Judges 19:11-28 – The priest and the concubine

Walking With Giants Posted on by

As evidence for the nastiness of the Old Testament and its God, Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion, 240f) can find no better example than the account of an unnamed Levite and his concubine while travelling in Gibeah (Judges 19:11-28).

Quoting the Authorised Version (why?), Dawkins outlines the ghastly unfolding of events.  The two of them spend the night in the house of an old man.  While eating their supper, the men of the city come to the door and demand that the old man hands over his male guest so that they can have their way with him. …

Preacher, guard your character

Walking With Giants Posted on by

There is, as Bryan Chapell points out, no shortage of scriptural teaching on the necessity of the minister of the word to be a man of good character (2 Cor 6:3-4; 1 Thess 2:3-8, 11-12; 2 Tim 2:15-16, 22-24; Titus 2:7-8; James 1:26-27; 3:13).

Those who preach Scripture should take care that their lives are under the rule of Scripture.  John Wesley once explained to a young preacher why his ministry was ineffective: “Your temper is uneven; you lack love for your neighbors.…

Mt 13:3-9; 18-23 – The Christian and the Bible – sermon notes

Walking With Giants Posted on by

It is springtime by the Sea of Galilee. Great numbers have come enthusiastically to hear Jesus preach, but what will be their response? The seed was being faithfully sown, but what will the harvest bring? We can picture Jesus sitting in the prow of a boat, pointing, perhaps, to a field where a sower is scattering corn seed onto the ground. Look: some of it is falling onto the pathway, and you can already see the birds coming along behind and pecking it up off the hard ground.…

Evangelical Biblical Illiteracy

Walking With Giants Posted on by

David R. Nienhuis writes in Modern Reformation of the problem of biblical illiteracy in America.

Among the general population, although 84% of Americans regard the Bible as important in helping them make decisions in everyday life, only half can name even one of the four Gospels, only a third are able to name the individual who gave the Sermon on the Mount, and only a minority can identify the first book of the Bible.

But the situation is also worrying among self-confessing evangelicals. …

What church-goers think of the Bible

Walking With Giants Posted on by

In 2008, research conducted on behalf of the Bible Society asked church leaders and ordinary church-goers (i.e. non-leaders) from across England and Wales about their atittudes towards the Bible.

The main findings, as summarised on the Evangelical Alliance’s Slip Stream web site, are as follows:-

Leaders

  • 98% of church leaders believe the Bible is divinely inspired and 47% think that is free from errors.
  • 90% of leaders say that the Bible actively challenges them to live in a way which runs counter to the present culture in Britain
  • 76% leaders associate Bible poverty with “our own land where the Bible is no longer at the centre of public and family life” and 90% think that the church should work towards a society that takes the Bible more seriously.
…

The Bible: ‘the book of the covenant’

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Tim Ward explains how and why we can regard the Bible as a unified covenant book, notwithstanding the huge diversity found within its sixty-six separate writings.  How can it be said that God’s covenant is communicated in the narratives of Chronicles, say, or in the wisdom sayings of Proverbs?

‘Commandments declare the stipulations of the covenant.  Prophecy and epistles, in particular, expound and apply those stipulations in specific contexts; they are, in effect, the covenant preached in different contexts. …

A primer on Hebrew poetry

Walking With Giants Posted on by

It was a great eye-opener for me to learn, many years ago, the rudiments of how Hebrew poetry works.  I have found that this greatly assists in the appreciation and understanding of many parts of the Bible.

Hebrew poetry is characterised

  • not by rhyme (phonetic agreement; parallelism of sound)
  • or by rhythm (metric agreement, parallelism of time)
  • but by thought-parallelism.

Among the several varieties are:-

1.  Synonymous parallelism

The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
making wise the simple

(Psalm 19:7)

Deliver me from my enemies, O God,
Protect me from those who rise up against me.…

Six reasons why many Jews reject Jesus as Messiah

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok, a distinguished Jewish scholar, has set out six reasons why Jewish people continue to reject Jesus as Saviour and Messiah.

1.  Jesus did not fulfil the expectations of the Old Testament prophets, and of the rabbis.  He did not restore the kingdom of David, nor gather the scattered people of Israel, nor restore all the laws of the Torah, nor rebuild the temple, nor did he renew the entire creation.

2.  Jesus’ claim to enjoy a special relationship with God (Mt 11:27; Jn 14:6f) contradicts the Jewish conviction that all people are equal before God.…

The Bible is for ordinary people

Walking With Giants Posted on by

Donald Macleod writes:-

It was one of the great achievements of the Reformation to give the Bible back to the people, stressing that ‘not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means’ could attain to a sufficient understanding of the scriptures (Westminster Confession 1.7). Today, we need to get back to this. The Bible is not targeted at experts, yielding its meaning only to priests or scholars. You don’t need rows of commentaries to understand it.

…

The Holy Spirit and the Bible

Walking With Giants Posted on by

It has been said that ‘the Bible without the Holy Spirit is like a sun-dial at night.’

J.I. Packer has written:-

‘The Spirit’s witness to Scripture is like his witness to Jesus, which we find spoken of in Jn 15:26 and 1 Jn 5:7. (cf. 1 Jn 2:20,27) It is a matter not of imparting new information but of enlightening previously darkened minds to discern divinity through sensing its unique impact – the impact in the case of the Jesus of the gospel, and in the other case of the words of Holy Scripture.…