Wednesday, July 31, 2024

When churches are founded truly upon Jesus Christ crucified, the fruit of their fellowship will be familial warmth, doxological focus, and a Great Commission orientation. If it is founded on personality, niche emphases, or the latest cultural trends, well… it won’t be Church.- BA Purtle

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

My teaching on the Christian response to the Olympic games opening ceremony. Audio 1. Audio 2

Monday, July 29, 2024

“First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.” - Paul

Sunday, July 28, 2024

“It is a foul way but a fair home.” —Samuel Rutherford

Saturday, July 27, 2024

"[H]ow often are the most unlikely persons convinced of sin, and led to the Saviour. How true is it still of many who are most moral and excellent, and even outwardly religious, that 'the publicans and harlots enter into the kingdom of heaven before them.'" – Spurgeon

Friday, July 26, 2024

I began this study with the suggestion that if we adopt the hypothesis that the Old Testament is a messianic document, written from a messianic perspective, to sustain a messianic hope, we might find that the interpretive methods employed by the authors of the NT are legitimate hermeneutical moves that we can imitate today. This hypothesis would work under the assumption that in the Bible’s metanarrative, from the moment God uttered his judgment against the serpent, the seed of the woman (the collective of those who trust God) were hoping for the seed of the woman (the man who would achieve the ultimate victory over the serpent).

If the books of the Bible were written by and for a remnant of people hoping for the coming of this person, we would expect to find in these texts various resonations of this promise of God. I have argued that we do, in fact, find imagery from Gen 3:15 in many texts across both testaments. We have seen the seed of the woman crushing the head(s) of the seed of the serpent, we have seen shattered enemies, trampled enemies, dust eating defeated enemies, and smashed serpents. 

Dr. Jim Hamilton, The Skull Crushing Seed of the Woman: Inner-Biblical Interpretation of Genesis 3:15

Thursday, July 25, 2024

In some cases those who have their heads crushed are physically descended from Abraham, but by their actions they show themselves to be at enmity with those who are faithful to Yahweh. Like Cain, who was physically a seed of the woman but showed himself to be the seed of the serpent by killing his brother, Abimelech shows the lineage of his ethical character by killing seventy of his brothers (Judg 9:1–5; cf. also 9:34–49, where he slaughters his subjects [9:6]). Judgment falls on the seed of the serpent (Abimelech), however, when a woman throws a millstone on Abimelech’s head (rō’š) and his skull (gulěggōlet) is crushed (rāsas)(9:53).  - Dr. Jim Hamilton

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Bad guys get broken heads in the Bible. - Dr. Jim Hamilton

Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Esther’s opposition to Haman continues the major theme running through the narrative, that of the woman against the beast: Eve versus the serpent. - Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty, 223

Monday, July 22, 2024

In the short span of Gen 3:14–19, the God of the Bible is shown to be both just and merciful. The scene puts God on display as one who upholds righteousness and yet offers hope to guilty human rebels. He is a God of justice and so renders just condemnation for the transgressors. Yet he is also a God of mercy, and so he makes plain that his image bearers will triumph over the wicked snake. - Dr. Jim Hamilton

Sunday, July 21, 2024

It seems to me that certain presuppositional starting points have the potential to ameliorate every intellectual difficulty with the way that the NT interprets the OT, regardless of the hermeneutical tools employed. I have in mind one thing in particular, namely, the hypothesis that from start to finish, the OT is a messianic document, written from a messianic perspective, to sustain a messianic hope. - Dr. Jim Hamilton

Saturday, July 20, 2024

...the Israelites and Judeans will come together, 

weeping as they come, and will seek the Lord their God. 

They will ask about Zion...

They will come and join themselves to the Lord in a permanent covenant that will never be forgotten.

- Jeremiah 50

Maranatha!

-Joshua Reese 

Friday, July 19, 2024

Pay only peripheral mind to trends and movements. Only on rare occasion are they helpful/lasting. 

Pay primary mind to the Gospel, personal holiness, the Bible, prayer, family, God-given responsibilities, witness, and life in the local church. These will matter most on the last day. -BA Purtle 

Thursday, July 18, 2024

When most modern Christians are asked what the Gospel is, they usually frame it as a message about HOW to be saved, but rarely do they frame it as a message concerning WHAT we are saved unto: A renewed Eden and an everlasting Kingdom of Israel. -Joel Richardson 

Wednesday, July 17, 2024

A reminder in light of the ongoing sins/scandals being exposed among leaders in our day:
Stop using David's sin and restoration as justification for ministers who have disqualified themselves. Stop using David's kingly anointing as a prooftext for the "anointing" of unqualified church leaders. Stop using Israel's "irrevocable" national election and calling as a prooftext for the supposedly irrevocable calling of Christian leaders.

The absolute authority and divine unity of Scripture matter. 

David's role and Israel's role may overlap in many ways with how we think about Christian leadership, but they are not identical. Let us be finished with lazy Bible interpretations. Let Scripture interpret Scripture. The apostles were clear in their teaching regarding the shepherding of God's house, and we mustn't deviate from them with newfangled methodologies or novel "revelations". 

There are qualifications for Christ's undershepherds (1 Tim. 3/Titus 1), and while men who have fallen into sin may absolutely be forgiven for their sins and find true repentance and restoration of faith, if they have disqualified themselves from Christian leadership, they must be removed from their place of influence and responsibility.

The fact that this is even a question for many professors of faith is a disclosure of how far we have fallen from "the faith once delivered to all the saints." The preservation of an organization or church brand should not even be a matter of consideration when dealing with these matters. To play that game is to disregard the plain teaching of Scripture. This approach has all too often been taken in recent decades, and it is unfortunately taking place yet today. It is nothing less than the offering up of "strange fire." 

Let us state it plainly: A just standing before God through repentance and faith is not identical to fittedness for Christian leadership. All leaders are in a "body of death" and possess indwelling sin, and we are all desperately and utterly in need of Gospel grace and preservation through faith on every leg of the journey. But that is not the same as disqualifying sins/crimes, not to mention the propounded darkness required in the attempt to hide them for the sake of saving our ministerial veneers. 
Brothers, these things ought not to be.

It is not only poor hermeneutics to twist Scripture in these ways, it is a poor example of basic Christian discipleship and ministry. Nothing good at all can come from laying hands on men hastily or "restoring" them to ministry on sub-Biblical grounds. To do such things is to breed further deception, to position men to hear "I never knew you" on the last day, and to set in motion the dismembering of leaders, ministries, and the families that were once under their care -- families for whom Christ greatly cares.

It is time to wake up from the long dark of worldly ministry efforts, saints. 

Let us return to a true interpretation of God's Word, a true trembling before God's Word, and a true application of God's Word. Let there be not even a hint of manipulation or compromise in us. "And do not give the devil a foothold."

Our works will be tried by holy fire one day, brothers and sisters. That day will be upon us sooner than we think.

Let us see to it that Christ crucified is the foundation we build upon. Let us build up His house according to His Word. And may we "walk in the fear of the LORD and the comfort of the Holy Spirit," looking forward with reverence, awe and humble hope to the Day when the Chief Shepherd appears with majesty and great glory.

He is coming soon, and His reward is with Him. -BA Purtle 

Tuesday, July 16, 2024

"Paul does not paint the future with rose-colour (2 Tim. 3.5). He is no smooth-tongued prophet of a golden age, into which this dull earth may be imagined to be glowing. There are sanguine brethren who are looking forward to everything growing better and better and better, until, at last, this present age ripens into a millennium. They will not be able to sustain their hopes, for Scripture gives them no solid basis to rest upon. We who believe that there will be no Millennial reign without the King, and who expect no rule of righteousness except from the appearing of the righteous Lord, are nearer the mark. Apart from the Second Advent of our Lord, the world is more likely to sink into a pandemonium than to rise into a millennium. A divine interposition seems to me the hope set before us in Scripture, and, indeed, to be the only hope adequate to the occasion."

(From the sermon "The Form of Godliness Without the Power," June 2, 1889)
Historic Premillennialist, Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)
Via BA Purtle 

Monday, July 15, 2024

The measure of the church is its production of loving martyrs. -John P. Harrigan 

Sunday, July 14, 2024

"And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth. Then He came and took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne" (Revelation 5:6-7).

That scroll will be opened in God's timing, and God's timing alone. This fact is both a comfort and a rebuke to believers.

The Lord's sovereignty at the end of the age is a rebuke to us, first because we have worried so much about the end of days. Second, because we have made an industry out of end-time speculations. And third, and most dangerously, because despite our sometimes expansive knowledge of the last things, we have failed to prepare our hearts for it.

His sovereignty should instead be a comfort to us because, in all the chaos of the nations and their struggling for dominance, we can rest upon His wisdom and faithfulness in not just guiding but actively steering all things to their conclusion.

All the great end-time mysteries—the mystery of Israel, the mystery of the Church, the mystery of lawlessness—these are all His mysteries, and He is the One driving them. 

If we will rest upon it, our trust in His goodness and sovereignty can be both our confidence and the antidote for so many fears as we see the end approaching. -Nick Uva

Saturday, July 13, 2024

Men build and plan as if their work were to endure for ever; but the wind passes over them, and they are gone. - John Newton 

Friday, July 12, 2024

Isaiah 51.11:

"And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."

"The pilgrimage that the prophet has in mind eclipses any other. The old pilgrimages occurred three times a year for the prescribed feasts. . . . Here the language of pilgrimage is retained, but we are given a glimpse of the end. We have returned to the ultimate hope expressed in 2.1-5 and 11.1-16." -DA Carson

Thursday, July 11, 2024

Considering the apostolic witness as a whole, it holds this same focus upon the cross and the day of the Lord. Thus, it can be broadly characterized as both sacrificial and apocalyptic. This twofold emphasis on the first and second comings of the Messiah rests upon (and to some degree developed out of) a creational understanding. God created the heavens and the earth without sin and death, while Adam and his progeny are to blame for its fallen state. Via the cross God has worked for our reconciliation, which he will consummate when he makes the new heavens and new earth (cf. Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15; 2 Peter 3). - John P. Harrigan

Wednesday, July 10, 2024

The Scriptures also frame divine blessing within an apocalyptic framework. By the word of the Lord, everything with the breath of life was blessed by the Creator in the beginning: “And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply . . . ’” (Gen. 1:22). This same divine blessing is reiterated in the new heavens and new earth in the end: “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life” (Rev. 22:14). Conversely, divine cursing is declared in the beginning (Gen. 3:14, 17) so as to frustrate creation (Rom. 8:20) and bring about repentance (cf. Ps. 73:3–17; Hos. 5:14–15; Rev. 9:20–21; etc.). This divine cursing culminates in the end with the judgment of the wicked—“Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire” (Matt. 25:41)—while the blessing of God culminates in the resurrection: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 25:34). - John P. Harrigan

Tuesday, July 09, 2024

Our struggle with mortality in concert with the intercession of the Spirit gives context to the mechanics of faith, so to speak. The captivity of mortality in this age is designed to drive us to dependence upon God, who is the only one able to deliver and save us unto immortality. So God works small deliverances throughout our lives to make us believe in the big deliverance to come, and conversely he allows (and sometimes orchestrates—e.g., Deut. 4:27; Dan.11:33; Luke 22:31; 2 Cor. 12:7) small captivities in our lives to make us come to terms with our big captivity to sin and death. This causes us to cry out to him by the groaning of the Spirit within us; and so on and so forth—all of which God works out for our good in the age to come. In this way, temporal captivity and deliverance (i.e., salvation) point to their protological introduction and eschatological conclusion. - John P. Harrigan

Monday, July 08, 2024

The titulus over the cross, “King of the Jews,” gives us just a bit more information: those crowds were proclaiming Jesus the messiah. Crucifixion— an ugly, slow, highly visible form of public execution—was Pilate’s way of disabusing the crowds of that idea. Had Pilate had a problem with only Jesus himself, he could have neutralized Jesus easily, by any of the many means that the prefect had at his disposal. The crucifixion points—and points us—in another direction: away from Jesus himself, toward those watching him die. Pilate did not have a problem with Jesus. Pilate had a problem with the crowds who followed him. - Paula Fredricksen

Sunday, July 07, 2024

Theology 101: Death is not a gift or a friend, but a curse and a foe. - Dr. Micheal Svigel

Saturday, July 06, 2024

Paul’s eschatological teaching about the approaching Endtime represents traditions that, he himself claims, go back to Jesus and to his earliest followers. And there are so many places in his letters where he does describe events at the End: in 1 Thessalonians 4, on Jesus’ second coming and the Endtime resurrection of the dead; in 1 Corinthians 15, on the same themes; in Romans chapter 8 (cosmic redemption), or chapter 11 (the salvation of all humanity, both Israel and the nations), or chapter 15 (on all these themes). Yet he nowhere tells any of his communities that, according to “the word of the Lord,” the destruction of the temple would signal the Kingdom’s approach. - Paula Fredricksen

Friday, July 05, 2024

My teaching on the healing of the paralytic and calling of Levi/Matthew from Luke 5. Notes. Audio 1. Audio 2

Thursday, July 04, 2024

Both John the Baptizer and Jesus of Nazareth thus seem to have incorporated Jerusalem and the temple in positive ways as part of their missions, and especially as part of their prophecy of the coming Kingdom. They had good biblical reasons for doing so. Those passages in scripture that speak of God’s Kingdom also foreground Jerusalem, and specifically har bayit Adonai, the “mountain of the Lord’s house,” that is, of God’s “house,” the temple. Isaiah, for example, foresees the day when all humanity, both Israel and the nations, will gather there to worship God. “I am coming to gather all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory,” God says, speaking through the prophet. Assembling on “this mountain,” the mountain of the Lord’s house in Jerusalem, all of these peoples will feast together on a meal made by God himself. “Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar,” God says of the last days, concerning the foreign-born who have joined themselves to Israel, “for my house”—that is, the temple—“will be called a house of prayer for all the nations.” When the Kingdom comes, sing these biblical traditions, it comes in Jerusalem. - Paula Fredricksen

Wednesday, July 03, 2024

No need to watch for Russian helicopters, the Pope, or those pesky demonic locusts at your front door with women's hair and lion's teeth. Just read history. See how first-century Jews were thinking and what they wrote about. The book of Revelation will become much less confusing. - Josh Hawkins


 

Tuesday, July 02, 2024

Theology 101: Jesus Christ is the God-Man. Therefore, what Scripture says about perfect divinity applies to him; and what Scripture says about perfect humanity applies to him. - Dr. Micheal Svigel

Monday, July 01, 2024

Paul describes life lived by faith in Christ’s sacrifice as being analogous to a “race” (cf. 1 Cor. 9:24; Gal. 5:7; 2 Tim. 4:7), wherein conversion is the starting line and the day of the Lord is the finish line. How you start is not as important as how you finish, though obviously you cannot finish without starting. Who puts blood on their door at dusk, but then goes down to frolic in the Nile before midnight? Who looks at the snake on the pole once, but then goes about tending to his wounds? The dead man does. The atonement only applies if faith is held unto the time of judgment. The Scriptures leave no room for the popular notion of “once saved, always saved." - John P. Harrigan


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