Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Lord God of Israel, Many times they have tormented me, From my youth they have tormented me. Let Israel say the same thing, Let Israel confess: Many times from my youth they have afflicted me, But they have not prevailed. With their …
The Marks of a Pharisee
The Pharisees are the principal bad guys in the New Testament, and they are caricatured as such by the Lord Jesus Himself. But we frequently miss the spiritual lessons involved because we don’t understand polemical satire and caricature. We look at the portrait Jesus draws and we take it with a wooden literalism, and we …
Pharisaical Caricature
I am currently reading a fine book on the Pharisees. The author, Tom Hovestol, is doing a really good job describing the Pharisees as they actually were, where they came from, what their goals were, and how much they resemble modern evangelicals. Although the book is coming from an unexpected quarter (Moody Press), it is …
Including Today
Our Father, and great God, we rejoice before You now. Thank You for the work You have blessed us with in the course of the last week, including today, and for the work that You will bless us with in the week to come. We thank You that in the new covenant our labors are …
Polemical Voltage
One of the staples of NPP discussion with regard to Second Temple Judaism is that, contrary to the OPP, the first-century Jews were not merit-legalists, but that rather they adhered to a religion of grace. In the set-up of the problem, according to many NPP advocates, we are not told that the first century Jews …
Ezra Nehemiah 2
Introduction: The world is a messy place. Part of the mess for believers is learning to tell the difference between situations that call for martyrdom and situations that call for godly acquiescence. One of the more common set-ups where such wisdom is required is when pagan empires are in control. To what extent are we …
The Issue Is Boasting
I freely and cheerfully grant that the Jews of the first century did not hold the peculiar merit theology that prevailed during the medieval era. But that particular merit theology is only one of countless ways that fallen men have devised to boast in themselves instead of in the Lord. And the problem of this …
Forsaking the Right Thing
As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper every week, take note that every exhortation, every confession, every charge is to be heard in this context, and this is how we are to fence the Table. If you are a baptized believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you are not under the lawful discipline of His …
Receiving and Retaining
In his article on justification in the New Dictionary of Theology, N.T. Wright says a number of good and indisputable things. The dictionary was edited by David Wright, J.I. Packer, and Sinclair Ferguson, so we know that the Reformed bona fides should be in good order here. And I thought the article was quite good, …
An Edible Worldview
We are all familiar with the word worldview. It is a commonplace among us, and in danger of becoming a buzzword. The Reformed usually mean that a Christian worldview is something like having a biblically-based intellectual framework. This is part of it, but it is only a part. A worldview is characterized by four basic …