Want to live real cozy-like? Has the pope apologized or not? If he has, it was quite a feat — hard to apologize to mobs of people making your point more strongly than you ever did. One of the funnier commercials I have seen. I wonder if it ever actually ran anywhere.
Sihon and Og
As we continue through the book of Deuteronomy, it is best not to tire of hearing about giants too quickly. God was giving the land of the giants to the children of God. “Rise ye up, take your journey, and pass over the river Arnon: behold, I have given into thine hand Sihon the Amorite, …
The Meal Is Before You
We are God’s covenant people, and we are seated with our Lord in this covenant meal. Now covenants are, at bottom, relationships. Covenants are not doctrinal abstractions. Covenant is not a mere word that we use to distinguish ourselves from other denominational traditions. Covenants are structured in the very way that God created the world, …
No Implied Criticism
The new command is that we love one another. Love in the Scriptures is defined as the giving of one’s self through immediate or indirect sacrifice. Paul tells the Thessalonians that they did not need instruction on this point – they were known for their love to all the brethren who were in the region …
Worship In the Temple of High Brow
“Until quite modern times—I think, until the time of the Romantics—nobody ever suggested that literature and the arts were an end in themselves. They ‘belonged to the ornamental part of life’, they provided ‘innocent diversion’; or else they ‘refined our manners’ or ‘incited us to virtue’ or glorified the gods. The great music had been …
Reading the Bible, Straight Up
“We need to take special care to tell stories that are ‘not suitable’ for modernists. The Bible contains dragons, giants, principalities, satyrs, and unicorns. Invariably, these get cleaned up in translation so that modernist evangelicals are not embarrassed by them. In such instances, the liberal is often to be trusted with the text of Scripture …
Few Understand the Potency of Theater
“At their most radical and pessimistic, all great playwrights, including Moliere and Racine, have more affinity for the enemies of the theater than for its pious friends. Their implacable genius rejects the self-serving platitudes of cultural idolatry. Great theater has never flourished except in periods when it was distrusted and ostracized” (Girard, A Theater of …
Each Text A Mountainous Wave
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Our great Lord reigns above all things, He is clothed with majesty itself. Strength is His garment, Power is tied around His waist. The world is fixed, established by Him This throne is ancient, Established of …
Inescapable Imprecation
The message today is on Psalm 35, one of the psalms of imprecation. These psalms have given many Christians many difficulties, and we don’t quite know what to do with them. Let us grant at the outset that they can be abused by people who pretend to embrace them. We can want to “destroy the …
And This is Odd Too
One of the central things we learn as we come to this Table is the nature of our triune God, and consequently the nature of the world He created. Many of the disputes between Christians about what happens at this Table is the result of their secret agreement about the rest of the world. The …