Musings of a Seminary Grad

Introduction As a teacher of both theology and biblical Greek at a Christian university, I have come to greatly appreciate the indispensable foundation the biblical languages provide for the study of Scripture. After all, it was a return to the original language based in the ad fontes (“to the sources”) cry of Renaissance humanism which led to both the five solas of the Protestant Reformation, one of which – sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”) – led specifically to the promulgation of the Bible in the common tongue. As Martin Luther himself urges us: “Let us, then, foster the learning of languages as zealously as we love the Gospel. For not for nothing did God have His Scripture written down in these two languages alone: the Old Testament in Hebrew, the New in Greek. The languages, therefore, which God did not despise but chose above all others for His Word we, too, ought to honor above all others. “And let us be sure of this: we shall not long preserve the Gospel without l...

This is a sermon I wrote to preach at Bible Baptist Church in Wakarusa, Indiana on 12/29/2024. I have included the recording, but the blog post is a fuller form of the sermon. Introduction As we finish out the Christmas season and look toward the beginning of a new year,  I wa nt us to meditate today on what our perspective should be as we look forward to the future unknowns. Corrie Ten Boom, a holocaust survivor who was sent to a Nazi concentration camp for hiding Jewish people, once said, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.” Today, we will look at the Mary’s song of praise in Luke 1 in which she does just that: after reflecting on who God is and what he has done, she expresses trust in him for the future. We do not know what evils God will permit in our lives in the coming year. Perhaps the loss of a job, the ending of a friendship, the onset of disease, the death of a loved one. The unknowns of the future can paralyze us, but instead of trying to control ...