Part One The Flight to Egypt Joseph is told to leave for Egypt before Herod finds the child and tries to kill it. He and Mary take Jesus away that night “until the death of Herod.” What Matthew does next appears interpretively strained. He claims that Hosea 11:1 is fulfilled in this incident (Matt. 2:13-15), or at least in the return from Egypt. But Hosea 11:1 in its original setting is speaking about Israel not its Messiah. What is …
Category: Theology
Part Two The Annunciation of Jesus’ Birth in Matthew Matthew famously begins his Gospel with a stylized genealogy. Placing a genealogy upfront like that bespoke a narrative rooted in the Jewish heritage. Starting your book off with a genealogy hardly seems to us to be a great attention-grabber, but Matthew’s Gospel certainly didn’t suffer on account of it (by all accounts Matthew was the most popular Gospel in the early Church.)[1] Certainly, this way of beginning a narrative about a …
Part One As one comes to Luke’s second chapter the census is mentioned, but only because it furnishes the reason for Joseph and his family to go south to Bethlehem, the town of David’s birth (Lk. 2:4-5), while also giving the location for the extraordinary vision of the shepherds in Luke 2:8-20. That event is also filled with covenant expectation. Notable is that the angel announced, “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.” (Lk. 2:10). The …
The annunciation passages in Matthew and Luke are our first introduction to the way the Holy Spirit will pick up the threads of the OT and join them with the new revelation that came with the advent of Jesus Christ. We start with those passages where angels announce the birth of the Savior. I am going to begin with Luke’s account, and move on to Matthew’s Gospel. Even John could be considered since his account, although it skips the birth …
When we cross over from the OT into the NT we might think that we ought to expect a very clear continuity. After all the OT, particularly the covenants and the Prophets have led us to expect a great future for the nation of Israel. Even though that people had gone and done their own thing, we would think that God would stick with His covenants and promises to that nation and bring them to Himself. We would also expect …
I received this question recently: “Thank you for all the material you put out. I have benefitted quite a bit. Do you have a list of books/reading that you would recommend as “must read” for someone wanting to grow theologically? I am a part-time worship pastor and full-time elementary music teacher. Previous experience as lay/part-time church planter, youth pastor, and young adult pastor. No seminary, relatively studied, conservative theologically.” As it’s nice to receive such requests (I remember doing the …
This is an update of an previous post. An interesting phenomenon in regard to the reading of the Old Testament and the New is the respective chronologies of the authorship of the canons. Whereas the Old Testament was written over a period of approximately 1,300 years – taking Job as the earliest book (c.1750 B.C.) and Malachi as the last book (c. 450 B.C.), the New Testament was written within one average human lifetime. This represents a vast difference which …
Part One This completes the thoughts offered previously. 4. Systematic Theology Coming now to Systematic Theology the first thing that must be said is that the pretended stand for a partial system must be summarily dropped. Dispensational Theology cannot be switched out for the term Dispensational Premillennialism. In point of fact, I make bold to say that the notion of Dispensational Premillennialism is a bit of an odd bird without a full-orbed system to back it up. Most Dispensationalists have …
I thought this article could use a second airing. I have taken the liberty to revise bits here and there. For one reason or another traditional Dispensationalism has been abandoned by all but a relatively few Bible students. The wild success of the Left Behind novels is no sound indicator to the contrary. Two much better indicators which point decisively the other way are the degree of serious attention given to this point of view in most Biblical and Systematic …
Part Three I’ve said quite a lot about already about the angel of the bottomless pit, but I’ve not finished. I believe certain passages of Scripture act as hermeneutical touchstones. Decisions about what direction to take can be either determinative of where the exposition is going to go, or they highlight the assumptions brought to the text. One thinks of the Olive Tree metaphor in Romans 11, or the exhortation given to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 43. The first eleven verses …
