James's Weblog

John Mackay is very helpful in his commentary on Jeremiah (volume 2) in his attempt to explain Jeremiah's prophecy of the new covenant (31:31-34).

Mackay's concern is to be true to Jeremiah's message. This requires recognising that Jeremiah spoke a message to a particular group of people in a particular setting (even though chapter 31 is one of the more debated chapters in Jeremiah when it comes to working out what that setting is). But (no less important) it also recognises that Jeremiah's message contributed to the final canon of Scripture and so has something far wider to say. The challenge is to hear the message as a single message that has both a historical context and a canonical one.

There is a really helpful paragraph in Carson's wonderful commentary on John expounding John 2:21, where Jesus speaks of his body as a temple. I've grasped the general idea expressed in John 2:21 for some time, but Carson's paragraph is very helpful for its clarity.

Psalm 69 is David praying to God about his enemies that are more numerous than the hairs on his head. He is fearful lest others who love God suffer because David is known to love God and is in disrepute. It is because of his zeal for God that he suffers.

Verse 9, quoted in John 2, comes in that context. David has zeal for God’s house, and because of that zeal he is suffering as he is. So, “consume” does not just mean “absorb”, in the sense that he is consumed with passion for God’s house. Rather, his zeal for God’s house is eating him up; it is leading to his mistreatment.

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.