A Site for the Teaching Ministry of Nick Batzig
When I sit back and read the deluge of thoughts and opinions online about what the church ought to be doing, I sense a noticeable lack of focus on the Gospel. In the many twitter rants that recur on a daily basis, there is a discernible deficiency with regard to Scripture and the Gospel. ...
It is the common lot of those God has called into gospel ministry to become discouraged on account of the challenges and trials that come from serving as a pastor. I can almost always sense when a brother is weighed down by the pressures, demands, and discouragements that come with serving as a pastor of a congregation, because I have known them throughout my own pastoral service. The apostle Paul intimated the challenges that pastors face in the church when he added to the external opposition he experienced from the unbelieving world the care that he had for the church. He wrote, "apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches" (2 Cor. 11:28). So what are ministers to do when they feel overwhelmed by the discouragements of ministry?...
We are meant to know that Jesus had to remain silent when he was judged so that we might have our mouths shut before the just tribunal of God. Then, having heard the sentence exacted against the spotless lamb of God, believers might open their mouths in praise to God for all the ways that He has removed their transgressions and the righteous condemnation that stood against us for Christ's sake. The silence of condemnation belonged to Jesus that praise for justification might be ours. ...
Sadly, many professing believers approach the gifts of the Spirit by overvaluing the idea of the miraculous spiritual gifts (e.g., tongues, prophecy, healing) and undervalue the common spiritual gifts (e.g., salvation and sanctifying fruit). Holding faulty views of the miraculous spiritual gifts is usually due to a failure to grasp the redemptive-historical purpose of the gifts. When we come to understand the biblical teaching about the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit and the ordinary gifts of the Spirit, we will better value the greater and continuing gifts in the life of the church today....
When each of the Old Covenant signs (i.e., the rainbow, Sabbath, circumcision, and the Passover) are viewed in light of the fulfillment of all that they typified, we come to understand a great deal about the work of Christ...
As we enter a new year with new personal goals and desires, the Lord wants His people to commit to Christian living among the members of the body. We must resist the urge to look to practices and programs in the local church to live out the Christian life or do the work of ministry for us. Our God has given us the enormous privilege and responsibility of diligently living out, daily, our Christian lives in Christ. Let’s commit ourselves to the practice of seeking to live the organic Christian life in the context of the local church to which we belong. ...
The reason why Mary sang a song of humility is because she was focusing on what God was doing to provide the Savior she needed. Mary had been waiting on God to fulfill the promises that He had made throughout the Old Testament era. Mary doesn't speak of herself or her privileges because Mary was focused on her need for redemption. ...
We rightly wonder of the coming of the eternal Son of God into the world in true human form while wrongly neglecting to wonder at the accompanying role of the Spirit of God in the ministry of the Redeemer....
In many of life’s circumstances, we struggle to understand how we will come to attain the promises of God, forgetting that their fulfillment is entirely based on the person and work of Christ. Jesus has secured an everlasting joy, an inheritance of hope for His people through His death and resurrection. Though we do not now see all that he has for us, we wait for him with patience. We are to be a people who trust in and wait for Christ in faith....
Imagine all the angels gathered before the throne of God when the Savior was born. The redemption that God had planned in eternity is now being accomplished in the fulness of time. Out of that vast host of angels, the Triune God chooses one from among these messengers who exist to do His will (Ps. 103:20: Heb. 1:7). He points to one of these angels in the midst of the myr...
Keep ReadingAs a teenager, I longed to be whatever my father was not. If he wore a dress shirt and khakis, I sported a t-shirt and jeans. If he listened to classical music, I listened to jam bands. If he liked tea, I liked coffee. If he liked impressionism, I liked fauvism. This rejection of my father’s styles and preferences continued well into my 20’s. By God’s grace, I never...
Keep ReadingIn a day in which we are inundated with counterfeit gospels, counterfeit spirituality, counterfeit religions, and counterfeit devotional practices it is important for us to keep in mind that believers are ever in danger of falling into what older theologians called, "a half-learned Christ." Instead of keeping our eyes steadfastly fixed on the fullness of Christ, we are e...
Keep ReadingBy means of sophisticatedly crafted statements on social media, certain prominent voices in the evangelical wing of Christendom have revealed their penchant for pitting Jesus' ethical teaching against that of the Apostle Paul. To elevate what Jesus taught over against what His apostles taught reveals a fundamental deficiency with regard to the doctrine of biblical revelat...
Keep ReadingAlmost no aspect of biblical revelation has been so misunderstood and disagreed upon as that of the sacraments. Many of the heresies and error in the apostolic church centered on a misunderstanding of the role of the sacraments. Ecclesiastical traditions and theologians have long differed with one another on the legitimacy of the word sacrament, the nature of the sacramen...
Keep ReadingWhen we turn to the Proverbs--which are arguably some of the most neglected portions of Scriptures in the realm of redemptive-historical studies--we discover a series of additional challenges to a consistent biblical-theological interpretation. When we considered the Psalms, we saw something of the complex nature (i.e.the diversity of genre, structure, and historical plac...
Keep ReadingGod has woven some of the most glorious redemptive-historical details into Matthew's genealogy of Jesus Christ. It is fitting that, at the fulness of the time, we should see how all the things foretold by the prophets would be fulfilled in the person of Christ. Matthew introduces the genealogy by telling us that Jesus is the long awaited "son of Abraham" and the promised ...
Keep ReadingWhen we consider the miracles of Jesus, we do not fail to recognize a divine power at work in them to reverse the awful effects of the fall and restore the natural wholeness of a person. We understand that His miracles are Messianic markers--signs pointing beyond themselves to the Savior who came into the world to make all things new. We feel the need for such a Savior wh...
Keep ReadingLast spring, a spider wove a cobweb across the entryway to our house. In the evening, it took the cobweb down and it spun a new one in the same spot the very next morning. This event recurred over a period of several weeks. At first, I simply sought to avoid the cobweb by sneaking under it whenever I came or went. (I’m sure that our neighbors thought I was practicing th...
Keep ReadingThroughout his New Testament epistles, the Apostle Paul models for us the way in which we ought to approach what may seem to be minor situations in the church by applying the greatest theology to the smallest of problems. Take, for instance, the great Christological hymn in Philippians 2:5-11. One might conclude that Paul was writing about the humiliation and exaltation o...
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