2023 Church Recordings

The Doctrine of God Revealed Through Christ – Review – 001

Christmas is Life born from God – Not just a holiday season. The 2022 Christmas New Year Season has finished, and we are three weeks into 2023. The celebrations are over, and the decorations have been stored away for the next year. The holidays are over and its back to work, back to normal. So, “Christmas” is over for secular society. And if a Church follows the lectionary and the liturgical year, we’d see that we have left the special season of Advent, and Christmas and have entered "Ordinary Time." It is called “Ordinary Time” because the liturgical year is either a “Special Season” like Advent, Christmas, Lent, or Easter so whenever the Church isn't celebrating one of these, it is ‘Ordinary Time.”

 
Today we are going to do a review of the sermon series we’ve been engaged with titled “The Doctrine of God Revealed Through Christ.” The series is designed to highlight the fact that Jesus Christ came to reveal God so that we can know Him and have eternal life. This assertion stands in contrast to humanities chronic religious fixation and the plethora of gods and religions it invents. Every human being has an idea of god or gods. We begin our thoughts about god within our personal frame of reference i.e., with what we know and an experience of life. We throw in a little imagination a pinch of superstitious mysticism some arbitrary moral rules and laws and voila we have a religion. But we have started with us, not God. We begin our theology from below not from above. Our gods and our religion are our own invention and there are many. The foundation of man-made religion is by definition man-made. And since there are so many of us there are so many gods and so many religions. TF Torrance reminds us that God must reveal Himself saying “God being God, all our knowledge of him comes by divine revelation, for it is impossible for us to know God without his willing to be known. God may be known only through God and is known only as he makes himself known to us through the revealing and saving agency of his Word and Spirit. This biblically grounded principle, without God, God cannot be known, was clearly formulated by Irenaeus in the second century in a remarkable clarification of the foundations of Christian theology in the early Church. God actively reveals himself through himself, through the incarnation of his Son among us as our Saviour and by the power of his Spirit.[i]”
Grace & peace, Ps Terry

2023-01-15 - The Doctrine of God Revealed Through Christ – Review of John – 001

(Audio recording by Stephen Davidson of Rev Terry Davidson at Hills Alliance Church)

We are reviewing of study or the Doctrine of God revealed through Christ. We have expounding John’s Gospel and mining it for the rich teaching on the person, relationship and works of God.

John’s Rich Theological Prologue: John was an apostle, but he was also a theologian, and he uses theology to evangelize. It is his theology that shapes our faith and thinking about God. John’s mission is to deepen and enrich his Jewish monotheistic heritage by introducing Jesus and His relationship to God so people will gain eternal life through Him. So, in 1:1-2 he confidently states “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” He begins with the theological assertion that the Word is God and has eternal relationship with God. With these few words he is consciously offending the theological status-quo, but he is nevertheless evangelising a people with God’s Gospel who already had a concept of God and an organized religion.

 

It is by design that John 1:1 parallels Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” for in both books God’s word creates! Creation begins with God speaking, but speech is a human vocal act, requiring a physical body with lungs, a tongue, voice box and an atmosphere in which sound waves can travel and the author of Genesis understands God as a being without a human body, yet he nevertheless asserts that God “said” things. In the Old Testament the “word” of God is often personified and used as the instrument for the execution of God’s will e.g., “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host.” (Psalm 33:6; cf.,107:20; 119:89; 147:15-18). These are anthropomorphisms or when an author uses human characteristics to talk about non-human things or beings. So, by introducing Jesus as “the Word,” John is pointing his Jewish readers back to the Torah where “the Word” of God is associated with God’s creative power. He then identifies this creative power not just as an anthropomorphism but with the person of Jesus – the living Word.

Grace and peace, Ps Terry

2023-01-22 - The Doctrine of God Revealed Through Christ – Review of John – 002

In this lesson we resume the exposition of John in our series the Doctrine of God Revealed through Christ.

John the Baptist’s witness regarding Jesus. This is the fourth section of John’s Gospel designed to point out that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God the Messiah who fulfills the OT promises and surpasses Judaism. In 2:1–11 at the Wedding of Canna, Jesus provides new wine that vastly surpasses anything that contemporary Judaism could afford, and renders obsolete the stone jars of purification. In 2:12–25, Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple proclaiming that the Temple’s proper role is best seen as an anticipation of the ultimate point of mediation between God and man which would take place in Him the God man. Then in 3:1–21, Jesus fulfills prophecies of a ‘water and spirit’ regeneration, from above and proves in that His death by being “lifted” up on a Cross is the ultimate fulfillment of the type of the bronze serpent ‘lifted up’ in the desert. So, now in this passage of vss 22–30 Jesus surpasses John the Baptist and any baptism or rite of purification he may represent.

Grace & peace, Ps Terry

2023-01-29 - The Doctrine of God Revealed Through Christ

We continue our exposition of John 3:31-36 today, in our study of the “Doctrine of God revealed Through Christ.”

From the immediate context, John the apostle, evangelist, theologian, and author is explaining why Jesus the incarnate Word is greater: “he alone is from above and is therefore above all.” He is highlighting the contrast of the John the Baptists ministry with the Messiah’s by describing the pre-eminence of Christ.

Christ’s pre-eminence is threefold. It is a pre-eminence of origin. Jesus is from above, i.e., from heaven, from the very presence and heart of God. By contrast, John is from the earth, a human, derived from a human process of generation. Jesus is therefore over all human ministers and witnesses.

It is a pre-eminence of word i.e., “What He has seen and heard, of that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony. He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure” vv32–34. Because Jesus is sent from the very presence of God, he testifies to what he has seen and heard (v32). The words he speaks are God’s words. Because God is truthful and the very expression of truth, so too are the words of the one who has come from him. In further guarantee of this truthfulness, the Spirit of God is given to the Son without limit (v34), in contrast to the more fitful and spasmodic giving of the Spirit to witnesses and preachers in the Old Testament period. John the Baptist is probably to be included in this Old Testament company. He stands in the line of the prophets, the last and greatest of them all (Mt. 11:11–14). They all passed on God’s Word as it has been variously given them. Jesus, however, is God’s Word come among us And it is a pre-eminence of resource. “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand” v35). Not only is the Spirit given to Jesus without measure but, because He is the beloved Son of the Father, everything which the Father possesses has been made available to Him—and has placed everything in His hands. It may be in keeping with the movement of thought here to recall that the Baptist, like all ministers and witnesses, must fast and pray for resources. Jesus by contrast has all things immediately at His disposal. In His self-emptying He did not lay aside His divinity.

Grace and peace, in Jesus, Ps Terry

2023-02-05 - The Doctrine of God Revealed Through Christ

The Doctrine of God Revealed Through Christ – The Book of Signs in John’s Gospel – 005j.  In this lesson we will finish this passage on John’s Theological Summary in 3:34-36. It is loaded with theological considerations. In the last lesson we saw that in John’s theology Heaven takes precedence over the Earth. And that Christ’s origin is from above, from the very presence and heart of God. And therefore, Christ’s Word is pre-eminent because “what He has seen and heard, of that He testifies.” Verse 33 follows “He who has received His testimony has set his seal to this, that God is true.” There is an important relationship depicted here in that the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God. John equates Jesus’ testimony with the truth of God. Jesus faithfully says and does all that God says and does, and only what God the Father says and does. And this relationship is depicted in our readings today of John 5:19–30; 6:37–40. In effect it tells us that to believe Jesus is to believe God. To disbelieve Jesus is to call God a liar. (Calling God, a liar is the epicentre of humanities fall.)

God Speaks Therefore His Creation Speaks: Verse 34 “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God… for He gives the Spirit without measure.” Here we see the relationship between the One who sends, the words of God and the Spirit of God in the life of Jesus. Both Old and New Testaments regularly stress the place of and importance of speech. All of creation begins with divine speech. Before there were any human languages God converses with God within God. It is through His speech His wisdom and will are expressed.

Grace & peace Ps Terry

2023 - 09 - 24 - The Book Of Signs In John’s Gospel - 008l

Stephen James Davidson