Paul’s big concern for the Galatian church was that they risked being captured by a different Gospel. The other day, I wrote something about this and observed that if we are to avoid falling for different, false Gospels, then we need to know what the true Gospel is. Now, we might assume that the answer… Continue reading What is the Gospel?
Category: Bible Study
A different Gospel
You get the impression that Paul is writing in a hurry when he sends his letter to the Galatians. Not for them, a lengthy introduction with prayers of praise and descriptions of what they are doing well. Paul gets straight down to business, identifying the problem in the church. 6 I am astonished that you are so… Continue reading A different Gospel
Introducing Galatians
Our church are about to embark on a teaching series on Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Here are some introductory notes. When was the book written? Nowadays it is usually viewed as an early letter, if not the earliest of Paul’s letters. Some reformers including Luther considered it to have been written later though, seeing… Continue reading Introducing Galatians
Death of a king
Saul’s family tree (9:35-44) Although the kingdom ends with Saul, his family line continues Battle (10:1-7) Defeat of Israel at Gilboa Saul’s sons are killed Leithart compares him to Goliath also defeated by missile and sword. [1] “Saul’s suicide is an appropriate gesture: he is the troubler of his own house.”[2] The people flee What… Continue reading Death of a king
The secret to good sleep
When we were going through a particularly challenging period, I remember an older pastor asking me “Are you able to sleep through the night.” Insomnia is of course a significant emotional health warning and many of us will have at different times struggled with it, finding ourselves unable to drift off or alternatively being suddenly… Continue reading The secret to good sleep
A Biblical Theology of Marriage, Sex and Relationships
Note: You will probably have read most of this material over the past week as it pulls together some of my recent articles in response to the book “Beautiful Union”. However, I wanted to gather it together as it will form one of the chapters of the E-Book/ teaching sessions I’m putting together on the… Continue reading A Biblical Theology of Marriage, Sex and Relationships
Stronger than the storm
This week at our Life Group, we invited everyone to share one of their favourite Psalms, it was a fantastic feast as we read, reflected on and prayed Scripture. On a side note, I’d encourage you to try doing this in your life/community/home groups sometime. Anyway, one of the Psalms shared was Psalm 93 which… Continue reading Stronger than the storm
The New Testament on Sex, marriage and intimacy
In recent weeks, I’ve been engaging with Josh Butler’s book “Beautiful Union” which seems to try and set out a kind of theology of sex. I’ve argued that whilst Butler’s aims might be lofty and whilst some of the criticism of him may be unfair, that he ends up falling seriously short and in a… Continue reading The New Testament on Sex, marriage and intimacy
A model Psalm study
Read Psalm 1 through twice: What words/phrases/themes dominate? Are there any images/metaphors/similes? What are they telling us? Psalms often use a technique called parallelism. This means that similar lines are placed together in pairs and triplets to either repeat, develop, compare or contrast. Can you find any examples of this in the Psalm? Try to… Continue reading A model Psalm study
Reading the Psalms: Digging into the detail
In my last article I talked about how we read the Psalms by reading them in context but just like with any other book of the Bible, we also have to step in to the detailed exegesis. Here are some further hints to help us with our Psalm reading. First, if you want to read… Continue reading Reading the Psalms: Digging into the detail
