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.
 
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And they sang ‘God Bless America.’
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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 claims [...]

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Warning communicants

Eating with Jesus.  What a privilege!  And what danger!  There need to be warnings.
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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 sinner.  Jesus eats with [...]

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Advice please

This is for everyone – both preachers and hearers of sermons.
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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 say?
I’d be really [...]

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Fake Plastic Trees (Country Hoedown)

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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 recorder with [...]

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Thirty, Sixty or a Hundred times

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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 I dare believe in [...]

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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: Accurate and [...]

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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) and the [...]

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Happy Birthday to you

Happy Birthday creation!!

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(h/t Archbishop Ussher)
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Also Happy Birthday Weird Al Yankovic
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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:
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“`As for those of you who are left, I will make their hearts so fearful in the lands of their enemies that the sound [...]

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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 usually considered to [...]

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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 ‘holding fast’ [...]

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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 (Written by [...]

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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 throughout our [...]

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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.  Verse [...]

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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, with [...]

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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
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In fact between this resource and his excellent blog, Milton Stanley may just be the one stop [...]

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Now that’s good sermon crit

From a Tim Keller sermon on ‘the first shall be last’:
There was once a young seminary graduate eager to preach his first sermon.  He ascended the pulpit steps, sure his great learning would amaze the simple lay folk.  Halfway through the sermon he realized he was making a hash of it.  First the congregation lost [...]

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When was Christ Begotten – and For Why??

Jesus is God’s Son. And there was never a time when He was not God’s Son.  Equally, there was never a time when the Father was not Father of His eternal Son, Jesus.  Wind back the clock into the depths of eternity and no matter how far back you go you will always find this: [...]

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The Glory of the Bloodied God

Here’s a hymn.  Not sure it’s finished – not happy with switch to first person in final verse.  Critique happily received (very new to this).
It fits with any common metre tune – maybe one of these: Worcester, Moravia, Martyrdom, Manoah, Leicester, Faith, Dundee, Dunfermline, Crimond, Cheshire. Burford, Bradford. Belmont
 
The glory of the bloodied God
His fruitfulness [...]

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And the winner is….?

If you haven’t seen this, perhaps you need to vary your blog diet and read Halden more often.

He got it from this guy

 
 

 
Question is, who wins the debate?
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Some more kids songs

Here’s a song I wrote for a holiday club for 7-11 year olds. We called it Shipwrecked. 
We turned the church into a desert island and we were all washed ashore having run our ship aground.  The Captain had put us in charge of his incredible ocean liner – he’d built it with his son.  He gave [...]

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Discussion continues…

I, like some deranged Sanballat, continue my attempts to abolish religion.  Marc, like brave Nehemiah, is building the wall.  Go here for the latest comments.
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Bible Overview

Go buy this book.

 
Okay it’s one of the least inspiring book titles ever conceived, but it does exactly what it says on the front.
Steve Levy has written it with Paul Blackham.  It’s 336 pages.  There are 11 sections:
What the Bible says about itself
Creation to new creation
Father Abraham
Redemption
Promised Land
Kings to Exile
Latter Prophets
The Writings
The gospels
Acts and the church
The church [...]

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New Wineskins

Some thoughts generated from a sermon on Mark 2:18-3:6
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In Mark 1:40-2:17 we saw three stories about the people of Jesus’ kingdom.  And this was the shock: The people of Jesus’ kingdom are the lepers, the paralytics, the tax collectors and their spiritual equivalents.  Jesus calls sinners.  Sinners.  Not the righteous.  Jesus’ people are not the [...]

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Too far?

Is it too much to say “Jesus is the abolition of religion” as I did in my last post?
Thanks to Marc who commented with this:
Glen, this “religion” as a dirty word is tiresome and misleading, don’t you think? Jesus came to abolish man-made religion and false religion, sure. He calls us to true religion of [...]

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Jesus: the abolition of religion

Adapted from a sermon on Mark 1:40-2:17
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Jesus’ teaching.  Jesus’ followers.  Do you ever have trouble putting those two things together?
In a sense that’s the problem the Christian faces as they seek to follow Him.  And it’s the problem the non-Christian has as they look on.  How do Jesus’ teaching and His followers go together??
Think about it.  [...]

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Some Kids Songs

I’ve been dipping my toe into writing Kids Song recently (see bottom of sidebar).  I’ve recorded them all as wma’s on a little handheld speech recorder and the quality on every level is dodgy.  But some people have enjoyed them.  So… 
Go here for my Jonah song featuring the greatest guitar chord ever: E7#9 (otherwise known as the [...]

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Barth on Jesus in the New Testament

“One can never say of a single part of the narrative, doctrine and proclamation of the New Testament, that in itself it is original or important or the object of the witness intended. Neither the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount nor the eschatology of Mk 13 and parallels, nor the healing of the [...]

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Jesus in the New Testament

These are a few scattered thoughts prompted by my recent mini-series on parables.
We all know Jesus’ rebuke regarding Old Testament understanding – John 5:39ff.  Yet I’m sure a rebuke remains for our appreciation of the New:
You diligently study the New Testament thinking that now you’re breathing the free air of apostolic Christianity and therefore, definitionally, have [...]

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Who’s the daddy?

Ok, no-one wants to touch Preaching Groups.  I respect that.
Let’s return to the parables. 
By now we know.  Jesus is the man who found treasure, the merchant looking for fine pearls and He’s the good samaritan.  So now we turn to the most famous parable.
And what shall we call it?  The prodigal son?  Of course not, [...]

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Preaching groups?

Adrian Warnock quotes Spurgeon (h/t Matt Finn):
…to win a soul, it is necessary, not only to instruct our hearer, and make him know the truth, but to impress him so that he may feel it. A purely didactic ministry, which should always appeal to the understanding, and should leave the emotions untouched, would certainly be [...]

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