New West Community Church

Michael Haykin is one of my favorite Christian teachers and one of the most preeminent church historians in the world. Every once in while, however, we disagree with some of our favorite teachers, and a little while ago Haykin posted an article that had a useful observation, followed by what I believe are (somewhat) erroneous conclusions. His observation was that there are very few major political figures mentioned in the New Testament, and especially compared to the Old. His conclusions (in a very brief article) are that 1) there is significant discontinuity between OT and NT as to how God’s people relate to politics and 2) the NT is not really that concerned with politics but about preaching and personal transformation. In this article, I won’t be interacting in any depth with Haykin’s writing, nor do I intend to refute it’s conclusions with in-depth research or exegesis. I simply want to suggest several strands of political themes which tend to be overlooked by those who focus on the Christian’s inner life almost exclusively (sometimes called pietism, at term which Haykin himself uses). Jesus tangled with political leaders constantly. The scribes and the Pharisees were not just religious leaders. They exercised...Continue reading→

Samuel Miller (1769-1850) was one of the three first Presbyterian professors at Princeton (alongside Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge), which was originally founded as a seminary for training pastors. He was a man of letters and learning who wrote on a wide variety of subjects. His sermon on fasting, The Duty, the Benefits, and the Proper Methods of Religious Fasting (1831) is exceedingly helpful, and as we are in our Spring week of prayer and fasting, I want to outline the sermon for you. His sermon text was Daniel 9:3, which says, “Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.” Although he mentions several contextual details about Daniel in the introduction, the sermon is, for the most part, topical upon the subject of fasting. He first lays out the duty of fasting under three headings. The Light of Nature teaches the duty. And here he points to the fact that many pagans practice fasting as a means of consecreation or propitiation. Of course, he also writes that our our practices as Christians are different and inward, not merely outward. The Examples in Scripture. He mentions...Continue reading→

In the sermon Sunday, we noted that Joshua was very old, and he needed to pass down the work of fighting to a younger generation. We don’t know Joshua’s precise age, but it seems like that he was at least as old as Caleb, who was at this time eighty-five (Josh 14:10). Because every man of fighting age (twenty years or older) had died in the desert wanderings over forty years, there was a gap of at least twenty years between the oldest men in Israel and Joshua and Caleb. Joshua had been their commander throughout the taking of Canaan, but it was now time for the tribes to rely on God and move forward and take what was left of the land. We see here a call for older saints to pass on skills, responsibility, and authority, to the coming generation. We see this principle several times in the New Testament. The apostle Paul mentored young Timothy and then told him to do the same to others. “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who...Continue reading→