Every word which men speak or hear in worship must either renew that word or cheapen it. God has determined to sanctify us through His Word, and therefore, because of our sinful inclinations, we tend to invent various shifts and devices in a vain attempt to keep this sanctification from happening. Of course, overt denial …
A Powerful Dinner
Father and gracious God, we lift up our hearts and voices to You, asking You to continue to shower Your kindness upon us. We thank You for bringing us to yet another Sabbath, and we rejoice in the opportunity we have here to rest in the grace of Your gospel. We know that this dinner …
Marriage As Manifest Glory XXXIV
INTRODUCTION: We have learned that being a godly Christian husband or wife is a subset of being a godly Christian period. That being the case, we see that certain characteristics that all Christians are to share readily have a peculiar and pointed application to husbands and wives. With this in mind, we need to take …
Marriage As Manifest Glory XXXIII
INTRODUCTION: As we have noted, men as husbands can fail in their calling to be masculine in various ways. But men and women are a fallen race together, and women also stumble in their calling to be feminine. Remembering that folly is a moral category in the Bible, we need to deal with the fact …
Do Not Forsake the Work of Your Hands
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! God and Father— We praise you with a whole heart Before the gods we sing our taunting songs. We turn toward Your holy temple throne, And praise Your name, a name filled up with mercy and with truth. And yet, You set …
Full Deliverance
We confess that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man. But we deny that He was any kind of mish mash of the two. The union of the two natures was found in one man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and this point of union was not a theological abstraction, but rather our Savior, Jesus. …
You Are the Meal
We gather together here at the Table of the Lord in order that He might feed us. We do not gather here on the assumption that the bread and wine constitute some kind of theological puzzle, the meaning of which we must figure out before we are qualified to take it. This is a meal—nourishment. …
Companions of Christ
In their ignorance, the disciples on the road to Emmaus besought Jesus to do something which we should all be seeking to do in all knowledge. As they came toward their home, the Lord made as though He was going to continue on, leaving them there. But they constrained Him, it says, and sought for …
Word and Sacrament Alone
You, like the Jews in the wilderness, are assembled on the edge of battle. You, like the Jews, are tempted to be distracted by the size of the enemy. You, like them, are all too aware of your own shortcomings and failings. You know your own sin, you know the doctrine of depravity, and you …
The Lord of History
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Father of history, Father of the Lord of history, God of the Spirit who directs all history, we worship You now in the power and authority of the name of Jesus, and amen. We rejoice that You have placed us at this …