Video links

Today was the third instalment of our series at CBC, looking at some of the 'I urge you...' statements that we find in the New Testament letters. Today our focus was on submitting and serving, starting off with 1 Corinthians 16:12-18, but also taking in Philippians 2:3-8, Luke 22:25-26, 1 Corinthians 12:4-31 and Ephesians 4:11-13.

We also used a couple of videos - the links are here:

https://www.ignitermedia.com/products/7018-mechurch

https://www.ignitermedia.com/products/8217-free-to-serve

Listening to design patterns

Unless this is the first time you've visited my blog it's unlikely that you've not come across The Bible Project. They're the team responsible for the Corinthians and the Romans videos that I've posted recently. Whether it's brief videos about individual books of the Bible, videos exploring biblical themes, or videos looking at questions like, 'how do you read the Bible?' - then their site is well worth a visit as it's packed with some really good and helpful stuff.

Back in the day of the iPod Nano (2nd Generation) I used to listen to quite a lot of podcasts. I spent time on public transport travelling around north London and so listening to a whole range of podcasts made good use of my time.

But for whatever reason, at some point, I got out of the habit.

My iPod is long dead and phones have become smart phones. 

And whilst the latest phones struggle to make a phone call they do allow you to do loads of other stuff - including subscribing to podcasts. And so I have recently got back into the habit of listening to podcasts and there is some brilliant material on The Bible Project site.

I am currently listening to their 'Design Patterns in the Bible' series - which is over four hours of spoken material that was a part of the process behind a 6 minute video on the same topic, which is the eighth video in the 'How to read the Bible' series - with each of the previous seven videos having about an hour of spoken material in a previous podcast.

That's a lot of really good material. You'll find the list of their podcasts here or you can subscribe on an appropriate app.

Background to 1 Corinthians

For the next couple of Sundays, as we continue our new series looking at the 'I urge you' phrases in the New Testament letters, we're going to be in the letter known as 1 Corinthians.

This week we're looking at the theme of being united based on Paul's instruction in 1 Corinthians 1:10 

I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.

Then next week we're looking at submitting and serving one another starting with 16:15-16 

I urge you, brothers and sisters, to submit to such people and to everyone who joins in the work and labours at it.

An important part of working out what the Bible is saying to us now, is to know what it was saying then. Because these are letters - written by an actual person (Paul), to a group of actual people (the church in the city of Corinth), about an actual series of events (issues that had arisen in the church) it is important to know this background before we start to attempt to apply this letter to CBC in 2018.

We're not going to have much time to look at this background - but below is a great overview video from The Bible Project. There's also plenty of other great stuff on the Bible Project website including written content and access to a series of podcasts.

Using the STEP Bible for a word study

On Sunday here at CBC we started a new teaching series looking at some of the 'I urge you...' phrases that we find in the New Testament letters. On Sunday I mentioned that not all English translations of the Bible translate this phrase 'I urge you...' on every occasion - sometimes they use 'I appeal to you ...' for example. So if we wanted to locate every verse where this phrase appeared in the original language - how would we do that?

A few weeks ago our speaker talked about their work with the STEP Bible - a free online resource that would allow us to find the answer to our question above.

Start by visiting the STEP Bible webpage here. It will open up in Genesis 1.

Whilst we use the NIV translation at church, the ESV in the STEP Bible allows us access to many more features so let's have a look at the first verse in our new series Romans 12:1-2 in the ESV and the NIV. Hovering over words in the ESV will give us important information about words in the original language.

We will then have a look at the Greek phrase that is translated 'I urge you'.

We will then search for this Greek phrase in the New Testament - and then limit our search to just the Epistles.

This short video will show you the different steps involved in this process.