Yesterday I received the honor of being chosen to serve the CREC for the next three years as her presiding minister. When we say we are honored by an honor and when we say we are humbled by an honor, it is too easy to assume that these are sentiments that pull in opposite directions. …
As the Ankle Bracelet Gets Itchy
Discussions of the doctrine of imputed righteousness often act as though the whole momentous subject swirls around a mere handful of texts, and as though the doctrine is not assumed in virtually everything Scripture says about the relationship of a holy God with sinful man. It reminds me of how geologists can find evidence of …
Three Chains III: Shame
Introduction: We have been considering fear, guilt, and shame, and we have come to treat the topic of shame separately. The Text: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run …
The Central Point
This meal is a sacrament. But what is a sacrament? Where does this use come from? The answer to that question—given the nature of what we are doing here—cannot be confined to one simple answer, but it does have an answer. The use of the Latin word sacramentum was introduced by the early father Tertullian, …
Birth and Growth
The task of the church is the evangelization of the world, and to bring that converted world up to maturity in Christ. The task of the local church is to do its part in that global task in its part of the world. Notice how the apostle Paul described his mission. “Whom we preach, warning …
Joseph and Rebecca
Because this wedding ceremony is using the form found in the Book of Common Prayer, in just a few moments—at the exchange of the rings—a phrase will be used that requires some explanation. That phrase is “with my body I thee worship.” Historically, the phrase is what distinguished a free wife from a concubine. A …
Three Chains II: Guilt
Introduction: The solution to fear is deliverance. The answer to guilt is justification. The solution to shame is the honor of glorification. To release someone from one of these chains requires that he be released from all. And Jesus Christ is the only one who can do any of it. Last week we considered the …
Present and Absent Both
This Supper of the Lord is not limited in its signification to just one or two things. It is richly laden with meaning on multiple levels. But two of them might appear to be in tension. The Lord’s Supper is a memorial of what Christ has done for us, and the Lord’s Supper is a …
Confession and Construction
When Nehemiah heard about the desolate state of the ruined city of Jerusalem, he was greatly humbled, and he cried out to the Lord in true confession of sin. “We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments, which thou commandedst thy servant Moses.” (Neh. …
Marjorie Becker, R.I.P.
The hymn O Worship the King uses a striking phrase to describe the condition of man in this fallen world of ours. It describes us as “frail children of dust, and feeble as frail.” That line contains two elements of biblical truth that I want to emphasize here today. The first is that we are …