Theology That Bites Back
Here is a brief something I sent out to our church a few years ago. Some of you all might find it helpful. I forget if I have posted it before. Halloween As another Halloween approaches, and as many of us are working on building alternatives, I wanted to take the opportunity to offer a …
“Some seem to think that we poor souls, who are the Puritanic school, are ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confined’ by harsh dogmas, from which we would gladly escape. They imagine that we have to check every rising aspiration of our nobler selves, so as to preserve the tyranny of a certain iron system. John Calvin is supposed …
INTRODUCTION: We come now to a very potent expression of the biblical take on blind wealth in the face of inexorable death. As we treat the subject of our riches, let us take care, first, to remember the whole counsel of God on this subject, and let us take even greater care to not allow …
“In forming your system of astronomy, where do you put the sun? If you are not clear on that cardinal matter, your scheme will be a failure. If you have not found out the true ‘tabernacle for the sun,’ I am not very particular as to where you put Mars or Jupiter. Where is Christ …
Holiness is a glorious perfection belonging to the nature of God, hence he is in Scripture styled often the Holy One, the Holy One of Jacob, the Holy One of Israel, and oftener entitled Holy than Almighty, and set forth by this part of his dignity more than by any other (Stephen Charnock) In a …
“So long as the life of the sermon is strengthened by preparation, you may prepare to the utmost; but if the soul evaporates in the process, what is the good of such injurious toil? It is a kind of murder which you have wrought upon the sermon which you have dried to death” (Charles Spurgeon, …
This exhortation is directed to the young people in our midst, to those who have grown up in the covenant. Here is the charge. Our unbelieving culture around us likes to pretend that hypocrisy, particularly religious hypocrisy, is the special province of elderly and crotchety Christians. But as one who has spent my entire life …
What do you want to be when you (finally) grow up? If you’ve had trouble figuring out your gifts and what God has called you to do and to be, you aren’t alone. The Lord enjoins every one of us, in all the actions of life, to have respect to our own calling . . …
“Do you not think that many sermons are ‘prepared’ until the juice is crushed out of them, and zeal could not remain in such dry husks? . . . You will never get a crop if you plant boiled potates. You can boil a sermon to a turn, so that no life remaineth in it …
Balance is very difficult for us as Christians to maintain. But balance in worship, balance in doctrine, balance in good deeds, and balance in individual practice, are nevertheless required. At the same time, balance is to be defined according to the Word, and not according to the moderate nervousness the world has about religious things. …
