In a recent book entitled The Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Rick Phillips says this: “Eventually, the evangelicals gave in to that pressure, agreeing that if you are baptized you are a Christian, even if you deny the deity of Christ and the atoning work of the cross. This is of the greatest importance …
Pleasant Words
INTRODUCTION Messages on the tongue can easily cause every Christian to respond with some sort of uh oh. We all know how readily we sin with the tongue, and if a preacher is aiming for conviction it is fairly easy to hit that target through preaching on “sins of the tongue.” But we all know, …
Offering Up Our Rest
: Father in heaven, You have given great and wonderful gifts to us, and among them we count this food, this opportunity to serve one another in fellowship as we eat it, the opportunity to sing before You, and the privilege of worshiping You tomorrow as we gather together with all the saints in the …
A Synod of Owls
Once a great synod of Reformed owls gathered together for a confabulation of their wits, to wit, putting their brains together to solve a problem that had long roiled the world of owley Reformedness. Now, in that last sentence, I must confess that I was sorely tempted to write, “of their wits, to wit, to …
Strange Alliances
A specter is haunting the Reformed world — the specter of biblically grounded teaching on marriage, family, and elder qualifications. The threat is causing new ecumenical alliances to form, all calculated to meet the rising and imminent danger. TR Frank Smith is teaming up with openness theology, rabid anti-theonomist John Robbins is shoulder to shoulder …
John Robbins and the Council of Trent
The controversy over justification by faith shows no signs of letting up. Every day I hear from some new quarter that the hubbub continues. One of the larger ironies in all this is that men who have abandoned the historic, Protestant understanding of faith have accused other men (who have not abandoned it) of doing …
Christ First, Wood Second, Business Third
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11) Growing Dominion, Part 7 One of the great legacies of the Reformation is the idea of calling. Prior to the Reformation it was assumed that serving God in a serious way meant going into a monastery, or some kind of spiritual equivalent. The resurgence …
Suspensions From the Supper
INTRODUCTION The purpose of this message is to explain and defend a certain practice required by our church constitution, and to do so in the only manner acceptable to us, which is through an appeal to the Scriptures. In recent months, we have had a small flurry of suspensions from the Lord’s Supper, which has …
Auburn Avenue Hubbub (AAH) Cool Quote #6
“Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we give you eternal praise and thanks, that you have granted and bestowed upon this child your fellowship, that you have born him again to yourself through your holy baptism, that he has been incorporated into Your beloved Son, our only Savior, and is now your child and heir.” Strasbourg Psalter …
No Level Playing Field/Psalm 7
The psalm is by David. The occasion of it was a slander by a particular man named Cush, a man from the same tribe that David’s adversary Saul was from. The psalm is a shiggaion, a “wandering,” which probably refers to a very intense, dithyrambic poem (cf. Hab. 3:1). In his zeal for vindication, David …