| The World Cup having just finished, one of the amazing things to notice about professional sport is the degree to which grown men will argue with a referee. Never once, in any code, have I seen a referee change their decision as a result of back-chat. And yet a huddle of angry players will besiege the ref, hoping against hope that this time they will get their way.
Sometimes the message from God is loud and clear, but we simply don’t want to hear it. So we try again, hoping for another version. Another passage, maybe. Another commentary. Another interpretation. Or we try someone else. Another source. In the end we prove our own rebelliousness, and God’s word remains unchanged. In 2 Kings 1, we find a rebellious king trying to resist God’s word – trying to replace it, trying to attack it. But in the end God’s word stands, and the king only confirms how just God’s decision was in the first place. |
 |
Featured Talks
)
Kings in Spades
Over the next few months in the evenings, we'll be looking at the Old Testament books of 1 & 2 Kings. As you might expect, these books are filled with historical accounts of the reigns of all the kings of Israel and ...)
Faith or Flight?
One of the great tensions of the Christian life is fear vs faith. Many things give us grounds for fear, including personal circumstances, global politics, health pandemics, and economic downturns. At the same time, God's word gives us grounds for faith - ...)
God's Mercy
This week in the mornings we start a three-week series on the topic of Mercy. We probably have a gut-feeling about what mercy is, and we can recognise someone being merciful - but how do we define it? In the Bible mercy ...)
We can be Heroes?
What is your definition of a hero? In a recent SMH article, the top five most unlikely Australian sporting heroes were unveiled. Of course, topping the list was poor Steven Bradbury, who medalled after everyone in front of him fell over on ...Resisting the Word
Posted in Kings.
– Aug 4, 2010
The Key to Reform
 |
Jumping Jehoshaphat! A mild curse in 19th century, a corny Robin-ism from Batman, and our next King in the long search to find the true Son of David. Jehoshaphat was the son of Asa, the first of the reformer-kings. And like his father, Jehoshaphat is given a rosy commendation: “he did what was right in the eyes of the LORD” (1 Kings 22:41-50). But if we dig into the back-story (2 Chr 17-20), we find a distinctive kind of reform – one based on the systematic teaching of God’s people from his word. In a generation who think with their feelings and who swarm to personality-preachers, we may just have stumbled onto one of the church’s great losses of the last half-century: the equal priority of teaching alongside preaching (1 Tim 5:17). |
Posted in Kings.
– Jul 26, 2010
