Mind the gap

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In The Hermeneutical Spiral, Grant Osborne discusses the issue of ‘distanciation’ (the cultural gap that exists between biblical times and today.  Preachers have devised a number of erroneous approaches, including:

  1. Literalistic preaching assumes God automatically bridges the gap and preaches the text as if it were written for today. Normally this is accompanied by a lack of serious effort to understand the text, resulting in shallow, subjective sermons.
  2. Allegorizing…assumes that beneath the literal, surface meaning lies the “real” meaning, such as the Song of Songs as a picture of Christ and the church.
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Seven types of false teacher

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Chameleon-like, false teachers are able to adapt their colours to reflect the prevailing attitudes of their own day.

What particular types can be found in our churches today?

  1. The heretic.  This is the person who blatantly contradicts one or more essential truths of the gospel.  See 2 Pet 2:1.
  2. The charlatan.  This is the person who exploits the gospel for personal gain.  See Acts 9:9-24; 1 Tim 6:3-5.
  3. The false prophet.  This is the person who claims to have a fresh and authoritative revelation from God. 
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Mt 15:21-28/Mk 7:24-30 – Jesus and the Canaanite woman

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Mt 15:21-28 Jesus went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that area came and cried out, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is horribly demon-possessed!” But he did not answer her a word. Then his disciples came and begged him, “Send her away, because she keeps on crying out after us.” So he answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”…

Psalm 19 – I hear voices (sermon notes)

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So many voices seem to clamour for our attention these days:

  • TV, radio, mobile phone.
  • Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
  • Youtube, Google, Alexa.
  • Educators, politicians, influencers.
  • Parents, friends, colleagues

But there are three voices that must not be drowned out by all this noise.  These voices are ancient, and yet timeless.  They speak to us eloquently, instructively, harmoniously.

Together, they witness to the most important thing in the world: the knowledge of God.

Each of them can be heard in this, perhaps the most wonderful of all the psalms.…

John 7:53-8:11 – The woman caught in adultery

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John 7:53-8:11 records the famous and well-loved account of a woman caught in adultery.

This text is ‘troublesome’ because of the high level of doubt about whether it belongs in John’s Gospel, or, indeed, whether it belongs in our Bibles at all.

The earliest manuscripts do not contain this passage, and it is very rarely mentioned by Christian teachers during the 1st millenium AD.

Few scholars would argue that even if it is canonical, it belongs to this particular place in John’s Gospel. …

The dignity of women in the Pauline epistles

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William Hendriksen writes:

  1. He mentions with favor the following, to many of whom he sends greetings: Phoebe, Prisca, “Mary,” Tryphena and Tryphosa, Persis, Julia, the sister of Nereus, Apphia, Lois and Eunice (see Romans 16; Phil. 4; 2 Tim. 1; Philemon).
  2. He employs women in the service of the gospel (Rom. 16:1–3; Phil. 4:3); specifically, the older widows (1 Tim. 5:9, 10), deacons’ assistants (1 Tim. 3:11), women who are able to support others (1 Tim.
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Now George Whitefield has been toppled

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The Evangelical Times, August 2020 reports:

The University of Pennsylvania, also known as Penn, has decided to remove a statue of the 18th century evangelical preacher George Whitefield from its campus.

The university issued a statement saying, ‘The case for removing Whitefield is overwhelmingly strong. He was a well-known evangelical preacher in the mid-eighteenth century, who notably led a successful campaign to allow slavery in Georgia. This is undeniably one of Whitefield’s principal legacies.

‘Honouring him with a statue on our campus is inconsistent with our University’s core values, which guide us in becoming an ever more welcoming community that celebrates inclusion and diversity.’

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The resurrection of the body

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“We look for the resurrection of the dead”, says the Nicene Creed.

“I believe in the resurrection of the body”, we declare every time we recite the “Apostles’ Creed”.

These ancient affirmations are well-grounded in Scripture, most obviously in 1 Corinthians 15, but also in Romans 8 and other passages.  They are also consistent with the teaching of 2 Peter 3 and Revelation 21 and 22 that confirms that the future hope of God’s people is not for their bodies to remain buried for ever in the ground of this earth and for their “souls” to fly off to “heaven”, but for bodily resurrection and for future life in God’s new heaven and new earth.…

What would it take to convince an atheist?

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Atheists like to claim that their views, unlike those of believers, are falsifiable.

So, given this openness to a change of mind, what might convince an atheist that God exists after all?

One blogger lists the following as her number one kind of evidence:

‘If I saw an unambiguous message from God, I would be persuaded of his existence. If I saw writing suddenly appear in the sky, in letters a hundred feet high, saying “I Am God, I Exist, Here Is What I Want You To Do” — and if that writing were seen by every human being, written in whatever language they understand, comprehended in the same way by everyone who saw it — I would be persuaded that God existed.’…

‘The heavens declare’

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Psalm 19 is the go-to passage for the witness of the heavens to the glory of God.  But, in fact, it is only one of a number of scriptures that explore what the starry skies reveal about the nature, will and purpose of God.

Power

Gen 1:2 famously says that ‘in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’  In fact, the first two chapters of Genesis witness of the creative power of God in creating the cosmos and everything in it.…