I was blessed to be able to fill the pulpit this last Sunday. I took 1 Peter 2:4-10 as my text and did my best to cover some of the wonderful truths contained in that passage. I focused on how the Church is both a Temple, made up of living stones, and a company of Holy Priests to the Lord. This passage has long been one of my favorite in the New Testament, and I hope my message will be a blessing for all who hear it.
I’m sharing the sermon here, and you can find all my recent sermons from The Heights Church, St. Paul, here.
If you don’t have time to listen to the entire sermon (53 minutes), please do look over my notes.
This past Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching at our church again. My text was Ezekiel 47:1-12 and the theme was living water. I had so much fun exploring the biblical theological theme of life-giving water. My sermon borrowed from the ideas I gleaned from G.K. Beale on how Jesus in both John 4 and John 7, alludes to Ezekiel’s eschatological temple and specifically chapter 47, where the river of life flows from the center of the temple. See an earlier post with relevant excerpts from Beale.
Ezekiel is not often the focus of a sermon, so I took time to introduce the book and situate the hearers to the context of chapter 47, particularly. John 7:37-39 provided the application and somehow I managed to get this all done in about 50 minutes! I am thankful for the opportunity and for how the Lord helped my scattered thoughts make sense. There was a good reception of the message and I pray it continues to bless those who hear it. Grasping the beauty of biblical theology has the potential to be truly transformative (it has been for me).
I’m sharing the sermon here, and you can find all my recent sermons from The Heights Church, St. Paul, here.
If you don’t have time to listen to the entire sermon (52 minutes), please do look over my notes.
Christians who love the Bible, should love biblical theology. More than any other discipline, biblical theology has the power to take the student on an exciting journey into the overall meaning of the biblical text. Early on in my study of biblical theology, I was told about the transformative power of one particular book and one particular biblical theme. That book was The Temple and the Church’s Mission by G.K. Beale (IVP). Eventually I read through that book and now agree with all the praise that was heaped upon it.
Beale’s work on the temple, showing how that theme is developed from Eden all the way to the New Jerusalem, can be truly transformative. Beale is not the only scholar to uncover this biblical theme, but his book perhaps more than any other, has advanced our understanding of all that is meant by God’s pledge to dwell with man in a visible temple.
The one drawback to Beale’s earlier title was that it was quite difficult to work through. Beale is exhaustive in his treatment of primary and secondary literature. He builds cases for each of the NT allusions he finds to OT passages. He interacts with the second temple Judaistic writings in his effort to understand what the people of the Bible’s day would have thought when they heard various images and themes about the temple. All of that reads more like a theological tome than a helpful and practical book for church use.
Finally, Beale has updated his original book and simplified it. Many thanks are due Mitchell Kim, a pastor who has used Beale’s material and also developed his own on the same theological topic. Together (and with the help of IVP) they have created a readable, shorter version of Beale’s original title, and even advanced beyond that book with more fully developed application of this theme for practical church ministry.
This new work, God Dwells Among Us: Expanding Eden to the Ends of the Earth by G.K. Beale and Mitchell Kim (IVP), is going to be my go-to book to give people interested in biblical theology. It applies biblical theology for the church and will be useful for lay teachers, pastors and Bible students everywhere.
God Dwells Among Us is well written, clear and concise. It provides numerous applications, and takes the time to show how the interpreters arrive at their conclusions. The book does not directly take on dispensationalism, but does explain certain assumptions which may provide a reason as to why many modern Christians have not seen the full nature of the temple theme as applicable to Church today. This volume also doesn’t tackle all the questions posed in the bigger work. It doesn’t directly deal with Ezekiel’s temple all that much, and it doesn’t major on ancient cosmology as a way of understanding the Eden = Temple image. You will have to get the larger work for those questions.
The book includes a helpful discussion on typology and is much more fully developed, pastorally, than the older work. I appreciate too, that the punchline and the take-home application, are not saved for the end, but over and over throughout the book applications are made to the NT understanding of the OT teaching on the Temple and how this applies to us today.
I highly recommend this book. This is a must read theology book for everyone!
Book Trailer:
To learn more about the book, view this brief video of Greg Beale talking about this book.
Recently I had another opportunity to preach on a Sunday morning. I took the opportunity to preach again on the Temple theme in Scripture, using 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1 as my text. I had preached on the Temple before, but this time I wanted to flesh out what it means that the church is the Temple today.
If you don’t have time to listen to the entire sermon (37 minutes), please do look over my notes. May God bless this sermon to all who hear it, for His glory and by His grace.
An ancient Coptic monastery, a hidden desert hideout, the Oval office, and Jerusalem’s Temple mount — these are a few of the stops in Terry Brennan’s latest whirlwind novel. From Lebanon to Ireland, New York to the Suez, The Brotherhood Conspiracy weaves an intricate web of secrecy, espionage and discovery.
The sequel to Brennan’s earlier debut novel The Sacred Cipher, this book continues the adventures of Tom Bohannon and his motley crew of archaeological detectives. Having already discovered a hidden Jewish temple built on the Temple mount but below the Dome of the Rock, an even more outlandish prize lures the frazzled team back to the dangerous quest of discovery.
Once again the author pursues a relentless pace using a staccato rhythm, moving the story one bite-size portion to the next. That approach may be wearisome to some readers, and is frustrating in the earlier portion of the book for those readers who didn’t just put down his earlier book before beginning its sequel. The plot keeps one guessing as the potential of an end-times return of Christ cannot be dismissed, even as the role of a **spoiler alert** newly rediscovered Tabernacle **end spoiler**, doesn’t seem to fit any popular end-times Christian fancies.
Brennan appeals to the amateur archaeologist with his mention of cartouches (Egyptian hieroglyphic ovals), discussions of Demotic and Coptic languages, and his historical treatment of the Crusaders and Jewish history. Occasionally, I found some errors in his historical facts which stood out glaringly against the overall historical emphasis in the tale. 1 Maccabees is mentioned as a book that the Council of Trent removed from the Bible (in fact it was the Protestants who removed it and Trent affirmed its canonicity), and the prophet Jonah is mentioned as having preached 40 years (instead of days) to Nineveh. The story itself stretches credulity, but the first book’s miraculous find of a centuries-old Jewish temple sets the stage for anything being possible. Brennan’s masterful character development and ability to draw out a wide range of emotions from virtually all of his characters keeps the story tethered enough to reality, that the reader goes along with the incredible — and happily at that. One other quibble with the book is its lack of illustrations or maps. At several points in the tale, a visual depiction of what the author labored to describe would have helped immensely.
Fans of archaeological fiction, in the vein of Paul Maier (A Skeleton in God’s Closet) and Don Hoesel (Elisha’s Bones), will enjoy this latest offering from Terry Brennan. Those looking for a fast-paced read with characters striving to follow God’s leading in their lives even as they battle against Islamic assassins and try to evade Israeli intelligence — on a mission for the President of the United States, no less — will also enjoy this intriguing work. I recommend the book and look forward to the third (and final?) book in this series.
Disclaimer: This book was provided by Kregel Publications. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.
About Book Briefs: Book Briefs are book notes, or short-form book reviews. They are my informed evaluation of a book, but stop short of being a full-length book review.
I was blessed to be able to fill the pulpit this last Sunday. I took 1 Peter 2:4-10 as my text and did my best to cover some of the wonderful truths contained in that passage. I focused on how the Church is both a Temple, made up of living stones, and a company of Holy Priests to the Lord. This passage has long been one of my favorite in the New Testament, and I hope my message will be a blessing for all who hear it.
