“Of course, pride goeth before the tumble down the geo-political slope” (5 Cities, p. 60).
Like the Two Boys in the Parable
“The nature and limits of our sabbath convictions are very important, because there is more than one way to break a commandment” (A Primer on Worship and Reformation, p. 65).
Music Into the Breach
“The psalter is a battle hymnal. If we are serious about conquering the world with the gospel through biblical worship, we will soon discover that it cannot be done without the psalms” (A Primer on Worship and Reformation, p. 64).
Compared to What?
“So we must beware of the false dilemma. It would be far better to sing five intelligible words (accompanied with three chords) that ten thousand unintelligible Latin or German words borne along by glorious cantatas. It would be better to sing a Scripture chorus to a humming guitar than to sin an old psalm in …
Audio Reading of Post
A Dirge at God’s Funeral
“One of my favorite hymns today is Holy, Holy, Holy, but when I waas a boy I hated that song. In the church where I grew up, the hymn was sung like dirge at God’s funeral. When I first encountered contemporary worship music, it was like a spring day after a long winter. But simple …
Becoming What We Eat
“We partake of Him by means of faith, which means that we do as we are told. We take and eat by faith. We take and drink by faith. As we do this, we are becoming what we eat. And since what we are eating is a new humanity, resurrected and alive, never to die …
Sermons and Sacraments, Not Lectures and Mnemonic Devices
“What does this ministry do? It causes the whole body to be fitly joined together. And faithful pastors do not have the authority to dispense with instruments thought by the apostles to be essential to this process. Simply put, we do not have the authority to turn sermons into lectures and sacraments into options” (A …
And Nobody Take This Out of Context and Start Another Blog War
“Most of us are familiar with Christopher Marlowe’s line that Helen’s was the ‘face that launched a thousand ships.’ Perhaps this might provide a modern scientific scale for measuring feminine attractiveness or beauty — .001 helen being a sufficient magnitude of beauty to launch one ship” (5 Cities, p. 50).
Communing With Eyes Open
“We are to discern the Lord’s body in one another. When the Lord’s Supper is being served, we should sit up straight, and look around the congregation, eyes open, up and down our row. It is true that we are to examine ourselves, but we are to do so in relation to one another. We …
The Magic is Elsewhere
“Nothing happens magically to the bread or in the wine, just as gold being slipped on a finger in a wedding ceremony has the same molecular make-up as gold anywhere else. But equally rejected is the rationalistic superstition which maintains that in the Supper of the Lord nothing happens apart from our rolling certain sentences …