There are conflicting traditions concerning John. A widely held opinion is that he was banished to Patmos by the Emperor Domitian who reigned from AD 81 through 96. If so, this makes preterism a paper tiger.
Preach from the Bible, and from the Bible only. Again, does this need to be said? One thing’s for sure. The Bible is fascinating, disturbing, offensive, sweet, alarming, comforting, stretching, shocking, controversial, caressing, strengthening. No way are you and I that interesting. Let’s put the Bible front and centre and let it be itself and do its thing, whatever the impact. Submerging the Bible for the sake of our cool personas isn’t really cool at all. It’s a way of avoiding risk, chickening out.
Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr
Centered on recent events, preaching inevitably loses most of its transformative power. From apostolic times, the task of preaching has never been a matter of providing a “religious insight” into what’s going on, a new slant on what everyone already knows. The purpose of apostolic preaching was to announce an event that, according to Paul, no one could know without a preacher. The point of preaching is not to answer questions that are already circulating. The point is to challenge the entire worldview that gives rise to those questions, and to announce the reality of a new world in which all the old questions have to be reformulated or discarded altogether.
Peter J. Leithart, Of Preaching and Newspapers.
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12
NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.
I thought for many years that the phrase “joints and marrow” in this verse was very strange. I guess this is a testimony to the artificial division of the Old Testament from the New by Bible teachers. It refers to the sword of the priest cutting up the sacrifice.
“Prayer is not a retreat from the history of redemption into private ecstasies of communion. Prayer is a chief instrument by which the Father renews the world through His sons who are in the Son and who have received the Spirit.”
Peter Leithart, Romans 8, continued, www.leithart.com
In his lectures on worship, James Jordan comments:
The church is the first form of the kingdom. The church is also the nursery of the kingdom. It’s within the institutional church that the fundamental principles of the kingdom are taught and learned. Christians learn government through the church government of elders. Having learned that, Christians are then ready to govern in more broad circumstances. We learn finances in the church, through the administration of the tithe. We learn charity in the church because we are starving and God feeds us bread and wine.
We learn music in the church. All of western music flows out of the music of the church. All of western theatre flows out of the liturgy of the church. All of western literature flows out of the literature of the church.
The church creates civilisation. The church is the nursery of culture.1
Western culture, then, is at the stage of Solomon with his idolatrous wives. The church is now just mimicking the corrupted culture of the world instead of being the pioneer. And we know what happened to Solomon’s kingdom.
1 Ten Principles of Worship, Lecture 1. Available from www.wordmp3.com
“What you are actually becoming in public is a public revelation of your true worship. What many call a ‘midlife crisis,’ for example, is simply idolatry catching up with a person.”
Doug Wilson, The Spirit of Accusation, Sermon Podcast, 7 January 09. Subscribe at www.christkirk.com
If the Bible were only about salvation by grace, it would be a lot shorter. It is about a growth from childhood to maturity, from nakedness to glory.
Jesus grew in wisdom and stature. That goes back to the two trees in the garden, bread (obedient priesthood) and wine (kingly wisdom).
Jesus carried the people of God through Adam’s testing (breaking the bread), beyond the tree of life, to the tree of wisdom (poured out wine).
‘of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God’ (1 Cor. 1:30)
‘in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.’ (Col 2:3)
He is both trees, and now we eat and drink Him freely before God.
In the two trees, Life and Wisdom, bread and wine, priest and king, flesh and blood, Land and Sea, earth and heaven, the Lord presented Adam with a divided world.
The only way it could be united was through obedience. If he obeyed the Father’s will, he would eat the bread, then drink the wine, and the divided world would be united first in his own body. By obedience, Adam became a Tree of Life (Table), then a Tree of Wisdom (Lampstand) uniting earth with heaven. Dominion begins with bread and wine.
Just watched The Painted Veil. Must be Edward Norton week. A movie based on a 1925 novel by Somerset Maugham, with strong messages of the benefit of forgiveness after betrayal, and of how suffering strips away our delusions and brings maturity and freedom to love.
The main thing that struck me was how the superstitions of the locals obstructed those who risked their lives to help them. We lose sight of just how much the gospel has changed the world, and take the foundation of our culture, the Bible, for granted.
Bible Matrix blog
