Over the past year (September 2021 to July 2022), at our midweek small groups, I took my church through the Pentateuch. The plan was to cover as much of the key storyline as we could in the number of weeks available. This of course meant that bits that I would have loved to cover were cut. We also ran Topic Nights looking at some of the big themes that appeared, and review sessions at the end of each book. These were all filmed for members who could not make it, or who wanted to review (videos are at the bottom of this page). Passages Here are the passages we studied…
The revelation of the Trinity in Scripture is perfect
“The revelation of the Trinity in Scripture is perfect”, says Fred Sanders in ‘The Triune God'[1]Sanders, F., 2016. The Triune God, M. Allen & S. R. Swain, eds., Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.. As Sanders says this, he means that the disclosure in Scripture of God’s identity is complete, sufficient, and the way it is meant to be. Or, to put it another way, we could not have done a better job of revealing the Trinity if we wrote the Bible ourselves. When you really think about that statement, it leads to a realisation that, in Scripture, we have all the information that the True and Living God wants us to know.…
Logos 9 | 6 months later…
It has been six months since Faithlife released Logos 9, and I thought it would be a good time to look and see the parts that I have used the most.According to my ‘screen time report’ from macOS, Logos is my most used application during the week, which already speaks for how prominent it is in my daily workflow. So I took note of the features that I use regularly, and the things that keep me coming back to them. Hopefully you, as the reader, will find this beneficial for seeing how you could do similar! Preaching mode When I started my detailed log, the very first entry was the…
Are you sure you’re an agnostic?
Surely sitting on the fence is the easiest place to get the best view? The big problem is that Christianity doesn’t rest on things we can take a ‘don’t know’ position on. Christianity rests on facts. Either facts you believe or facts you don’t believe. Error happened.
Jonah in Luke’s Gospel
We recently had Luke 8:22-56 preached at Christ Church Hemel, and it struck me that Luke alludes (quite strongly) to Jonah in the first section (Luke 8:22-25). Just consider the similarities: Jesus, like Jonah, falls asleep on the boat. (Luke 8:23, Jonah 1:5) Shortly after a storm rises, threatening to sink the boat. (Luke 8:23, Jonah 1:4) The disciples cry the same thing as the captain (Luke 8:24, Jonah 1:8) The response of the disciples and sailors is fear. (Luke 8:25, Jonah 1:16) There is a striking difference though. Jesus actually went and offered salvation to the Gentiles, whilst Jonah did not want to. And if Jonah was meant to…
Notes on preaching Hosea
Here are my findings as I preached through Hosea at Christ Church Hemel between January and April 2020. This is a live page, so I plan to keep this updated with further research as time progresses (and allows). To hear my sermon series on Hosea, please visit the sermon archive. Big picture Below is the big picture structure for the book of Hosea. This will be fleshed out further on in this page: Passage Theme Hosea 1-3 Hosea and Gomer’s marriage is a picture of God and Israel’s relationship Hosea 4:1-3 God lays out his charges against the people of Israel Hosea 4:4-6:3 God has a charge against Israel because…
