In this portion of His great sermon, Christ brings us to the subject of our material possessions, and our attitudes towards them. The teaching of this section can perhaps be summarized this way. God does not mind His people having things; He forbids things having His people. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on …
Secret Tunnels
Someday I hope to write a full account of the last two years’ worth of controversy. Such an account would have to cover the waterfront — young fatheads, illegal gambling, slavery, Intoleristas, the bearded lady incident, postmodern encroachments into the conservative Reformed world, Auburn Avenue theology, N.T. Wright, and the Shroud Indignation Support Group. One …
Terri Schaivo and Postmodern Law
As Andrew Lytle noted, we like to think of ourselves as modern men, but actually we have the affliction of being momentary men. Because we are momentary men, sound-byte men, the problem with political and civic conflicts is that everything reduces to pushing and shoving in the present, and no one really cares about consistency …
Laughingstock
The Shroud of Turin is an amazing artifact. And it has also been amazing to me to watch as my son figured out a plausible way to account for how it may have been made. But an amazement beyond all these has been brought on by watching those with an inability (or in some cases, …
The Death Lobby Overeaches
As I write this, it looks as though all legal options are exhausted in the fight for Terri Schiavo’s life. It also looks like the option of intervention by Gov. Bush is extremely unlikely. If Gov. Bush had decided to send in the National Guard, it would have been a constitutional exercise of a governor’s …
Saul As Torah-Breaker
I am continuing with some occasional remarks on various aspects of N.T. Wright’s work. “What, then, was the agenda of Saul of Tarsus? We may draw it together in three points. First, he was zealous for Israel’s God and for the Torah. This was a matter of personal piety, no doubt, and of fervent prayer …
The Risen Lord
Minister: He is risen! Congregation: He is risen indeed! God of everlasting life, we pray to You in the mighty name of Jesus Christ, our risen Lord. As Jonah spent three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Lord Jesus spent three days and three nights in the heart …
Death Reversed
Jesus rose from the dead, and defeated the power of death forever. He did not do this in one moment of time, with all the effects of His work immediately evident, but the central thing was done at that one moment of time. His resurrection was the first fruits of what will be a glorious …
Protection and the Sacrament
As was noted at the Good Friday service, the Lord Jesus at the Last Supper gave bread to Judas. The apostle John says that after this identification of him, Satan entered him and he went out into the night. There is an important sense in which we should fence the Table, and this is what …
Good Friday Homily 2005
This is the day in our calendar when we commemorate the time when the mangled body of our Lord Jesus was nailed to a cross of wood. Not only do we commemorate this, we exult in it. In this divine humiliation, we have learned to see the beauty of the Lord, the wisdom of God, …