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....
One of the most glorious aspects of biblical truth is that God has purposed to reveal His manifold wisdom in giving us glimpses into the way in which He has ordered things and why He has ordered them in the specific way that He has. This is seen in everything from the creation of the stars “for signs” (see Gen. 1:14 and Matt. 2:2; 9) to the “trees” for a cross...
Keep ReadingIt was the late Professor John Murray who first articulated the doctrine of definitive sanctification. As he studied the exegetical statements of the New Testament that spoke of believershaving beensanctifiedthrough the death of Christ (e.g.1 Corinthians 1:2;6:11;Heb. 10:10, etc.), Murray suggested that "it is a fact too frequently overlooked that in the New Testament the...
Keep ReadingAs I teach a short series on the sacraments at church, I recently happened across a fascinating historigraphical statement by Francis Turretin about the way in which certain theologians have calculated the numerous types of baptisms in the pages of Scripture. Setting out the various views, Turretin ultimately listed eight events or experiences that may properly be con...
Keep ReadingThe Scriptures give us a robust revelation about all that Jesus accomplished on the cross. As we go about seeking to categorize all of the various dimensions of the cross, we discover that there are bothverticalandhorizontaldimensions to Jesus’ work. Theverticaldimensions are foundational; thehorizontalare consequential. Theverticaldimensions include Jesus’ defeat of ...
Keep ReadingOur family has recently started working through the Sermon on the Mount during family worship. As we have moved through each section, I've experienced a renewed sense of astonishment at the countercultural nature of what Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. In the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches that the way of the Kingdom of God is radically different from the way of the ...
Keep ReadingAnyone who reads the Scriptures with any degree of honesty must immediately recognize that when Christ enlisted us into His everlasting Kingdom, He enlisted us into a spiritual battle in this fallen world. This means, of course, that our Christian lives will be fraught with trials and tribulation. Anyone who has sought to walk faithfully with the Lord for any length of...
Keep ReadingDuring the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of prominent leaders in the emerging church movement asserted that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is tantamount to “cosmic child abuse.” At a time when men and women were finally starting to see the need to condemn every form of abuse that had been tolerated in our culture, the allegation seemed ...
Keep ReadingSun Tzu’sThe Art of Waris one of the most ancient and most revered military manuals in all of human history. In it, Sun Tzu set out what he believed to be the “essentials of military victory.” He wrote: “If you know the enemy and know yourself,you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourselfbut not the enemy, for every victory gained you wil...
Keep ReadingAs a boy, I would sometimes slip into my dad’s dress shoes and put on a pair of his glasses when I found them lying around the house. Perhaps this was merely an act of admiration; however, I suspect that it was also an act of imitation, a longing to grow up to be like my father. Now, as a father of three boys, a subtle, sublime joy wells up in my heart when one of my so...
Keep ReadingWhat impact would it have had on the church in our late-modern, scientific day and age if the author(s) of the Apostles’ Creed had included a statement about the reality of angelic activity and spiritual warfare in the Christian life? I envision such a statement as reading like this: “I believe in principalities and powers, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly pla...
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