This is the 8th narrative sermon in the Gospel of Mark in which Jesus’ confrontation of the Pharisaic regulations called “The Traditions of the Elders,” which are a body of 18 new oral laws passed by the religious leaders in order to drive a wedge of hatred...
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April 10, 2017 Andrew Sargent
101 Most Misunderstood Verses, Bible Backgrounds, HAGALAH, Inductive Study Methods, Meeting the Jesus of Mark, New Testament Studies
This is the 3rd narrative sermon in the gospel of Mark. In it, Mark uses a repeated story pattern to develop the increasing tensions between Jesus and the religious leaders as they progress from criticizing him in their hearts to plotting his death, after he turns the...
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April 7, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Uncategorized
When do you know that your charity efforts have been successful? You have not succeeded when a stream of the same hungry people eat from your hand day after day for years… though you will think so because you’ll tell yourself that this is better than having them...
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April 6, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Uncategorized
This is a highly edited sermon on the 5th narrative sermon of the Gospel of Mark. In it I address Mark’s depiction of Jesus’ parable telling. It is the first record of Jesus’ actual teaching since the short snippet recorded in chapter one concerning the time of...
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April 5, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Biblical Theology, HAGALAH, Inductive Study Methods, Meeting the Jesus of Mark, New Testament Studies
This is the first of a series of sermons drawn from a course I teach on inductive study that I call, MEETING THE JESUS OF MARK. I introduce the idea of interpreting gospel stories in terms of how the authors have woven various stories into narrative sermon...
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April 3, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Biblical Theology, Meeting the Jesus of Mark, New Testament Studies, NT's Use of the OT
In this series I am unpacking seven paths of investigation that a person should take in his or her attempt to understand a New Testament author’s USE of an Old Testament passage. Many imagine that texts like Matthew 2:15—in which an historical comment in Hosea 11:1 is used...
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March 31, 2017 Andrew Sargent
New Testament Studies, NT's Use of the OT, Old Testament Studies
The article, “I Lost My Purity (And I Haven’t Had Sex)”[1] is well written, provocative, cleverly titled, and advances the true notion that sexual purity is bigger than virginity, fornication, and physical adultery. In “Let’s Think About This Practically: A Response to “I Lost My Purity (And I...
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March 27, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Ethics, Society
It is common to find certain posts on social media that have gone viral. They are usually something provocative that challenges (at least in my circles) the standard Evangelical Christian sense of things, and almost always have some ensnaring title that promises titillation. I’ve been sitting on this...
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March 24, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Ethics, Society
I’ve been reading of late, a lot of viral posts on social media in which a person accuses pastors and churches, teachers and schools, politicians, police, government agencies and the like of wrongdoing because they show “insensitivity” to “X” by defending some right, holding to some standard, enforcing some...
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March 22, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Society
Two realities confront us a Christians. The first is that, as loving members of our own communities, it is unthinkable that we do not do all that is in our power to secure the safety and prosperity general of that community. We are to pray for and participate...
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March 22, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Ethics, Society, Theology
We’ve been considering the claim that Matthew’s appeal to YHWH’s historical deliverance of Israel from Egypt in Hosea 11:1 is proof positive that the NT writers cared little to nothing for the original context of the passages they quoted. They had, it is claimed, a Jesus hermeneutical lens...
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March 20, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Biblical Language Issues, New Testament Studies, NT's Use of the OT, Old Testament Studies
Consequences, pain, suffering and loss are unwelcomed gifts from a loving creator to wayward creatures. Only discomfiture of one kind or another drives change. Only a sense of dissatisfaction with the world causes one to look up from his or her preoccupation with it, to consider what lies...
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March 17, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Biblical Theology, Worship
I’ve had some interesting discussions this week about various churches’ perception of “Spirituality, Love & Humility,” My ministry is non-denominational and I travel around a bit so I encounter all kinds of interesting perceptions of these matters. In the movie Joyful Noise the choir director struggles with her...
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March 17, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Society, Theology
In this series we are laying the ground work for analyzing the common suggestion that Matthew 2:15 proves that the New Testament writers don’t care about the original context of the Old Testament texts that they interpret …and, thus, neither should we. I insist that they did care...
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March 15, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Biblical Studies, New Testament Studies, NT's Use of the OT, Old Testament Studies
In part 1 of this series I introduced the common accusation that Matthew 2:15 proves that the New Testament writers don’t care about context. Matthew takes a text that was clearly intended to make an historical statement about God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt and declares it to...
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March 13, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Biblical Studies, New Testament Studies, NT's Use of the OT, Old Testament Studies
What you are about to read is real. These are not actors, but are the actual opinions of the people who are expressing them. No, seriously, I couldn’t make these things up. Well, I’m pretty creative, so I could… but you’d accuse me a writing psychologically dishonest fiction....
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March 10, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Society
Matthew 2:15 is one of those passages that bothered me a lot when I was a young Bible college student. After reading the original passage from which this “fulfillment” was quoted, I asked a prof in class one day, little realizing the historical significance of my wording, “How...
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March 8, 2017 Andrew Sargent
101 Most Misunderstood Verses, Biblical Studies, HAGALAH, New Testament Studies, NT's Use of the OT
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I had an over the top experience in a congregation yesterday after preaching a message on a Biblical Theology of Holiness, called “Whole Life Holiness.” I have grown accustomed to the fact that an exorbitant number of Millennials have a rather narcissistic view of their own qualifications to...
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March 6, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Society
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We have invited Melodie Sargent, a student at Northpoint Bible college, back again to deliver another blog post. This time her attention is turned the importance of rhetorical structure in the first prophetic sermon of Amos. Enjoy. Amos 1:3–2:16 Background During the righteous reign of King Uzziah (Amos...
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March 3, 2017 Andrew Sargent
HAGALAH, Old Testament Studies
Myopic visions of reality are a basic human trait. The mind is incapable of tracking enough information for a person to see everything, to know everything, to anticipate the effects of everything on other things. Thus, people tend to fixate on a few things and track those, to...
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March 1, 2017 Andrew Sargent
Society
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