Bibles! Because God did not speak in English! All we have is translations from ancient texts in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. So what we must do is seek to understand the deep meanings God wants to reveal to us through the words we have.]
Jeremiah 31:31-34 – “Behold! The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah – not according to the Covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. My Covenant, which they broke, though I was a Husband to them, says the Lord. … I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. … I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” [When I first read the entire Bible some 52-53 years ago, I remember this passage, though I do not recall a single word or phrase from any of the courses I took in law school while completing my studies in 1972-1973. One thing to note – though I do not recall thinking of it at the time – is the “language of love” God uses when He refers to himself as a Father leading a child by the hand and as a Husband caring for a beloved wife. This has much deeper meaning for me now that I understand that God IS love .. and the entire Bible must be read and understood with that foundational understanding.]
Matthew 26:28 – “This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” (See also related verses in Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, Hebrews 9:15, and Hebrews 9:20.) [Yippee! It was many years after that first reading of the entire Bible that I finally “connected” God’s prophecy of a “New Covenant” given through Jeremiah in the Old Testament to the fulfilling of that prophecy in the New Testament when Jesus prepares to offer his life on the Cross for our sins. In short, Jesus himself IS the New Covenant – the Word in flesh, not on stone. * This also connects waaaaay back to God’s prohibition on eating blood found as early as Genesis 9:4 – “You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” This topic is so important that it is covered in the entire chapter of Leviticus 17, which is titled “The Sanctity of Blood.” Note especially “I will set My face against that person who eats blood .. for the life of the flesh is in the blood. .. it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.” And the death penalty is decreed for those who violate this command. Indeed, the prohibition against eating blood even survives the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus, as we find in Acts 15:20 & 21:25. * All this must be reconciled with the long passage in John 6:22-71, where Jesus exclaims such extraordinary things as “I am the bread of life” .. “I am the living bread which came down from Heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever, and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” .. “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Is Jesus calling us to cannibalism? Of course not! He means we have to “eat” his Words, for “The Words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life.” We must absorb, digest, and abide by his Words (Bread = Body, broken for us); and we must take up our own cross by imitating his life of selfless sacrifice and service (Wine = Blood, shed for us).]
Psalm 102:18 – “This will be written for a generation to come, that a people yet to be created may know the Lord, understand the Lord, praise the Lord, and obey the Lord.” [This is a verse I read many times, but did not “discover” until nearing my 83rd birthday. And I have embellished this lucid verse to express what I believe to be its deep meaning, because it was not written for Jews, Romans or Greeks 2000 years ago, but for Kenyans and Americans today – generations to come, nations and peoples not yet created at the time the sixty-six Books of the Bible were compiled. The Bible is an “Owner’s Manual” teaching us how to live! By reading the Bible Stories and understanding them from the point of view that “GOD IS LOVE,” we find myriad examples of how humans should or should not act, relate, live. * Relevant also are Psalm 22:31 – “They will declare His righteousness to a people who will be born” and 1 Corinthians 10:11 – “All these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” Well, that was written by Paul almost 2000 years ago; but it was written for we who live now!]
Isaiah 49:6 – “God says, ‘It is too small a thing that you should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved ones of Israel. * I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles, that you should be My salvation to the ends of the Earth.’” (The last part of this appears in Luke 2:32 & Acts 13:47.) [It wasn’t until my latest full reading of the entire Bible that I understood the clear meaning of this “gold nugget” – that saving the Gentiles was not something newly found in Acts 10 when Cornelius sends a delegation to search for Peter, who first has a vision, and then preaches to the Centurion and his household, whereupon the Holy Spirit falls upon them, but rather something God planned and envisioned from long, long ago and prefigured during Jesus’s own ministry in such incidents as (1) his encounter with a Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob in Sychar in John 4:1-42, (2) “Jesus Heals a Centurion’s Servant” in Matthew 8:5-13, and (3) the woman of Canaan with a demon-possessed daughter in Matthew 21-28.]
Hebrews 9:28 – “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. .. He will appear a second time (apart from sin) for salvation.” [This 24K “gold nugget” just jumped out for me in July of 2025, for it indicates clearly that Messiah must come in the flesh twice, not once. You see, “Christ” is not a name, but a title meaning the “Anointed One.” Jesus of Nazareth was the first incarnation of God’s Divine Nature & Spirit in a human body, and he fulfilled the purpose of that first “Living Temple of God” – the remission of sins. (See Mark 1:4, Acts 2:38, and Hebrews 10:8) But Jesus did not fulfill the promise of the angels to the shepherds in Luke 2:8-14 – “peace on Earth, goodwill toward men.” For 2000 years later, we still live in a world rife with war, crime, and immorality. In fact, Jesus told us clearly, “My kingdom is not of this world” in John 18:36. He also said in John 16:12-15 – “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when the Spirit of Truth has come, he will guide you into all truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me, for he will take of what is mine and declare it to you.” We Christians believe that the Holy Spirit has been conveying God’s Truth to many since Pentecost in Acts 2, but Jesus is also referring to the Second Advent of Messiah in another man born of woman, a man who will tell us all those things that Jesus knew but could not say, because he could never marry and have a family to form the substantial foundation for the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, thus fulfilling God’s Original Purpose of Creation found in Genesis chapters 1 & 2 -- the God-sanctioned marriage of one man and one woman (not the “fallen” Eve & Adam), which is prophesied in Revelation 19:6-16 as the Marriage of the Lamb (one man), whose Bride (one woman) is ready.]
1 Kings 16:34 – “In his days, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundation with Abiram his firstborn, and with his youngest son Segub he set up its gates, according to the Word of the Lord, which He had spoken through Joshua the son of Nun.”
