Bible

Many Christians struggle with the conquest of Canaan in the Old Testament. We don't get there until the book of Joshua, but to the modern mind it can seem like barbaric genocide. The people of Israel were told to conquer the land of Canaan, which was already occupied.

I must have read Matthew 11:27-30 a thousand times before:

The two churches of Kemsing and Woodlands in Kent are going on an ambitious journey together in 2014. We're going on a Bible tour.

Here's the plan: Read the whole Bible through 2014, in step with one another. In that sense, it's a communal read-through. (We're not actually going to come together each day to read, at least not in any way that's organised for the whole church).

Once every 2-4 months, we have an informal evening service in Kemsing under the name of "Digging Deeper". We sing a few songs, and say a few prayers, but most of our time is devoted to taking some topic addressed by the Bible and digging deeper together in what the Bible says. We've thought about the Trinity before, and we've thought about the inspiration of Scripture. Last night, we considered our hope as Christians - where is history heading, what is our part in it, and how certain can we be?

This coming weekend, I'll be at Otford Manor, the base of Oak Hall Expeditions, for a teaching weekend. Roughly 4 times a year, they run weekends under the title of "Unlocking the Bible", at which a speaker takes one book of the Bible, and seeks to unpack and apply its main message for today.

This week, I've been pondering how the individual paragraphs of Matthew 7 fit into the whole chapter. It's always a mistake to take a paragraph of Scripture away from its context, and to read it with no regard to where it comes. In this case, these paragraphs were spoken by Jesus, but he said them as part of what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

On Monday, I posted about the difficulties in reading Matthew 7 as a whole. Far easier to read a paragraph in isolation; hard to
articulate what the chapter as a whole is about and how each paragraph contributes to that.

On Monday, I posted about the difficulties in reading Matthew 7 as a whole. Far easier to read a paragraph in isolation; hard to articulate what the chapter as a whole is about and how each paragraph contributes to that.

Both Matthew 5 and Matthew 6 have a clear structure. Each chapter also has a clear message - Jesus seems to be developing one clear theme in each chapter. This is not the place to go into what the structure and message of each chapter is.

Photo: Germán Póo-CaamañoLots of churches have had their summer holiday clubs for children - they do them as soon as term finishes. We do ours the other end of the summer - just after the bank holiday weekend.

(Quick plug: If you live in or near Kemsing, and have children who have just finished a year at primary school, we can probably still fit you in - 4 mornings starting Tuesday 27th August).

I'm looking over some of the resources we've got for the club. Never mind which one we're using, as I'm not wanting to make a point about any resource in particular. As it happens, I think the resource we're using for this year's club is excellent.