Ministers and preachers have a dangerous tendency to emphasize timeless truths to such an extent that they wind up preaching to no one in particular. And yet the letters to the Ephesians, Galatians, Corinthians and Romans are quite different — this is because their respectively different stories require that that God’s eternal Word be brought …
Rocking Back and Forth in His Name
When we come before God, when we gather our families together to worship Him, we are doing something that we have been summoned to do. God speaks and we respond. We are to respond in the words He has given us, and with the heart He has given us. We do this submissively, and this …
The Farmer Scratched His Chin
One day two theologians were traveling to a conference together and their car broke down on a country road. They began the long walk back to the nearest town together, which was about five miles away and, as they walked, they fell into a deep and profound conversation. To pass the time as they walked, …
Moving Beyond Repentance
The joy of the Lord is our strength. As we pray for reformation, as we worship with reformation in mind. This phrase, taken from Nehemiah, should not be mis-rendered. We should not say, “The grief of the Lord is our strength.” God’s purpose is to save and deliver us. This does entail the grief that …
Not a Graveyard for our Prayers
The pattern of worship in the Bible is this. We, in the power of the Holy Spirit, ascend into the heavenly places to worship God. As we worship Him there, and He receives our praise, He takes that glory and manifests it on earth. If we try to manifest God’s glory on earth directly, we …
Worship Is Political
The modern world specializes in fragmentation. Everything is broken apart into little bits, so that autonomous man might have the illusion that this world can be controlled by man, piece by little piece. But we are Christians, who serve the God who made heaven and earth, and who then remade them in Jesus Christ our …
No Dessert for You
Once there was a young couple whose first child was approaching school age, and they had begun to talk seriously about what they were going to do. The problem was acute for them because they both came from families that had a lot of public school teachers in them. These were Christian people, but public …
Unity and Conflict
The unity of the faith is dependent upon unity of faith. While we have an objective unity with all who share one Lord, one faith, one baptism, Paul does on to say that there is another unity that we must grow up into. There is a unity we must preserve, and there is a unity …
By the Root
James tells us the source of quarreling and wars. He says, authoritatively, that people fight and quarrel because of their covetousness. Covetousness, in its turn, a violation of the tenth commandment, is the opposite of contentment. When you are weeding in a garden, it is not enough to simply clip the weed so that it …
False Reproach As Glory
Peter tells us that we are happy when we are reproached for the name and sake of Jesus Christ. He tells us that we should not be astonished when we are confronted with attacks, persecutions, and slanders. But more than this, Peter states, in line with what the Scriptures tell us elsewhere, that it is …