Announcement: I am a Sunday School Teacher Now!!!

Me @ RTS (Mclean, VA) on April 26, 2014 for an open house.

A couple of weeks ago my pastor asked me if I would be willing to teach the high schoolers and middle schoolers at our church in Sunday School. I gladly said I would consider it, and ultimately accepted the offer.

So I am pleased to announce I will be teaching The Westminster Confession of Faith and using "Confessing the Faith: A Reader's Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith"  (2014) by Chad Van Dixhoorn of Reformed Theological Seminary starting on Sunday, September 19, 2021.

The topic was the pastor's choosing.

My copy I just received last Sunday!

What's interesting is that the year this book was published I visited, but ultimately did not apply to, Reformed Theological Seminary. I can't recall if I met the author. I did, however, meet some of his colleagues mentioned in the book, such as Peter Lee of RTS and Scott Redd.

I will be publishing my weekly Sunday School Notes here at The Goins Report. 

These will be references for my students but also general readers who want to follow along with both the Confession of Faith book by Dixhoorn and the actual Confession of Faith text itself.

While this series will not initially be recorded, it may be recorded in the future, or the next go around.

However, I plan to have a couple of video series (potentially on Youtube or Udemy at no cost, initially; or some free and some at low-cost) potentially on the following topics:

• The Evidence of Christianity and the Evidence of Prophecy
• Loving the Old Testament
• Biblical Theology
• Sermon on the Mount 

P.S. I am a huge, huge fan of Biblical Theology as my growing collection of BT books attests to. But my first introduction wasn't an explicitly BT book per se. It was this one. The introduction and the first chapter are gold. And then some people at my church also introduced me to the now-defunct Northwest Theology Seminary which has a BT Primer on their website. 

Jesus to Kingdom Citizens: Worrying flows from Serving Mammon

Jesus made it very clear that those who worry about their life and food and clothing end up serving money.

Disciples of the King are not supposed to not worry about these things.

Those who worry are the Gentiles — those outside of the promises of God.

“No one can serve two masters …You cannot serve God and mammon." 

He immediately follows this with “therefore,” as in “therefore do not worry about your life,” thus connecting the "do not worry" statement to the preceding statement about serving either God or money. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And love of money can cause you to support all kinds of evil power structures.

Here is the full text of Matthew 6:24-33 (NKJV):

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

“Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;

“and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

“Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’

“For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Here is the full text of 1 Timothy 6:10 (NKJV):

"For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

P.S. Matthew 6:33 is my favorite scripture. I read it or recite it every night right before I close my eyes to rest. 

Video: James D. G. Dunn | Interview on "The Oral Gospel Tradition"

The book came out in late 2013.