Who did Jesus think he was?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

If we are to take the four Gospels pretty much at face value (i.e. not as documents whose teaching emanates largely from the faith of the early church, rather than from the Master himself) then we are faced with two complementary, and equally astonishing, sets of truths regarding Jesus’ claims concerning himself.

1. Firstly, there is everything that Jesus did not say or do.

‘Jesus never said to his disciples, Let us worship God together; Let us put our faith in God; Let us pray together; Let us trust or hope in God.…

The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew and Luke

Walking With Giants Posted on by
Matthew 6:9–13 Luke 11:2–4
Our Father in heaven Father
May your name be sanctified May your name be sanctified
May your kingdom come May your kingdom come
May your will be done
As in heaven, so also on earth
Give us today our daily bread Give us each day our daily bread
Forgive us our debts Forgive us our sins
As we also have forgiven our debtors As we also forgive everyone
who sins against us
And do not lead us into temptation And do not lead us into temptation.
…

Acts 14:8-20 – How do you do that? – sermon notes

Walking With Giants Posted on by

How many people sometimes feel inadequate, discouraged or even ashamed when it comes to their efforts to share Jesus Christ with others?

Although Jesus told us to be fishers of men, we are content to be keepers of the aquarium.

A girl returning home from Sunday School complained about the class’s reaction after the day’s lesson. “We were taught to go into the world and make disciples of all nations,” she said, “but we just sat there.”…

Acts 10 – I’m not eating that! – sermon notes

Walking With Giants Posted on by

This is a wonderful story of how God worked separately in the lives of Cornelius the Roman soldier, and Peter the apostle, to bring them together and grant a priceless gift to each of them. To Cornelius and his household the Lord gave the gift of new life in Jesus Christ. To Peter he gave the gift of a new understanding – a new realisation that this new life in Christ was for everyone, and not just for Jews like himself.…

Counting the cost

Walking With Giants Posted on by

In his celebrated book Holiness, J.C. Ryle urges ‘the true-hearted and holy Christian’ to count up and compare,

1. The profit and the loss. You may possibly lose something in this world, but you will gain the salvation of your immortal soul. It is written: “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36.)

2. The praise and the blame. You may possibly be blamed by man, but you will have the praise of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.…

God so loved the world…

Walking With Giants Posted on by

John 3:16 has been called by Luther ‘the Bible in miniature’.  It reveals the following aspects of God’s love:-

1.  Its character.  The intensity and energy of divine love is hinted at in the word ‘so’.  The emphasis in the original is, ‘So loved God the world…’.  God loved to an immeasurable degree and in a transcendently glorious manner.  The little word ‘so’ signifies, ‘so greatly, so much, so dearly’.  God’s love is not only deep and pure, it is also powerful and active. …

Why did Jesus do nature miracles?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

N.T. Wright (Jesus and the Victory of God) points out that in addition to the healing miracles of Jesus, we find him exercising power over the natural order, as with the miraculous catch of fish, the stilling of storms, feeding of multitudes in the desert, and (negatively) the cursing of a fig tree.

In these actions, Jesus is demonstrating his power to bring the natural order into ‘a new harmony with itself’ in ways that had only occasionally been glimpsed previously, as with the crossing of the Red Sea.…

Repentance and forgiveness, the Wright way

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Until recently (writes N.T. Wright in Jesus and the Victory of God), it was generally assumed that ‘repentance’ was a major theme in the teaching of Jesus, and that this meant more or less the negative side of personal conversion.  His message was one of divine grace, in contrast to the prevailing legalism of Judaism.  It is now ‘widely recognised’, says Wright, that this involved a ‘complete caricature’, both of Judaism and of the teaching of Jesus.  …

Is hell self-chosen?

Walking With Giants Posted on by

I must admit that for quite a long while I have been sympathetic to the view that hell is self-chosen.  That is, rather than being sent there by God, people make their own choice, and live (or, rather, exist) with the consequences.

Perhaps the most celebrated exponent of this view is C.S. Lewis, who wrote:

‘[a] man can’t be taken to hell or sent to hell: you can only get there on your own steam’; ‘the doors of hell are locked from the inside’; ‘[t]here are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”‘

…

Five truths about the incarnation

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Based on this post by Joseph Scheumann:-

1.  The incarnation was not the divine Son’s beginning.

Our Lord did not begin to exist with the virginal conception or with his birth in Bethlehem.  No: the incarnation means that he who had no beginning began to be what he eternally was not – a human being.

2.  The incarnation shows Jesus’ humility.

No ordinary king, Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve (Mk 10:45).  …