Liberalism is no longer spoken of as a church tradition. Does this mean that it no longer exists? Quite the reverse. It's on a mission to take over entirely, eclipsing all the previous churchmanships within the Anglican church. Read on to see what I mean
Thanks to Marc Lloyd for this one.
Doug Wilson is very helpful in articulating with clarity a Calvinist view of the Lord's Supper.
In a nutshell: Are the bread and wine that we share just bread and wine? His answer is: Yes... In the same sense in which the words on the page of the Bible are just words on a page.
The comments beneath his post are as worth reading as the post itself, because they clarify precisely what he is and is not saying.
I love the fact that the Egyptian magicians think it is clever to copy the first few plagues. (They run out of steam when it gets to the gnats).
The Egyptians "grow weary of drinking water from the Nile" (7:18 - !), because it is turned to blood. So the Egyptians produce... more blood.
Pharaoh is pleading (not very dignified for a king of Egypt, 8:8) with Moses and Aaron to take away the frogs. But that's alright - his magicians can produce... more frogs.
I mean: What use is more blood and more frogs?! The one thing they cannot copy is Yahweh's ability to take away the plagues. Thus it's clear, even from plague 1, that Yahweh is without rival in Egypt.
There are many temporal expressions of God's anger in today's world. The false gods we all serve to varying degree can replicate many of these expressions of anger. But there is no god in the world, except the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, who can take away the anger of God.
I’m looking again at sermon I gave a little while ago on 2 Peter 1:12-21.
What I’m noticing was the careful precision with which Peter describes the inspiration of the OT (prophets) in verse 20.
I like the story of King Joash / Jehoash (1 Kings 11-12).
When he was just born (under a year old, comparing 11:3 and 11:21), the person who thought they ruled Judah (Athaliah) killed all the kings sons. Why such ruthlessness? She wanted to rule, and felt threatened that a new heir to the throne had been born.
Someone recently pointed me to this poem, where each line is associated with a verse of Scripture, entitled The Father’s Love Letter.
One of the things I like about it is (even allowing for several / many misappropriations of Bible verses) that it is a heart-warming exposition of the love of God for his people. God’s love for his people is part of his glorious character, and it is good to see facets of it laid out.
But I have to admit to not being too keen on it as a piece of writing.
I’m enjoying Peter Enns, NIV Application Commentary, Exodus more than I expected to. He has clearly spent a lot of time with the Hebrew text of the book, and has a lot of helpful observations to make.
For example, the word for “worship” in 4:23 is of the same root as the word for “work” in 5:9. (‘bd). The conflict between Yahweh and Pharaoh is being seen in yet one more respect – which king will successfully command the work/worship of the Hebrews.
I'd like to welcome my friend James Gould to the blogosphere.
James has just started a degree in Biblical Studies at Sheffield, having done a youth-work year-out with us last year. He's concerned to end his degree loving God more than when he began.
So, rather than e-mail all his friends separately with every issue his course raises, he thought he'd start a blog and ask his questions where we can all find them. To start with, they're a bunch of OT questions, often Pentateuch ones.
Welcome, James. And if any readers of this blog ever fancy peaking at his and posting him the odd comment by way of reply - I know he'd be grateful.
At St James, Audley we are about to start a sermon series on Exodus – the whole book in 8 sermons.
I get to preach on 1:1-7:7, 12-14, and the first of the tabernacle sections.
Phew… it’s hard work. And I’m trying to work out why.
The whole thing isn’t long, but here are a couple of paragraphs
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