This is really a post for any folk from St James who happen to be here.
The sermon from yesterday on Luke 21:5-38 is now available online. The text is available on this site and the audio is available on sermons page of the St James Audley website.
I’m hugely enjoying reading R T France’s commentary on Mark 13
“Avoid divisions!”, say the closing three chapters of Romans. And I don’t know one Christian who doesn’t agree with that. We all hate division in church life. It is ugly. It distracts from evangelism. It causes personal pain and grief.
The important thing to notice is that Romans 14-16 offers us two very different ways in which division might arise, and therefore two very different ways of avoiding it.
That depends on which God you are talking about.
People who embrace a set of views known as “open theism” like to say that God does not know the future (either his own, or that of his world, or both – there are different versions).
I’m reading Isaiah 41-44 again, and am freshly struck by what is here. God sets out one test or characteristic that will distinguish him, the true God, from an idol or false God.
God can tell you what is going to happen; an idol cannot
Here is the test, for example, in 44:7
“Who is like me? Let him proclaim it.
In Luke 20:1-21:4 we have a section characterised by
The section is framed by:
I don’t know.
But it must be something to do with this:
Mark 1:2-8 leaves us with two expectations of what God is about to do. From Mark 1:2-3 (quoting Isaiah 40), God is about to bring his people back through the wilderness to the promised land; he is about to remake his people. From Mark 1:7, he is “the stronger one than John” who will operate on his people’s hearts by his Spirit to bring about true repentance. There is no clear indication from Mark 1:2-8 that either “the Lord” or “the stronger one” is anyone other than God himself. We’re not looking for a human being (yet).
I’ve been doing some work on Mark chapter 1, and what I’ve found is really exciting!
Hello everyone!
Some of you may have wondered why I took a two week break from posting as I didn’t let on much. Others will have seen the issues clearly. Personally, I’ve valued having a couple of weeks to give serious thought to some of the issues that were raised with me. It’s easily to be cheaply dismissive or (equally easily) blown here and there by everything everyone says. I wanted to be neither, but to listen and think with care.
I’ll be taking a 2 week break from posting on this site from now.
Comments still welcome of course – especially in response to this post. I had a really useful conversation with two good friends yesterday about the tensions of blogging. Specifically, what we were talking about was how blogging sits with serving the church in pastoral ministry.
