New Testament

This is a “just noticed this parallel” post.

I’ve just noticed that Luke 19:37-39 reminds me of 2 Samuel 6:16.

As he was drawing near- already on the way down the Mount of Olives- the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” (Luke 19:37-39)

Linking my two previous posts. That is:

Environmentalism as religion

Romans 1: A Fair Exchange

Really we shouldn’t be surprised by the way we treat the environment. Here is the heart of human sin

Romans 1:18-32: We, the human race, have suppressed the knowledge of God that we all have. We all have it because God has made his existence, deity and power known in his creation. The creation is his conscious handwriting intended to communicate to us. We have done so effectively, such that Paul can say we all knew God. The problem is not ignorance, it is culpable suppression of what we know.

God’s temporal judgement for this is to hand us over to self-harming sin. The human-race is constantly attempting to self-destruct; Romans 1 interprets this as God taking off the reins.

I was asked one very specific question after my last sermon on Luke 21.

I developed one implication that the temple was to come to an end, which is the implication developed in Ephesians 2. The era of Jewish national privilege has closed, so that in the new creation none of us will have a second class spot – specifically, no Gentiles will be penalised for being Gentile.

After the service I was asked why, if this is the case, I still hold that there will be a distinction in the roles taken by men and women in church life.

/a

In November and December 2007, I preached a series of 3 sermons on Luke chapter 21. You can read the transcripts on this site, should you wish to.

Doing some work on the birth narrative in Matthew at the moment, and enjoying the recently published commentary on Matthew by R T France.

He has a brilliant (if long) paragraph arguing that Matthew was not a poor Old Testament handler at all, but knew exactly what he was doing. So brilliant, it’s worth quoting in full (from page 45)

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12)

If, like me, you’ve ever read that verse and puzzled slightly over what those “greater works” are, then it’s time to visit Doug Wilson’s blog over at Blog and Mablog.

Yesterday he posted an entry entitled Greater Works which sheds a lot of light on that verse.

“I tell you the truth, today you wll be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

So said Jesus, on the cross, to “the other criminal”. A saying that has been precious to me for some time, not least because of the implications for the way in which God saves by grace not works. The model sinner, whose saving faith could not be accompanied by any good works. Such a verse makes very clear that God does not save us because of our works (as instrumental cause), but by faith. James 2 makes clear that genuine faith will be accompanied by good works, but Luke 23 makes clear that such good works are the outworking of faith in space and time not an essential component of it.

But I want to reflect on this verse from another angle today. What we can learn from this verse about what awaits the believer after they die.

This is really a post for any folk from St James who happen to be here.

The sermon from yesterday on Luke 21:5-38 is now available online. The text is available on this site and the audio is available on sermons page of the St James Audley website.

I’m hugely enjoying reading R T France’s commentary on Mark 13.