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 have learned--both from personal experience and from pastoral ministry--that change can be among the most unsettling dynamics of life in this fallen world. We are a people of change living in a world subject to change. When we put our confidence in created things or set our hearts on circumstances, we make ourselves susceptible to disappointment and heartache. Marriages...
Keep ReadingYesterday, my twitter feed was flooded with comments about a video floating around online in which Mark Driscoll said, "I don't hold to the five points of Calvinism. I think it's garbage...because it's not biblical." This statement came in the midst of a sociological rant in which the former pastor of Mars Hill Seattle was pontificating on how different groups view God in...
Keep ReadingOf the multitude of Messianic prophecies that stand out in the book of Genesis, Gen. 3:15, 12:1-3 and Gen. 49:8-12 are arguably the most significant. After our first parents fell, the Lord promised to send a Redeemer into the world. This Redeemer would be the seed of the woman, the seed of Abraham and the Lion of the tribe of Judah. As redemptive history was carried along...
Keep ReadingAn important biblical theological idea emerges out of Paul's use ofDeuteronomy 21:23 inGalatians 3:13. In the middle of the most polemical book in the New Testament, Paul made the astounding declaration: "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree')." The immediate context sho...
Keep ReadingOf the Gospels,none is as full of Old Testament typology as the Gospel of John. The apostle John had a keen interest in the types, shadows, symbols, metaphors, and elusive allusions the Savior employed during his earthly ministry in order to set forth his own divine glory (John 1:14). Most of the types in the Fourth Gospel are rooted in Israel’s exodus and wilderness ex...
Keep ReadingMy parents frequently quoted Scripture to my sister and me when they overheard us fighting with one another as children. Ephesians 4:32 had to be the most cited. While writing the church in Ephesus, the Apostle Paul urged the members, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." It should strike us as strange that professin...
Keep ReadingThe Holy Spirit gives us ample amounts of proofs of the deity of Christ in Scripture. The fact that Jesus received worship from men and women--during his earthly ministry--has to be among the most marvelous of these proofs. Four times in Matthew's Gospel we read, "they...worshiped him" (Matt. 2:11; 14:33; 28:9; and 28:17). First, when the magi presented their gifts to...
Keep Reading"Faster internet!" "Buy it now!" "Get what you've always wanted when you want it." These are only a few of the seemingly ubiquitous advertising slogans of our culture. No sooner have we begun to entertain them that we have met the dilemma of progress. The more things progress, the more we desire. The more we desire, the more we expect. The more we expect, the less we are ...
Keep ReadingI've always found it to be a thing of comfort to know that one Apostle found another Apostle's writing to include things that are "hard to understand" (2 Pet. 3:15-16), while honoring him for being used by God to reveal the most comforting spiritual truths. I have often wrestled with many of the things that the Apostle Paul wrote--trying to understand how they fit into th...
Keep ReadingThe Puritan Thomas Adams once wrote, “Christ is the sum of the whole Bible, prophesied, typified, prefigured, exhibited, demonstrated, to be found in every leaf, almost in every line, the Scriptures being but as it were the swaddling bands of the child Jesus.” Many have, by God's grace, been enabled to see the glory of Christ when they open the Scriptures. Nevertheles...
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