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The Audiences of Jesus

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When you read the Gospels carefully, you discover some great insights concerning the audience to whom Jesus speaks. There are four types of audiences addressed in Jesus’s ministry: (a) His opponents, (b) the crowds, (c) the disciples, (d) the Apostles. I want to briefly explore the final three audiences and reflect on why this matters. “The Apostles” Jesus’s very first disciples were “taken” from John the Baptizer’s group of disciples; Andrew (and probably John), then Andrew recruited his brother, Simon Peter. Soon after, Jesus called someone else from the same hometown as Andrew: Philip, who then brought his brother, Nathaniel (John 1:35-48). We see in these, and with others, Jesus used a network of relationships that already existed (e.g., brothers: Andrew and Simon Peter, John and James), business partners (Peter and Andrew fished together with James and John, Lk 5:10), while the others almost certainly would have known each other because they lived in the same towns (Cape...
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"Did God breathe the Holy Spirit into Adam?" A conversation with a friend.

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Good Morning David, Hope all is well with you.  I have a question, In the beginning when God breathed the breath of life into man, was that the Holy Spirit?  I have been struggling with a series of sermons based on “God’s Invasion of Earth/Man”.  Perhaps it’s the word invasion that unsettles me, it seems negative.  There is an interim pastor at the church I attend . . . Several weeks now the sermons have seemed to point to saying that man was in the beginning filled with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit left when man sinned, Jesus came to bring back the Spirit, and Jesus has invaded earth and man to reconcile us back to God.  Which, I do see the theology that Jesus is our way to God, but something in this keeps bothering me.  I have to say, after reading your blog, I have said several times, that this man (who is a lawyer, called to be a pastor, not theologically educated) needs to learn how to preach to make his points clearer and precise, he seems to b...
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"Who is Satan? What does he do? What does the Bible say about him?" My quick thoughts.

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What is “the Devil”? Where did he come from? Can demons possess Christians? I get asked these questions often. In my experience, people are usually squarely located on either the side of “I don’t believe in Satan/I don’t ever think about it” to the other side of “I pray against Satan and his demons all the time.” It reminds me of what C.S. Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters : “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in  their  existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”  Not only do most people in my experience either ignore or obsess about Satan, they also tend to picture Satan like a character in a Bugs Bunny episode. Yet, the Bible never describes Satan’s physical appearance (there are metaphors, like in 2 Cor. 11:14, but no actual descriptions), probably because this Being is a Spirit and has no physical properties. How does the Bible pres...
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