The driving force in Jesus’ life

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Sit down (suggests J.I. Packer, in his celebrated book Knowing God) and read through Mark’s Gospel, and you will receive an impression of Jesus that includes at least the following four features:-

1. Jesus was a man of action.  He was ‘a man always on the move, always altering situations and precipitating things—working miracles; calling and training disciples; upsetting error that passed as truth and irreligion that passed as godliness; and finally walking straight and open–eyed into betrayal, condemnation and crucifixion (a freakish sequence of anomalies which in the oddest way one is made to feel that he himself controlled all along the line),’

2.  …

Rom 7:24 – Who is the ‘wretched man’?

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Paul describes, in vv15-24, a high level of emotional turmoil.  But who is the “I” of this passage?  Is it Paul himself, or someone else?  And is the state he describe that of a believer, or an unbeliever; a regenerate, or an unregenerate person?

It is true, as Moo says, that what Paul says about the law still amounts to much the same thing, whatever conclusion one arrives at: ‘One can preach this paragraph, in its basic intention, without even making a definite identification of the ‘ego’.’ …

Jeremiah 36 – dramatised reading

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Dramatised Reading – Jeremiah 36

(Adapted from Contemporary English Version)

Narrator, Jeremiah, Baruch, King Jehoiakim, king’s secretary

Narrator – stands at lectern
Jeremiah – stands front of stage, organ side
Baruch – sitting in congregation
King Jehoiakim – sits regally centre-stage, wearing his crown.
King’s secretary – stands beside Jehoiakim.

Props: scroll, crown, large pair of scissors, paper shredder

The scroll should be in three sections, with the following words on sec. 1:

“Who will have pity on you, O Jerusalem?…

Jonathan Edwards on the atonement

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Andy Naselli draws attention to a passage in Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, in which the authors show that Edwards felt the need to explain the rationality of the atonement against the following charges of the deists:-

  1. that justice could be satisfied by earnest human efforts,
  2. that God was not obligated to fulfill his threats, and
  3. that the merits of one person could not be imputed to another.

Against the second of these – the presumption that God does not have to fulfill his threat to Adam and his descendants that they “would surely die” (Gen.…

Signs of genuine repentance

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Jared Wilson offers the following as characteristic of genuine repentance:-

1. We name our sin as sin and do not spin it or excuse it, and further, we demonstrate “godly sorrow,” which is to say, a grief chiefly about the sin itself, not just a grief about being caught or having to deal with the consequences of sin.

2. We actually confessed before we were caught or the circumstantial consequences of our sin caught up with us.…

Jesus – pre-existent or exalted divinity?

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Bart Ehrman is one of those scholars who impresses with his extensive knowledge (to say nothing of his personal charm and communication ability), but who makes glaring errors of judgement on too regular a basis.  Perhaps it is his own loss of Christian faith that makes him so certain that he has no axe to grind that he cannot see the axes lying all around him – some on have already been ground, others are waiting to be ground, still others are in the process of being ground.  …

Mark 1:1-20 – Four witnesses – sermon notes

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A book by Philip Pullman : ‘The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ’.  This reflects the popular distinction between ‘the Jesus of history’ and ‘the Christ of faith’; the simple Galilean teacher, as depicted in the Gospels, and the exalted object of the church’s worship, as found in the Epistles.

How is Jesus actually presented in this, the earliest and shortest of the Gospels; the one that most emphasises his humanness?  Let’s call four witnesses.…

Rom 5:12-21 – A tale of two families – sermon notes

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I wonder how far back you can trace your family tree?  Not many of us can rival the claim of Canadian furniture-maker Michael Ibsen, who is the nearest known relative of Richard III, who died at the battle of Bosworth in 1483.

But did you know that, in fact, each of us is a member of one or other of two very ancient families?  These families are discussed by Paul in Romans 5.

At the head of each of these two families stands a representative. …

That’s not what I call preaching 4

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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.  …