Monthly Archive: September 2006

This is like something from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

1 Kings 8:15:

Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who with his hand has fulfilled what he promised with his mouth to David my father.

I’m always trying to find these. So to save me hunting, I’ll put them somewhere.

(William Perkins, chapter 7 of The Art of Prophesying, entitled “Use and Application”)

What do I notice when I read what Perkins is actually saying (as opposed to what people imagine him to be saying)? He’s saying:

∓

Picking up, again on this CHN article. The Bible is quite clear that it’s a fair question. Jesus did die for the sins of the whole world. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”.Just a small exegetical observation.

I’m delighted to see that Steve Leighton, proprietor of HasBean coffee has finally managed to find a Kenyan good enough to stock. He drinks Kenyan at home, and basically will not buy one unless it has such a “wow” factor that he can’t get over how good it is.

Well, there have been no Kenyan coffees at HasBean for some time – nothing up to Steve’s standards. But at last we can buy Kenya Ragati from him. Sounds good, and I trust him – but I’ll still buy a 250g bag of green to see what I think for myself.

Ros wanted a copy of the sheet I prepared whilst at college summarising the morphological changes that take place when conjugating the 9 classes of weak verb.

Here it is Ros, and anybody else who’s interested: Weak Verb Summary Sheet

Thank you Mark Dever, in The Message of the Old Testament for this that I’ve never seen before:

Andrew Towner is very helpful on how a band leader can best serve the whole church.

Thanks Ros for pointing me to this which I hadn't seen before.

At times it was a real laugh-out-loud moment. At other times it was a little too close to the bone, in terms of things I've heard people I know say.

Now that’s provocative. That’s also one bright seven year old.

What’s wrong with the lolly-bag illustration? Two things come to my mind.

I'm finishing off preparations for a training day I'm leading on Saturday, entitled "Preaching Christ from the Old Testament".

The bookstall arrived today. The good John Telford, manager of Wesley Owen on Wigmore Street in London, was tremendously helpful in recommending titles for me and finding ones that our local Christian bookshops said they wouldn't be able to sell. Thank you John, and an excellent parcel of books it is. Shame the Griedanus is temporally unavailable.

Anyway, why did I not know of Mark Dever's The Message of the Old Testament before now? It was only published in May, so fair enough. But Mark sets out, for each Old Testament book, to print a sermon on the entire book. A brave project, but oh so helpful. So thank you Mark Dever too.

Thanks, again, David for this:

http://davidpfield.blogspot.com/2006/09/living-in-sodom.html

Indeed! And I remain convinced that one of the most important books of Scripture to teach our children is the book of Daniel.

"But you would say that", I hear. Yes - but which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Indeed! And I remain convinced that one of the most important books of Scripture to teach our children is the book of Daniel.

I've just stumbled across this article on paedocommunion.

http://www.paedocommunion.com/articles/lusk_for_the_childrens_sake.php

So, to remind me where to find it in future, I've put a link to it here. Excellent.

(Given he mentions post-mill, presumably if I come back far enough into the future, I will see Bible-teaching churches across the UK that welcome children in this way).

I'm just finishing reading through 2 Samuel. Joab and Abishai, the two (surviving) sons of Zeruiah, remind me of the role that James and John, the two sons of Zebedee, sometimes play in the gospels.

The assassination of Amasa in chapter 21 seems as much to do with Joab's determination to continue in charge of the army as it is about Amasa's slowness to muster Judah. In short, he wants to be David's right-hand man. Compare Mark 10:35-45. Joab's hastiness to slay Absalom is deemed too hasty by David, cf. Luke 9:54-55.

I'm just trying to tap consciously into something I had noticed instinctively. The question is: I'm I noticing something that isn't objectively there? Even if it is a valid observation, so what?

Enough subconscious blogging for one morning! Bye all

See this Comment

Note to self: It really is time to do some proper reading and thinking into preterism

OK. Let me try and be a little clearer.

John Frame says (if I understand him correctly) that, in the act of God making himself known to me, there are 3 perspectives through which this can be viewed.

Yet again, I'm sure this has been said numerous times. But I'll record it here by way of "note to self"...

Richard Pratt's book He Gave Us Stories discusses handling OT narratives. Recommend it. Part 1 of the book discusses how we approach stories - not in terms of techniques to follow, but in terms of the kind of approach we need. He only mentions Frame very occasionally, but a lot of what he says is along the lines of "Don't set this method / approach over against that method / approach, as if you must pick one or the other. You need both."

[Edit: This post originally had a lot more after this point, but I've since managed to write what I was saying more clearly. Have a look at the post immediately after (chronologically) this one. So I've removed the unclear stuff I wrote originally. Cut!]

Who decided to name the next hurricane about to attempt havoc-wreaking on the United States, "Gordon"?

Extremely helpful quotation.

(OK, I can't resist writing this: James reads David who quotes Barb listening to Lusk quoting Leithart)

http://davidpfield.blogspot.com/2006/09/baptism-and-covenant.html

In particular, I've never before seen the conceptual link between the covenant community / elect distinction and the creature / creator distinction. Thanks David for fishing these things out for us.

Before you say,... I know – these observations have been made before and are not new. But…

Here are two true statements:

• God speaks through the Bible
• God speaks through the Holy Spirit

I assume we wish to join the Eastern and Western churches throughout their history in affirming that the Spirit is one of the three persons, that the Spirit is divine, is God. If not, the implications are serious indeed – but it also makes the rest of this post redundant. Proceeding, then, on that assumption…

Thanks to Chris Green and Dick Lucas in their BST commentary on 2 Peter for the following paragraph. 2 Peter 2 really is frighteningly contemporary in the scenario it describes.

I’m often saddened when, in these days, weddings seems to matter more then marriage. (How encouraging, by contrast, to be helping one couple, who have recently become followers of Christ, to organise a wedding in the shortest possible time. They are keen to be married and are prepared to sacrifice lots of elements of “the ideal wedding”).

Having flow charted 2 Peter, the main points stand out quite clearly from the subordinate ones.

Again – just in case this is helpful for anyone, here are two summaries of 2 Peter.

Summary

I’m doing some study of 2 Peter, and have prepared for myself a flow diagram of the English text. For those not familiar with flow diagrams, the idea is that the text is laid out to show the grammatical structure. Main clauses are placed against the left hand margin, and all dependent clauses are indented. Where it makes sense to do so, those dependent clauses are indented so as to place them directly beneath the word they depend on.

Many thanks to Peter Davies, vicar at Audley for his permission to reproduce this morning’s sermon here. Very helpful, I thought, for how clearly he put things. Echoes of Rich Lusk at one point – which certainly is not a criticism!

I have to say that this familiar passage is such a shock to the system.

I could be misconstrued as Binitarian in my recent entry on the Independent “Good List”.

Just to clarify:

The BBC reports today on the Independent’s recent compilation of a British “Good List”. Not just those people who did something good, or changed things for better, but those who expressly sought to do so.

The list is interesting. Most of Britain’s religions have someone on their because of their affiliation with that religion. We have a Muslim leader, a rabbi and a Sikh leader. That affiliation qualifies their inclusion.

Re-reading Mark 14 is interesting. In Gethsemane, the disciples were urged to stay awake, watch and pray so that they might not fall into temptation. Jesus himself stayed awake and prayed – presumably including prayer to remain faithful under the forthcoming trial.

A sobering statement on human nature. The disciples could see Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, praying to his father that he might not yield to temptation. Yet they thought (implicitly or explicitly, it doesn’t matter) that they could endure without the Father’s help. Astounding – and sobering.

That also gives a point of contact between chapters 13 and 14. The concluding exhortation in chapter 13 is “stay awake”, the same thing Jesus has to tell the disciples in chapter 14. Could this be one key to working out Mark’s intent in these chapters?