Bible

As I start to do some work on Luke 21, I remind myself of where we are in Luke.

I don’t know.

But it must be something to do with this:

Mark 1:2-8 leaves us with two expectations of what God is about to do. From Mark 1:2-3 (quoting Isaiah 40), God is about to bring his people back through the wilderness to the promised land; he is about to remake his people. From Mark 1:7, he is “the stronger one than John” who will operate on his people’s hearts by his Spirit to bring about true repentance. There is no clear indication from Mark 1:2-8 that either “the Lord” or “the stronger one” is anyone other than God himself. We’re not looking for a human being (yet).

I’ve been doing some work on Mark chapter 1, and what I’ve found is really exciting!

I’m preaching a series of 3 sermons on Luke chapter 21 in November. They make a series, but numbers 1 and 3 are 30-minute sermons to adults, whilst number 2 needs to stand alone as it is a 10 minute talk on Remembrance Day with all-ages still in church.

I could give sermon number 2 a title: “The war to end all wars”.

But that’s about as far as I’ve got with any of it.

What I’m really looking for at this point is some help. What should / could I read that would help me get the broad direction right. And the details. And the contemporary applications. Books. Papers. Articles. Blog posts. ... all those are welcome.

Suggestions please!

The discerning sets his face toward wisdom, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth. (Proverbs 17:24 )

— Jonah sent to Nineveh (1:1-2)
—— Jonah goes to sea – boards a ship (1:3)
——— Jonah in the belly of the ship; the sailors cry to their gods (1:4-6)
———— Jonah tells the sailors that he worships the one true God (1:7-10)
———— The sailors worship the one true God (1:11-16)
——— Jonah in the belly of the fish; Jonah cries to his God (1:17-2:9)
—— Jonah back on land (2:10)
— Jonah sent to Nineveh (3:1)

Corroborates my suspicion that Jonah’s ministry to the sailors is very important to these chapters

Job is one of those books of the Bible that I still feel I don’t really know what to do with. I’m not happy with treatments of it that read it as if the bulk of the book were a paranthesis. But I can’t do better. So I keep reading it, to see what I can learn.

I’m doing some work on Jonah 1 at the moment (again!), and it seems that we have another fine example of responsibility being passed between groups of people and representative individuals.

Jesus said: “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.”

I noticed the other day that Luke uses a different word for “children” here than either Matthew or Mark. Luke uses bre,foj==. Both Matthew and Mark use paidi,on==. (Again, you’d have to have the BW font to see that correctly – the words are brefos and paidion, for those without the fonts.)

I little while ago, I posted about different Bible translations. My post on this blog was simply a copy of a comment a posted on a friend’s blog, in response to his request for advice on which English translation to use for serious study.

I had two follow-ups to that post.