Tuesday at the Banner was a full day with an afternoon break featuring two morning addresses and two evening ones. We started with prayer and a very helpful message on lifetime ministry and the Son of God from Garry Williams who also spoke later in the day on the same subject. The second part of the morning was led by retired minister David Johnston on life and ministry, reflecting on the ministry of Moses. The last session of the day was from Jeff Kingswood from Canada on 1 Corinthians 15:58.
Garry Williams was particularly insightful and helpful as he took us to the temptations in the wilderness (particularly the third) at the beginning of Christ's ministry (Matthew 4) and Gethsemane at the end of it (Matthew 26). In the wilderness, Christ was the new Moses, the new Israel and the new Adam. Taking us to Psalm 2 he helpfully pointed out how the first two temptations begin If you are the Son of God ... whereas the third begins All this I will give you .... He pointed out that the problem was not so much with what the devil offered Jesus as with the menas he suggested for securing it. There was also a proper emphasis on Christ as Saviour first and then example.
In the second message on Gethsemane we had a full and helpful treatment of the theological difficulties and lessons to learn about stress in the ministry, with nice quotations from Hilary of Poitiers, John Calvin et al.
... And whence came his sorrow and anguish, and fear, but because he felt that death had something in it more sad and more dreadful than the separation of the soul and body? And certainly he underwent death, not merely that he might depart from earth to heaven, but rather that, by taking upon himself the curse to which we were liable, he might deliver us from it. He had no horror at death, therefore, simply as a passage out of the world, but because he had before his eyes the dreadful tribunal of God, and the Judge himself armed with inconceivable vengeance; and because our sins, the load of which was laid upon him, pressed him down with their enormous weight. There is no reason to wonder, therefore, if the dreadful abyss of destruction tormented him grievously with fear and anguish. Calvin
That which He has not assumed, He has not healed. Gregory of Nazianzus
Jesus dies on the cross, but not of the cross. B B Warfield
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