The effective expository preacher is involved in two different worlds
The preacher needs to know how to develop the Biblical text into a message that will address people’s needs today.
The exegetical idea should be submited to three developmental questions:
Just four things can be done with a declarative statement
1. …
A note on the kingship of Jesus from the Puritan Thomas Watson.
‘Jesus Christ is of mighty renown, he is a king;
1. He has a kingly title. ‘High and Lofty.’ Isa 57:15.
2. He has his insignia regalia, his ensigns of royalty; corona est insigne regae potestatis [a crown is the symbol of royal power]. He has his crown; Rev 6:2; his sword, ‘Gird thy sword upon thy thigh;’ Psa 45:3; his sceptre, ‘A sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.’…
Charles Simeon (1759 – 1836) exercised an influtential evangelical ministry centred on Cambridge, England.
…‘The Conversion of the Jews was perhaps the warmest interest of his life, in the way of extended religious enterprise.’ He actively promoted the work of the Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews. On hearing of a Jew who had recently embraced the Christian faith, he wrote, “O that the whole nation might remember themselves, and turn to the Lord!”
‘Literally to the last the thought of the recovery of Israel to the divine Messiah was on Simeon’s heart.
Election is ‘God’s decision to choose us to be saved before the foundation of the world.’ Or, more fully, ‘election is an act of God before creation in which he chooses some people to be saved, not on account of any foreseen merit in them, but only because of his sovereign good pleasure.’
The term ‘predestination’ is a broader term, including as it does God’s leaving of the non-elect to the consequences of their own sins. …
John Charles Ryle ministered in East Anglia in the middle years of the 19th century before becoming the first (Anglican) bishop of Liverpool. His writings are refreshingly clear, robust, and heartfelt. He explains, defends and applies the evangelical faith with deceptive simplicity. Ryle deals with the doctrine of election in his book Old Paths. Here’s a summary:-
We are familiar with the idea of a general election to Parliament. But there is a greater election.…
Election is such a hot potato that we can end up resenting the very existence of the doctrine, and almost reproach God for putting it in the Bible at all. Because we find many of our arguments about election to be unedifying, we are tempted to conclude that the doctrine itself is unedifying.
But look at the attitude of Paul: he is neither embarrassed nor ashamed of election. The thought of election leads Paul to praise, Eph 1:3ff, to encouragement, Rom 8:33ff, and to ethical appeal, Col 3:12.…
Craig Blomberg is Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary. He’s the author of a number of fine books, including one on the Historical Reliability of the Gospels and another on the The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel.
I was interested to read this recent interview with Blomberg on Justin Taylor’s blog, Between Two Worlds.
Blomberg shows that the kind of approach to the inerrancy question that James Orr was advocating a century ago is still, thankfully, alive and kicking.…
The Post-Evangelical is entitled ‘Let Me Tell You a Story’. This chapter deals with the failure of modern, and the rise of the postmodern, ‘stories’.
What is the new postmodern world that is emerging?
…It is a world which understands itself through biological rather than mechanistic models; a world where people see themselves as belonging to the environment, rather than over it or apart from it; a world distrustful of institutions, hierarchies, centralized bureaucarcies and male dominated organizations.
In chapter 5 – ‘Woolly Liberals?’ – Dave Tomlinson informs us that he shares with evangelicals a rejection of theological liberalism. But what he does not share are evangelicals’ reasons for opposing liberalism.
Indeed, he expresses amazement at ‘how paranoid evangelicals are about liberalism’. Evangelicals are constantly patrolling their boundaries, lest one of their number should trespass into liberal territory.
This is not to suggest, says Tomlinson, that theology and doctrine are unimportant:
…‘Far from it; but there is no evidence from the Bible that it is (sic) of ultimate importance.
Dan Brown’s The Dan Vinci Code is well past its sell-by date now. But it has given wings to a fanciful myth about Christian origins which had being crawling around in the academic world in the US and elsewhere but has now, thanks to Brown’s book, nested in the public consciousness.
What is this myth? The redoubtable New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, in the course of a lecture given in 2005 which exposes the sillinesses of the above-mentioned book, outlines the five elements of the Myth of Christian Origins:-
1. …
