So often, when you read a commentary on part of the Bible you're studying, you have pages and pages of material but the commentator doesn't seem to be puzzling over the same details of the passage as you are.
How refreshing when the commentator asks exactly the questions you were asking, and has some very sensible things to say.
This year is the 300th anniversary of Robinson Crusoe, the debut novel of Daniel Defoe published on 25th April 1719. It is said to be the first novel published in the English language, and since 1719 has been printed in many editions. It is many years since I read it, so I thought it time to do so again.
The novel starts with Robinson's father seeking to persuade the stubborn lad not to go to sea. His efforts are sincere and emotional, but in vain.
I often hear it said that if you join a local church, you haven't just joined a branch of the church, or a part of the church. You are a member of the church. Each local church is the church. At the same time, the church throughout the world is one.
One thought just struck me that makes this clearer.
In the book of Exodus, the people are told how to build a tabernacle, a tent in which God can live. One of the pieces of furniture in that tabernacle is a golden lampstand. It symbolises that God lives amongst his people.
In February 2017, General Synod refused to take note of a report by the House of Bishops on human sexuality. I wrote on this at the time: It really is time to choose.
It's been a joy, and at times a challenge, to preach right through the letter of 1 Corinthians. It's healthy to take a long epistle like this, and to tackle it in a single sermon series, so we don't lose the train of Paul's thought by interrupting the series midway through. The challenge, then, is to decide how fast to go. Too fast, and you get such long blocks that the details get lost and the series is bland. Too slow, and the series simply takes too long, and we actually do lose Paul's train of thought because it's so long since we began.
Paul Barnett has written a very helpful, carefully applied, commentary on 1 Corinthians.
I'll just park this here for future reference.
Sometimes you see writers say that certain parts of the Bible are written in the "apocalyptic" style of writing.
Recognising the "genre" of part of the Bible can be very important when it comes to reading it properly. For instance, parables and historical narrative communicate in very different ways; you'd completely misread the gospels if you confused them.
On Easter Sunday, I preached on Romans 8:18-30.
There wasn't time in that service to set those glorious verses in their full context in the book of Romans.
A little while back, the Church of England's weekday lectionary spent some time in Hebrews 7 and Genesis 14. So it was, that I found myself trying to explain as simply as possible why the hard-to-pronounce character of Melchizedek is such good news to have in the Bible.
It's customary to refer to Revelation chapters 2 and 3 as the "Letters to the Seven Churches".
As I've studied, and we've preached, our way through these chapters, I'm not convinced that's the best heading to give them.
In fact, the whole of Revelation is a single letter. It's an epistle, like Philippians is. We get that from verse 4 that begins:
“John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace …”
The whole of Revelation is a letter. It was written to seven churches in Asia Minor.
