Baldhead Bible Podcast

This week we meet Ezra, the man the book is named after. We also come to the end of the story. Ezra was a man dedicated to three things: studying the Word of God, obeying the word of God, and teaching the word of God. Those three things were the dominant theme of his life and ministry, and they are on full display in this story. Because of those things, in just five months, Ezra causes a nation to realize something dreadful: they have broken their covenant with Yahweh and are in danger of...

The people gave up. For over 15 years, the Jewish people quit building the temple. They were threatened by the people of the land, who did not want them to continue the rebuilding. The Babylonian authority told them to stop. Everything was working against them, and in many ways, the Jewish people just gave up. But then God sent two prophets to wake the people up. Who were they, and what happened next? Listen on to find out. Turn to Ezra 5 and 6 to follow along.

Zerubbabel is forced to stop building the Second Temple. Jeshua and Zerubbabel had done so well. They had led the people back to the promised land, and they had made a new altar and begun daily sacrifices again to Yahweh. After a silence of 80 years, sacrifices were once again being offered to Yahweh. Progress was being made. But there was an enemy present. One who did not want to see God's people back and one who wanted to see all this progress come to a screeching halt. But how? How could...

This week we start a new series on the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Many believe they were originally one book later split into two, and that idea makes sense when you realize their story focuses on the same overall event: the return of the exiles to the promised land. The return of the Jewish people to their homeland occurred in three waves. Today's story focuses on the first wave led by Prince Zerubabbel and the decree of King Cyrus, allowing the people of Israel to return and rebuild the...

We last left Jesus in the garden, praying, begging for this cup of suffering to pass from him. But in the end, Jesus knew it was His cup to bear, His cup to drink, and with His final conversation with His Father, He stood up ready to face the coming onslaught. And there was very little time for Him to reflect on the coming ordeal because right away, what He saw coming towards Him would have terrified the average person, but for Jesus, instead, He saw an end and a beginning. The end of His...

In this week's snapshot, we see the humanity of Jesus on full display. Remember that Jesus was 100% man and 100% God all simultaneously. And many times, we forget that Jesus was fully man and suffered in very human ways down here on earth. Sadly, in the garden, we see Jesus overwhelmed with the horror of the coming cross. Where others saw a beautiful garden, Jesus saw a beckoning sorrow, and with that, he began to weep. How did Jesus handle the emotions that were threatening to overwhelm...

In the next couple of episodes, we will look at snapshots from the life of Jesus. From the last supper to His triumphant resurrection. We begin with looking at graduation day for His disciples. Jesus had been honing and shaping them in the Jesus school of ministry for the past three years, and now they were ready. Graduation day had come. So what was Jesus going to say? As the graduation speaker, what were the words of encouragement He wanted to send His disciples? We know exactly what He...

This is the final episode in the Jeremiah series, and this is the last day he gets to spend in Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar has sacked Jerusalem and burned it to the ground. And now the people of Judah are being deported to Babylon, and Jeremiah is being dragged along with them and his trusty sidekick Baruch. These were two men who tried to live for Yahweh, who did their best to obey His commands, yet they still had to suffer the consequences alongside those who chose to disobey. Is that fair?...

It had to be dark in that pit as Jeremiah slowly sank into the mud. As he stood there, he must have felt himself sinking further down into the mud at the bottom of this nasty, stinky cistern. How did Jeremiah end up there? Why did Jeremiah end up there? What could have been so bad that he deserved being shoved into a deep, dark mud hole? If you have ever sometimes wondered where God is in the middle of your pit of despair, well, this is a story you have to hear. Turn to Jeremiah 37 and 38,...

Jeremiah is a wanted man. King Jehoiakim of Judah wants Jeremiah gone, dead, killed off. Yet God commands Jeremiah to go and read all the prophecies of doom and destruction that God has given to Jeremiah over the last 25 years, to go and have them read to Jehoiakim, the very man who is trying to kill him. How is Jeremiah going to do that? First, he has to write them down and then read them to the King. Enter the scribe, Baruch. Listen to this week's story to hear about Baruch and the...

We go back and look at two more visual parables this week. God would use any method He could to reach His people Israel. Sometimes he asked His prophets to portray His message to His people visually. Last time it was dirty underwear and broken clay pots. This week it is a yoke and buying a field. How will God use these images, these visual parables, to reach His people? What messages is He trying to send? Listen on to this week's podcast to find out. To follow along in your Bible turn to...

What was it like for Jeremiah to preach? This week, we look at a scene from Jeremiah's life showing the challenges he had to face every time he preached. And one of his greatest challenges was that he spoke under the threat of imprisonment and the grave possibility of death every time he preached. And yet he still preached and warned his fellow Israelites of God's coming judgment, but also he told them about God's offer of grace. Finally, we hear the story of a contemporary of Jeremiah: the...

In the Bible, God would use any means to reach His people Israel. He would send prophet after prophet to warn His people, or He would send plague, disaster, or some other act of judgment to try to wake His people up. And sometimes, if the people were unwilling to listen, God would use symbolic action, or a visual parable, to try to help his people understand and get them to listen. In the next couple of episodes, we will hear four of them. Today we are going to listen to the first two. And...

This week we are starting a new series on the book of Jeremiah. We will be focusing on specific scenes from the life of Jeremiah, the prophet. Jeremiah was called by God to speak, to preach, to weep over a crumbling culture slowly drifting away from the worship of Yahweh. I believe there are things that we can learn from Jeremiah's life, from his story, to help us live a faithful witness in the middle of our own drifting culture. This week we learn about the call of God on the life of...

We come to the end of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, and boy is it a sad ending. King Josiah led Judah towards a godly future. One where the people of Judah were once again in covenant with Yahweh. But then he died, and his sons were left to run the country, and unlike their Father, they had no interest in having a heart after Yahweh. Instead, they led Judah back to its idolatrous ways, and we come to the final chapter in the story of Israel. We also meet a prophet named Jeremiah, who though he...

Josiah is a fabulous King in the eyes of the LORD. He has a heart wholly devoted to him and is busy tearing down high places and removing idolatrous practices from the nation of Judah. He began to rebuild the broken parts of the Temple to restore the site dedicated to the worship of YAHWEH. The High Priest Hilkiah was busy cleaning and ordering the temple treasury when he saw the edge of something sticking out in the corner. It looked like a scroll, probably some scroll that tallied the...

As King of Judah, can an 8-year-old child be the Greatest Of All Time? The greatest king Judah, and in fact, all of Israel ever had? The writer of 2 Kings thinks so. He wrote of this 8-year old King that "Neither before nor after . . . was there a king like him who turned to the Lord as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses" (2 Kings 23:25). Who was this fantastic elementary school kid? What was the name of this...

Hezekiah was a good King who followed Yahweh with all his heart. Though he did not end his reign on a high note, overall, he was a King who pleased God. And for eleven years his son Manasseh co-reigned with him, learning from his Dad how to lead the nation in a way that pleases God. And when his father died, at the age of twelve, Manasseh became the sole ruler of Judah. And you know what he did when he was finally on his own? He became one of the vilest, evil kings Israel and Judah had ever...

This week we come to the end of Hezekiah's story. The GOAT of Judah, one of the greatest Kings Judah ever had, is coming to the end of his days. He is dying, and the prophet Isaiah has shown up to tell him that God wants him to get his house in order because he will die. But Hezekiah is not ready to die. He still wants to live, so he pleads to the Lord for life, to not die, and to live longer. He prays for God to remember all he has done for Him and to give him more time on this earth. And...

The great Assyrian King was threatening the very walls of Jerusalem. He had marched throughout the Samaritan region, destroying nations and taking many captive and exiling them to Nineveh and the cities of his Assyria. And he had one prize left, the city of Jerusalem, and he was primed to siege and take it and wipe out the nation of Judah forever. Judah's King at the time was King Hezekiah, and he had to face the threat of Sennacherib and his vast army. But how? Where is Judah's, God Yahweh?...