We are discovering that celebration is hard work. We are in the middle of a great season of personal and corporate celebrations—graduations from high school, from college, weddings, and so forth. This is a time of great joy, and joy naturally calls us to work so that we might give fuller expression to that joy. …
The Ten Words
So we now come to the Ten Commandments. As with everything, context should govern all our understanding, but this is especially important when we are considering the question of law. “And this is the law which Moses set before the children of Israel . . .” (Dt. 4:44-5:33). We have to understand the grace of …
Artistic Responsibility?
“In the highest aesthetic circles one now hears nothing about the artist’s duty to us. It is all about our duty to him. He owes us nothing: we owe him ‘recognition,’ even though he has never paid the slightest attention to our tastes, interests, or habits. If we don’t give it to him, our name …
Aesthetic Relativism
“Among conservative believers we at least have a concept of resistance to relativism in the areas of truth and ethics. We reject the idea that something can be true on Tuesday but false on Friday. We also reject the notion that sins in the first part of the week gradually lose their sinfulness by the …
A Brother Thing
“We instinctively tend to regard the fraternal relationship as an affectionate one; yet the mythological, historical, and literary examples that spring to mind tell a different story: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Eteocles and Plyneices, Romulus and Remus, Richard the Lionhearted and John Lackland. The proliferation of enemy brothers in Greek myth and in …
Sabbath Kindness Again
God and Father, we thank You for Your Sabbath kindness to us. You have shown that kindness to us over and over again, and so we continue to thank You for it. We are thankful for the food, for the wine, for the fellowship around this table, and for all the hard work that went …
A Fourth Decade of Psalms/Psalm 37
Introduction: One of the temptations that the righteous have to deal with is the temptation of envying the unrighteous. This is a psalm to set that temptation in its propher context, and so to help us deal with it. The Text: Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of …
Westminster Ten: Of Effectual Calling
1. All those whom God hath predestinated unto life, and those only, He is pleased, in His appointed and accepted time, effectually to call (Rom. 8:30, 11:7; Eph. 1:10–11), by His Word and Spirit (2 Thess. 2:13–14; 2 Cor. 3:3, 6), out of that state of sin and death, in which they are by nature …
Westminster Nine: Of Free Will
1. God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that it is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined to good, or evil (Matt. 17:12; James 1:14; Deut. 30:19). By virtue of creation, mankind was given a true and natural liberty with regard to all issues of good and …
Not Good Symptoms At All
“Artists also talk of Good Work; but decreasingly. They begin to prefer words like ‘significant,’ important,’ contemporary,’ or ‘daring.’ These are not, to my mind, good symptoms” (C.S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night, p. 72).