1. Luke 2:41-52 tells us all we know about Jesus’ childhood. What else do you wish you knew about his childhood and family life in Nazareth?
2. Jesus says to his parents (verse 49), “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” The following verse tells us that his parents ‘did not understand what he was saying to them.’ Do you think they should have understood? What do you think he meant?
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In his book The Fire That Consumes Fudge devotes an entire chapter (chapter 4) to the meaning of the Greek word aiōnios (usually translated ‘eternal’).
The key question is this: does the word mean (a) lasting for ever, (b) characteristic of the age to come, or (c) either or both of these (depending on context)?
A key text is Matthew 25:46, which speaks both of ‘eternal life’ and ‘eternal punishment’. Many argue that aiōnios must mean the same in both parts of the verse. …
If, like me, you’re slightly nervous about today’s social agenda of ‘inclusion and diversity’, then you, and your church, may need an injection of real gospel diversity to set the record straight and (to change the metaphor) adjust the direction in which we are traveling.
Greg Morse has some helpful guidelines, addressed especially to pastors, but useful to us all. I summarise:-
1. Don’t dismiss social justice as “not a gospel issue.” True, social justice is not the gospel, but it is just as true to say that it is an essential and inevitable outcome of the gospel.…
We all agree (don’t we?) that it’s great to have a bird’s eye view of the Bible as a whole, and especially its overall storyline. But what about attempting this in a series of sermons?
John Percival writes on Unashamed Workman about just such an attempt. His church followed Andrew Reid’s outline of eleven ‘big moments in God’s story’: creation, fall, promise, exodus, conquest, kingship, exile, return, cross, gospel, new creation.…
Summarising this post by Tim Challies:-
‘The justice of God’s final judgment, which Jesus will administer, according to the Gospel, lies in two things: first, the fact that what people receive is not only what they deserve but that they have in effect already chosen — namely, to be forever without God and therefore without any of the good that He gives; second, the fact that the sentence is proportioned to the knowledge of God’s Word, work and will that was actually disregarded (cf. …
‘In contrast to most of the parabolic sayings, such as not reaping figs from thorn bushes (Luke 6:43), the story parables do not serve to illustrate Jesus’ prosaic teaching with word pictures. Nor are they told to serve as vehicles for revealing truth—although they end up clearly doing that. Rather the story parables function as a striking way of calling forth a response on the part of the hearer. In a sense, the parable itself is the message.…
This was, of course, a question that was put to the Lord Jesus (Luke 13:23). We would do well to take his response to heart: it matters little whether they are few or many, if you are not among that number.
Still, some things can be said about this subject.
The question is faced up to squarely by the Puritan Christopher Love, even though he found his conclusion to be ‘one of the most dismal doctrines’ a pastor could preach. …
Wayne Grudem (Systematic Theology, p1150) notes the following arguments that are advanced in favour of annihilationalism:-
I present here arguments for and against this difficult and disputed question.
Traditionalists argue that the Gk words for ‘eternal’ (‘aion‘ and ‘ainios‘) often carry a clear idea of duration, Heb 13:8; Rev 4:10; 10:6; 11:15; 14:11; 20:10. Cp Mk 3:29 w Mt 12:32. They frequently note the parallelism between ‘eternal life’ and ‘eternal punishment’ in Mt 25:46.
The word ‘eternal’ is used over 60 times to refer to the blessings of the future state. …
