Tag: Old Testament

Tag Old Testament

Must Married Christians "Multiply" By Having Children?

Many moons ago I set out to explain the decision my wife and I made to not have any children. I wrote a loose series of posts on the topic...

Graham Heslop
02 Mar 2021

Kings and Christian Leadership: Sin Brings Forth Death

This post will serve as the final installation in my series on the Old Testament book of Kings. The purpose throughout has been to apply King’s theology of leadership to...

Graham Heslop
15 Oct 2020

In Defence Of Satire

In Between Two Worlds, John Stott defines satire as a literary device or tool that uncovers folly. It subversively exposes the fallen human condition, which tends to make us resist...

Graham Heslop
08 Oct 2020

Kings and Christian Leadership: True Success

Have you heard about the mighty Omridic dynasty in the ancient Near East? No? Don’t worry. I hadn’t either before completing the readings for my course on the Old Testament...

Graham Heslop
19 Aug 2020

Kings and Christian Leadership: Servants not Centres

Picking up shortly where the post on 1 Kings 2 left off, the wisdom of Yahweh was in Solomon to carry out justice in Israel (1 Kings 3:28). But, as...

Graham Heslop
29 Apr 2020

Kings and Christian Leadership: God Builds His Church

In The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher prophetically cites Matthew 16:18, where Jesus promised, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Dreher warns...

Graham Heslop
10 Dec 2019

Who is YHWH?

Normally when we read the Old Testament (which doesn't happen too often for most of us), we are moving too quickly to notice details that make sentences sound weird. We...

James Cuénod
04 Apr 2019

7 Lessons on Wisdom and Wealth from Proverbs

Motivating a building project at your church? Preaching series in Nehemiah. Financial giving is dropping off? Pulpit thumping sermons from Malachi. And whatever the occasion, in and out of season,...

Graham Heslop
05 Feb 2019

Thank God for the Old Testament

Habakkuk opens with a question, “O LORD, how long shall I cry out for help and you will not hear?” But I imagine many people were asking another question as...

Graham Heslop
08 Nov 2018

Chris Pratt: The Church's Responsibility to the Next Generation

Appearing repeatedly on my social media feeds this week was Chris Pratt’s speech, after accepting the MTV Generation Award. What has garnered a lot of attention was his ninth rule...

Graham Heslop
22 Jun 2018

Malachi on Divorce, Godly Offspring, and the Gospel

Two months ago I responded to an article posted by Tim Challies. He developed a few points made by Christopher Ash, in Married for God, arguing that it is sinful...

Graham Heslop
15 Nov 2016

Hunger will Pass

Have you ever read the Bible and thought, “why is this even here?” Me too… and that is especially true when I read Numbers 7. But, I have just found...

James Cuénod
12 Nov 2015

Doodle: Hellenism, Ethics, and Old Testament Eschatology

Max Bemis, of the band Say Anything, sings: “God and death are none of my concerns / I’m no philosopher”. And these words have often struck an uneasy chord with...

Graham Heslop
10 Apr 2015

Daniel 7: The Kingdom will be Given to the Saints

Despite the difficult details and apocalyptic flavour of Daniel, the overarching theme is not too complicated and I think correctly summarised as: “God is sovereign. He overrules and eventually will...

Graham Heslop
08 Apr 2014

Irony Abounding to the Chief of Persia

I few weeks back I posted in the wake of completing Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative, noting his method and drawing out some theological conclusions. The experience implicit throughout...

Graham Heslop
02 Apr 2014

Rediscovering the Art of Biblical Narrative

“Religious tradition has by and large encouraged us to take the Bible seriously rather than enjoy it, but the paradoxical truth of the matter may well be that by learning...

Graham Heslop
19 Feb 2014

An Ailing Translation: Psalm 114

We're doing a series on the Psalms at Trinity Hilton and for my preaching slot, I decided to do Psalm 114 because it looked like the least insurmountable of these...

James Cuénod
16 Apr 2013

What's the deal with Sacrifices?

I had the opportunity to present an assembly at Grace College. Given the lead up to Easter, I was asked to talk about sacrifices. I decided to tackle the distance...

James Cuénod
26 Mar 2013

The road to Emmaus and all the things concerning Christ...

The adventures of leaving theological training to starting in full time church ministry present to me familiar challenges that my three years of training could not solve. And one such...

David Kobedi
15 Jan 2013

Lying Jews (and the art of biblical narrative)

Hebrew authors, it seems, have a propensity towards the prodigious use of direct speech but rarely reported speech and it seems clear that they were willing to summarise conversations into...

James Cuénod
28 Nov 2011

Rekindle