(a) What had Philip been doing before this episode (see Acts 8:5-8)? Why might God have led him away from all of this, in order to evangelise this one man? Do you think that God sometimes takes us away from one thing (that seemed to be working very nicely, thankyou very much) and sends us to another (that doesn’t look so promising)?
(b) We sometimes talk about ‘beginning where people are’. The Ethiopian’s starting point was a passage of Scripture (Isaiah 53).…
Egalitarian writers often claim that male headship did not come about until after the Fall, and is, accordingly, a consequence of the Fall.
This view goes back at least as far as Chrysostom, who represents God as addressing the woman thus:
…‘In the beginning I created you equal in esteem to your husband, and my intention was that in everything you would share with him as an equal, and as I entrusted control of everything to your husband, so did I to you; but you abused your equality of status.
Notes of the second of two talks given in July, 2018.
The need for discernment
If, a generation ago, you asked anybody for their favourite verse from the Bible, they would probably quote John 3:16. Today, people are more likely to cite the words of Christ, when he said, “judge not, that you be not judged” (Mt 7:1). It suggests to them that we should accept all beliefs, all behaviours, all professions of faith without question. …
Notes of the first of two talks given in July 2018. These were based on the earlier and more detailed work written up on this site.
Habakkuk 3:2 – ‘Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.’
‘From the fall of man to our day, the work of redemption has mainly been carried on by remarkable communications of the Spirit of God. …
It is sometimes thought that in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 we have two entirely separate and self-contained creation accounts, so different as to be incompatible.
But they are neither contradictory accounts, nor carbon copies of one another.
Claire Smith discusses the similarities and differences most helpfully:
When we look at these two accounts we see there is sameness and difference. They are not conflicting accounts, but they are not carbon copies either. Each makes its own distinctive contribution.…
Leaving, for the moment, specific issues to one side, what does the big picture of sexuality in the Bible look like?
What follows is based on Ian Paul’s helpful overview (here and here).
The church has often struggled with this, partly because earlier generations have assumed that 1 Cor 7:1 (‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman’) represented Paul’s own view (rather than that of his correspondents). …
What does it mean to ‘abide in Christ’?
Sinclair Ferguson writes:
The exhortation to “abide” has been frequently misunderstood, as though it were a special, mystical, and indefinable experience. But Jesus makes clear that it actually involves a number of concrete realities.
First, union with our Lord depends on His grace. Of course we are actively and personally united to Christ by faith (John 14:12). But faith itself is rooted in the activity of God.…
Preston Sprinkle provides the following summary of his argument in his 2015 book People To Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just An Issue:
According to Bart Ehrman, the Synoptic Gospels teach that the human Jesus was at some point ‘exalted’ to a divine status, but not that he was pre-existent.
But, responds New Testament scholar Simon Gathercole, this is to ignore the significant number of ‘I have come’ statements found on the lips of Jesus. Here are some of them:
And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.…
Sometimes, we need to move from the general to the particular, from statistics to personal experience, to really feel the impact of the ‘sexual revolution’.
Denny Burk quotes the heartbreaking words of a mother whose daughter has ‘transitioned’:
Like any parent, I felt betrayed when I found out a pediatric endocrinologist, someone who knows how powerful our bodies’ natural hormones are, would teach my 16-year old daughter to inject herself with testosterone, a primarily male hormone known and documented to have many horrible side effects on young girls including male pattern baldness, vaginal atrophy, infertility, and an increased risk of heart disease and cancer.…
