in Christ: Andrew Fountain's blog

I remember coming across this phrase as a section heading in Paul, an Outline of his theology by Herman Ridderbos. It was so exciting to read and I felt as if whole vistas of understanding were opened up to me.

That book together with Resurrection and Redemption by Richard Gaffin are two books that have made the biggest impact on me in my understanding of the Apostle Paul.

I imagine these concepts like a great range of underwater mountains that penetrate the surface of the ocean as groups of islands. In the same way, once you grasp Paul's underlying framework, you can see it poking through in numerous places in his letters.

For me, one of the most fundamental of the fundamental structures is Paul's teaching on the "Two Worlds", or if you prefer, "Two Aeons". Jesus leaves the old, entering the tomb and then is raised a new being. We follow by virtue of being united with him. This my picture of how I think of it:

Last Sunday evening I spoke at TACF on the subject of "What it means to live under the New Covenant" as part of their "Equipping series". Of all the subjects I speak on, this is probably the one that is most important and foundational for the Christian. It is also one that I get very excited about.

I have uploaded the video to Youtube:

If the above video does not play smoothly for you try the following link:

• What it means to live under the New Covenant (Medium Quality).

Please don't be offended at the way I have involved the audience in role-playing some of the scenes. I am not trying to be disrespectful to God, I just feel that there is much more of an impact when people are more involved.

All my notes (fairly detailed), illustrations and Scripture passages are at loveintruth.com/newcovenant - What it means to live under the New Covenant

The video can also be downloaded to your computer from the following links:

• Download medium quality (64 Mbytes)
• Download high quality (174 Mbytes)
• Listen online or download audio (29 Mbytes)

There is a debate going on right now about whether a church that holds to believer's baptism should allow someone who has not been baptized to be a member, or even to break bread together with the rest of the church.
Adrian Warnock has collected together has collected posts from this debate in one post: Sam Storms, John Piper & John Bunyan vs Wayne Grudem, Al Mohler & Mark Dever on Baptism

I find myself very much in agreement with Sam Storm, who writes:

Let me be clear on one thing. I am a credo-baptist, not a paedo-baptist. That is to say, I believe that only those who believe in Jesus Christ should receive the ordinance of water baptism. I also believe that the proper mode of baptism is by immersion. Ligon Duncan, on the other hand, is a Presbyterian paedo-baptist. Because of this, both Mark Dever and Al Mohler made it clear that if Duncan were in attendance at either of their churches they would not permit him to partake of the elements of the Lord's Supper.

• There is a flow in the topics between these three seminars
• It is essential that people in our churches are filled with the Spirit
  • Sometimes people come because they like the worship
  • The heart of what we are in churches is a gathering of individual people who are baptized in the Holy Spirit
  • This is the doorway that opens the gifts of the Spirit

Introduction

• What is the function of the HS as we gather?
• Where do we get our ideas from? As much as possible the Holy Scriptures

  • John 4:21 —a huge difference between the Old and New Covenants

  • This is a radical new way of worshipping
  • Our meetings have to be Spirit led and so there is spontaneity
  • There is not a rigid structure for worship. We have moved from form to the unknown
  • 1 Cor 14:26 “whenever you come together, each one has a...”
  • 1 Cor 12 lists gifts of the Holy Spirit (I am concerned when there are no gifts being manifested)
• The HS has a massive role in our lives. We can’t do anything of any value without him [read more...]

I believe in grace, not legalism. Today I preached on the sermon on the mount in Luke. I came face to face with the problem that Jesus preached a lot of commands, and ended the sermon saying that those who kept the commands would be preserved and those who didn't would be destroyed (the house on the sand).
How come Jesus didn't say "I love you and nothing you can do will make me love you more or love you less"? Instead he gave us a set of commands that are even harder to keep than those of Moses, and said things like "Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." (John 14:21). I don't believe that we are loved on the basis of our performance, but this is what it sounds like Jesus is saying.

This evening I preached on The Kingdom and Healing. This wasn't a polemic against cessationists, but an attempt to get a better understanding of how healing worked in the ministry of Jesus and his disciples. It came out of my own desperate study to improve in this area. As I grappled with chapters 9-11 of Luke I found a flow of ideas which was helpful to me. In the (rather short) sermon I simply went through these chapters and pulled out this theme.

My rathier brief notes on the Kingdom and healing as well as the audio are uploaded here.

Last week I finished teaching a course on the book of Hebrews. I have just got together the notes and outline for Hebrews on loveintruth.com. The book made a big impact on me. I spend many hours working on trying to understand the structure of the book and once this began to come together it was a huge step in understanding how the book works as a whole, it's thought flow and emphasies.