If we are talking about reading, writing, and ciphering, the state of government education in the United States is appalling. But if we reflect on what Hunter Baker points out in his The End of Secularism (p. 18), that more Americans believe in the virgin birth than believe in Darwinism, the failure of state education …
Dealing with Nuisance Lust
Note: this is an imaginary Christian couple, assembled as a composite from various counseling situations. Dear Tony, Thanks for the email and the follow-up phone call. I am glad you decided to get help with this, and I am glad that you and Suzanne are talking about it. A central part of this letter will …
Audio Reading of Post
Samuel and Susannah
The book of Genesis is the book of our beginnings, but they are not simplistic beginnings. Rather, God has given us a layered and textured account what He did when He first created us, male and female, and this is an account that never fails to astonish us when we go back to learn from …
When Crushed Bones Rejoice
INTRODUCTION:If forgiveness of sin is one of the glories of the new covenant, and it is (Heb. 8: 8-12; cf. Heb. 10: 17), then this psalm is one of the glories of the entire Bible. In this psalm, we learn the greatness of forgiveness, and in the course of learning this, we learn the true …
More Like a Presbyterian in the Shower
The message this morning will begin the next decade of psalms—in the weeks to come we will be working through Psalm 51 through 60. As we do this, the choir will be teaching us to chant them, which we will begin doing as a congregation when this series of messages from the psalms is completed. …
Not Thin Commons
The Lord comes to us in order to deal with our sinfulness, and our resultant sins. The Lord deals with us; He does not let us continue on as before. But at the same time, God deals us with in surprising ways. He deals with us by means of His grace. He washes us, teaches …
Not Basically Good at All
Father, Your Word says that no one does what is right, and our national catechism impudently contradicts this, saying that everyone is basically good. Father, we not only confess to You how bad we are as a nation, but we confess the lies that we tell ourselves about how bad we are. We pray that …
Jesus. Reason. Soap.
We are discussing mere Christendom as a construct for civilization. Since we have been here before, it is, more accurately, a construct for a renewed civilization. How is this necessary? C.S. Lewis once famously observed the wishful thinking of unbelievers. “In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We …
What We Think of as Problem Passages Are Often Solution Passages
“More than one Israelite man went to worship the golden calf because there was a good prospect there for getting laid. It sort of gave the ‘golden calf theology’ that little extra appeal. God struck twenty-three thousand of them down because of it. We should be well acquainted with God’s treatment of them, along with …
No Kidding . . .
“There is a relation between what predominates in our preaching and what we deem to be of greatest importance” (Gordon, Why Johnny Can’t Preach, 91).