James's Weblog

John 2:16 reads, "Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade."

In the parallel incident in Mark 11:15-19, Jesus says “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” He quotes Isaiah 56:7, but the cross references in my ESV point me to Jeremiah 7:11 for the latter half of that verse, “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?”

In Mark 8:33, Jesus rebukes Peter. Peter has just suggested that Jesus is mistaken in his need to go to the cross. Jesus rebukes him with those terrifying words:

• "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."
• Ὕπαγε ὀπίσω μου, Σατανᾶ, ὅτι οὐ φρονεῖς τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ ἀλλὰ τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων.

Jesus then (Mark 8:34-38) teaches the disciples of the need to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him.

What I hadn't realised until recently is how closely related this call to the crowd is to his rebuke of Peter.

I've long found 1 Peter 3:19-22 really hard to understand. Much attention gets given to questions like who the spirits in prison are and so on. However my concern is to understand Peter's flow of thought throughout 1 Peter 3:18-22. 3:18 would flow nicely into 4:1 (“For Christ also suffered once for sins… made alive in the Spirit. Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same attitude.”), so why does Peter insert 3:19-22 in between here?

This is worth flagging up. It may be old news, but it was new to me: Proclamation Trust has decided to make lots of their online media free to download. Previously, MP3 talks and sets of talks had to be purchased. Now lots, but not all of it, is free.

The download location is http://www.proctrustmedia.co.uk/shop/index.php?act=viewCat&catId=1.

I know, I'm two weeks late to be commenting on this... but I've been on holiday.

The recent advertising campaign, bankrolled by the British Humanist Association, and backed by Richard Dawkins, has received a lot of publicity.

Since I posted on Henry Scott Holland's poem “Death is Nothing at all”, that blog post has overtaken my sermon on 1 Corinthians 13 as the most visited page on this site. Curiously, both the Scott Holland text and 1 Corinthians 13 are popular passages at funerals.

I've never read the whole piece before, so I was delighted to discover Dorothy L Sayers' 1947 essay The Lost Tools of Learning online. The web address for the copy I found is http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html, but I'm sure it's in lots of other places as well.

There's no day like New Year's Eve to release a new version of software that will draw up a Bible Reading Plan.

The changes from the previous version aren't massive (it's a minor release), but I think it makes it more usable.

Doug Wilson's post on the star followed by the wise men is most thought-provoking and insightful.

Enjoy!

Just spotted this for the first time: Luke 17:6-10 and Luke 17:11-19 are deliberately juxtaposed.

17:6-10 establishes that the right way to relate to God is as his servants. When we serve him, he doesn't “thank” us, because we recognise that we are merely giving him (a tiny part of) what he is due. As the commentaries point out, this is really about the fact that God does not owe us anything because of the service we have given him. Our service never puts us in his debt.