A certain man once claimed that he had a special kind of fish net, one that could capture any kind of fish in the lake. A friend asked to see the net, and was astonished when the proud fisherman brought out a net with a mesh that had openings that were two inches square. “Don’t …
Kindness and Truth Together
One of the ways that we avoid biblical balance in speaking is by assuming some kind of distance between truth and kindness. But Scripture says, “Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart” (Prov. 3:3). Merciful kindness and truth go together. They are …
Part of the Temple Wall
God is at work in our midst, and when God works in a fallen world, He does two things. The first is a work of tearing down, of shaking, of demolishing that which rests upon the wisdom and knowledge of carnal man. He throws down the work of the fleshly man, He throws down the …
The People Had a Mind to Work
In the latter part of the Old Testament, some of the characters and dates start to run together for us, and it is sometimes hard to keep the details straight. If you couple this with the general ignorance about secular history of this time, the result—even for Bible readers—is a random collection of historical facts …
Arms Stretched to Fill the Barns
Minister: Lift up your hearts!Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! When You our Lord released us from our captivity    We were like dreamers.Our mouths were filled with laughter,    And all our tongues could do was sing. Heathen onlookers were baffled,    And acknowledged that our God had done    Great things for us.So we amen …
Everlasting Triune Language Events
We are gathered here now to worship the God who reveals Himself. Moreover, we are worshiping the God who reveals Himself by speaking and by writing, and by becoming a human being who can rightfully be called the Word. Those who seek to undermine our confidence in the ability of words to communicate truth are, …
The Wonders of Food and Drink
Heavenly Father, we rest in You and in Your gracious salvation. We glory in the wonders of food and drink, and how they display Your kindness and grace. We know that our bodies are strengthened by these means, and we pray that our souls would be strengthened in a comparable way, as we celebrate yet …
Jeremiah Hurts the War Effort
Throughout the stories told in the Old Testament, we find three kinds of figures. All of them in various ways are types of the Lord Jesus, but no one figure portrays Him completely. We have kings, like David or Hezekiah. We have faithful priests, like Aaron or Jehoida. And we have the prophets, men like …
Marriage As Manifest Glory XXXVIII
Introduction When a man leaves his father and mother, and takes a wife, one of the purposes God had for this was the creation and nurture of godly seed. As we mentioned when we considered this, it is one purpose of the marriage union, but it is not the only one. We come now to …
Discerning the Body
N.T. Wright wants to say that justification is not so much a matter of “getting in” as it is a question of understanding who “is in.” The problem I have with this (and a great deal of the NPP discussion) is that phrase “not so much.” It creates an adversarial either/or set up where none …