Flattery is deadly, and before you start flattering others, you must first flatter yourself. The reason it is such a deadly sin is that it is the sin that hides from you your clear need to repent. Flattery rushes up to you as soon as the Holy Spirit has convicted you of something, and hastens …
Humanity Divided
As the people of God, we are called to be the people of God. This reality is the reality of the antithesis. It is the constant and unrelenting desire of the secularists to blur and muddy the antithesis, and it is one of our fundamental duties to maintain it. God spoke at the beginning of …
Feel Free to Bring the Kids
The gospel is declaration, not investigation. We were not told to go out into the world, in order to find out where the Spirit had already begun His secret work. Rather, we were commanded to go preach, declare, and announce the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We were to do this openly, and …
The Nature of Folly
Folly is not defined against a worldly standard. There is a kind of folly that exists there, true, a dumb and dumber kind of thing. But we are not concerned with that. In Scripture, folly is not a matter of intelligence, but rather of a moral indisposition to submit to God. Some of the most …
Worship as Haka
As you have been taught before, worship is warfare. But over time, there are some in the church who want to be known as warriors, but do not want an actual fight. What is necessary is to exalt what might be called ceremonies of fighting. This gets the blood pumping, but then you can just …
An Exhortation for the Fourth
As it happens, today, the Lord’s Day is also the Fourth of July, a national holiday. The fact that it is not a part of the church calendar should not prevent us from taking note of it, and resolving on several things as Christians who are also part of a nation that has been surpassingly …
The Problem Character in the Sketch
You have been exhorted as a people numerous times to remember who you are in the story you are in. You have been asked to think about what kind of character you are. If the day you are having were a movie, what character would you be? And would it be a sympathetic character or …
No Matter What Happens, You Grow Up Into You
Jesus is Lord, and He is Lord forever, world without end, and amen. He is Lord of Heaven and earth–not Lord of tiny compartments in our hearts. His grace must extend to those compartments, and our awareness of His lordship over all things must begin there. We must be converted to God. The works of …
Less Glory Is More
The Bible teaches us that the times of the new covenant are attended with a greater glory than the old covenant, as well as with a greater simplicity. In effect, that simplicity is part of the glory. The arrival of Jesus the Messiah was not a signal for us to lapse into some kind of …
Stealth Disobedience
The Bible instructs us on how we are to live together. When we do not follow those instructions, there are two kinds of disobedience. One is flagrant, and knows that it is disobedient. When professing Christians give way to these sorts of temptations, the results are called theft, adultery, fornication, sodomy, false witness and so …