Two Kinds of Idolatry

“There are two kinds of idols. One must be demolished entirely, ground into powder at the brook Kidron, and used to desecrate the graves of the people (2 Kings 23:5-7). There is to be no quarter given to this kind of idol—for example, a statue of Tash in your backyard, to which neighborhood puppies and kittens are sacrificed. That is not the sort of thing that can be gradually opposed. But there is another kind of idol, where natural and good gifts from our Heavenly Father have assumed a wrongful place in the heart loyalties of an individual. He might be greedy for money, which is idolatry (Col. 3:5), and yet after repentance he must still purchase things. He might love his father and mother in such a way as to keep him from becoming a disciple of Christ (Matt. 10:37; cf. Luke 14:26), and yet true repentance does not mean that he needs to shoot his father and mother, and bury them in a desecrated graveyard at the brook Kidron. Rather, it means demoting them from the god shelf of his heart, and honoring them in the proper way more than he ever did in his life before.”

American Milk and Honey, pp. xii-xiii

Real Adultery

“A man who is married to a woman can betray her, but a man who never met her cannot do so . . . In other words, we say that all adulterers were never really married. But of course this means that they are not really adulterers . . . In other words, we have two positions: the first is that husbands cannot commit adultery, and the second is that adulterers are not husbands, and hence not adulterers. What never seems to occur to anyone is the duty of fighting our fellow Christians to the last ditch—as Athanasius did with Arius.”

“Reformed” Is Not Enough, pp. 195-196

Teaching Faith Instead of Doubt

“If we believe God when He says that He made us one with our wives so that He could have godly offspring, then we should act as though we believe it. This means that we should teach our children to believe it. And this means, in its turns, that they should never know a time when they did not love and honor Jesus Christ, love His gospel, and love His Church. If we do anything else with our children, we are teaching them to doubt, not to believe . . . We must return to the doctrine of covenantal succession. If we hold to infant baptism, we are saying by our participation in that wonderful rite that we believe God’s promises concerning future generations. What this debate has shown is that more than a few paedobaptists are saying, ‘Really? You believe the promises? Isn’t that works?’”

“Reformed” Is Not Enough, pp. 188-189

Application, Allergies & Anaphylaxis

Introduction: One of the great characteristics of modern Reformed preaching and teaching is that there appears to be a deep and abiding aversion to making any concrete applications. Sometimes various things are decorated as though they might be a matter of possible application, but this is illusory, like a heat shimmer off a highway in …