December 2009
23 posts
Trellis and the Vine - Part 3
These posts are coming fast and furious, because I have a little time right NOW and because I will be in Israel next week from Monday to Saturday.
What is the NT basis for what Marshall and Payne are calling us to be and do? To be a disciple is to be a disciple-maker (43). Frankly the concept of a professional clergy oftentimes can get in the way of this radically Biblical truth. We leave it to...
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The Trellis and the Vine - 2
Yesterday we began a series of posts on the book, The Trellis and the Vine, by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne. The title compares the trellis to the structures of the church and the vine to the real life of the church: the people who are disciples and should be disciple-makers. The authors argue that structures don’t grow ministry any more than trellises grow vines. Most churches need to make...
A Ministry Mind-Shift That Changes Everything
Can one book really make you think differently about how we “do church”? The subtitle of The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne makes that claim. I know that there are jaded readers who will respond with: “Here we go again. Another mega-church superstar pastor who wants to tell us that we do it wrong and how he does it right and how we can too if we follow his plan.” In...
A Protestant Saint - Part Two
This review should not be read without consulting part one that was posted yesterday (see below). I mentioned there that a new biography of A.W. Tozer justly celebrates the holy walk of the man of God who wrote the spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God. Lyle Dorsett does justice to this giant whose entire life and ministry exhibited A Passion for God.
But Dorsett’s biography is not a...
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The Life of a Protestant Saint
That title at least got your attention! I am fully aware that we Protestants do not promote the sainthood of a few. We believe that Scripture teaches the priesthood and sainthood of all believers. But there are some evangelical believers that do seem a cut above the rest of us. Aiden W. Tozer was one of those “saintly” individuals.
Lyle Dorsett has written an excellent and honest...
A Very Merry Christmas
The “DrIBEX Ideas” blog was begun in September and has consumed a lot of my time. But in my opinion it has been time well spent. One of my colleagues at The Master’s College told me that I am reaching more readers here than through my books, and that is probably true.
Recently a colleague at Grace Church told me that he will be posting some of my Christmas pieces on a respectable online magazine...
A Message for the Sunday After Christmas
Today I conclude my series on a fresh look at the Nativity with a brief look at the words of Simeon in Luke 2:22-35. What do you preach on the Sunday AFTER Christmas? Perhaps this event which took place 40 days AFTER the birth is appropriate. These summary ideas are seed-starters for your own further reflection.
When Jesus was 8 days old he was circumcised (Lk. 2:21). When he was 40 days old he...
Our Christmas Letter
The Varner Year of Travel
Germany has become a newly frequented destination. Amy, Jeremy, Claire and Eliza are now living in Spesbach near the Black Forest. Captain (soon to be Major) Jeremy Haskell is serving as a Psychologist at Ramstein Air Force base. We spent two weeks with them celebrating Helen’s birthday and Christmas. They took us to beautiful castles and picturesque villages in...
The Dark Side of Christmas
(NOTE: I have received thus far only one response to yesterday’s post about the new “Cursive King James Version.” The respondent did recognize that the announcement was a “spoof” intended to have a little fun with the KJV Only crowd.)
Christmas is a time of light and joy, but a new book develops a neglected but solidly Biblical theme: That the original Nativity...
A New Version of the KJV!
16 December 2009 Announcing the Cursive King James Version! This truly advanced edition of the inspired Scriptures is edited to respect the preservation of the text as no previous edition has been. Firmly committed to the manuscripts that undergird the King James Bible, the CKJV represents a significant advance in textual preservation. All previous editions of the King James Version have employed...
Wesley and Men Who Followed - A Review
John MacArthur refers to Iain Murray as “my favorite biographer.” It is hard to disagree with his evaluation of this modern patriarch who ministered with Martyn Lloyd-Jones and helped to found the Banner of Truth Trust. Murray is known for his biographies of such Calvinist stalwarts as Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones, John Murray and AW Pink. In this volume he turns his...
The Shepherds and the Savior
Today I continue my series on the Biblical Nativity with some observations on the role of the shepherds. I acknowledge that some thoughts are borrowed from one of my favorite current NT authors, Ben Witherington.
The episode about the shepherds, which takes up more space than the discussion of the birth itself, has a real historical plausibility to it, since Bethlehem was one of the main areas...
The Mythology of the Mean Innkeeper
The Christmas portions of the gospels are at once the most beloved and the most mythologized texts in the New Testament. Like works of art that have been lacquered with coat after coat of varnish, the details of the original stories are sometimes hard to see clearly. In the last few posts I suggested that a close reading of Matthew’s account (chapter two) reveals that the star may be...
Hermeneutics: An Introduction (brief review)
On his blog Scot MacKnight said that only Anthony Thiselton could write this book. I agree. He is a professor at the University of Nottingham and is the unquestioned “Monarch of Biblical Hermeneutics” today. We are all in his debt for his earlier books stressing philosophical hermeneutics. Here he publishes what is probably his most accessible tome, culminating a career of thought on...
The Mythology of the Magi (2) What About That...
Yesterday we looked at a few myths surrounding the visit of the Magi to the child Jesus in Bethlehem. We questioned the ideas about the sources of their knowledge about the star and the “King of the Jews” as lying in astronomical phenomena or in astrological “signs.” What is an alternative explanation for their knowledge?
It is distinctly possible that the oracles of...
THe Mythology of the Magi (I)
The visit of the magi to the Child-Messiah, recorded in Matthew 2:1-12, is one of the most familiar biblical scenes to most Christians. Theaverage conception of this event, however, has been unfortunately marred by a large number of popular misconceptions. Some of these come from the popular song, “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” Consider the following list of erroneous assumptions about the...
Merry Messiahmas
In my last posting, I mentioned that the Messianic Hope of the Hebrew Scriptures is not limited to the individual prophecies about the Messiah. There is an iceberg below the surface which the individual prophecies mentioned in the NT are the tips. But that does not imply that the prophecies themselves are not important. They are what we are exposed to most often in the NT.
Since we are in the...
The Firstborn
I have done a lot of thinking about the Messianic role of our Lord Jesus. I even published a book about the subject titled The Messiah: Revealed, Rejected, Received. After over thirty years intensely studying the Messianic idea I am still discovering wonderful new facets of this subject. To limit one’s study to the individual Messianic prophecies is actually to cover only one area of this...
Is Arminianism Sinful?
Here I post two adapted Facebook updates from the last two days.
Recently I was told that Arminianism is sinful. I assume that condemns the godly John Wesley and a host of other great Christians that were/are not in my own Calvinist camp. Does it mean that an Arminian is committing sin by holding to that soteriology? The implications of such an accusation are rather staggering when you think...
Further Problems with the ESV Study Bible
On October 15 I posted a brief preliminary review of the ESV Study Bible (see the “Browse the Archives link” at bottom of this page). A more thorough critical review of this study bible was given by James Borland at November’s ETS meeting. A copy of this review can be accessed in my Dropbox at http://bit.ly/618eW4. My thanks to a TMS colleague for sharing with me this review...
Christmas Flesh
I was so pleased with this Christmas meditation by Scot McKnight that I post it here. We emphasize so strongly that Jesus was DEITY incarnate that we forget to think through what it meant for Him to come in the “flesh” (John 1:14 and 1John 4:2). - WV
“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). The Word who is Life, the Word who is Light, has become “flesh.”
The Christmas...
Why Doesn't the NT Quote the OT Accurately?
I am often asked by students why the NT quotations of the OT do not match up with what we have in our English OT. There are a number of reasons why this is so. The following are some suggestions about this problem (with a little help from my OT mentor, Walt Kaiser).
First, our OTs are generally translated from the Masoretic text, the traditional Jewish text, the earliest manuscripts of which are...
“All that happens to me becomes either bread to nourish me, or fire to purify me,...”