Doug Moo on translation - compiled

QTC has had the pleasure of hosting New Testament scholar Douglas Moo over the last few days. While probably not the most fruitful of his lectures to have live-blogged, I did take some notes from the exclusive ACT lecture that he did today on his experiences as a member and now head of the NIV translation committee.

You can find them, in order, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

And for those visual learners, here's a snap of Doug with QTC's professional fanboi, Joseph Wee.

Gary Millar: Liveblog #15 (Talk on Titus 2)

Not to teach sound doctrine, but to teach what accords with sound doctrine! (v1)

4 things about this gospel that Paul is teaching:

1. People change all the time, so we need to be on our toes and change.
2. Know our people.
3. Start where people really are rather than where we think they are. Otherwise you'll distort the gospel of grace.

Gary's admission:

I found it difficult at times to preach the gospels and the crucifixion. Why? I realised that it was an expose on my own sin. I found that what I liked to do was to take difficult things and make them clear. So I felt good about myself for helping people understand difficult things. The cross was too easy...

'older' Christian generally just means older, in our normal sense.

Preaching to 'older' blokes means encouraging them to keep going.

A danger of a high view of preaching is that this is the only place where teaching happens. And yet Paul encourages the older women to teach the younger. Make sure that we're encouraging this as it's vital. Truth is best taught in close relationship.

Can't stop working at connecting with people, because people are always changing.

Self-questions

• Is my Bible teaching's application specific enough?
• Do I understand the culture well enough?
• Do I know what people are going through at the moment?
• Do I understand the challenges of individual stages of life well enough?
• Do I care enough to find out?
• Is my speaking health-promoting or damaging at the moment?

Why is zeal now an insult? The element of a gospel life that is scary to the outsider is the zeal for good works.

We MUST preach the gospel of grace because it produces Godliness and passion. Preaching legalism does NOT produce lasting change. Legalism and guilt-tripping people does NOT produce lasting change.

Future grace by Piper

Past grace -> respond with gratitude.

Future grace -> respond in faith, living for him.

Look forward to the grace that is to come. Keep going because Jesus is coming.

Get on with a gospel-speaking, straight-talking, hard-working ministry, despite all the rubbish that will come. All of ministry is the gospel, its power, not ours, and God working through it.

Gary Millar: Liveblog #14 (Deut 31-34)

Big Idea:

Good news, bad news (Moses dies, Joshua raised up)

Be strong and courageous

Atonement

What does the future hold?

• Failure
• Death of leader
• New leader coming in
• Sense of foreboding about the future
• 'anxious chapters'
• hints that God is in control, has a plan, that Israel has a hope and that one who will exceed the works of Moses will come.

Route to Christ:

Expose the problem?

Fulfilment?

Attributes of God?

The whole point of this exercise is not saying that this is the way to preach Deuteronomy, but that this method will help you to preach in a Biblical theological framework in a way that gets the OT text to set the agenda, and so that the God who talks can change lives.

Your final package may look completely different to this, but that's because of the magnificent depth of God's word.

Gary Millar: Liveblog #13 (Deut 27-30)

Big Idea:

God will change them

-> Love God and live

Route to Christ

Fulfilment

Consequences

Gospel:

Gary Millar: Liveblog #12 (Deut 12-26)

Big Idea:

Here's how to live

Separated and Consecrated

God's instructions for all of life?

How do we deal with such big chunks?

Nearly impossible to go through it line by line, so how do we get through it? Try all sorts of things!

Read short extracts with a commentary at the end.

Read 6 or 7 carefully chosen extracts that give people the big idea.

Try everything and anything, we just want people to be exposed to the text.

Route to Christ:

Fulfillment in Christ

Expose the problem

Which do you go, the "now you're in Christ live this way" angle, or the "Christ is the fulfillment of all this" angle?

Gospel angle:

Romans 12:1

Gary Millar: Liveblog #11 (Deut 7-11)

Big Idea:

Love in response to grace (how do we deal with the fact that this looks very similar to 5-6?)

Alternative Big Point:

Golden calf incident, so could point out that God is the god of second chances.

God gives fresh starts.

Route to Christ:

Highlight the attribute

Follow the action

Follow the plan

Gospel angle:

Plenty of options

The big push in all of this is to get the main point from the OT and not bolt an NT passage onto it.

Gary Millar: Liveblog #10 (Deut 5-6)

Big Idea:

Obey in response to grace

Route to Christ:

Point out the consequences

Highlight the category

Gospel angle:

Show that this is the way God works in all of Scripture.

Titus 2

Gary Millar: Liveblog #9 (Deut 4)

Bid idea:

We have a God who talks! (So listen)(very unique!)

Route to Christ:

Follow the action

Gospel angle:

Hebrews 1

John 1

Gary Millar: Liveblog #8 (Deut 1-3)

Big Idea:

God's Grace

Our Rebellion

Route(s) to Christ:

Expose the problem

Highlight the attribute

Follow the plan

Gospel angle:

Problem-Solution method

Gary Millar: Liveblog #8

A fantastic blog post referenced by Gary Millar.

The Day of the Triffids; the Wrath of God?

Some other points he made:

• I'd rather have a God who is more holy, more outraged at sin and more free than I am.
• If we understand our God, if we know all his ways, and if we can predict all his thoughts, then our God is too small.
• Should we apologise for the God of the universe? . . . Never.
• God's resolution for his holiness and his mercy is in Romans 3.
• We ought not only to be able to sit ok with God's wrath, but sit breathless before what he has done!
• The God we can never completely work out, because he's God.
• Without understanding the wrath of God we cannot hope to understand the massiveness of what's happening at the Cross.
• Our amazingly creative God came up with a way to be both holy and merciful.

Gary Millar: Liveblog #5

Deuteronomy 30:1-14

It's a big chiasm, and it's all centred around v6. It's the big, big thing. This is also the conclusion of the sermon (While 30:15 to the end of the chapter is the conclusion to the book)

Verses 11-14 are actually happening not on the day Moses is speaking this sermon, but happens when Yhwh circumcises their hearts.

In that time, the word will be in our mouths, and close to us. This helps make much greater sense of the passage.

Gary Millar: Liveblog #4

There are 2 questions which are slightly different.

1. How does the text relate to Jesus?
2. How do I preach the gospel through this text?

They're not the same. Gary was saying that the first is somewhat academic, while the second is far more related to how a listener is going to treat their kids when they get home from church.

Have I pointed people to what God has done in Christ as the solution to all our problems.

Have I pushed people to throw themselves upon God for mercy, or just told them to try harder.

You haven't preached the gospel if the essence of the message is 'be like', then you haven't preached the gospel.

Have we pushed people to the grace that does all the work of bringing about godliness?

Recover the rhetorical impact of the text

We must help the audience feel what the text is doing, not just conveying the intellectual content.

We must give the people a reason to listen. Don't assume that they'll listen just because they've shown up at church. The first 90 seconds is the most important part. We must justify to the person walking in off the street why they ought to listen.

We must connect with people. Speak to the people who are actually in front of you, must know who they are.

Gary Millar: Liveblog #3

Christ centred preaching is not about trying to find a reference to Jesus in every text, but to show how the text stands in relation to Christ.

Boring preaching is a sin. Why? Because your audience is made to feel guilty. They feel guilty for not being as excited about the gospel as they should be. They feel the boredom is their fault.

7 Ways of moving to Jesus from the text:

1. Follow the plan (Here's the first bit of the plan, here's where God followed on in order to get to Jesus) (follow the story. Take the scenic route. God did this, then this, then this, then this)
2. Expose the problem
3. Explain the category - Leviticus is there to explain how sacrifice works.
4. Highlight the attribute. (demonstrate something of God)
5. Trace the fulfillment. (More like Star Trek than 1, beam up at promise and beam back in at fulfillment.)
6. Focus on the action ("this is what God does" - Like the attribute one, but with actions)
7. Point out the consequences. (If you are x to God, then y will happen)

Gary Millar: Liveblog #2

hehehe...

The two Israelites weren't the best spies ever. They'd never been in a city! Most likely, they're walking around the city wide-eyed and pointing, strangely enough ending up in the house of a prostitute... Innocently... Right...

Excellent spying. Really. I wonder how Jericho's rulers knew exactly which house to go to when they decided to get a hold of them...

Rahab's the only one who speaks about Yahweh.

Gary Millar: Liveblog #1

Basic convictions about Bible teaching.

1. When we preach rightly, it is God speaking
2. Preaching is not simply the conveying of information, but with the purpose of changing people.
3. That last point he massively ties in with spending a lot of time in the Biblical text. For the preacher/teacher mainly, I think.
4. Must preach within a biblical theological framework. (wrt death and resurrection of Christ, salvation history, etc)
5. Must preach the gospel.