Weekly Email: August 5, 2024
Each Monday, I’ll be sending you a note filled with encouragement and/or study tips, updates about our program, and a devotional from our faculty. My hope is that these emails will support and inspire you on your academic journey here at Southern. If there’s anything specific you’d like to see in these messages, please feel free to share your thoughts with me.
Encouragement:
Seminary is hard and that’s okay. The demands of reading, lectures, papers, and quizzes can sometimes feel overwhelming, especially with everything else happening in your life. I encourage you to lift your studies to God. Pray for His sustaining grace and focus to help you flourish in your academic pursuits. Remember, it’s not the final grade that defines your success. What truly matters is that you gave your best effort, completed the work with integrity, and aimed to be transformed into the likeness of Christ.
Program Updates:
Dr. Kyle Claunch is finishing up his development of Systematic Theology II with us, which will be offered in Fall 2. If you’re interested in getting an early look at the syllabus and a lecture, let me know! Dr. Claunch has been busy recently, as he just finished his Doctrine of the Trinity course, which has been anticipated by many students.
Devotional:
Dr. Jim Hamilton reflects on Psalm 120 for this week’s devotion:
This psalmist pronounces a woe on himself because he sojourns in Meshech, a place famous for having as its chief prince “Gog, of the land of Magog” (Ezek 38:1). These haters of peace (v. 6) are for war (v. 7), speak lies and deceit (vv. 2–3), and produce the distress from which the psalmist cries out to Yahweh (vv. 1–2). Gog of Magog turns out to be the Lord’s own end time enemy (Rev 20:7–10), and here in Psalm 120 the psalmist wants to “go up” (“Psalm of Ascent”) from the foreign land of Meshech to Jerusalem, city of God, seat of David’s throne (cf. 122:1–9). The psalmist is confident that God’s enemies face the warrior’s sharp arrows and the glowing coals of the broom tree (120:3–4): a fiery destruction awaits those who reject the one who speaks peace from God (120:7).
For this psalmist, distress is caused by being among those who reject Yahweh’s peace (v. 7), being in a foreign land (v. 5), longing to be in God’s place (“Ascent”), reigned over by God’s king, living in accordance with God’s instructions. In a way, then, the psalmist’s prayer in Psalm 120 is another way of saying, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done. . .” (Matt 6:10).
For what kingdom, what homeland, what way of life, do you long?
Dr. Hamilton is Professor of Biblical Theology and the senior pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church here in Louisville. He is teaching Old Testament I online in the Fall 2 term (2024).
You can find an archive of each week’s email here.
Brian Renshaw
