Before I begin to prepare for preaching, even before I approach the text, I must hold certain convictions. These include: a) the text, in some way, points to Jesus, b) the text is part of the context of the book of which it is a part, and so on. Until I hold these convictions, it…
Jesus in Romans
In Romans Paul presents Jesus as a conduit, the one through whom God has effected forgiveness for his readers and the subsequent realities they enjoy. Jesus is relatively passive here. Elsewhere in the New Testament he plays a more active role (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 1:17, 2 Corinthians 3:3, Galatians 2:20, etc). In Romans,…
Romans in the meta-narrative of Scripture
The Scripture is not a string of stories, poems and genealogies arranged like beads on a necklace. Rather, it tells a single story with each “book” serving as chapters related to each other and contributing a necessary element to the meta-narrative of the whole Scripture. This is indicated in Romans (and many of Paul’s other…
Paul’s Reason for Writing Romans
When asked to state the theme of Romans most pastors and theologians would answer, ‘The Gospel’. They would cite as Paul’s “theme statement” verse Romans 1:16 ‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for everyone who believe, to the Jew first and also the Greek.’ Therefore, Paul…
Advent – The Magi
Today let us turn our attention to the Magi, or Wise Men. A couple points before we do that: We don’t know that there were three Wise Men. We know they gave three gifts (gold, frankincense and myrrh) but the Bible nowhere mentions how many men there were. There may have been three, or only…
Saul: Decline of a king
One of the presenters at a conference I attended was recently in India. Walking along the street he saw a huge sign that had a picture of a man on it, and the words ‘a sad demise’. He asked his colleagues about it: ‘This poster, “a sad demise”… What’s that about?’ They said, ‘A great…
David and Goliath
They say that familiarity breeds contempt. If that is true, then we face an obstacle this morning. In our walk through 1st Samuel we come today to what is without a doubt the best known story of the Old Testament: the story of David, the shepherd boy, facing off against the Philistine giant, Goliath. It…
Abraham
My child. ‘Yes, Lord’. I want you to take your child, whom you love, and go to the mountains and sacrifice him for me. So, the next morning you and your child pack up and drive to the mountains. The trip takes three days. You are cherishing these last moments, but your child has no…
God the Son: His work
Today we will be thinking about what is perhaps the most important Christian doctrine. (The word ‘doctrine’ refers to those bodies of truths that make up the content of our faith. For example, the Bible reveals a number of things that are true concerning the Church. Those truths together make up what we would…
God the Son: Who he is – The Humanity of Jesus
The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century. Weighing more than 380 million kilograms, it stretches over one mile between San Francisco on one end and Merino County on the other. The bridge is suspended from cables several miles in length. Each cable is three…