Let me summarize the points made in my previous posts. One of Luke’s purposes in writing Luke and Acts was to show how the events of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were fulfillment of promises God had made to Israel through the prophets. Those promises included the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which occurred on the Day of Pentecost. Linked with that promise was the promise of forgiveness. This offer of forgiveness was a second…
In my last post, we looked at how Luke presents the outpouring of the Spirit and the offer of forgiveness as a second chance for the Jews in Jerusalem to enter God’s promised time of refreshing. Luke hinted that Israel would get a second chance when he included in his gospel Jesus’ parable of the fig tree. A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found…
In my previous post, I talked about several components of God’s promise to Israel regarding the outpouring of His Spirit. Because of that outpouring . . . He would write His law on their hearts, Israel would experience an internal renewal of their heart and spirit, and This renewal (or refreshing) would bring about a new realization of justice and peace to their nation. In this post, I want to talk about another aspect of the outpouring promises…
Communication always involves transferring an idea from the mind of one person to the mind of another (or others) through the medium either of speech or written text. The Bible is no different. As readers of the Bible, our goal is not to create our own meaning (what this means to me), but to understand what the author intended to say. This involves not only the immediate text but the broader context and argument (or…
Scanning the literature on the topic of the Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, two interpretations rise to the surface as the most prevalant. Attributing to the Devil the Work of God’s Spirit One view is that “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has to do with accusing Jesus Christ of being demon-possessed instead of Spirit-filled” (Houdeman, 2018). In other words, this interpretation says that blasphemy against the Spirit is attributing to the devil a work of…
