Lydia is described as a woman who ‘worshiped’ God, whose heart the Lord ‘opened…to respond to Paul’s message’.
(a) What do you think it meant for Lydia to have been a ‘worshiper of God’? Who today might be similarly described, but has yet to hear and respond to the Christian message?
(b) Lydia’s experience of coming to Christian faith seems to have been quite calm and unspectacular. Paul’s, on the other hand, had been much more dramatic. …
Acts 16:10 After Paul saw the vision, we attempted immediately to go over to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.
16:11 We put out to sea from Troas and sailed a straight course to Samothrace, the next day to Neapolis, 16:12 and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of that district of Macedonia, a Roman colony. We stayed in this city for some days.…
11:27 Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. 11:28 A person should examine himself first, and in this way let him eat the bread and drink of the cup. 11:29 For the one who eats and drinks without careful regard for the body eats and drinks judgment against himself.
What is meant by eating and drinking ‘without careful regard for the body’?…
Exhortation in the preaching of Jesus
Characteristics of Jesus’ preaching:
The Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7) presents practical applications of the law (e.g. anger (5:21–26), lust (5:27–30), loving your enemies (5:43–48), giving to the needy (6:1–4), and so on), but Jesus does not stop there. He concludes his sermon with a series of exhortations (Mt 7:13-27):
…‘As Jesus began his conclusion, he gave a powerful word picture showing that his sermon does, in fact, demand a response.
Mitch Chase notes that Gabriel is mentioned in just two books of the Bible: Daniel 8:16; 9:21 and Luke 1:19,26.
In the Daniel passages, Gabriel makes known events that were to occur in the distant future.
In the Luke passages, Gabriel makes known near-future events. A son is to be born to Zechariah and also to Mary.
There are a number of points of comparison. Looking first at Daniel and Zechariah:
This question is discussed by Stephen Kneale.
Do we look for Christ in all the psalms, or only in this customarily considered to be Messianic?
Expositors from Augustine to Luther tended to take the maximalist approach. Calvin, however, stressed the original contexts of the psalms, and so adopted a more minimal interpretation.
In recent times, Bonhoeffer and Ash have leant towards the maximalist position, whereas others, including Dale Ralph Davis, incline towards a more limited reading.…
Luke 1:38 So Mary said, “Yes, I am a servant of the Lord; let this happen to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
The word translated ‘servant’ is doulos, ‘slave’.
It has been speculated (by Mitzi J. Smith, J. Davison Philips Professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, and Professor of Gender Studies at the University of South Africa, followed by Candida Moss and Keith Giles) that Mary’s self-designation may imply that she was actually a slave (and Jesus himself a slave, as the son of a slave woman).…
Dave Armstrong seeks to present ‘Biblical evidence for Catholicism’.
I find his writings irenic, if ultimately unconvincing on distinctive Catholic teachings such as the doctrine of Mary.
In The Blessed Virgin Mary: Hail, Full of Grace Armstrong seeks to define and justify various aspects of that doctrine.
The following summarises the main points. I refrain, for the time being, from making critical comments.
(a) Mother of God
Lk 1:43 (“The mother of my Lord”) is appealed to in support of the doctrine of Mary as ‘Mother of God’. …
This is a bit late for Christmas 2023. But, hey, I write for posterity (if not prosperity), so I’ll borrow (and slightly adapt) some thoughts from Chris Green and pass them on.
How can we give our Carol Service talk a cutting edge? What will help us to slice through the layers of predictability and (let’s face it) banality that besets such discourses?
Chris Green offers:
1. Choose one obvious passage. Speak from one of the old faithfuls, one that requires a minimum of background and explanation, and let it loose.…
Craig Evans, Joel Green and others have noticed a series of remarkable parallels between the births of John (the Baptist) and Jesus, as recorded in Luke 1.
