Idolatry is to place any created thing in the place that should be occupied by the living God alone. Gross idolatry occurs when someone carves or paints an object, and then bows down in front of it. This is prohibited in the ten commandments—no graven images. But idolatry can also occur when we are dealing …
Love That Dirty Water
When Isaiah has his great vision of the thrice-holy God, his immediate reaction is to recoil in the realization that he dwells among a people of unclean lips (Is. 6:5). The Lord Jesus teaches that the overflow of the mouth reveals the true state of the heart (Matt. 12:34). Hypocrisy can bottle such things up …
Buttery Lessons
God has created us in such a way that we must live in accordance with a word. We must live by a law, by a standard. There is no other way for us to function. When we fell into sin, we discovered the possibility (or so we thought) of living by another standard than the …
The Cootie Contagion Radius
One of the things we have to learn as Christians is that, when it comes to appearances, we clean up real nice. But we also have to remember that this is also true of whited sepulchers. They clean up real nice also. When new Christians join us, still reeling and recovering from all the problems …
What Draws Us All
The words of grace to us are centered in the phrase no condemnation. But this word from God is nonsensical unless it is understood in the context of the condemnation that could have been. Indeed, it has to be understood in the context of the condemnation that most certainly would have been had God not …
Actual Neighbors
As we gear up for our upcoming campaign centered on the theme of Gospel Presence, we want to urge you to do just a few things to prepare yourselves for what we want to do. One of the things we don’t want to do is think of these campaigns as events where we do something, …
No Dead Space Between Us
One of our problems is that we do not recognize the reality of our relationships. We tend to think of individuals as hard centers of reality, and the relations between them as being a matter of arrangement. If things are good, well, that’s fine, but they can be “not good,” and the individual is still …
Evicting Everybody
ExhortationGod expects our worship of Him to come from honest lips. We know that we are not capable of this on our own steam, but we should also know—just as certainly—that God’s grace makes honesty possible for sinners in this world. With it having been made possible, by His grace alone, it is therefore obligatory …
When Your Child is the Mystery Pill
Children are often the beginning of conflict between adults. Sometimes it isn’t their fault, but at the same time, it sometimes is. There are multiple ways this can happen, but let me focus on just one. The attitude that drives this one is found in most if not all of the others, and so it …
No Static Center
Because Jesus has been established as both Lord and Christ, our worship of God through Him is the center of the world. Everything else we do, like the water flowing out from Ezekiel’s temple, proceeds from that reality. Not only is it the center of the world, but it also shapes the world. It was …