“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).
Manifest Zionism
“You do not have to think nineteenth-century Zionism was a great idea to be willing to acknowledge that Israel’s presence there now is an accomplished fact . . . One hundred years after the fact, someone can believe that Manifest Destiny was a pernicious doctrine and yet live in Oregon or Nevada” (5 Cities, p. …
One of the Liveliest Places on Earth
“Such conservative and safe preaching is neither conservative nor safe. A preacher must never behave as though he were an engineer trying to write a phone book . . . The pulpit should be one of the liveliest places on earth, because in it, words are imitating the Word” (A Primer on Worship and Reformation, …
A Dog’s Breakfast
“This is why right-minded Christians, whenever they hear some modern evangelical academic bemoaning the Enlightenment, have a spirit within them that pulls at the sleeve and says uh oh. They see, rightly, that hte bemoaner is likely just another modernist, fleeing from the baying hounds of meaningless metaphors, and is now up a tree like …
Cutthroat Preaching
[Regarding Heb. 4:12-13] “As worshippers, we are laid bare before this Word, and the Greek word describing this (trachelizo) is a word that refers to exposing the neck of a sacrificial animal just before the throat is cut. It is the Word that slays us, cuts us apart, assembles us on the altar, and sends …
Organic Renewal
“What are the elements of our worship service as we renew our covenant with God weekly? But first a word about this word renewal, which might be misunderstood. We do not renew our covenant with God because it was going to expire or run out, like a lease. We renew our covenant with God because …
Failing By Their Own Central Standard
“The difficulty for fundamentalist Muslims is that the need for warlike violence toward Christians and Jews is grounded in their sacred text, w hile at the same time success on the battlefield has eluded them for centuries. In the early centuries, they were on a roll and their theology matched what was actually happening. But …