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Preaching Christ from the Old Testament

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How can we preach Christ from the Old Testament?  Sydney Greidanus outlines seven ways:-

1. Redemptive-historical progression—seeing the message of the passage in the context of redemptive history from beginning to end, especially following the progression of redemptive history as it moves forward from the text’s historical setting to Jesus’ First and/or Second Coming.  [Example: Gen 3 and the ‘Fall’, finding its remedy in the saving work of Christ]
2. Promise-fulfillment—showing that the promise of a coming Messiah was fulfilled in Jesus’ First Coming or will be fulfilled in his Second Coming.  …

How does Christ rule his church?

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After his resurrection, Jesus declared that ‘all authority is heaven and on earth’ had been given to him (Mt 28:18).  As Christians, then, we confess that ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’ (Phil 2:9-11).

How does Christ exercise his authority in the church today?  Four possible answers have been given:-

  1. The Roman Catholic answer is that Christ rules his church through the magisterium, the teaching of the Pope and his bishops both in the past and in the present.
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What would you like to be remembered for?

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What one thing would you most like to be remembered for after you die?

According to a recent poll conducted by Avalon Funeral Plans, the most important trait is not our sophistication, good looks, intelligence, parenting skills, or even kindness, but trustworthiness.  That was the response given by 60% of the 2,000 British people who were asked.

Most people, it seems, want their funeral to be a celebration with lots of laughter, and would like guests to wear colourful clothing rather than the traditional black attire.…

Mary Magdalene – fact and fiction

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According to Luke 8:2, Mary Magdalene had been a severely demonised woman whom Jesus had healed.

David Instone-Brewer notes that Mary would have been a former social outcast, feared and despised by the rest of the community.  She occupies a uniquely privileged place in the NT, however, since she is the only person to have witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection (Mt 27:61, 65; 28:1).

Later traditions developed around Mary:-

The Gospel of Thomas (about AD 100) includes her among the disciples.  …

Talk like a Babylonian

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We read that Daniel and his three friends were educated in, among other things, ‘the language of the Babylonians’ (Daniel 1:4).

There is great pressure on us today to avoid the language of the kingdom of God and to adopt instead the language of our culture.  John Lennox observes that ‘the wave of relativism now swamping Western thinking has increased the pressure to drop certain words from our languages and replace them with others that drive forward the secularist agenda of deconstructing the very nature of human beings and the society we live in.’…

Jesus, the ineligible bachelor

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In the Jewish society of Jesus’ day, it was almost unthinkable that a man would remain unmarried beyond the age of 20 or so.  After all, the very first commandment of the Torah is to ‘go and multiply’).  Few indeed are the recorded instances of unmarried men.  There was a studious rabbi by the name of Simeon ben Azzi.  And even he probably had been married, but had become a widower.

Girls were usually married by the age of twelve, and men by the age of twenty.…

‘The Sin of Certainty’ – 9

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So, finally, to the ninth and last chapter of Peter Enns’ book.

The need for certainty (according to Enns) fosters a number of unholy and unhealthy traits, such as: the ‘vigilant monitoring of who’s in and who’s out’, preoccupation with debating and defending the faith, over-valuing of logical arguments, and unquestioning conformity to intellectual authorities.

Such a faith does not promote trust either in God or others.  It provokes, rather, by fear and anxiety.  Trust does not grow in an atmosphere of dogmatic certainty.  …

Jesus: a ‘new and improved’ Moses?

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Should we regard the Old Testament and the New Testament as continuous, or discontinuous, with one another?  The standard evangelical approach is to regard the relationship between the two as that between bud and flower, source and stream, promise and fulfilment.

But many are troubled by the moral teaching and actions recorded in the Old Testament, and ask how this can be reconciled with the teaching and actions of Jesus.

Taking the difficult matter of the destruction of the Canaanites as his starting point, Peter Enns looks at Matthew’s Gospel, asking, ‘What would Jesus do?’…

PYO gender, kids?

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As noted recently by Sam Hailes on the Premier Christianity blog, issues relating to transgenderism have been hitting the news with considerable frequency:-

Transport for London recently announced they’d no longer use the phrase “ladies and gentlemen” when making public announcements. TFL said the phrase was “outdated” and “belonging to yesterday”.

Last month a Canadian transsexual refused to give their baby a gender. Kori Doty complained the baby had not been issued a birth certificate because officials say a gender of either male or female must be registered.…

‘The Sin of Certainty’ – 8

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In chapter 8 (‘Cultivating a habit of trust’), Peter Enns bares his heart.  We learn that in his forties, he went through a bad time.  His daughter had developed an anxiety disorder so severe that she had to be sent away to a boarding school far from home.  A seemingly co-incidental and almost trivial incident struck him as a ‘God-moment’ that helped him to see that we do not have to know and understand before we commit to God in faith.…