Either you love God and His people, or you don’t love God and His people. There really is no third way. The two great commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor. Loving your neighbor includes those who come to the Table with you here every week; it means loving your fellow church …
Beauty Works Out
“It is too much the habit to regard beauty, as mere ornamentation; as something that is added to other properties, instead of growing out of them . . . if the definition that has been given be the true one, beauty is rather an inevitable accompaniment, than a labored decoration” (Shedd, Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, …
On Christian Disobedience #5
Introduction: As we have been considering the relationship of the believer to the modern secular state, what have we learned? We know that our current rulers are in high rebellion against God, and have therefore forfeited all moral legitimacy. Judgment, when meted out by God, will have been most mercifully delayed—even if it happens tomorrow. …
A Wall of Water on Each Side
We are instructed by Scripture to think of this meal in multiple ways. It is not just “one thing.” And four of the central aspects of this meal should be treasured in our hearts regularly. First, it is a commemoration. Jesus Himself established this pattern when He said that we were to observe the meal …
Death as a Way of Life
When a person drifts in the context of a sound and healthy church—a church in which very many people are not drifting, but are being nourished and fed—the reason that person is drifting is the direct result of not dealing with sin. And in the Scriptures, dealing with sin is not the same thing as …
Asahel’s Carcass
“Many preachers in our days are like Heraclitus, who was called the dark doctor. They affect sublime notions, obscure expressions, and uncouth phrases, making plain truths difficult, and easy truths hard. ‘They darken counsel with words without knowledge.’ Studied expressions and high notions in a sermon, are like Asahel’s carcass in the way, that did …
Joshua and Julia
Everyone who has ever wanted to grapple with the reality of the human condition has needed to deal with two profound realities. The first is the nature of the Divine personality, what the triune God revealed in Scripture is actually like. The second is the reality and depth of the human apostasy and fall, with …
Which Comes From Elsewhere
“The sermon should throb with robust life” (Shedd, Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, p. 87).
No Partial Force
“The preacher who studies and ponders the Bible as a whole, will not be a half-educated man. He will not see great ideas on one side, but on all sides, because they are so exhibited in Scripture . . . His force will not be lawless and without aim” (Shedd, Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, p. …
Surveying the Text/Nahum
Introduction: We know virtually nothing about Nahum, other than that this prophet was a magnificent poet. We have his name, this short masterpiece from him, and the fact that he was probably from Judah, from a town called Elkosh. He prophesied after the fall of Thebes (3:8) in Egypt (664-663 B.C.) but prior to the …