Bully's Blog

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11)

This passage (or pericope?) retraces the Covenant pattern, which is also played out in the flow of the history of Israel. We’ll have a look at the structure of the passage and then I want to discuss the significance of the literary placement of “every tongue.”

WARNING: Weird ahead.

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]
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James Jordan is never afraid to throw a new idea on the table. As he says, “that’s my job.” But he’s also ever quick to remind his audience that what he has said is never the last word on a subject.

Brian Mattson writes:

Honest-to-goodness scholars are people who think, analyze, teach, and write in good faith.

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“Identify…”

Putting Your Water Where Your Mouth Is

Part 1 here.

Doug Wilson recently gave a good rundown on his own doctrinal journey over the years since he began pastoring. It’s well worth a read. But the thing that stuck in my mind was his reason for moving to the practice of paedobaptism. Since he had already become Reformed in his doctrine, another minister said he should “put his water where his mouth is.” I know it was a call to consistency, but to me it highlights how the conflation of the Covenant sign with parenting allows baptism to usurp the place of preaching. It’s putting water where your mouth ought to be.

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Atonement and Enthronement

“Jesus does what no medicine man
or witch doctor is able to do.”

And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man,
the one who had had the legion, sitting there,
clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. – Mark 5:15

Rich Bledsoe’s old blog is a goldmine. Here’s an excerpt from The Dysfunctional Family of the Gadarene Madman.

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From Steve Jeffery’s blog:

Don Carson on the Church in Britain

This kind of thoughtful analysis is just one of the many reasons why Don Carson is such a blessing to the church, and one of the many reasons why he will be remembered when the impact of other – perhaps noisier – men has faded.

Here’s one particularly striking extract:
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or Ethnic Cleansing as Mercy

“In representative terms, the people of God are no longer the Land but the heavenly Sea. The Church herself is the oncoming storm.”

In The Days of Vengeance [PDF], David Chilton did a great job of introducing many of us to the fact of Jesus’ use of “cosmic language” in Matthew 24 to describe the end of the Old Covenant. Not only is the idea of an actual, physical star falling to earth impossible (can you imagine the sun “falling to earth”?) but Jesus is quoting from a prophecy against Babylon. His audience would have realized this as a scathing attack against the Herods and their “government controlled” Temple worship. So, the language is clearly poetic, but why would the prophets—and Jesus and His apostles—deliberately cause so much confusion by using cosmic language to describe non-cosmic events? The answer is found in the mercy of God.

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or The Invention of  non-Adamites

“But your dad will not
know about that,”
Said the cat.
“He will never find out,”
Laughed the Cat in the Hat.

A popular argument among theistic evolutionists and hyperpreterists (and theistic evolutionary hyperpreterists) is that Adam wasn’t the first actual man, just the first man “in Covenant” with God. [1]

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Doing my first Bible Matrix presentation this Sunday morning (with Powerpoint) at a church in Sydney. Also have a question time at the church dinner on Saturday night. Please pray for me as I prepare. I can handle public high school kids okay, but this is a different kettle altogether!

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and the Transformation of Gender Norms

In his post You Will Never Guess Who Is Really Responsible For The Softening of Males In The Church, Mark Sayers shifts the blame for the current “sea of passivity” in modern males from feminism to men like John Newton.
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Pastor Fired by Church

by Albert Garlando

Charles Stone introduces his book, ‘Five Ministry Killers and How to Kill Them‘ with an account of how a Church fired their Pastor. As I started the first paragraph, I thought it was a fictional parable used to kick off the main topic of the book. Wrong!

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