Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! So then I cried with all my heart, Hear me, oh Lord, I pray. I will keep Your statutes pure, Again I cry, please save me now, And I will keep Your holy law. I rose before the dawning sun, And I …
Only Grace
We serve and worship a merciful God. One of the central lessons to learn as we approach this Table is that God loves us and wants us here. This is a hard lesson to learn—sinful men know how to flatter themselves, and they can readily believe (in their own conceits) that God loves them just …
God-centered Worship?
Reformed Christians have sometimes reacted away from the man-centered worship of much of the contemporary church, and they have lurched to another extreme, one just as dangerous. If you react away from a style of worship that seems to be saying nothing more than “gimme, gimme, gimme,” the temptation is to think that “God-centered worship” …
The OPC Report on the Federal Vision
The OPC report on the Federal Vision is being considered at their General Assembly this week. Because of this, I want to say just a few things for the record. It is not that my opinion matters all that much, but I feel free to make these comments because I am labeled as one of …
Seth and Naphtali
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, welcome. In the kind name of the Lord Jesus Christ, welcome. In the communion of all the saints who love the Lord Jesus, welcome. This is a great mystery, the apostle Paul tells us. The ultimate bridegroom is the Lord Jesus, and the bride is …
False, False, and False
For those who for some reason want to follow the saga of the most recent secularist and hypocritical (but I repeat myself) attack on Christ Church, you can see a particularly ripe sample here. This kind of thing is of course crazy. So why respond to it then? Why give the time of day to …
Extended Deadline
The last time I did this, a discussion broke out over whether we ought to cancel Trinity Fest. With this shameless appeal, because I am running that risk yet again, let me begin by showing the consistency between repentance of sin and rejoicing before the Lord. The reason for Trinity Fest in the first place …
Resting Upon the Sacrifice
What you see before You is a table, and not an altar. It is a sacrificial meal, and apart from the sacrifices of praise we offer, it is not a sacrifice. In the Old Testament, after the sacrifices were offered, the worshipper was invited to sit down at a sacrificial meal which depended on the …
For the Giant’s Forehead
We are the Church militant. We have not yet entered into the final Sabbath rest of the resurrection, and we still contend with unbelieving forces that array themselves against the God of heaven, and which, like Goliath, taunt the armies of God. Like the armies of Israel at that time, the church today is largely …
Why NPR Listeners Think They Are Aristocrats
“For more than a century, the elite in the United States has distinguished themselves from consumers of commercial culture, or mass culture. Highbrow/lowbrow was the language by which culture was translated into status—the pivot on which distinctions of taste became distinctions of caste. The words highbrow and lowbrow are American inventions, devised for a specifically …