Notes and podcasts on the Book of Acts
Interested in a 7-week journey through Acts?
Notes and podcasts will appear here each week. If you’re in Perth (Western Australia) you can join us live at Riverview Church 7–9 pm if you register (no charge).
Each Wednesday evening we’ll cover 2 chapters, take a coffee break, and then the next 2 chapters. At four chapters each week, we cover the 28 chapters in seven weeks:
How does the cross of Christ save us? How do we understand atonement?
Was Nahum right, or was Jonah? Did God want to condemn Ninevah or save it?
Two Minor Prophets heard God’s message for Nineveh, capital of the biggest, “baddest” empire of the Middle East in the eighth century BC. Assyria traded on its reputation for violence, so that the other nations would yield to them.
The prophets say that’s not right. God runs the world, and the nations must answer to him. But Nahum and Jonah have very different views of how God will deal with Nineveh.
Two minor prophets addressed Israel. Hear what God was saying to Israel, and you’ll hear what God is saying to the world.
Want to know what the prophets mean for us? Read them in their setting. It’s more effort than, “I’ll have this verse,” but it means so much more. What God promised comes alive in Christ.
Hosea and Amos are the two minor prophets who addressed Israel. That’s the northern nation established by Jeroboam when Solomon died. Samaria was the capital. Bethel and Dan were the worship centres.
Hosea and Amos kept calling Israel back to God. Disconnected from the Lord and his anointed, Israel was a basket of summer fruit going rotten (Amos 8). God’s anguish with Jacob’s failing family was something Hosea knew firsthand, living with a partner who gave herself to others and children who weren’t his (Hosea 1).
Hosea moved to rescue his wife from slavery. He said God would move to rescue Israel from their demise as a kingdom without a king or God to save them:
When did God fulfil his promise to raise the bones to life?
Exiled in Babylon, Ezekiel receives news that Jerusalem has fallen (Ezekiel 33). It’s the last gasp of a nation that is no more. Assyria had taken most of the land, and Babylon has taken what remained. There is no house where God is present in the world. There’s no anointed king representing heaven’s reign on earth. The bodies of those who tried to defend it lie unburied in what people were calling the Valley of Slaughter (Jeremiah 7:32; 19:6). What God intended to be his Holy Land lay defiled with their dead bones.
“Can these bones live?” God asked Ezekiel (37:3). The man has no answer. Death is so final. Ezekiel has already been lamenting, “The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land!” (Ezekiel 7:2). Who could argue? Speaking as a human, who could overturn death?
But Ezekiel is not speaking as a human. He’s speaking for his Master, the Sovereign Lord who breathed his breath into the human in the beginning, raising a human from the dust as a living being (Genesis 2:7).
Can this Valley of Slaughter become a new Eden? Is the Lord to breathe his breath into these bones, raising a body of people from the dust to stand as a great force under him? (Ezekiel 37:10)
Is Ezekiel 28 telling us about Satan’s origins?
Image: The Bible Project, 2019.
This text from Ezekiel and a related one in Isaiah 14:12-14 are often referenced in studies on the origin of Satan. What do you think?
Ezekiel 28:12–16 (NIV)
12 “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: carnelian, chrysolite and emerald, topaz, onyx and jasper, lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. 14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. 16 Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.”
The problem is that Ezekiel says it was about the king of Tyre, a wealthy trade city just up the coast from Israel. Here’s the immediate context:
Here are the notes and podcasts you need to understand the setting of the Old Testament prophets: Isaiah – Malachi.
[Update 2024-03-21: Full notes and final podcasts added]
The Old Testament concludes with the major and minor prophets. Do you know how each of these books fits into the Bible’s story? I mean, if we don’t know the situation they were addressing, it’s hard to make sense of what God was saying through them.
Here’s your opportunity to put the Prophets in perspective. Over the next six weeks, we’ll provide you with notes and a podcast covering the background of each one so you can read them for yourself.
You can download the full set of notes (60-page PDF), or the weekly notes for the six-week course (held Feb/Mar 2024), with two podcasts each week:
Notes will be available ahead of time, and the podcasts afterwards. The sessions are at Riverview Church in Perth Western Australia on Wednesday evenings.
Continue reading “Formed in God’s Story: Old Testament Prophets”
It’s ninety seconds to midnight according to the atomic scientists’ doomsday clock. Their weapons fuel our insecurity. How long before the world ends?
My parents and grandparents lived through world wars I and II. I grew up with images of doomsday prophets and their sandwich boards proclaiming, “The end of the world is nigh.” I think they were copying Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 7:2-3 (NIV)
2 Son of man, this is what the Sovereign Lord says to the land of Israel: “The end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land! 3 The end is now upon you.
But Ezekiel was no weirdo. He wasn’t talking about the end of the world.
Continue reading “What did Ezekiel mean by “The end is nigh”?”
Ezekiel didn’t know where he fitted on earth until he saw the wheels within wheels in the heavens.
By the rivers of Babylon, Ezekiel sat like a fish out of water. Despite all the glitz and glamour of Babylon, he didn’t fit here. He was living in a world that didn’t match his identity. It’s a feeling many of us can relate to.
But what could Ezekiel do? He didn’t really want to be there. Everything he valued was falling apart. A huge storm was brewing, about to blow everything away. It had already swept westward, and now it was turning south towards Egypt, with Ezekiel’s city (Jerusalem) in the firing line. It felt like a hurricane no one could survive.
That’s when Ezekiel looked up and saw another storm in the heavens, north of Babylon:
Jeremiah’s message helps us recover when everything falls apart.
Just as Jeremiah had said, Babylon swept through the whole region, ingesting all nations into its kingdom. God’s nation was no more. They lost the land where God’s anointed reigned. They lost the land Joshua fought for. They lost the land God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
How could they make sense of the world now? They’d regressed 700 years, to the time before God formed them as his nation at Sinai. The leaders and influencers were captives in Babylon. What should those who were left behind do now?
Feeling exposed and insecure, they considered going back to Egypt where Pharaoh might protect them. They asked Jeremiah.
Continue reading “Where is God’s reign when the kingdom falls? (Jeremiah 41–52)”
Why was Jeremiah dropped in a cistern and left there to die? What had he done?
A new covenant means a new king. That’s the gospel in Jeremiah.
“I know the plans I have for you,” may be our favourite text from Jeremiah. But here’s the favourite of the New Testament writers (quoted in Luke 22:20; Romans 11:27; 2 Corinthians 6:16; Hebrews 8:12; 10:16-17):
Jeremiah 31 (NIV)
31 “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. … 33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
Why did God promise a new covenant? What was wrong with the old one?
You may have heard this one:
Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
We’re looking at favourite verses in Jeremiah, and this might top the list. We’re asking you to handle Scripture well, understanding how it applied to them before applying it to us. Who was you? What plans did God have for them?
What did Jeremiah see when he visited the potter’s house? Is his picture consistent with the metaphor of God as ‘potter’ in the New Testament (Romans 9:21)?
You know that time Jeremiah visited the potter to see what God was doing?
Continue reading “The hands that shape history (Jeremiah 18)”
How could the temple fall if God was there?
Do you have a favourite text from Jeremiah? By setting the verses you already know in context, you’ll have a better appreciation of this prophet.
“Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?” God asked through Jeremiah (7:11). And Jesus asked the same question about his Father’s house (Matthew 21:13 || Mark 11:17 || Luke 19:46). Understanding Jeremiah’s context makes powerful sense of both settings.
In the tragedy of Israel’s fall, Isaiah declared how God would redeem his world.
[Image: the light at the end of Hezekiah’s Tunnel. Allen Browne, 2014]
Hear the Prophets in their setting, and we see how the promises of God restoring his reign find their Yes in Christ. That’s how they apply to us.
The sheer size of the Major Prophets can feel daunting. This post is a high-level drone shot of the Book of Isaiah. He was called to proclaim God’s throne as the kingdom fell apart.
Isaiah 6 is a great intro on how to read the Prophets. God explains what a prophet is and what a prophet does.
To discover what a prophet is, chat to one. How were they called? What was God calling them to do?
Isaiah gives us that conversation. It all started with the death of the Davidic king who had reigned well for 50 years (2 Chronicles 26). What would happen now?
Isaiah 6:1 (NIV)
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple.
Eschatology — the study of “last things” — is all about how God’s promises come together in the end.
Maybe we should call it Yeschatology — the study of how God’s promises find their Yes in the Messiah. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him (2 Corinthians 1:20).
So how do all the promises God delivered through the prophets find their Yes in the Messiah? Ah, that’s the central story of the Bible. That’s how the Prophets apply to Christ.
Did the Old Testament prophets describe current events, things happening in our lifetime?
There’s no question the Prophets spoke into specific times, addressing specific events. For example, this marks a major turning point in the Book of Isaiah:
Know the setting for each Old Testament Prophet? Now you do.
The Prophets (Isaiah – Malachi) are some of the most fascinating and least understood books of the Old Testament. In this series, we’ll give some insight into how to approach them, and provide some context for listening to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Minor Prophets. We’ll draw some conclusions about how they apply to us, and how they are fulfilled in Christ.
This introductory post covers how to approach the prophets. What is a prophet? How do we know what context they were addressing?
Seeking the kingdom 