Last week I saw a Facebook thread that had been kicked off with a comparison of abortion and infant baptism. Quite a discussion ensued, as you might expect. The initial point being made concerned things parents do that they have no warrant from God to do, and since I am writing here as a paedobaptist …
Glorious Inequality
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) The Basket Case Chronicles #189 “There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and …
Freshness and Force
“The sacred orator is quickened by the analytic study of the sacred volume into a freedom, freshness, and force, that are utterly beyond his reach without it” (Shedd, p. 7).
The Basic Task
“In the presence of both nature and revelation, men, as Lord Bacon phrases it, is a minister and interpreter, and not a creator and lord” (Shedd, Homiletics and Pastoral Theology, p. 5).
Surveying the Text: Joel
Introduction: The occasion of this prophecy was a swarm of locusts that devastated the land of Judah. That was a true disaster that was a portent of another follow-up disaster, an invading Gentile army. Joel calls upon the people of God to repent, and promises them true restoration if they do so. Part of his …
On Christian Disobedience #2
Introduction: With regard to our duties of civil obedience and submission, we have to consider the express teaching of the Bible. But we must do this in context, which means we have to set a contextual stage. This context is important in two respects—the broader context of doctrine and theology, and the second is the …
The Ultimate Pledge of Allegiance
The sun is 93 million miles away, and yet every day we enjoy its warmth and light here. The Lord Jesus is at the right hand of God the Father, yet He is present here with us, now. His warmth and presence comes to us in the person of the Holy Spirit, and so if …
The Barnacles of Devotion
We have noted that simplicity is an aesthetic value, and should not be regarded simply as a theological value. Too many times believers assume that if one’s good, then two’s better, and over the centuries the worship of God gets progressively encrusted with the barnacles of devotion. But it is not enough simply to develop …
Paul and the Rhetorical Schools
“Paul disavows the grand style of the Asiatic rhetoric, while actually practicing the plain style of the Atticist rhetorician” (Overstreet, Persuasive Preaching, p. 53).
Surveying the Text: Hosea
Apart from what we can glean from the book itself, we do not know a lot about the prophet Hosea. He was a prophet from the north, and the hard date we can gather from Hosea 1:4 means that his ministry was in the mid 700’s B.C. The theme of the book is Israel’s unfaithfulness …