“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 …
Or So I Maintain
“But the fact that it is a commonplace does not keep it from being true. Many truisms are true” (5 Cities, p. 45).
How the Bride Entered the World
“We forget where we came from. We forget our birthplace. We were created when the Lord Jesus died on a beam of wood, and another shaft of wood drove a spearhead into Him. That spearhead was the culminiation of a grotesque judicial murder. But the folly of man is wisdom to God, and so when …
A Knife for the Right Hand
“Abraham is the father of all who believe because of what he did on Mount Moriah when he took the knife in his hand to show how firmly he believed the promise of God. And since that time, every son of Abraham has come to faith with a knife in his right hand” (5 Cities, …
Deep Meaning, Right on the Surface
“Any preacher who uses commentaries when preaching through Old Testament books can testify how rare it is for the apostolic interpretation to be taken into any kind of account by the commentator as he seeks to find the meaning of the text before him. Surely this should be a cause for astonishment. Sometimes commentators do …
A Deep Sixing Sanctification
“I remember being taught as a child that we should be like the Sea of Galilee and not like the Dead Sea. Both are fed by the same Jordan River, and yet, because the Dead Sea has no outlet, it is not conducive to life. The Sea of Galilee, on the other hand, is teeming …
And It Is Often Not What You Thought
“An exercise that could be very helpful to pastors in accomplishing this mindset is one that was instrumental in helping me shake loose of many of the unbiblical doctrinal assumptions I had picked up over the years . . . The thing to do is fix the problem yourself with marker pens. Look up every …
Christ in All
“Christ was a Rock that followed the Jews in the wilderness (1 Cor. 10:3-4). The flood in Noah’s time was a typological representation of Christian baptism. The bronze serpent in the wilderness was a type of the crucifixion. Sarah and Hagar were representiative types of two covenants. Melchizedek was a type of Christ and the …
Lots of Dead Fish
“A word fitly spoken, an apt metaphor, will do more teaching, more revealing, than the most precisionistic word-chopping, lengthwise or otherwise. After all, the kingdom of God is like a pile of dead fish (Mt. 13:47)” (A Primer on Worship and Reformation, pp. 44-45).