Never forget that the point of worship is identical to the point that God has established for the history of our world. The meaning of worship is the same as the meaning of history. God is engaged in remaking the human race in Jesus Christ. Easter Sunday is a powerful reminder of this. There are …
Stay and Believe
Quite a number of years ago, we began observing the Lord’s Supper on a weekly basis. Quite a bit went into that discussion beforehand, but one of the striking things about our preparations for it was the warning I got from an experienced minister. He said that when we went to weekly communion, we should …
Good Friday Homily 2017
As we meditate of the death of the Lord Jesus, as we consider what He has done for His people in this glorious substitutionary sacrifice, one of the things we may reflect on with profit is how many times Scripture juxtaposes blood and water, and on the different ways it does so. One of the …
Crowds of the Heart/Palm Sunday 2017
Introduction: You have often heard here that we have no real reason for assuming that the crowd that welcomed Jesus in the Triumphal Entry and the crowd that was gathered to scream for His crucifixion were made up of the same people. Those two events, just days apart, are often pointed to as evidence of …
Odd Crusades
In just a few moments, we will come to the point in our service where we confess our sins. We do not do this because we think it should just be part of the drill—because we just want to acknowledge something theologically. Although this does make a theological statement, we are not preaching here; we …
Present or Absent?
For centuries, Christians have debated the “real presence” of the Lord Jesus in the Supper. Too often it is not noted that the alternative position is necessarily a belief in His real absence. This of course is silly, and so it should cause us to reflect. All orthodox Christians believe in the real presence—the debate …
The Queen of Repetition
I was talking the other day with a friend about the propriety of making fun of cheesy Christian music. We both agreed that there was a time when it was called for, and that there was a time when it was not called for at all. But where is that line, and how do we …
Real Forgiveness
Introduction: Everyone knows that the Christian faith revolves around the forgiveness of sins. But because there is a gospel logic involved in it that eludes every form of carnal reasoning, we have to be careful to understand what is actually involved. What is real forgiveness? The Text: “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and …
A Growing Temple
We feed our children so that they might grow up. God feeds us for the same reason—we are His children, and He is growing us up into maturity. This Table is therefore one of the central instruments to help us resist one of the great idols of our age—that of calculated immaturity. In fashion, in …
Damnation and Deficient Allegiance
A few days ago, Peter Leithart published a brief summary of Matthew Bates’ book, Salvation by Allegiance Alone. My musings here cannot be a fair rebuttal to Bates, since I have not read his book, and it is really not a rebuttal of Peter’s point either, because he largely limits himself to summarizing what he …