this weekend, i will be back to gereja grace batu pahat for round 2. some months ago, i went down to do a one-saturday night seminar on 'the role of israel today'. the crowd's response that night was fantastic. we started at 8.15pm and ended the meeting well after 11pm and we could have gone on into the night except that i had to preach the next day. on sunday, i preached on isaiah 40 (which was part of the church's preaching series on the book of isaiah). it happened that for that sunday, the text was isaiah 40, one of my favourite chapters from Isaiah 40-55.
so, with their appetites whetted, the church has come back to me to do a part 2 on the seminar as well as preach the final sermon on the series on Isaiah based on chapters 65-66. since i touched on the historical background of Israel leading up to its present state, i covered something on Jewish Zionism and Theodore Herzl. so in consultation with the deacons, we decided to continue on the topic of Christian Zionism. This is not exactly my field of studies as i am an OT guy. (Theology for me is not so exciting as biblical studies! Too dry for my taste) But since the topic impinges on one of my side interests - the role of Israel today, it is a challenge for me to prepare for the seminar. i will probably have at the end about 60 ppt slides ready for the saturday night seminar.
And the need to prepare a sermon on Isaiah 65-66 with a corresponding NT text thrown in to help the church see the connections on a larger picture. So i decided to pick matthew 13:24-30, the parable fo the wheat and the tares, to supplement what i am preaching from Isaiah 65-66. More on the sermon in another post.
this is on top of the pressure of marking assignment and exam papers for the students. faculty have a deadline too to meet to hand in the results to the academic office so that the staff can prepare the transcripts before the students return next year in january 2008.
so, with their appetites whetted, the church has come back to me to do a part 2 on the seminar as well as preach the final sermon on the series on Isaiah based on chapters 65-66. since i touched on the historical background of Israel leading up to its present state, i covered something on Jewish Zionism and Theodore Herzl. so in consultation with the deacons, we decided to continue on the topic of Christian Zionism. This is not exactly my field of studies as i am an OT guy. (Theology for me is not so exciting as biblical studies! Too dry for my taste) But since the topic impinges on one of my side interests - the role of Israel today, it is a challenge for me to prepare for the seminar. i will probably have at the end about 60 ppt slides ready for the saturday night seminar.
And the need to prepare a sermon on Isaiah 65-66 with a corresponding NT text thrown in to help the church see the connections on a larger picture. So i decided to pick matthew 13:24-30, the parable fo the wheat and the tares, to supplement what i am preaching from Isaiah 65-66. More on the sermon in another post.
this is on top of the pressure of marking assignment and exam papers for the students. faculty have a deadline too to meet to hand in the results to the academic office so that the staff can prepare the transcripts before the students return next year in january 2008.
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