Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! God Almighty, Maker of all things, we praise Your ineffable wisdom and power, Your kindness and mercy, Your justice and law, Your Son and Your Spirit. We thank You for receiving our worship now. We confess that You are the God above …
A Few Tattered Rags
Not only must the Church throw down idols, but the Church is called to throw down idols using God’s appointed instruments for doing so. We are to pull them all from their marble pedestals, but what ropes are we to use? In the apostolic era, the word of God was preached with great boldness, and …
The Cultural Mandate
Genesis is the book of beginning — this is too often neglected by Christians. Here we see the beginning of the world, obviously, but also the beginning of marriage, of work, of rest, of music, and of many other of God’s good gifts. In short, the book of Genesis provides us with a basic understanding …
Marriage As Manifest Glory XXIII
INTRODUCTION: James tells us that the tongue is an unruly member. If we can control the tongue, he says, we can control anything. At the same time, the Bible teaches that the tongue has tremendous power for good. We destroy with our words. We build with our words. THE TEXTS: The wise in heart shall …
Not To Decide
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 50 Now if you get more of what you subsidize, and less of what you penalize, then what follows from this? In our egalitarian age, one of the favorite responses to any intrusions of reality is to revolt against them. …
Jesus and the Minimum Wage
If anyone wants to read something by N.T. Wright that would indicate why I find him such an edifying writer, I would recommend Bringing the Church to the World, put out by Wipf and Stock. I am edified by him as much as I am because few contemporary writers make the case against false and …
Living Wisdom
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! We praise Your name, oh God, for You are the living and triune God. The idols have mouths, but do not speak. You have no physical mouth, and yet You speak the eternal and everlasting Logos, the Word over all, the Word …
False Peace With False Gods
God has assigned a task to the Church in the world, and that task is to throw down all idols, and to establish the right worship of God throughout the earth, from the River to the ends of the earth. But looking around, we have to come to grips with the fact that idolatry in …
Life Devouring Death
The psalmist praises God because God prepared a table for him in the presence of his enemies. Surely this would include the presence of the great enemy, death. Now rightly understood, this table is the central example of that gracious provision, and rightly understood, this table is one of the great weapons in the arsenal …
The Ultimate Letter to Rome
Dear Joel, Once we get past our agreement that perseverance in the faith should be considered a good thing, the doctrine of perseverance creates a large number of questions. Some of the disagreements that arise out of this are extremely subtle, so it is important to define our terms very carefully at the outset. According …