I Will Exalt You; I Will Praise Your Name

Read: Isaiah 25:1
God isn’t hidden: he has done wonderful things. The Bible is filled with accounts of men and women who have interacted with a knowable God, who has made known his plans and made promises, and then fulfilled his plans and kept his promises. He is who he is, but he does not keep all of who he is to himself.
We praise God because he has done wonderful things. Praising him only adds to our experience. For example, a great piece of art such as a painting, a novel, or a piece of music, is only half-enjoyed until it has been praised to others.
Praising our praiseworthy God only brings more joy to our soul, as well as more glory to God.
Has God done wonderful things in your life, fulfilling his plans and promises? Is your response to exalt him, and praise his name?

Phillip Jensen on Hosea

I'm part of a small group that meets on Sunday evenings to sing "psalms, hymns and spiritual songs" (Ephesians 5:19), and to hear the word of God expounded through various pre-recorded means. The days of tapes and even CDs are being superceded by the massive array of talks that can be downloaded for free from the internet.  (Free and internet should set off your discernment alarm now).

In this group, we recently completed a series of talks by Phillip Jensen on Hosea. Each talk goes for half an hour, and covers one chapter of the book. Each one of us found the talks excellent, and highly recommend them. The talks are:

• Comprehensive.  Almost every verse of the book is discussed.
• God-centred.  These talks showed me how much the book of Hosea tells us about God: His love, mercy, patience, jealousy, sovereignty.
• Christ-centred.  The prophecies of Hosea find their fulfilment in Christ, and these connections are clearly expounded.
• Relevant.  All Scripture is relevant (2 Timothy 3:16), but sometimes the scripture can be taught in an irrelevant way.  This is not the case with these talks.
• Easily Understood.  Phillip uses simple language that is easily understood to make Hosea easily understood (including historical and political background).  This is a spiritual gift that is hard to explain.  He doesn't make himself appear clever with his complicated words: he simply makes you understand what is written on the pages of your Bible.
• Memorable.  Good teaching links what you've been taught to the words of the scripture, so that when you read the passage later, you recall what you've learned.

Enough glowing praise.  If Phillip Jensen read this he'd glow with embarrassment.

To find the talks, go to his website: http://phillipjensen.com/ and follow the "Video" link on the top toolbar.  You'll find a number of series there, including the one on Hosea.  I'm sure the others are just as good (we've just started the Ephesians series), however, I'll only recommend what I've seen.

Technical tip: to download each talk as an mp4 video file, right-click on the video window that pops up and select "Watch on Vimeo".  Vimeo's kind of like YouTube, but different. If you log into Vimeo, you can download the talk using the button on the bottom-right of the page.  I first tried using automatic downloaders available on the web, but they're much more fuss (and less useful) than just signing up to Vimeo - then you can download any Vimeo video.

Disclaimers: Phillip Jensen isn't a relation of mine!  His name is Jensen; mine is Jansen.

100% Luke, 100% God

Read: Luke 1:1-4

This brief dedication to Luke's gospel provides one of the few direct insights into the "author side" of the inspiration of scripture. (Other passages, such as 2 Timothy 3:16, tell us about the "God side" - that the words of the scriptures are the very words of God). Luke's dedication teaches us that, (at the same time as being God's words), the words of Luke's gospel are Luke's own words too. The scriptures are 100% the words of God, and 100% the words of the human authors.

Think about this, for a while. God didn't force Luke's hands, but he guided them. He didn't over-ride Luke's mind, but the words that came from Luke's mind onto the page were God's words. And Luke's.

These two facts are not contradictory; however, we need to learn to allow each fact to leave room in our minds for the other. What other concepts in scripture are like this?