Yesterday evening, I had the joy of being invited to our church midweek youth ministry. The teenagers had been given the chance to write down questions they'd like to ask one of their pastors, and I was invited along to tackle those questions and any others that came up during the course of the evening.
The parable of the lost sheep occurs in two of the gospels: It's in Matthew 18:10-14 and Luke 15:1-7.
In Acts 23:12-22, Paul is imprisoned in Jerusalem, when a group of over 40 young men take an oath not to eat until they have killed him. They plan to request him to be taken for an audience at the Sanhedrin, and to ambush it en route. Paul's nephew hears of the plot, tips off the military commander, and Paul is extricated at night to Caesarea to foil their plot.
A little more from David Gooding’s book, True to the Faith.
Why is the section from Acts 19:21-28:31 so long, taking about a third of the book?
Because on trial is not just the question of whether Paul took a Gentile into the temple, but the gospel itself, and Paul as apostle to the Gentiles.
I have long found David Gooding's book, True to the Faith, a really helpful look at the book of Acts, mapping out how Luke's story unfolds and how it teaches us in the process.
As I look at chapters 19-28, he introduces his section on this with the following really helpful paragraph (page 338 in my 1990 edition; I'm not sure how much material has been added by the currently in-print 2013 edition to move the page numbers on):
I'm preparing to preach on Mark 13 in a couple of Sundays time, and find myself once again reaching for R T France's excellent commentary on Mark.
I'm greatly enjoying reading Against Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Beings in Relation to Communal Identity and the Moral Discourse of Ephesians by Daniel Darko (published 2020 by Hippo Books).
He explores the significance of the spiritual powers in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, suggesting that we in the West often don't feel the full force of the letter's message because we are not atuned to see this as important.
Recently, someone asked my advice. They had been asked to present a one hour session on how evangelicals do theology.
It's not hard to think of things to say if someone asked about the content of evangelical theology. We'd talk about our distinctive doctrine of Scripture, of sin, of the atonement, of judgement and so on. There are particular hallmarks that have arisen over the centuries that mark out what evangelicals do when it comes to theology.
Most Christians have weeks when it's hard work to discipline themselves to get up and worship with their church family on a Sunday.
I love these words from Robert Murray McCheyne, written in 1836, that quaintly and yet compellingly encourage us to make the effort.
If this struggle is you, let me encourage you: Come, and callibrate your watch!
This blog is many things, but one of them is a kind of commonplace book where I can jot things I want to find later, but done in a public blog because the things I want to find later may help others too.
