aBeLOG
Welcome to the aBeLOG, a series of (hopefully!) fortnightly posts on all matters homiletical. I intend to touch on whatever grabs my attention regarding preaching—issues contemporary and ancient, ideas hermeneutical and rhetorical, personalities conservative and liberal, publications antiquarian and avant-garde. Essentially, I’m going to follow my own homiletical olfactory instincts up rabbit trails and after red herrings. Comments are always invited and appreciated.
Installation!
Quick note: For those interested in watching a livestream of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Convocation Chapel tomorrow, Tuesday, August 23, at 10:00 am US Eastern Time, make your way to this site.
Your faithful blogger is going to be invited up on stage to sign (with a quill pen, no less!) the Seminary’s 150-year-old doctrinal statement, The Abstract of Principles, as well as to be installed as the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching.
Loud
Judges 4:1–24
Fearless faith in God results in blessing.
The Israelites have not learnt a whole lot—they are “continuing” to do evil in Yahweh’s sight (Jdg 4:1). And so Yahweh sells them into the hand of Jabin, the Canaanite king (4:2), and the Israelites cry in desperation (4:3). Same old story.
But the next few elements of the standard paradigm are missing in the Barak narrative. Instead, we have a relentless echo of feminine nouns and suffixes: “Deborah [a feminine
Judges 3:12–31
Integrity, driven by reverence for God and reliance upon him, receives divine approbation.
We are told twice that Israel “did evil in the sight of Yahweh” (Jdg 3:12). So, what’s new? And Yahweh, therefore, empowered Eglon, the king of Moab, against Israel (3:12). Yet God has mercy and he raises up an Israelite deliverer, Ehud (3:15). But quite surprisingly, for the rest of the passage, Yahweh does not seem at all involved with the goings on. And the final victory
Judges 2:6–3:11
Personal experience of God produces unwavering commitment to him and gives him glory.
Judges 2:6–10 is almost identical to Josh 24:28–31, but it weaves the story in its own way for a different theological purpose. Unfortunately, as was seen in Jdg 1:1–2:5, the post-Joshua generation went but did not possess the land for, as 2:10 declares, they did not “know Yahweh, or the deeds which he had done.” And what they did in their abysmal ignorance—and
Judges 1:1–2:5
Faithfulness to God manifest in uncompromising godliness and reliance on God brings blessing.
Joshua, the one who had begun to lead the Israelites so successfully against the Canaanites, and who was God’s agent for assigning land to the various tribes, was now gone. An era had concluded with the death of Joshua. A new beginning was at hand, and with it the challenge of finding godly leaders. Who would be the next godly servant to lead Israel? The Israelites do not ask
Judges: Introduction
This is the first in a series of posts on each pericope of Judges, essentially a distillation of what is in my Judges commentary (more on that here).
The verb “to judge” does not always indicate a judicial functionary. In Judges, the function of these God-raised leaders is best as seen as military judge-deliverers, as indicated in 2:16–17:
And Yahweh raised up judges
who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them.
Judges 2:16–17
The book is gory, with
Ephesians 6:10–24
Victory against supernatural foes is achieved by divine empowerment in the form of God’s armor (commitment and dependence upon God) and by Spirit-driven prayer.
It is not surprising that “power” occurs a number of times in this pericope: believers are “empowered” (Eph 6:10), so that they “may be able/may have power” (6:11) to stand against the devil, thus “being able/having power” (6:13) to resist in the evil day, and “being able/having power” (6:16)
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.