Christians often don’t know what to do with the Old Testament. We know that Jesus has ‘fulfilled’, ‘abolished’ and ‘reinterpreted’ its teaching; but we also know that “all Scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness“ (2 Tim 3:16). So how are the food laws in Leviticus going to train us in righteousness? What kind of rebuke do we get from the elaborate temple descriptions at the end of Ezekiel? Questions like these lead us to push the Old Testament aside. It’s just too obscure, we tell ourselves, and stick with more familiar literature such as the New Testament epistles. We sense a huge gap between the Old and New.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Hermeneutics and Christ
Thought
Hermeneutics has been one of the big topics of the last 25 years. A seemingly endless series of books has been produced and academic papers written.
Divine Intervention: Genetic engineering and the plan of God
Life
Heart transplants. IVF. The Genome Project. There’s even a rumour about a cure for the common cold.
The potential of medicine seems to grow by the day but the question for Christians remains the same: how much should human beings fiddle with God’s creation? How do we discern between Babel-building and faithfully stewarding the world God has given to us? Using the example of genetic engineering, theologian and ethicist Michael Hill gives us some guidelines for sorting out what kinds of medical activity Christians can welcome.
One nation before God
Life
“God’s own country”.
So declared the recent front-page headline of our local newspaper, over a colour picture of a lone figure on a beautiful dusk-coloured beach. While I have often heard people refer to this area by that phrase, as front-page news it somehow feels official now: God lives in Sutherland Shire, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
Can you feel it?
Thought
Jonathan Edwards is something of a celebrity in theological circles these days. He is revered by American writers as one of their greatest sons. In the controversy over charismatic ‘manifestations’ (such as in the Toronto Blessing), he has often been quoted as a reformed evangelical who was in favour of extraordinary emotional outpourings, and who promoted revival, with all its sometimes unruly accompaniments.
Living on approval
Life
This article was adapted from a talk entitled ‘A Christian Man Gives Spiritual Leadership’, delivered at a Katoomba Men’s Convention.
Some men spend their lives waiting for the approval of their fathers, or trying to walk in their footsteps. But perhaps we need to learn the lesson that the Pharisees never learnt: to be satisfied with the approval of our Father in heaven.
The Devil Unmasked
Life
For over a century now, belief in the devil has seemed to be on the way out. The toothy red imp with the tail and the trident has become a secular figure of fun, while Protestant theologians generally have banished the personal devil of the Bible to the lumber-room reserved for broken-down myths. No doubt this state of affairs is just what the devil has been working for, since it allows him to operate now on the grandest scale without being either detected or opposed. Nor has he wasted his chances. During the past hundred years, he has engineered a world-wide collapse of evangelicalism in all the older Protestant denominations. The present spineless, powerless, unevangelical state of these churches, as compared with what they were a century ago, gives heart-breaking proof of the skill and thoroughness with which he has done his job. The Bible is no longer fully believed, the gospel is no longer thoroughly preached, and post-Christian paganism sweeps through the world like wildfire. Not for centuries has Satan won such a victory.
He’s out there
Thought, Sola Panel
As Hank neared the main business district he paused on a corner to look up and down the street, watching old cars, new cars, vans and fourby-fours, shoppers, walkers and bicyclers stream in all directions …
The rags of time
Life, Sola Panel
No, there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do…
Jim Croce must have had me in mind when he wrote Time in a Bottle. It’s the story of my life—ideas to chase through, books to read, people to see, and letters to reply to. And some day, I promise myself, I’ll learn how to chip and putt. I even have an ‘ideas’ book in which I jot down all the things that I want to do. Reading back through it is a depressing experience. It is a catalogue of unfinished schemes and dreams.
Published Abroad: Green with envy?
Factotum #7: What is a leader?
Everyday Ministry
Leadership is one of the pressing issues of today, and not only in the church. Time magazine recently had a special on the ‘leaders of tomorrow’, highlighting the need to prepare for the future or face a world that has little direction and little security.
Needy baby, murky bath
Life
Loving your neighbour
It really couldn’t be simpler. “Love your neighbour as yourself”. The words appear nine times throughout Scripture. They are part of the law of Moses (Lev 19:18). Jesus quoted this commandment as the second of the two great commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets (Matt 22:36-40; Mark 12:28-34). When a teacher of the law tried to limit the impact of this, Jesus explained its power with what is probably his most well-known parable (Luke 10:25-37).
The end of quiet times
Life
To be an evangelical Christian is to be a Bible reader. Our piety insists on personal, family and public Bible reading, even if the statistics suggest that our commitment to reading Scripture may be a part of evangelical mythology.1 Anyone who has the gall to ask “Do we really need to read the Bible?” deserves to be ex-communicated as a heretic and infidel and is certainly not a fit person to hold a publican’s license!
Experiencing God
Thought
Did Satan Win?
Pastoral Ministry
A postcard from America
In October this year, nearly 100 Sydney pastors and elders visited the USA to attend conferences on church growth and observe patterns of church life. One of them, Ed Vaughan, gives us his impressions of life (Christian and otherwise) in America.