If we hear a word enough, we think we know what it means. We live in a Christ sub-culture that has strongly emphasized the need to be “born again.” Without denying this need for regeneration at all, we still have to place the reality in a biblical context, lest we turn it into something entirely …
Take It Easy
“Little learning and much pride comes of hasty reading. Books may be piled on the brain till it cannot work” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 177).
By Faith, Not By Sight
Greeen Baggins has picked up the thread again, and so shall I. There is not a lot to talk about here, but rather just a few questions to answer. Lane gives three basic ways to take the “I am righteous” language of the psalter. One is say that the psalmist is not claiming a perfect …
This Will Happen to Us Too
I was reading this morning in Luther’s Table Talk, and came across an insight that is more than a little relevant to some of our confessional and dogmatic controversies. When someone had proposed the collected works of Luther, he said this (the emphasis is mine): “I’d like all my books to be destroyed so that …
Watering the Soup, To Use Another Image
“This age is full of word-spinners — professional book-makers, who hammer a grain of matter so thin that it will cover a five-acre sheet of paper; these men have their uses, as gold-beaters have, but they are no use to you” (Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, p. 177).
A Foundational Prayer
It is sometimes said that what is called the Lord’s prayer is not really the Lord praying, but rather is the Lord’s prayer offered to His disciples, for their use. This is helpful, but we still must not forget that this is the master of prayer teaching praying. “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our …
Brother Charles Nails It
“Sensible persons do not expect a garden to yield them herbs from year to year unless they enrich the soil; they do not expect a locomotive to work without fuel, or even an ox or an ass to labour without food; let them, therefore, give over expecting to receive instructive sermons from men who are …
Christ the Lord of Song
Our motive for all that we do is to be the glory of God — even if it is something as mundane as eating or drinking (1 Cor. 10:31). How much more should we be seeking the glory of God when we are in the act of worshiping Him? Certainly, most Christians would agree that …
Fling Away the Stilts
“I am persuaded that one reason why our workingmen so universally keep clear of ministers is because they abhor their artificial and unmanly ways. If they saw us, in the pulpit and out of it, acting like real men, and speaking naturally, like honest men, they would come around us . . . The vice …
Is Discipline a Mark of the Church?
Church discipline is relatively rare in the modern church and, because it is rarely done, when it is done, it is too often done poorly. As with everything, we have to turn to the Scriptures for guidance and protection. “I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet …