March 29, 2009
Paul has made clear how the Corinthians should not view him and other ministers, and now he makes clear how they are to view them. This excludes the Corinthians’ judgment of their ministries, as the real judgment belongs to God on the final day. Paul also points to the Corinthians’ standing before God as being [...]
March 29, 2009
God willing, this year we will celebrate the week leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection (Holy Week) with both a Maundy Thursday service and a Good Friday service. Since we try not to add services without purpose at Whitton Avenue, I thought I would give a brief explanation for why we are doing this.
The [...]
March 20, 2009
Tonight we gather in the sanctuary for a “Concert of Prayer” from 6:30 - 7:30. For some, the words “concert” and “prayer” belong to two different worlds, so to dispel any imaginations of guys playing electric guitars on their knees, I thought I would share what we hope the hour to look like.
First of all, [...]
March 15, 2009
Paul further highlights the foolishness of basing divisions on Christian ministers since God ultimately does the eternally fruitful work through such ministers. This launches Paul into a discussion of the nature of the Christian ministry as that of building onto the building God began in Christ and the rewards inherent to such work.
March 15, 2009
There is some neurosis in my brain, some compulsivity that draws me toward the “Extra features” of a movie or TV show DVD. I must exhaust the contents of the disk, even if the movie was not terribly compelling. And this frequently involves watching the “deleted scenes” of the show.
I recognize that most people do [...]
March 8, 2009
Having laid out the Spirit’s ministry in the previous section, Paul describes the way spiritual people receive the Spirit’s instruction. He then laments that the Corinthians’ divisiveness is evidence that they are not acting as people of the Spirit but as people of the flesh.
March 8, 2009
As our family ate lunch on Sunday afternoon, it dawned on me that I had promised to “get practical” at the end of the sermon and, in all my enthusiasm, failed to deliver the goods. I asked Rachael and she graciously confirmed this, so I thought I would use the space here to work out [...]
March 5, 2009
1 Corinthians 3:18-23
“Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,” and again, “The Lord knows [...]
March 3, 2009
Part of my current reading for seminary is a 600-page work that gives an “introduction” to the political, religious, social, and cultural background of the New Testament. In that reading, I came across a phrase with which I was unfamiliar: “bread and games” (or “bread and circuses”). Juvenal, a Roman poet, coined the phrase not [...]
