Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible. Show all posts
Monday, May 11, 2009
you and ....
On Sunday we starting our new preaching series at Morning Church (9.30am) on 'You and ...'. The topics and dates are in the picture below. This week the topic is 'You and God'. Look forward to seeing you there! Chris.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Scripture Alone...but why?
Tomorrow at church (9:30am) Josh Taylor will be speaking about the Bible, its centrality in our lives and in the Reformation. He has been doing some thinking about it all and I post some of his thoughts about what appears to be a vicious circle in our thinking about the bible:
"One difficulty people have with Christian is that they say you can’t use the Bible as evidence to support the assertion that the Bible is the word of God. “How do we know the Bible is the Word of God? Because the Bible tells us so!”. It seems like a cyclical argument that doesn’t make sense.
The problem comes when we try to find another authority above God, who gets to judge whether the Bible really is God’s Word or not. If God has written it, what higher authority can there be than himself to verify that it comes from him? No-one else gets to put their seal of approval on it. Either God tells us that it really is from him, or we go and worship whatever authority has the final say, because they must be the true god. The buck has to stop somewhere.
That leaves the window open for deceitful people to make their own claims to have the authority of God. So how do we decide if the Bible’s claim to truth is the right one?
We start by not forcing the fact on people. You don’t have to believe that the Bible is the Word of God before you read it. In fact, quite the opposite – it’s as you read it that you become convinced that it is from God.
It’s like this: God says that Jesus is Lord. Where does He say that? In the Bible. If you read the Bible and become convinced that Jesus is Lord, then you’re at the same time affirming that God really did write the Bible.
It’s like 1 Thess 2:13:
‘And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe’.
Once you get into the text, you soon see there are a lot of good reasons to believe the Bible’s claims. Historically, the New Testament has been verified by Christian and secular scholars alike. That means it’s not a fairy-tale, but real people recording real events. If that is true, then the things Jesus did, like rising from the dead, gives us unprecedented reason to believe his claims to be from God.
As we hear those facts, and become convinced that Jesus is Lord – then at the same time we are affirmed that those words are actually from God, spoken through men.
Rather than standing outside the Bible, trying to reason why it could or couldn’t possibly be God’s Word – simply read it, and the response you have to its content will decide whether you think it’s from God or not.
There is a lot more evidence for the Bible’s claim to be from God, this just gives us a framework for thinking about it.
What do you think about this approach? Please feel free to comment, there is no doubt further conversation that could be had on this topic."
"One difficulty people have with Christian is that they say you can’t use the Bible as evidence to support the assertion that the Bible is the word of God. “How do we know the Bible is the Word of God? Because the Bible tells us so!”. It seems like a cyclical argument that doesn’t make sense.
The problem comes when we try to find another authority above God, who gets to judge whether the Bible really is God’s Word or not. If God has written it, what higher authority can there be than himself to verify that it comes from him? No-one else gets to put their seal of approval on it. Either God tells us that it really is from him, or we go and worship whatever authority has the final say, because they must be the true god. The buck has to stop somewhere.
That leaves the window open for deceitful people to make their own claims to have the authority of God. So how do we decide if the Bible’s claim to truth is the right one?
We start by not forcing the fact on people. You don’t have to believe that the Bible is the Word of God before you read it. In fact, quite the opposite – it’s as you read it that you become convinced that it is from God.
It’s like this: God says that Jesus is Lord. Where does He say that? In the Bible. If you read the Bible and become convinced that Jesus is Lord, then you’re at the same time affirming that God really did write the Bible.
It’s like 1 Thess 2:13:
‘And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe’.
Once you get into the text, you soon see there are a lot of good reasons to believe the Bible’s claims. Historically, the New Testament has been verified by Christian and secular scholars alike. That means it’s not a fairy-tale, but real people recording real events. If that is true, then the things Jesus did, like rising from the dead, gives us unprecedented reason to believe his claims to be from God.
As we hear those facts, and become convinced that Jesus is Lord – then at the same time we are affirmed that those words are actually from God, spoken through men.
Rather than standing outside the Bible, trying to reason why it could or couldn’t possibly be God’s Word – simply read it, and the response you have to its content will decide whether you think it’s from God or not.
There is a lot more evidence for the Bible’s claim to be from God, this just gives us a framework for thinking about it.
What do you think about this approach? Please feel free to comment, there is no doubt further conversation that could be had on this topic."
Monday, September 24, 2007
Lost and found!
I was pretty excited tonight. Having lost my mobile phone earlier in the day I found it again. Nothing surprising I hear you say (particularly for me!). The difference was that I lost it while I was wiring up our church office with gigabit ethernet.
I had crawled through the roof space above the offices, stretching right out to the eaves and had navigated the maze of under floor brick walls under the rectory to get to where the router was. I now had to retrace my steps.
After getting back from Synod (more on that later) I got another set of old clothes on and armed with Beth's phone and a torch went in search of the lost phone. I started in the roof. I wasn't sure if the phone was on silent so as I rang it, looking out to see if there was the faint glow of the LCD screen. There was no sound and no dim glow.
By this time I was already dirty and had time to hit under the house. The maze of walls under the house almost needs mapping and a GPS to know where you are. About half way under I rang the phone and 'Eureka!' I could here the ringtone coming from the dirt under my study. Around the corner was my phone - it must have just slipped out of my pocket as I dragged myself along the dirt with only about a foot clearence to the floor above. Was I happy to see it!
It reminded me of Luke 15:8-10 (NLT)
“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.”
I had crawled through the roof space above the offices, stretching right out to the eaves and had navigated the maze of under floor brick walls under the rectory to get to where the router was. I now had to retrace my steps.
After getting back from Synod (more on that later) I got another set of old clothes on and armed with Beth's phone and a torch went in search of the lost phone. I started in the roof. I wasn't sure if the phone was on silent so as I rang it, looking out to see if there was the faint glow of the LCD screen. There was no sound and no dim glow.
By this time I was already dirty and had time to hit under the house. The maze of walls under the house almost needs mapping and a GPS to know where you are. About half way under I rang the phone and 'Eureka!' I could here the ringtone coming from the dirt under my study. Around the corner was my phone - it must have just slipped out of my pocket as I dragged myself along the dirt with only about a foot clearence to the floor above. Was I happy to see it!
It reminded me of Luke 15:8-10 (NLT)
“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.”
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