Viewing entries tagged
Hebrews
What good is Scripture? What good is the Old Testament for us today? Does it help us with important life decisions?
This is the first of our new series on the Doctrine of Scripture. Through this series, we hope to see Scripture says about itself, that God’s Word is sufficient, clear, authoritative and necessary.
We’ve been seeing how Scripture sufficient, clear, authoritative and necessary. Since Scripture is this perfect word, how do we know that what we have in the Bible matches that standard? What then are the recognised books? That is what we will be looking at today.
When we say the Bible is sufficient, we don’t mean that it is the bare minimum we need to get by. Rather, we are to think of sufficiency to mean that Scripture is all that we need to know God, for His purposes.
But, what is it sufficient for? We can’t just speak of the sufficiency of Scripture in a vaccum! Hence, we need to see the purpose of Scripture, and also examine how Scripture is sufficient for this purpose.
As we near the end of our study in Exodus, we come also to the point where the construction of the Tabernacle nears its end.
Gender. It's an incredibly important and hot topic these days, mostly because the issues are so weighty and so personal at the same time. Few issues go to the heart of our humanity and personhood like this one. Thus, we should be careful at all times, to speak of these matters with great care and love, ever conscious of the dignity of human persons. This is core for Christians in every context. Gender and sexuality are sacred issues for us and we must not be careless. Thus, for us, instead of tackling each of the specific issues individually, we're going to start first looking at the character of God, and the nature of humanity He designed. In order to develop shared ground to speak of, we should not start from our experiences, which are varied, and expectations, which could come from different sources. Our controlling mechanism must begin with who God is, and who we are as human beings, so let’s start from there.
This series looks at what is commonly referred to as the "5 points of Calvinism", but we're also mot interested in looking at each of these truths, and how they show 5 characteristics of grace. Today's study focuses on limited atonement. Our context and philosophical worldview could cause us to baulk at this topic and the thought that God’s atonement is limited. But limited atonement also means that grace is triumphant. As we unpack this passage in Hebrews 9, let's remember that both these things can be true -- that atonement is limited and also grace is triumphant.
This section begins with a genealogy, which was last seen in Gen 5. Genealogies signal divisions in the book of Genesis, and here, it signals the beginning of a new chapter.
(A) The Proper Princess (Gen 23:1-3)
(B) The Princely Price (Gen 23:4-16)
(C) The Promised Property (Gen 23:17-30)
