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....
I vividly remember the morning of September 11. 2001. I was living in Flat Rock, NC, just south of Asheville. I remember hustling into the Country Club where I worked as a cook, trying not to lose my job because of my prodigal lifestyle. At some point, the head chef ran out and sat the staff down. We all huddled around a small, portable, black and white kitchen television...
Keep ReadingSo much about the truth of Christ in the Scriptures respects the obedience He rendered to His Father. Though He is God manifest in the flesh, Jesus lived a perfectly sinless life--as the last Adam--in order to merit righteousness for His people. Jesus kept the Ten Commandments perfectly as the representative of those He came into the world to redeem. Whereas, Adam sinned ...
Keep ReadingOne of the most important, and yet most difficult, elements of Pauline theology is the Apostle's use of the flesh/Spirit (σὰρξ/πνεῦμα) antithesis. The antithetical construct is preeminently found in Romans and Galatians, and can really only be understood in its fullest significance when viewed through the lens of both the Historia and the Ordo Salutis.Througho...
Keep ReadingDiscussions about sermon preparation tend to gravitate towards subjects involved in the formal processes of moving from the text to the sermon. There is no shortage of books, chapters, or articles in which one will find the various exegetical, theological, practical and homiletical elements of preaching. Among those works from which I have most benefited over the years ar...
Keep ReadingWhat is the central message of Christianity? This is a subject of timeless importance in a day when many insist that the central message is kindness in interpersonal relations; or that it is justice in its variegated societal implementation. However compelling the case may be made for either of these, the Apostle Paul gave us the divinely inspired center of the Christian ...
Keep ReadingJohn Newton once wrote a letter on rules of controversy to a fellow minister who informed him of his intention to confront another minister about that minister's supposed unorthodox doctrine. In this letter, Newton warned the man to 1) consider his opponent, 2) consider the public, and 3) consider himself prior to entering into the fray of theological debate. This sage c...
Keep ReadingThe doctrine of indwelling sin is one of the most important doctrines a Christian can diligently study. If we are going to make progress in growth in grace, we must gain a right understanding of indwelling sin. If we are going to be resolved to fight against the remainder of sin in our flesh, until we are in glory, then we need a right assessment about the prevalence and ...
Keep ReadingIn a letter to his disciple, Joseph Bellamy, Jonathan Edwards praised Petrus Van Mastrict's Theologia Theoretico-Practica as being "much better than...any other Book in the world, excepting the Bible, in my opinion."1 I have long wanted to compare Mastricht's theology with that of Edwards' in order to see where the scholastic theologian of the Great Awakening was influ...
Keep ReadingOn Saturday, February 17, 1739, George Whitefield resolved that he would commit himself to the task of evangelistic preaching to the coal miners in Kingswood. It was well known that the coal miners were uneducated and spiritually ignorant members of society. Nevertheless, stories of tears running down the coal-blackened faces of these men circulated quickly--peaking the i...
Keep ReadingScripture is full of double-entendres. Often they are found in the historical details in the Gospels that serve to teach spiritual lessons. Perhaps the most vivid of these is the account of Simon the Cyrene bearing the cross after Jesus (Luke 23:26). The Savior, having been scourged and weakened by the abuse that he endured at the sinful, God-hating hands of men, was carr...
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