As we come to worship the Lord, and as we prepare our hearts to confess our sins, we have to take care that we do this as Christians. The carnal attitude toward sin thinks no more than about “breaking or keeping a rule.” This is the religious mentality. This is paganism; it is legalism. The …
Vertical and Horizontal
When we come before the Lord to worship Him, we are to have pure hearts. We have a vertical relationship with God, and a horizontal relationship with one another. The Bible teaches us that there needs to be a symmetry between those two. If the liturgy and the sermon create the wrong kind of space, …
Teaching Us on the Outside
The Word of God tells us to put to death our members which are on the earth, and this exhortation is followed by a list of that unhappy crew (Col. 3:4-6). Uncleanness, lust, fornication . . . all must die. The apostle Paul gives this assignment to Christians, to saints and faithful brethren (Col. 1:2). …
Not at All Symmetrical
It would seem that grace is a good deal, and absolute grace would be a really good deal. If salvation is free, unearned, unmerited, and undeserved, then this means that absolutely anyone can be saved. What could be the catch? Well, the catch is that these terms mean that anyone can be saved by Christ …
Doctrinal and Liturgical Clutter
The longer you are a Christian, the harder it is to keep it simple. You grow in knowledge. You grow in your grasp of Christian doctrine, and the Word. You come to church long enough to know when to stand up and sit down. But in all these manifestations of doctrinal, liturgical, and cultural knowledge, …
Covenant Ties
You have heard the word covenant many times, and there is a temptation to think of it as just one of those Bible words. But the word covenant means something. In fact, it means many things, and one of the important ones has direct relevance to the make up of our congregation. Because we are …
Not Wanting to Look Bad
In Psalm 71 (and in various other places), the biblical writer pleads with the Lord that he, the worshipper of God, not be put to shame. One of the faults we have in prayer is that we do not imitate this enough. We have drifted into what we think is a principled complacency—whatever God decrees …
Against the Wind
We not only struggle against sin itself, but we also struggle to understand sin rightly. One of the mistakes we make about it is that we think that time spent in sin is somehow enlightening, such that, after we repent, we can teach and inform others by means of our testimony. Now God does use …
Whether Rough or Smooth
One of the traps we fall into is that of defending ourselves both coming and going. We tell others that “all we ask” is that if someone has a problem with what we are doing, that they simply come to us with it. Talk to me, we say, and not about me. And there is …
Two Kinds of Blamelessness
There are two kinds of blamelessness. One is impossible for us to have, and the other is the full and settled expectation for all Christians. Compared with the holiness of God, not one of us as yet at the place where God could not find fault if He wanted to. In our vertical relationship with …