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There is a danger in any area of Christian thought that we talk past one another, objecting to caricatures of what another Christian thinks, rather than to what they actually think. It is a tragedy whenever it happens, because it means that careful understanding (which is the grounds for charity) is replaced with a climate of suspicion. So we need to express what we think with great care, and that is as much about affirming what we do believe to be true as it is about denying what is not true.

A very striking observation from Alec Motyer on James 3:13-14:

“James does not yet tell us anything that we must actually do, any course of conduct to follow. He offers us an ethic not of verbs (do this), nor of nouns (naming this or that item of good conduct), but of adverbs (about the sort of people we are to be whatever we do). Everything (his good life … his works) is to be done in the meekness of wisdom, or, to unwrap the phrase slightly, ‘in a wisdom which always bears the mark of meekness.’.” (Page 131)

We find Exodus chapters 7 to 10 quite hard to read. When we ask why this is, Motyer is surely spot on.

Another post quoting Alec Motyer on Exodus. His introduction is extremely helpful at drawing threads together and helping to make clear how the details of the book go to make up the whole.

Alex Motyer is not exaggerating when he describes how important the book of Exodus is in the unfolding story of the whole Bible:

“The point of all this is to underline the importance of Exodus in the Bible. It is as significant a turning point or new beginning as is Matthew at the start of the New Testament. To go no further than recall its revelation of the divine name or its story of the blood of the lamb is at once to give it the same place in the Old Testament that the coming of Jesus and the cross of Calvary hold in the New. It begins the normative Old Testament (and biblical) revelation of God's way of salvation; it underlines the nature of God as holy and of humankind as sinners; it explains the meaning of blood and sacrifice; it is a book of the grace which reaches down from heaven and of the law which teaches redeemed sinners to live in heavenly terms. While some of these great biblical truths are foreshadowed in Genesis, Exodus pulls them all together, giving them a shape and definition that the rest of the Bible will not alter. Under the simplest of forms, and by many a fascinating story, Exodus reveals fundamental truth and is, in fact, one of the Bible's great building blocks.” (page 23)

Alec Motyer wrote this very helpful paragraph in his commentary on Exodus.

Re-reading Exodus 1:1-7:7 a few times in preparation for next Sunday's sermon, I have been struck again by just how well-crafted the book of Exodus is.

Here are a handful of details that I observed in those chapters, that are reproduced here in the hope that they might intrigue a few people to read the book of Exodus again. What, I think, we need is to read the whole book (because it functions and speaks to us as a whole), but to combine that with close attention to the details.

A few quotations from Douglas Moo's Commentary on the book of James to fill in a bit more background to the material we looked at during Kemsing's Useful! service on the second half of James 2.

Why not join me in being built up by reading Peter Leithart's exhortation on Paul's instruction to rejoice in the Lord always. Always? Yes - always. …

http://www.leithart.com/2009/12/13/joy-at-his-coming/

Darrell Bock cautions:

“The shepherds are often characterised as representing the ‘downtrodden and despised’ of society, so that the first proclamation of the gospel is said to have come to sinners. … There are two problems with reading the shepherds as symbols of the hated. First the rabbinic evidence is late, coming from the fifth century. More importantly, shepherd motifs in the Bible are mostly positive. … Thus, the presence of the shepherds is not a negative point. Rather, they picture the lowly and humble who respond to God’s message.” (page 214)