Bucket Full of Grace

2 Kings explained: trace Israel and Judah's long slide into exile and discover what Scripture teaches about disobedience, divine judgment, and the mercy that outlasts even the most catastrophic collapse. There is a moment in 2 Kings that stops you cold. The armies of Babylon have broken through Jerusalem's walls. The Temple — Solomon's masterpiece, the dwelling place of God's glory, the spiritual heartbeat of the nation — is stripped bare. Its bronze pillars, its golden lampstands, the great bronze sea, the sacred vessels carried for centuries through the wilderness and conquest — all of it is carted off to Babylon. And then the Temple is burned to the ground. The book of 2 Kings builds inexorably toward that moment. From its opening pages — picking up where 1 Kings left off, with Elijah's fiery departure and Elisha's rise — it traces the long, agonizing descent of two kingdoms, Israel and Judah, as they walk further and further from the God who called them, war...

Why Do We Sing About Dry Bones Rattling? The dry bones in Ezekiel 37 is a well known prophesy in the Old Testament.  It describes a vision where Ezekiel is told to prophesy to the dry bones and when he does, they rattle and come back together and resurrect into an army.  This motif is common in Christian culture to visualize what is happening when a person is born again.  There is no hope for dry bones to ever live, but God does a miracle that we could never have done on our own to resurrect us and give us new life being born again.  If you haven't studied Ezekiel 37 then this can be a very strange song and I would recommend that this song goes well with teaching on the concepts in it, but not so well as a stand alone worship song if you don't know the context. Controversy and "Grave Sucking" After the release of this song, there was an uptick in the number of people who believed in "Grave Sucking" also known as "Mantle Grabbing" or "Grave Soa...