Phil Whitall's church in trouble with the Advertising Standards Agency for a flyer about God healing.... I'm with Phil - God says he heals, and so long as we're not guarenteeing that as a reward for church attendance (which he isn't) but rather inviting people to come and believe in the God who has revealed himself you'd think it was part of freedom to believe, freedom of speech...
The flipside, as the 1998 Publicity Coordinator for Bath University Christian Union there is a lesson to learn to make sure we take 2 Corinthians 4 seriously and don't distort or twist the truth. Hype is easy to do, and unecessary. We can tell it like it is. The gospel is gloriously good news. And God does heal today.
Smith Wigglesworth - "The Word of God makes enlarged hearts"
Overlooking the error of him refusing to read other books... this stands between Spurgeon on reading more Bible and his words on Paul and his books..
"Libraries make swelled heads, but the Word of God makes enlarged hearts. We are to have enlarged hearts, hearts fiolled with the fragrance of the love of God that will show forth the life nad power of the Lord. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God - not by reading commentaries. Faith is the principle of the Word of God. The Holy Spirit, who inspired the Word, is called by the Spirit of truth; and as we receive with meekness the engrafted Word, faith springs up in our hearts; faith in the sacrifice of Calvary; faith in the shed blood of Jesus; faith in the fact that He took our weaknesses upon Himself, that he has borne our sicknesses and carried our pains, and that He is our life today. The Word of God is living and powerful, and in its treasure you will find eternal life. If you will dare to trust this wornderful Lord of life, you will find in Him everything you need... I have never read any book but the Bible... Fill your head and your heart with the Scriptures.... as you do this, you are sowing in your heart seeds which the Spirit can germinate.... You must be soaked with the Word of God, you must be so filled with it... Believers are strong only as the Word of God abides in them... Know your Book, live it, believe it, and obey it. Hide God's Word in your heart. It will save your soul, quicken your body, and illumine your mind. The Word of God is full and final, infallible, reliable, and up-to-date, and our attitude towards it must be one of unquestioned obedience. If a thing is in the Bible it is so; it is not even to be prayed about; it is to be received and acted upon. Inactivity of faith is a robber which steals blessing. Increase comes by action, by using what we have and what we know. Your life must be one of going from faith to faith.... Because you dare to believe, you act in obedience.p73-75. Smith Wigglesworth, Apostle of Faith by Stanley Howard Frodsham. The book itself is something of a hagiography but Wigglesworth clearly had some good stuff to say
Love the people. Love the word of God.
A couple of things I've stumbled upon thanks to Justin Taylor:
Keller and Powlison: Should You Pass on Bad Reports?: "You never have all the facts. And you never have all the facts you need all at once. You are never in a position to see the whole picture, and therefore when you hear the first report, you should assume you have far too little information to draw an immediate conclusion... when you hear a negative report about another, you must keep it from passing into your heart as though it were true. If you pass judgment based on hear-say, you are a fool. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check out the facts. Go to the person. Hear other witnesses... take pains to maximize boots-on-the-ground interpersonal relationships."Love for people. Love for the word of God. The two go together.
Mark Driscoll notes a conversation with Wayne Grudem: "...every issue ultimately hinges on one’s view of the inerrancy, authority, and truthfulness of Scripture in every way. He encourages all young Christian leaders to make sure that deep within them is a love for and trust in every word of Scripture as God’s perfect revelation to us."
Proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ
The preaching of the Old Testament is not a dirge that must end with a happy chord. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the melody of the scriptures from beginning to end. Apostolic preaching will always demonstrate this.
Acts 9v22 - Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.
Acts 17v2-4 - As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ"
Acts 18v28 - For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.
This was Paul's evangelistic approach. Paul with his Old Testament proving, reasoning, refuting, explaining and proving that their true meaning is the gospel of Jesus.
It could be argued that this is his approach among Jews - which it was. And granted at Athens he seems to argue more from creation and culture. But when we consider his approach to the Gentiles of Galatia he says he 'portrayed Christ crucified'. He promptly goes on to spend several verses reminding them about Abraham and the law. It seems he'd quickly shown them that the gospel preached to Abraham 'all peoples will be blessed through you' was the meaning of Christ crucified.
If we only operate with a 27 book Bible we rob ourselves of the roots and foundations on which the gospel stands. Our gospel will be flimsy and appear 'new' when it is rooted in everything God has ever said, the God who reveals all this plans. Amos 3v7: For the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. That's spoken into a context where God's people were silencing their prophets, and so robbing themselves of the life-giving knowledge of God. We do the same to ourselves if we silence the law and the prophets by not permitting them to sing their true melody, about the Christ.
Posted by Dave Bish. More thoughts on how to read the Old Testament as about Jesus can be found at The Biblical Theology Briefings.
The Old Testament is about Jesus.
That's what Jesus said to the Pharisees. They were missing it. Not because they were stupid but because they didn't believe in Jesus. And if they did they'd see that Moses writes about Jesus. It's a bit of a circular thing but what isn't.
The key to understanding the Old Testament is not intellect but faith in Jesus. Through faith in him the eyes of our hearts are opened to see him clearly in all 66 books of the Bible.
The question really is how did Moses write about Jesus. He didn't write the name 'Jesus' anywhere in his five books. Is it a magic trick, like those sermons we think of where someone talks about a passage for 30mins and then tacks Jesus on the end - or like the story that describes a squirrel in sunday school but the kids conclude it must be a description of Jesus because it's sunday school. Such stories are fairly apocryphal though clearly have some basis in reality.
Seems to me that the way the Old Testament is about Jesus is a multifaceted thing.
- The OT is about Jesus because it's about God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
- The OT is about Jesus in that Israel is a shadow of Jesus. The OT is about Jesus in that Jesus is Abraham's seed - and so the life of Isaac points to Jesus (Galatians 3)
- The OT is about Jesus in that he is the wisdom of God that all wisdom points to (Colossians 1)
- The OT is about Jesus in that the law has shadows and models that are shadows and models of Jesus (Hebrews 8-10)
- The OT is about Jesus in that what happens to Israel is a warning to take Jesus seriously (Hebrews 1-2)