This Morning's Meditation

"It is a rule of the Scriptures, and a rule which is confirmed by and exemplified in the long history of the Church and her saints, that when God has a particularly great task for a man to perform, He generally does try him. I care not which biography you pick up, you may take the life of any man who has been signally used by God, and you will find that there has been a severe time of testing and of trial in his experience.... So one may have to pass through this kind of experience because of some great task ahead. Look at Joseph.... Can you imagine a more dismal kind of life? Everybody seemed to be against him.... But in all this God was only preparing the man for the great position that He had in store for him. And it is the same with all the great men of the Bible. Look at the suffering of a man like David. . . . The Apostle Paul was no exception (2 Corinthians, 11 and 12).... God sometimes prepares a man for a great trial ... by giving him some lesser trials. It is there that I see the love of God shining out so gloriously. There are certain great trials that come in life, and it would be a terrible thing for people suddenly to be plunged into a great trial from the undisturbed and even tenor of their ways. So God sometimes, in His tenderness and love, sends lesser trials to prepare us for the greater ones. 'If need be' (1 Peter 1:6)—if such proves needful, if God, in looking upon us as our Father, sees that this is just what we need at that moment. So we start with this great principle, that God sees and knows what is best for us and what is needful. We do not see, but God always does, and, as our Heavenly Father, He sees the need and He prescribes the appropriate trial which is destined for our good."

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

In his book, The Interpretation of Prophecy, Patrick Fairbairn gives us an excellent analysis of the style and diction of prophecy, presenting his researches under five headings. First he explores negatively the character of prophetic style and diction, what it is not, by way of refutation. Next he discusses positively what it is, and finally he examines three distinctives of style and diction: poetical elevation, figurative representation and the presentation of events in relation to one another, rather than as linked to definite historical periods.

In his book The Interpretation of Prophecy (regretably out of print), Patrick Fairbairn investigates and sets forth the principles for the sound interpretation of prophecy, and proceeds to apply them to the future of the Jewish people as delineated in Biblical prophecy. In exploring this critical area of hermeneutics, he identifies the following three prevalent modes of interpretation: the Jewish, the Semi-Jewish, and the Spiritualistic.

I recently received an query from a friend who wanted my opinion on the ESV. Here is my reply:

Wordpress does a much better job in handling unicode fonts, so I will be posting more sermons here: http://theophil.us/category/kerygma/