In chapter 8, “All Flesh Is Grass,” Michael Pollan introduces us to Joel Salatin, a “Christian-conservative-libertarian-environmentalist-lunatic farmer” (p. 125). When all is said and done, Salatin sounds like a fun guy, like someone who has made his small farm productive in multiple ways, on multiple levels. So three cheers for him, in the most neighborly …
Seven Reason Why “The Deep Things of God” Is an Important Book
This evening a group of men from Christ Church are meeting at our home to discuss our reading of The Deep Things of God, by Fred Sanders. A month or so ago, when I started reading this book, I wrote to a friend at Crossway to thank him for publishing such an important book. Here …
In the Shadow of Thy Wings
INTRODUCTION: We are in a stretch of the psalms which record David’s trials before coming to the promised throne. This psalm is a cry of faith from a very beleaguered and dark time. Since the reference is simply to “the cave,” this is probably the time when David and his six hundred men hid in …
A Form of Shallowness
“Imagine a competent physician, a general practitioner, well trained in medicine. He does well in his practice, but occasionally he comes up against a patient who knows very little about medicine, but knows an enormous amount about the particular ailment that troubles him. In other words, before coming to see the doctor, the patient has …
Christ in the Sermon
“The task of the preacher of the Word is to expound the scripture in the midst of the worshipping Church, preaching in the expectancy that God will do, through his frail human word, what He did through the Word of His prophets of old, that God by His grace will cause the word that goes …
Christ in the Sermon
“The task of the preacher of the Word is to expound the scripture in the midst of the worshipping Church, preaching in the expectancy that God will do, through his frail human word, what He did through the Word of His prophets of old, that God by His grace will cause the word that goes …
Wisdom is not Mechanical
“In other words, when the elders of a church are determining whether or not a new candidate is qualified for the office, they must be the type of men who are mature in judgment. They are discerning character, not counting rocks” (Fidelity, p. 159).
Master of the Plain Style
“This does not mean that Calvin was unaware of rhetoric. He was a master of it! He knew Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian well. He had carefully schooled himself in John Chrysostom and Augustine, both accomplished in the art of rhetoric. As is often said of very great artists, he had mastered his art so completely …
The Horizon is Really Quite Interesting
“If a man can’t go to the beach without sinning, then he should quit going to the beach. But if he has the self-discipline to spend a lot of time looking at the clouds, or gazing out to sea like the ancient mariner, then he can do that” (Fidelity, p. 150).
An Essential Part of the Offering
“The exposition of Scripture in course became one of the biggest planks in their platform of Christian revival. To them it was an essential component of a Christian worship that was according to Scripture and after the example of the ancient church. To these Reformers the sermon was an act of worship. It was the …