The Bible uses the word “comfort” in thirty-one places, and more than half appears in 2 Cor. In just today’s passage alone, it appears for ten instances. Paul is sharing with the church in Corinth about the true comfort he has experienced amidst his suffering.
Today’s passage is very practical, because we, or our friends might need comfort. Often, we struggle to comfort sufferers and we don’t know how to help or what to say to them. How do Christians comfort and suffer?
Corinth was a strategic city in the Roman empire. It was a seafaring port with a diverse, cosmopolitan crowd. Many in the city, and also the church, were probably used to riches and power. We’re going to look at this second letter to the Corinthians in this series. Why are we doing 2nd Corinthians? It is a book that we hope will be like a bowl of hearty, healthy broth that can reinvigorate our hearts, just as it did for the Corinthian church.
This is the last study in our Doctrine of Scripture series. We started our series with a speaking God, and we went through some of the attributes of Scripture — sufficient, clear, authoritative and necessary. Then we studied about the Canon of the Bible, how we have the set of books in our bibles today. Last week, we spoke about how Scripture cannot be broken. And we come to this week, where we want to trace the storyline of the Bible, because we know that what God says will come to pass!
In this study, we will see what Jesus Himself thinks about Scripture! In this series on the Doctrine of Scripture, we’ve been spending so much time reading the Bible and understanding its characteristics, thus seeing what Jesus Himself has to say will also help us to understand the importance of Scripture too.
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.
In the past four studies, we’ve seen how the Bible presents God as a God who speaks. From beginning to end, He is a God who relates with human beings and acts for them using words. We’ve looked at the kinds of words God uses and some of the qualities of those words – the sufficiency, clarity and authority of Scripture.
In this study, we look at a fourth quality – the necessity of Scripture. His words are necessary; we cannot do without it. The purposes for those words cannot be achieved without those words. They are needed and we desperately need them.
The topic of the “authority” of Scripture raises questions about who has the right to tell us about ultimate reality, and how life ought to be lived. A good place for us to begin is to take reference from Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, and to see how He views the Bible. Seeing how He views the Bible, and how He responds to it should help us form our expectations about the Bible’s authority. Even more fascinatingly, the passage we’ll look at sees Him engaging with Satan, a competing authoritative source and how the Bible, for Jesus, was clarifyingly authoritative.
The clarity, or pespecuity of Scripture is something that we either take for granted or we accept as something that cannot be achieved. The latter could be a product of what our society tells us, that language is a construct and meaning is what we want it to be. Either way, these are norms that most of us live with. We have come to a place in our world where we accept that maybe God spoke, and maybe it has a meaning for my parents or friends etc, but we may not know if it has relevance for me 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.
In this series, we’re going to focus on why and how we can trust Scripture to be reliable and trustworthy. We’ll examine what Scripture says about itself, but today, we’re going to begin by looking at the God of Scripture. Our goal in this series is not to get more information but to learn about what Christians through the ages have believed about God and His word!
Joel 3 reads like an earth-shaking, soul-rattling thunderstorm that gives way to great comfort in the coolness of the morning. The vision of God and His judgement shakes our soul more than any thunder has shaken our souls, but in the midst of this terrible judgement, we see a beautiful picture of salvation unlike any other – salvation that springs up a deep wealth of peace and restedness more satisfying than sleeping in on a rainy morning.
In this short series on the book of Joel, we have learnt what it means to lament: what it means to cry out to God in our times of sorrow and pain; what it means to turn from sin in genuine repentance.
Now, we want to consider Joel 2:28-32. Specifically, in these few verses: we want to examine this theme of the “Day of the Lord”. What is this great and awesome day of the Lord? What will happen, on this great and awesome day? From Joel 2: 28-32, we learn of some awesome and wondrous promises of God, a God who promises that He will pour out His spirit on His people, even in the midst of chaos and calamity. How do we understand these wondrous promises, and what do they mean for us? We will attempt to answer these questions, in this study.
How are God’s people to respond to calamity? Joel 2 helps us see that one way is to turn back to Him in repentance. But how do we do so? And why should we do so?
God uses different means to confront us in our lives. I think that it is true that God meets us where we are. In our passage today of Joel, God confronts his people with a word of warning through his prophet Joel. As we read through this passage, it’s a big-time warning, not just a gentle reminder. Joel warns about a day of the Lord, about a day of confrontation that is near.
Two kinds of Prophets form a major portion of the Old Testament – the four Major Prophets (so called because they are long books) and the 12 Minor Prophets (so called because they are short books). Joel is one of the Minor Prophets.
Written after the exile of the Israelites in Babylon, what does this short book hold for us today?
As we come to a new series in Joel, we must recognize that we study God’s Word in tumultuous times. It is therefore fitting for us to start on a new study on the book of Joel which deals with calamity and crisis, allowing us to understand why disaster may happen in the life of God’s people. And in our studies, we pray that we may be comforted and strengthened, as we consider how God’s people should respond in a time of crisis and calamity?
What would you call “glorious”? Some of us would think of creation (e.g. mountains, sunset and sunrise) or architectural wonders (e.g. Sydney Opera House. Others might associate with food or skills, or think of sports teams or the title “GOAT” attributed to sports persons.
But what does is mean in this Psalm? How is God glorious?
In this Psalm, the psalmist cries out to God and focuses on His unchanging nature. How does this attribute of God serve as his encouragement?
We live in a broken world and we often have to choose between imperfect options. Often, many of our options involve some form of loss. So in these situations, what we need most if wisdom to pursue the course of action that would be most honoring to God and to all the stakeholders involved. In God’s grace, He helps us choose Him and choose the things that glorify Him the most.
In each situation, there are two kinds of wisdom at play – firstly, the wisdom of God and secondly, the wisdom that God’s people strive towards. This study of Psalm 104 will focus on the first kind of wisdom. We hope that in such a time as this, God’s revelation of Himself in His Word will be a source of hope and encouragement to all of us as we come to it together.
Psalm 104 is a creation psalm. It shows us the wisdom of God as it is seen throughout creation.
God’s silence is a perturbing matter. In philosophy of religion, it is often cited as evidence that God does not really exist, or at the very least, He does not seem to want to make Himself known. After all, if He really wanted to reveal Himself to us, couldn’t He simply appear to everyone? Or at least speak directly to each individual in an unmistakable act of communication?
