What sort of leader is God? How does God’s leadership define the way we lead?
Is “mutual submission” an oxymoron? It’s not part of the political our commercial landscape. Influencers are people with followers, right? So where would we even look for such a radical model of leadership?
Update 2024-08-09: Added podcast on Psalm 22.
We saw in Psalm 3 that “of David” refers to the Davidic kings who were God’s anointed throughout the generations (not just the individual from the tenth century BC). Now we’re ready to approach Psalm 22.
The opening words may sound familiar: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These were the words on Jesus’ lips at his crucifixion (Matthew 27:46 || Mark 15:34).
But before we ask why Jesus reused the opening words of Psalm 22, what did those words mean in their Old Testament setting?
In the first three psalms, we discovered the rich diversity within the Psalter:
It helps to recognize the different kinds of psalms (genres). They’re generally categorized into these types:
Why am I constantly confronted with David’s enemies in the Psalms? What relevance does that have for us?
Update 2024-08-09: Added podcast on Psalm 3.
The first thing you’ll notice about Psalm 3 is the comment before verse 1. This is the first psalm “of David.”
The first two psalms didn’t have a title like this. They set the foundation for the relationship between the Lord and his people. That relationship was established by the Law of the Lord (Psalm 1), and implemented in the reign of the Lord and his anointed (Psalm 2).
Now in Psalm 3, we turn to the Lord’s Anointed. All the remaining psalms in Book 1 are “of David,” with one exception (Psalm 33).
So, are you ready for the privilege of listening in on the king’s prayers?
Update 2024-08-01: Added Podcast on Psalm 2.
Without Psalm 2, you’ll get bogged down when the Psalms talk about “enemies.” Book 1 talks about enemies and foes fifty times in 41 Psalms. Some people just skip these psalms, looking for something more joyful.
Psalm 2 is the missing piece of the puzzle. David’s enemies are God’s enemies. As the Lord’s anointed (verse 2), David represents God’s reign on earth. So, any enemy of David is an enemy of the one who appointed him.
Update 2024-08-01: Added Podcast on Psalm 1.
Here’s a simple, interactive introduction to the first Psalm, with some thought-provoking questions to stimulate group discussion or your own meditation. Continue reading “Psalm 1: The Lord’s Law”
Do you know the story that spans the five books of the Psalms?
Welcome to Psalms. This is an amazing book that feels so relevant. When you’re joyful, sing Hallelujah psalms. When life is terrible, use a lament Psalm to express your anguish to God. The Psalms shine God’s light into every facet of our existence.
Do you have some favourite Psalms? Which ones do you turn to most often?
In the coming weeks, we’ll take you through 12 of 150 psalms, sampling different kinds. Some taste like bitter tears; others like joyful praise. Psalms of trust taste like soft-centred chocolate, while wisdom psalms are more like a nougat that takes time to chew.
Twelve Psalms in six weeks.
Update 2024-09-12: All notes and podcasts are now linked.
Interested in the Psalms? Do you know what they meant to Israel as their story unfolded in the five books of the Psalms? Why was David so central? Does that have anything to do with Jesus? What do the Psalms mean to us?
We’ll take two Psalms each week for six weeks, selecting different genres from across the five books within the Psalms, so that you’ll know how to treat the Psalms well.
We’ll add notes and podcasts here each week. We’re meeting on Wednesday evenings (7–9 pm) from 31 July to 11 September 2024 (except 14 August):
Why does Paul appeal to Caesar? What about his Jewish roots, and his faith in God’s Messiah as Saviour of the world?
Why would Paul say this? “I am standing before Caesar’s court, where I ought to be tried.” (Acts 25:10)
Doesn’t Paul believe Jesus is the ruler who ultimately sets all things right? And if he had to choose between Jerusalem and Rome, why choose the rulers who oppressed God’s nation rather than the nation called to represent God’s authority?
Paul’s statement cuts across how many today think about Israel, empire, and the kingship of the Christ.
Continue reading “How do governments fit with Christ’s authority? (Acts 25:10)”
How do we navigate the growing political divide in our society? This book from N. T. Wright and Michael Bird can help us get our focus right.
Update 2024-08-17: Link to Christianity Today’s review.
How should Christians engage with the politics of our day? N. T. Wright and Michael Bird help us face this challenging question in Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies (Zondervan, 2024).
I loved this book. Even when I disagreed, it felt like a stimulating conversation with friends, discussing things that matter:
In this book, we have attempted to do a number of things related to the topics of political theology, public discipleship, Christian testimony in the face of tyranny, and debates over Church and State relationships. (page 175)
Notes and podcasts on the Book of Acts
Updated 2024-06-20: Final notes and podcasts added.
Interested in a 7-week journey through Acts?
Each Wednesday evening we 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.
The full notes for Acts 1-28 are here (PDF, 17MB). Alternatively, you can download the podcasts and notes for each week:
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)”
Seeking the kingdom 