Deeper Waters Podcast 8/31/2013: Jonathan Pennington

What’s coming up Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

Many of us who read the Bible tend to avoid the gospels. Yeah. They’re about Jesus. There’s a lot we appreciate. We like to read the great miracle stories and events like that, but we just don’t really understand a lot of the gospels, well aside from the main events of Jesus’s life and oh yeah, He’s God.

What we tend to jump straight to immediately are the Pauline epistles. We want to know what Paul said because that is where most of our doctrine comes from. That’s where we get the most about justification by faith, for instance. That is where we learn about the life of the church. The gospels are often seen as the snacks that prepare us for the main course of Paul. The gospels give us the life. Paul gives us the difference.

On the show this Saturday, my guest, Jonathan Pennington, thinks we’re missing a great deal of what the gospels have to say to us and that is because we do not know how we are to read them properly. Jonathan Pennington is the author of “Reading the Gospels Wisely” and he’ll be on my show to tell us just how it is that we’re supposed to do that.

What are the gospels? What is their purpose? Is it more than just the life of Jesus and showing His deity? Why does Jesus speak so much about the Kingdom of God, a concept that seems to be hardly ever spoken of in our churches today? What difference does the background material that the gospels was written in make? In fact, most churches today are unfamiliar that there is background material. Jesus just came to a world like theirs, except not as technologically advanced. People thought just the exact same way after all.

If that’s a false belief though, we are not reading the gospels wisely. Are we missing out on a real meal in the gospels if we think that Paul has the full deal for us? This is not to undermine Paul, but in our valuing of Paul, let us remember that Paul did what He did because of what happened in the gospels and if we want to be people who value the epistles, we have to be people who value the gospels.

So we’ll be discussing how it is the gospels were written, what methods we should use when reading them. More importantly perhaps, what methods should we not be using when reading them. Why were they written and what is is that the gospel writers really want us to get out of the messages?

I hope you’ll be planning to join me on the show this Saturday from 3-5 PM EST to discuss “Reading the Gospels Wisely” with Jonathan Pennington. The link can be found here. The call in number if you want to ask Dr. Pennnington a question is 714-242-5180. I look forward to this show and I hope you’ll be there to appreciate the wisdom of Dr. Pennington as well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

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