Not a great image

… in any sense of the word. Cindy Jacobs mobilised a Day of Prayer for the Global Economies on October 29th. So these Christians went down to a Wall Street statue symbolic of the global financial system.  They laid hands on a metal image of a bull and prayed.   . And they sang ‘God [...]

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Freed will

Previously on Christ the Truth… We discussed the impossiblility of a humanistic account of freedom. To say ‘I am who I am / I will be who I will be’ is both idolatrous and, ironically, makes us slaves of our own desires.  Such “freedom” enthrones the self and simultaneously locks the self off from the [...]

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Warning communicants

Eating with Jesus.  What a privilege!  And what danger!  There need to be warnings. . . I preached this sermon at a service of Holy Communion in another church.  It was essentially an extended warning to all would-be communicants: If you eat with Jesus you are confessing to Him and the world that you are a [...]

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Advice please

This is for everyone – both preachers and hearers of sermons. . . Imagine you had three minutes with a young preacher to pass on advice.  And imagine that they would take to heart what you had to say for the rest of their ministry.  What, from your perspective, would be the most important things to [...]

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Fake Plastic Trees (Country Hoedown)

. Meditating on Mark 4 has made me think about genuine Christian growth.  Gospel transformation is not like manufacture.  It’s agriculture.  It’s the word planted deep - fragile but potent, internal but outgoing, gradual but multiplying beyond all expectation.    Anyway I wrote this kids song on the theme.  Fake Plastic Trees (Country Hoedown) (again, recorded on handheld voice [...]

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Thirty, Sixty or a Hundred times

. Do you believe these words from Jesus: Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, welcome it, and produce a crop–thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown.  (Mark 4:20) Christ’s promise for Christian fruitfulness is out of this world.  3000%, 6000% or 10 000% is an incredible yield. Do [...]

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NT use of OT

Justin Taylor points us to a very helpful book review by Andy Naselli, whose blog looks great!  What follows is taken straight from Andy’s blog – do check it out for yourself. Three views on the New Testament use of the Old Testament outlines the following three positions: Walter Kaiser Jr: “Single Meaning, Unified Referents: [...]

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Freedom – where to begin?

Seriously, Happy Creation Day everybody.  Hope you’ve been enjoying the festivities. The other day I started talking about freedom: Beginning with ourselves will never get us to a sustainable or satisfying account of freedom. When we say: “I am who I am / I will be who I will be”, it is both blasphemous (Exodus 3:6) [...]

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Happy Birthday to you

Happy Birthday creation!! . (h/t Archbishop Ussher) . . Also Happy Birthday Weird Al Yankovic .  . Coincidence? .  

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15 Steps

Love the song.  Love the animation (a finalist in a Radiohead competition)     .What verse springs to mind for you?  For me it’s the curses for disobedience in Leviticus 26:36-39: . “`As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the [...]

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The problem of freedom

Freedom An evocative word. What does it mean to us? Usually it means a freedom from some kind of power so that we can realize our true potential.  ‘I’m free to do what I want any old time.’  That kind of thing. The question of ‘Who is this “I” who can do these things?’ is [...]

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Holding fast the healthy teaching

Titus 1:9 in my amplified translation: [An elder must be] Continuing to hold fast / grasp / embrace / protect the word of faith according to The Teaching, so that he is able, on the one hand, to encourage in healthy teaching and, on the other, to prove to opponents their error. The word for [...]

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Show us your appendix

Who said the appendix is redundant?  There’s some brilliant appendices to Bible Overview How about this from Paul Blackham – he answers 24 frequently asked questions about an explicitly Christ focused Old Testament.  Here are the questions – if you want to read his answers – buy the book! Appendix I – Frequently Asked Questions [...]

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Christless Christianity

Mike Horton is promoting his new book “Christless Christianity“.  Listen here to the podcast from the ever-helpful Issues etc. A couple of great quotes from Horton: Christians need to hear the gospel preached not only once in their christian life but throughout – each week – because (as Calvin said) “We are all partly unbelievers [...]

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Some mission talks

Here’s a talk I did in the middle of a pub quiz (audio here).  I posted up the script in advance here.  In the end I modified it a bit.  Essentially the original talk boiled down to ‘Go and live for Christ!’  The changes I made were basically to say ‘See how He lived and [...]

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Meditating on Romans 3

I preached on Romans 3:21-26 recently.  It’s a dense, theologically loaded paragraph on the vindication of God’s justice in justifying the unjust through the cross.  Leon Morris has called it perhaps the most important paragraph ever written. So how to preach it? Well it’s Paul, so then clearly a strong didactic form is called for.  [...]

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More News From Orissa

From Baranabas Fund: Hindu extremist violence against the Christian community in Orissa State, India, which started on 24 August (see previous articles : 12/09/2008, 01/09/2008), has continued almost unabated since then. At least 50 Christians have been murdered, some cut to pieces and others burnt alive. Many fear that the death toll is even higher, [...]

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Bible Study Helps

Here’s a brilliantly helpful resource for New Testament study: Links for Expository Preaching For every NT book there are stacks of links to online resources under the following headings: Introductions, Overviews, and Short Commentaries Full-Length Commentaries Historical Commentaries and Sermons Expositional Studies Expository Sermons and Other Links . In fact between this resource and his [...]

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