Category Archives: God

Psa 139 – You know me – sermon notes

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Psalm 139

It was going so well!  Here is one of the most beautiful and personal of all the psalms.  ‘Lord, you are amazing.  You know me through and through.  You are with me everywhere I go.  You formed me in my mother’s womb.  And isn’t it about time you started smiting some enemies?’

At first, I considered leaving that bit out.

1. God knows me – completely, 1-6

V1 – ‘O Lord, you have searched me and you know me’ – though others may misunderstand and misrepresent me, you, O God, know me as I really am. …

The plagues of Egypt

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, refused to release the Hebrew people from slavery and allow them to leave his country. So the Lord sent ten plagues upon the Egyptians to break Pharaohs stubborn will and to demonstrate his power and superiority over the pagan gods of the Egyptians.

These plagues occurred within a period of about nine months, in the following order:

  1. The water of the Nile River turned into blood (Ex 7:14-25).
  2. Frogs overran the countryside (Ex 8:1-15).
…

Reading Hosea 11 with Islam in mind

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Isa Glaser suggests that the book of Hosea is interesting to read with Islam in mind because of (a) its critique of idolatry, (b) its scandalous sexual imagery, and (c) its even more scandalous record of a prophet being called to marry a prostitute.

In Islamic teaching, a prophet is kept from major sin, and it would be shameful for a man to take back an adulterous wife.  Hosea 11 is about about the scandal of God taking back of adulterous Israel.…

Aspects of our likeness to God

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Moral aspects

  • We are morally accountable to God.
  • We have an inner sense of right and wrong
  • We are capable of behaviour that is holy and righteous before God

Spiritual aspects

  • We have immaterial spirits
  • We have spiritual capabilities that enable us to relate to God in prayer, praise and so on
  • We have immortality

Mental aspects

  • We are capable of rational thought far in advance of any animal
  • We are capable of complex language far in advance of any animal
  • We have an awareness of the distant future; of eternity, indeed
  • We are capable of creativity in areas such as music, art, and literature
  • We are capable of rich and complex emotions

Relational aspects

  • We are capable of deep and complex relationships
  • We are capable, in marriage, of reflecting the relationship between Christ and the church
  • We have been given authority over the rest of creation, and will even judge the angels

Physical aspects

  • Our physical bodies reflect the character and purpose of God, even though he himself is immaterial
  • Our ability to produce children who are like ourselves reflects God’s ability to create human beings who are like himself

Based on Grudem, Systematic Theology

 …

God and his creation

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Scripture teaches that God is transcendent, and yet immanent. He is far above above creation, yet intimately involved in it, Acts 17:25,28; Eph 4:6; Col 1:17; Heb 1:3.

False views include:

  • materialism, which denies the existence of God altogether;
  • pantheism, which teaches that the whole universe is God, or an emanation from God;
  • dualism, which holds that God and the material universe have existed eternally side by side, locked in eternal conflict, with no guarantee that good will triumph;
  • deism, according to which God created the universe and then left it to run on its own.
…

What we learn from creation

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Bible commentator Matthew Henry notes that in creation we observe:-

1. Great variety, several sorts of beings vastly differing in their nature and constitution from each other. Lord, how manifold are thy works, and all good!

2. Great beauty. The azure sky and verdant earth are charming to the eye of the curious spectator, much more the ornaments of both. How transcendent then must the beauty of the Creator be!

3. Great exactness and accuracy.…

God does not live in houses

Walking With Giants Posted on by

“The Most High does not live in houses made by men,” declared Stephen (Acts 7:48).  And even though these words infuriated his accusers, he was only echoing the consistent message of their own Scriptures (see, esp. 2 Sam 7:5f).

To this day, Christians seem to doubt Stephen’s words.  True, they may pay lip-service to the idea that the church is a ‘people’, not a ‘place’.  But ‘holy’ buildings still feature far more prominently than they ought, given the consistent teaching of both Old and New Testaments.…

Does God accept us just as we are?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

It is a glorious truth that God accepts us just as we are.  Whoever we are, whatever we have done.  We could never come any other way, for no-one is ever ‘good enough for God’.

This, as I say, is a glorious, essential, inescapable, truth.

But it is not the whole truth.  In fact, by itself, it is a dangerous half-truth.

One half of the truth is to say that God meets us where we are, and the other half is to recognise that he does not leave us there.  …

The Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Does the Great Commission of Mt 28:18-20 supersede the cultural mandate of Gen 1:26-28?  Does the command to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’ replace the requirement to fill and subdue the earth and to rule over all living things?

At first sight, it might seem that this is indeed the case.  After all, the cultural mandate was given to Adam in Eden, as God’s image-bearer, in a state of innocency, prior to the Fall.  …

That’s not what I call preaching 4

Walking With Giants Posted on by

I wanted to check a few details about Philip Pullman’s book, ‘The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ’.  In that book, Pullman imagines ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ’ were brothers: ‘Jesus’ was godly and moral, but ‘Christ’ was something of a Judas-character, whose physical likeness to ‘Jesus’ led, after the death of his brother, to a belief in the resurrection and the founding of the Christian Church.

I was intrigued to read this transcript of a sermon by the Reverend Robert Reiss, who at the time was Canon in Residence at Westminster Abbey.  …