Work

My new definition of Work

Work is to produce life

Thus sinful work only works for the self and is ultimately futile

God's work is to produce life in others, for we already have life in self - we are to create an Eden for others (despite it costing us dearly)

In this way - we testify to our Working, Resting God
Who longs to live in the Eden He made for us, with us

is that a complete enough definition?

OT Spirit

avid Murray has a series of posts on the Spirit in the OT

His conclusions are these:

Five conclusionsI’ll post some quotes tomorrow from ancient and modern commentators to support this interpretation of this passage. But in the meantime, here are some conclusions:

1. All Old Testament believers were born again from above, had faith in the coming Messiah, and were continually indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The indwelling Spirit was given to Old Testament saints prospectively, just as pardon of sin was given in view of Christ’s future atonement.

2. Old Testament believers’ experience of the Holy Spirit was usually limited to a degree of personal filling, but rarely a filling full, and even more rarely an overflowing to others in witness, evangelism, and mission.

3. The reason for the more limited experience of the Spirit’s indwelling was because of their more limited knowledge of Christ’s person and work.

4. Once Christ’s person and work and reached its apex of revelation, the Holy Spirit’s power was fully manifested in overflowing power.

5. The more we are filled with Christ, the more we will be filled with the Spirit, and the more we will overflow into the lives of others in witness, evangelism, and witness.

Agree?

I wonder for points 2-3 it is not so much an individual sense, but in a corporate sense - i.e. limited to Israel, vs overflowing to the whole world - surely Moses' evangelism and mission was as 'powerful' as ours?

any thoughts?

Ranting on 1 Samuel

So just heard the dean of a certain Australian college give a series of sermons on 1 Samuel as training on how to preach OT narratives in a Christ-focused manner:

which to him means explaining the passage in detail and then putting 1-3 minutes of Jesus at the end...
does that qualify as preaching Christ?

For example, 1 Sam 13,
Amnon & Tamar... explain whole story, let it come out in feeling...
then at the end Jesus is the true son of David who will live the way David never could
unlike the real sons of David which brought out the murderer and rapist in him

ok i guess.. but is that all we've got??

what about this...

as we trace how sin works and affects the prince and his half-sister-bride

we then come to trace the faithful prince, with his sister, his bride,

Song of Solomon 4:9 You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride; you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.

he then knows how to wait for love, for if he advances on her too soon, she will reject him and be his tool, not his helper, and he indeed will be like all the other fools who: stir up or awaken love (before)  it pleases.

No, He will woo her, and die for her, instead of murdering her husband.. to allow her to open up slowly and surely, 

then he will take his (half) sister, bride - according to the King's command, into their mother's bed chamber 

forever

or something like that?

optimism & pessimism

Being realistic is to be pessimistic about all the works of man, and to be optimistic about the compelling love of God

Godly Hermaneutics

According to the Living God...

Jeremiah 1:11-12   11 And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, "Jeremiah, what do you see?" And I said, "I see an almond branch."  12 Then the LORD said to me, "You have seen well, for I am watching over my word to perform it."

"sounds like" - is a perfectly acceptable form of understanding something


NLT 1 Kings 18:44 Finally the seventh time, his servant told him, "I saw a little cloud about the size of a hand rising from the sea." Then Elijah shouted, "Hurry to Ahab and tell him, 'Climb into your chariot and go back home. If you don't hurry, the rain will stop you!'"

"looks like" is also acceptable

so i don't see what the heck is wrong with allegorizing and making quite generic allusions to both things in Scripture and creation...

Another sermon on Proverbs

Must admit, didn't quite know what else to say apart from what I already said last week, but wanted to zoom in on us being reacquainted with Wisdom - Jesus - Father. Wasn't explicit with this, but also wanted to drop the hint that a sermon is not just about us coming as subjects before a king to hear a list of decrees or applications to work on; but simply spending time with Jesus, and receiving Him and from Him, being loved by Him and loving Him. Again, not sure I dealt with it properly, and basically ran out of time to think through more... Don't know why but didn't really want to preach this sermon and felt like I just went through the motions.
As always... comments very much appreciated...

http://www.emmanuelplymouth.co.uk/?page_id=146&sermon_id=142

Sorry... still don't now how to do the link thing!

A sermon on Proverbs

http://www.emmanuelplymouth.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sermons/DR000288db.mp3

Not sure how this went down, but from whatever comments I had, it didn't seem to 'do much' for people. So comments very much appreciated. It's not sleek public speaking as I'm trying to preach without a script - finally taking Prentice's advice - but really just want to know if the gospel was presented. Getting a bit disheartened by not much happening through sermons.

By the way, how do you put a link in a post that you can click on to take you to another site or sermon etc?