As God allows us to stumble toward more mature forms of worship and government, we must take great care. An essential part of cultural maturity in community is that places of honor will develop. This is inescapable. Jesus did not command the Jews to tear out the chief seats in the synagogues and to level …
Merry Christmas As Insurrection
On a number of different occasions, we have considered the importance of having our times and seasons defined in relation to Jesus Christ. The only alternative to this is to have them defined in reference to someone or something else, and this is obviously an unacceptable alternative to all faithful Christians. Jesus Christ really has …
If You Are Breathing
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! All you people, praise the Lord! Praise God in His holy sanctuary, Praise Him in the high firmament, The firmament of His great authority. Praise Him for His mighty acts in history, Praise Him in accord with His excellent greatness. Do this …
Marley’s Ghost Notwithstanding
This is the third Lord’s Day of Advent, the year of our Lord, 2005. We are not here today, marking the approach of Christmas, because the early Christians compromised with paganism. It is not the case that our fathers tried to sanitize some pagan celebration of the winter solstice. As it turns out, the Romans …
Corporate Testimony
Tim Enloe has raised a very good point about the care that Protestant apologists should take in representing the Catholic faith to others. In short, we ought never to maintain that official Roman Catholic teaching affirms what it plainly denies, or vice versa. In other words, apologetics ought never be a battle with a straw …
Lord’s Day Prayer 49
Father and gracious Lord, we are so grateful for Your continued covenant kindness to us. That covenant has brought us salvation in Jesus Christ; that covenant is Jesus Christ, and we thank You that You have given us the gift of living and rejoicing in Him. That life, and that joy, includes our Sabbath feasting, …
Glory In the Highest Comes To the Lowest
We want always to remember and commemorate our holidays like Christians. We must never attempt to recover the “meaning of Christmas” through some Reader’s Digest approach to inspirational stories. The meaning of Christmas is not found in a rejection of rank commercialism, but is rather the meaning of the whole Bible—sin, promise, redemption, faith and …
Ezra Nehemiah 5
Introduction There are two great elements to the task of rebuilding. The first is the nature of the task itself, an overwhelming task. The second is that the task must be undertaken with a handicap—constant opposition. It is not only that you have to drain the swamp, which would be difficult enough, but that you …
Theology With the Chambermaid
I am not sure I can do full justice to the questions about Roman Catholicism (from Tim and Kurt), but I will have a whack at it. The distinction between the magisterial doctrine of sola Sciptura and the modern, individualistic solo Scriptura is, in my thinking, straightforward. Solo Scriptura maintains that the Bible is the …
A Decree Went Out From Caesar
As we come to a robust celebration of Christmas, we want to maintain the biblical antithesis. This cannot be done on the basis of genial Unitarian platitudes, egg nog, gentle snow fall, or anything else like these things. “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, …