Today we were pleased to host an At The Castle training day on the Letter to the Ephesians with New Testament scholar and commentary author, Peter O'Brien. About 100 people attended, with three sessions presented by O'Brien. The first was on finding the key verses of Ephesians, which O'Brien argued were 1:9-10. He talked us through this, and then showed how the theme fits the rest of the book. Session two concentrated on unpacking the richest sentence of the Bible. In the Greek, 1:1-14 is one sentence, taking us from eternity past to eternity future, which sets out the glorious and gracious purposes of God's plan being revealed in the world and the blessings lavished through Christ Jesus. The final session was on the armour of God from 6:10-20, which are the very characteristics of God himself, the armour of our mighty warrior God in the battle against the devil.
The day wasn't overly scholarly, though, with accessible material, useful illustrations, and pastoral preaching, applying the message and full force of God's word to our situations. The audio files from the three sessions will be shortly available over at the At The Castle website.
If you happen to be in Belfast tomorrow, Peter O'Brien will be preaching in St Elizabeth's Dundonald on Ephesians 2. Our service is at 10.30am and you'll be most welcome!
Was disappointed not to get to this - think it's our next module. Looking forward to hearing the audio when it's uploaded.
ReplyDeleteI'm disappointed you didn't get either! Would have been good to say hello in person! He also preached on Sunday so the mp3 file of it should be available as well at some point on our sermon website... although things are very busy for me this week so I might not get it done this week!
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