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1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - A Few More
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - A Few More
by SPCK - John Goldingay
A Few More 1 Kings 8:41-66 I can still picture myself sitting in Sunday School as a little boy of nine or ten, and I can still hear the voice of the stern Sunday School superintendent exhorting us to bow our heads, put our hands together, and close our eyes to pray. I suspect I c…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - A Few Things You Could Pray For
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - A Few Things You Could Pray For
by SPCK - John Goldingay
A Few Things You Can Pray For 1 Kings 8:31-40 I just had a phone call from the rector of the church where I am to preach on Sunday. It will be Pentecost, and I thought they were asking me just because they wanted a guest preacher for that festival, but she had apparently forgotte…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - A Skin Disorder Removed and Exposed
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - A Skin Disorder Removed and Exposed
by SPCK - John Goldingay
A Skin Disorder Removed and Imposed 2 Kings 5:1-6:7 Yesterday was the fourth Sunday in the month, and as usual on that Sunday we didn’t have a “proper” sermon; the rector sat on a chair and invited the congregation to tell us what they heard God saying to us out of the Scripture …
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Coping With the Aftermath
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Coping With the Aftermath
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Coping with the Aftermath 1 Kings 2:1-46 As an undergraduate, I often walked past the Martyrs Memorial, standing where Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer were burned at the stake in Oxford in 1555 and 1556, caught in the conflict between different Christian groups.…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Desires and Choices
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Desires and Choices
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Desires and Choices 1 Kings 9:1-28 In connection with 1 Kings 7 I mentioned the work Joe is doing on my bathroom. Yesterday he finished the work. The fixtures look as if they were designed in the twenty-first century rather than somewhat before; the rusty cupboards are gone; the …
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Enter the Queen of Sheba
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Enter the Queen of Sheba
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Enter the Queen of Sheba 1 Kings 10:1-29 The news yesterday reported on one of the unbreakable rules of capitalism: whatever regulations are put in place to control capitalism, people will find a way around them. Interestingly, one of its examples was the Old Testament ban on len…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Everyone Under Their Vines and Their Fig Trees
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Everyone Under Their Vines and Their Fig Trees
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Everyone under Their Vines and Their Fig Trees 1 Kings 4:20-5:18 A few weeks ago my son and his family were visiting, and we spent some great times sitting out in the shade eating bread and cheese and drinking wine while the children played in the pool. The eruption of a volcano …
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - GLOSSARY
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - GLOSSARY
by SPCK - John Goldingay
GLOSSARY aide A supernatural agent through whom God appears and works in the world. Standard English translations call them “angels,” but this term suggests ethereal figures with wings, wearing diaphanous white dresses. Aides are humanlike figures; hence it is possible to give th…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Horse and Chariots of Fire Around Elisha
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Horse and Chariots of Fire Around Elisha
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Horses and Chariots of Fire around Elisha 2 Kings 6:8-23 Over recent years the way I pray has been revolutionized by the awareness from the Prophets that when we pray we are taking part in debates in God’s cabinet in heaven. Stories like the one about Micaiah in 1 Kings 22 illust…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How to Be the Bad Guy
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How to Be the Bad Guy
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Be the Bad Guy 2 Kings 21:1-26 I sometimes wish I knew what was going to happen in the future, though when I think about it, I am not so sure it’s a good idea. When my wife was diagnosed with her multiple sclerosis, if I had known how it would progress over four decades, I…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How to Gain and Lose God's Sympathy
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How to Gain and Lose God's Sympathy
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Gain and Lose God’s Sympathy 2 Kings 20:1-21 My wife Ann had multiple sclerosis for forty-two years until she died a year ago. We and other people prayed for her healing on lots of occasions in many ways, supported by a number of high-profile figures in the world of prayin…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How To Manipulate the Old Man in Order to Get Things Done
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How To Manipulate the Old Man in Order to Get Things Done
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Manipulate the Old Man in Order to Get Things Done 1 Kings 1:1-53 I have friends in Kyrgyzstan, where a few weeks ago there were protests against the president and the government on the part of the opposition party and its supporters, citing widespread government corruptio…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How To Render To Caesar
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How To Render To Caesar
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Not to Render to Caesar 2 Kings 15:1-16:20 A recent graduate of our seminary was telling me on Friday that the seminary faculty is divided between people who avoid saying things that students would disagree with and people who don’t mind saying such things. The logic (she thi…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How to Undo a Reform
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - How to Undo a Reform
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Undo a Reform 2 Kings 22:1-23:24 The first time I visited the United States, I came to give a week’s guest lectures in a seminary. People must have thought the lectures were OK, because they were then interested in offering me a job, but it wasn’t a moment when I could thi…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - In the World And Also of The World
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - In the World And Also of The World
by SPCK - John Goldingay
In the World and Also of the World 1 Kings 20:1-21: 7 I am getting ready for a task force that is meeting next week to discuss the use of the Bible in the Anglican Communion worldwide. The meeting will be complicated because we include members of the Episcopal Church in the Unite…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Introduction
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Introduction
by SPCK - John Goldingay
INTRODUCTION As far as Jesus and the New Testament writers were concerned, the Jewish Scriptures that Christians call the “Old Testament” were the Scriptures. In saying that, I cut corners a bit, as the New Testament never gives us a list of these Scriptures, but the body of writ…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Is It the End, or Is There Hope
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Is It the End, or Is There Hope
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Is It the End, or Is There Hope? 2 Kings 24:17-25:30 On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was sitting on my patio when one of my neighbors passed and told me that a plane had flown into one of the Twin Towers in New York. I went indoors and watched transfixed for a while (I di…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - It Was Just a Coincidence