The central lesson we must learn as we approach God in worship is the lesson of honesty. Confession of sin is agreement with God over what constitutes sin, and in order to do this we have read two things rightly. We have to read the text rightly, which is harder than it looks, and we …
Son of Jonah
In the famous exchange between Jesus and Peter after the resurrection (John 21:15ff), a lot of attention is paid to the question about the word for love that Jesus uses. While that is a worthwhile question, I think we should also spend some time on the fact that Jesus calls Peter “the son of Jonah” …
High Hearted, Not High Arted
“High church Puritan thinking begins with the authority of the Word of God, and one of the first things we are told in Scripture is that God has established enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. An understanding of this enmity, this antithesis, must undergird all that we do” …
No Kidding
“I was once visiting my grandmother’s home in a tiny, sleepy farm town in Nebraska. While there I saw a bumper sticker that said, ‘You don’t see much in a small town, but what you hear makes up for it'” (5 Cities, p. xiii).
That Seamy Chain of Syllogisms
Marriage is a political act, and not an individual choice. How you marry is a way of testifying to what city you belong to. Who defines marriage? The difficulty we are having in our generation in answering this question shows how theology shapes and drives everything. If God created the world, and put one man …
Maturity Grows
“As Scripture tells the story of the world, it begins with a garden, and it ends that story with a Garden City” (5 Cities That Ruled the World, p. xi).
A Great Thunderhead
“We were commissioned — I believe the word is ordained — to compel every manifestation of worldly power, glory, wisdom, and exaltation to yield to and obey the majesty of God, in full accordance with God’s Word. We were ordained to feed the sheep and drive away wolves, and all by God’s Word. We were …
Some New Obtainables
I am happy to note that a new edition of Nevin’s The Mystical Presence is out and available. Check it out here. The Reformed tradition is wide river, not a babbling brook. On a completely different note, but just as cool, I just read through the small booklet Cycles — a primer on astonomy — …
Earthly, Not Worldly
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) The Basket Case Chronicles #76 “But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of …
No Derivative Light
“We were not sent to preach about the perfections of a perfect by distant star, cool and twinkling against a black, velvet sky. We were not even sent to preach a moon, reflecting derivative light — we are not servants of the ruler of the evening. We were sent to preach a blazing sun, one …