Resentments have a tendency to accumulate. They are something that grows. Bitterness is a settled negative disposition toward someone, but it is a settled negative disposition that feeds and grows. If you one time fired an employee for laziness or dishonesty, that might represent a settled negative disposition toward him, in that you would never …
Declared Clean
This is a meal, and we know that we are to wash up for meals. It is the same with this sacramental meal as it is with any meal. Before you eat, you wash up. That is just what you do. We understand this by how we place our time of confession at the beginning …
Truth Without Permission
“If a thing be true, why confer with flesh and blood about it?” (Shedd, Homiletic and Pastoral Theology, p. 286).
Don’t Convolute It
“A reader of English can always help himself by looking back a few lines and refreshing his mind. A hearer of English hear once for all, and if he loses the thread of your sermon in a long involved sentence, he very likely never finds it again” (Ryle, Simplicity in Preaching, p. 13).
Swings Like a Thurible
Peter Leithart was kind enough to respond to my rejoinder here. So let us not just talk about ecumenism, let us all continue to display the ecumenical spirit that properly begins at home. I thank Peter for his interaction. In this rejoinder to mine, Peter issues a clarification, and then notes an irony, a misdirection, …
Preaching Clearly Means Seeing Clearly
“If I do not see my way through a text, I cannot preach on it, because I know I cannot be simple; and if I cannot be simple, I know I had better not preach at all” (Ryle, Simplicity in Preaching, p. 11).
A Rejoinder to Peter Leithart
Introduction: In a recent First Things article, Peter Leithart has continued to develop his recent emphasis on the “end of Protestantism.” He has a book coming out on the subject, and so this is not the first précis he has offered on the topic. The topic is on his mind, and that is why it …
Women: Themes in Proverbs III
Introduction: The image for wisdom in Proverbs is overwhelmingly feminine—but so is folly. The book of Proverbs is dedicated to teaching young men to walk up rightly, and this means taking women into account, women of both kinds. Women must learn from the book of Proverbs also, but need to do it in reverse. Don’t …
Without Guile
In a time like ours, one of the fundamental distinctions we must master is the distinction between a sin and a crime. This is more complicated than it looks or sounds. A crime is something outlawed by the civil authorities, and in what they have done, they may have behaved wisely or foolishly. For example, …
Our Loyalty Lessons
God has fashioned the world in such a way that table companionship is filled with meaning. And it is not just one meaning, but a multitude of meanings, running in every direction. But one of those meanings is the implied pledge of mutual fidelity. We can see this in the implications found in the words …