A Ministry of the School of Theology and Christian Ministry—Olivet Nazarene University

Biblically Speaking

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Remember

J. Edward Ellis   2/01/13

 

February 13 is Ash Wednesday, which begins the liturgical season of Lent, traditionally a time when we Christians, in preparation for the celebration of Easter, examine our hearts and reflect on Jesus’ suffering in our behalf. One of our most cherished ways of calling to mind Jesus’ work on the cross is the sacrament of Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper. It seems fitting here, then, to consider a few Scripture passages that relate to the Lord’s Supper and ask what they teach us about the meaning of Jesus’ death and the meaning of the sacrament itself.

In Mark 14:24, as Jesus and his disciples eat the Passover meal, Jesus says, “This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many.”1 The phrase “blood of the covenant” calls to mind the establishment of the covenant between the LORD and the people of Israel on Mount Sinai in Exodus 24:4-8. In that passage, Moses wets the people with the blood of oxen that have been offered to the LORD and says, “See the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you . . . ” (v. 8).The idea of establishing a covenant takes us back to a time even earlier in the history of the people of Israel, the time of Abraham. In Genesis 15, Abraham, at the LORD’s command, brings to the LORD a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove, and a pigeon. He cuts the heifer, the goat, and the ram in half, lays the halves opposite each other, and waits. Around sunset, Abraham falls into a deep sleep, and a “deep and terrifying darkness” (v. 12) comes over him. As Abraham sleeps, “a smoking firepot and a flaming torch” (v. 17), symbolizing the presence of the LORD, pass between the halves of the animals.” The LORD says to Abraham, “To your descendants I give this land . . . ” (v. 18). In Abraham’s world, the Ancient Near East, the parties to a covenant typically passed between the pieces of slaughtered animals and said something like, “May the gods do to me what has been done to these animals if I ever violate this covenant.” By passing between the pieces of the animals, the LORD Himself takes this oath of self-curse, pledging to remain faithful to Abraham and his descendants. To say that the blood of Jesus is the blood of the covenant, then, is to say that his death establishes a covenant relationship between God and human beings. The Lord’s Supper calls us to remember both our status as God’s covenant people and the great price at which that status was bought for us.

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Tags: Communion, Lenten Season
 

Preaching and Teaching the Psalms

Kevin Mellish   11/15/12

As a church leader, do you ever have difficulty locating useful resources for preaching and teaching from the Old Testament?  The attempt to find stimulating books that will enrich the mind and connect with the audience in a practical, meaningful way can be quite challenging and frustrating.  In light of this, I would like to propose a monograph written by V. Steven Parrish entitled, A Story of the Psalms: Conversation, Canon, and Congregation.1   In this book, Parrish examines how the canonical arrangement of the Psalter recounts the story of the people of Israel (thus Canon), and he demonstrates how the narrative sequence within the Psalms shares many parallels with the modern congregation (thus Congregation).  He then constructs a historical-contextual bridge between an ancient context and a modern one, thereby making it possible for the church to be in constructive dialogue with the biblical text (thus Conversation).

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Tags: Bible, Psalms
 

Hermeneutical Reflections Concerning N. T. Wright’s Eschatological Understanding of the Relationship Between the Present and Future

Larry Murphy   9/01/12

 

I listened intently as a pastor spoke with anguish of wanting to invest in things which last.  My first reaction was surprise.  Does not the work of ministry inherently have lasting value?  The pastor, however, was not thinking of encouraging people to make decisions which have eternal consequences, but rather looking to lasting results in the present world.

Recently, this desire has been loudly voiced by those who passionately want their lives for Christ to produce lasting results for this world.  The focus in not on what God will do at some future time, but what he is doing in the present.  At times, these persons refer to a hope looking toward a future world as a type of escapism.  They rightly recognize what the church, at its best, always has always taught.  Followers of Christ are to be engaged in living out the implications of their faith now.  They are to show the love of God in all their activities within the present time.  This includes being a voice for the poor, the outcast, and disenfranchised in society.  It includes a concern for all God’s creation.

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Tags: N. T. Wright
 

What’s In A Name?

Kevin Mellish   7/01/12

 

Names have meaning.  Have you ever thought about what your name means?  I remember when my wife and I spent time carefully picking out the names of our children.  We wanted them to say something significant about each child.  We chose the name Dakota for our oldest son, because it reminded us of the wide-open prairie.  We envisioned him being a person who would be his own man and think for himself; one who would not mindlessly follow the crowd.  We later discovered that his name derives from the Native American word meaning “friendly.”  Thus, it took on added significance.  We named our middle daughter Delaney.  Her name means “the challenger” or “spirited one.”  Little did we know at the time how perfectly it would describe her personality.  Delaney is quite spirited and she possesses a unique sense of humor.  Because she loves to pull pranks on us and tell jokes life is never dull or mundane when she is around.  We named our littlest one Lacie.  Her name means “cheerful.”  Three years later we cannot believe how accurately it describes her.  She is very gracious, easy going, and pleasant (when she is not sick).  My wife and I always maintain that if she had been born first we would have been spoiled as parents.

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Tripp York’s The Devil Wears Nada

J. Edward Ellis   5/01/12

Book Review: York, Tripp. The Devil Wears Nada: Satan Exposed. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2011.

“Nobody likes a smart-aleck, Son.” I can’t count the number of times my father said that to me (for good reason, I admit) when I was growing up. Dad’s adage rang repeatedly in my ears as I read Tripp York’s The Devil Wears Nada. 

York’s introduction begins in the middle of the action (or, as some students of literature might prefer, in medias res), as he recounts a portion of one of the many interviews he conducted in preparation for writing the book. In that very brief excerpt, York recalls telling a preacher “whose sideburns suggested a slight obsession with the King of Rock & Roll” (p. 3) that he wanted to find Satan in order to find God. Having set the stage for the quest that the rest of the book will chronicle, York spends a few pages reflecting on the experiences that led him to begin his rather unorthodox search. Those who search for God, he says, tend to operate “in one of two frameworks: personal experience or apologetic precision” (p. 4). York finds both frameworks sorely insufficient. Personal experience, he argues, is too subjective to be of value to anyone but the individual to whom it belongs. Further, reliance on such experience tends to lead us to define God in the way that we find most pleasing, essentially creating our own god “in our image” (p.5). Even weaker than personal experience, for York, is the apologist’s effort to prove the existence of God through philosophical arguments. Such arguments, he says, tend to say nothing about the character of the god whose existence they have proven. Further, they “have the uncanny tendency to convince only those who need no convincing” (p. 6). Years of teaching have left York weary of his students’ predictable, weak, uninteresting arguments.

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