As Christians who live in history, as believers who occupy time, we want to make sure we understand the tenses of the verbs that describe our salvation. Before the foundation of the world, He has chosen us. That is in the past. His past choice concerns our future—that we should be holy and blameless. Because …
Eating Authority
The apostle tells us that when we partake of this holy meal, we are proclaiming the Lord’s death until He comes. Because this is a standing truth, it means that from the first observance of the Supper to the last observance of it just before His Second Coming, the Lord’s death will be continuously proclaimed …
Clothed with Humility, Clothed for Glory/1 Peter 5
Introduction: Peter now comes to his final words of exhortation and encouragement. The holiness under pressure that he has been encouraging them in is a holiness that is arrayed in humility. This humility is characteristic of the entire Christian body, including the head of that body, meaning of course the Lord Jesus. The Text: “The …
Getting What We Deserve
The task before us today, in these times, is that of learning how to live faithfully as Christians in the station to which we have been assigned, and yet to do it with an eye on the big picture. We need to understand that the nation will not be transformed by direct action, aimed at …
Real Presence
We want to affirm the presence of the Lord here with us now, and this presence is truly a real presence. We do not want to say it is an absence—a mere memorial—and neither do we say it is an ethereal, spiritualized presence, or that it is simply a raw material presence, crassly understood. Rather, …
Philip and Naomi
Too often we speak of marriage as though the secret to a happy one is something uniquely marital. But marriage is a human estate, and is a relationship between two humans, a man and a woman. And as something that encompasses a vast number of humans in relationship, it also encompasses the range of things …
Micah and Kelsey
A wedding ceremony is an imaging ceremony. This is the case because a wedding is made a wedding by virtue of the fact that it consists of a man and a woman, coming together as man and wife. We are told in Scripture, in various ways that this is an imaging of God. The first …
The Spirit of Glory Rests on You/1 Peter 4
Introduction: We have been talking about holiness under pressure, and Peter has been preparing these saints for a time of intense persecution. We are dealing also with hard facts on the ground, with rival interpretations of those facts battling it out. And those rival interpretations could not be farther apart than when dealing with two …
As a Lamb Among Wolves
The apostle Paul once said that he filled out the sufferings of Christ (Col. 1:24). Clearly, he did not mean that the atonement was somehow lacking—when Jesus cried that it was finished, it really was finished. So what did He mean? The complete atonement established the body of Christ, and because of the completeness and …
The Head of the Table
As the apostle Paul begins the eleventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, let us assume that he is not guilty of a radical lurch as he changes subjects, deciding finally to come back to the subject of the Lord’s Supper in v. 17. The culmination point of Christian worship is the Supper, and every disorder in …